Monday, August 24, 2009

DIY School: In Session


No Excuses.
No time like the present.
You want to make a film? Don't wait. Don't hesitate. Don't look for the stars to align. It's never going to be absolutely perfect.

The tools are right here.

Make your own damn media.

More on this as it develops.
Because if you need a kick in the pants. I own the steel-toed boots.

Edit to add: Not only am I in your corner, but 1K Film has a handy horror / scifi tip post here. Again, no excuses.


4 comments:

Andrew Bellware said...

Don't you need a script to make a movie?

;-)

Michael Szeles said...

Thank you for this.

I shot my first feature film on two rented panasonic dvx 100b's, a couple of shotgun mics, a wireless, and with the help and dedication of my incredibly talented friends. I am editing it right now.

It's true. DO IT. Decide to do it, and do it. Don't wait for someone to hand you money, don't wait until you've raised such and such amount of money, don't wait for someone to take your hand, don't wait until everything is perfect. Do it now.

I did it. And all I had was a phone and people I knew. I had read about sound, cameras, everything is books. I had acted for years and years in front of the camera. I have been a writer all my life.

Heck, the screenplay I shot was the screenplay I wrote after trying, to no avail, to get another screenplay made. So I said f*** it, and I wrote another one, keeping in mind the resources I had(people and places). And then I shot it.

In the midst of shooting one day during production, I thought, "Why the hell did I wait so long to do this?" Because it was AWESOME. I had the best time of my life.

Thank for this post, also, because I am writing a science fiction/adveture/horror novel right now, and I have put off writing for a day and a half, and I needed the steel toed boot of Pulp Bastardom to kick me in the ass.

Thanks for your blog. You inspire me every time i read a post.

Mike Szeles

Craig Blamer said...

I shot a feature with an XL2 and edited it with iMovie. Looks and sounds like crap at times (mostly the audio... damn, do test footage), but fortunately it was a send-up of old B-movies from the Cold War era.

A l'il leeway there.

I spent two hundred bucks to learn most of what I would have learned in film school.

Mostly by learning the hard way not to do, but hey... that makes more of a lasting impression than being told what to do.

Cunningham said...

Nothing challenges you like throwing yourself in the deep end...

Pick up a camera, any camera and just go shoot.

Craig, love the fact you used the tools at hand and did something.

Awesome.