UPGRADE YOUR iPHONE CAMERA FOR £15

It's probably not ground breaking information anymore for someone to suggest that you can shoot movies on your iPhone. These days people are doing it all the time and there are some fantastic results out there (Hooked Up and To Jennifer are a couple of great horror examples) that prove that anyone has the power of filmmaking in their pocket and with the newest models shooting 4K, it seems more and more like a legitimate filmmaking tool.

YOU CAN APPLY THIS TO ALMOST ANY SMARTPHONE THAT RUNS ANDROID OR IOS.

I've been shooting stuff here and there on my iPhone now for a few years, I don't do it all the time as it not usually the tool that best suits what I'm doing, but I made a micro short for some film students a couple of years back on an iPhone 4 just to show that can be done. Of course, like I said, these days that is common knowledge.

My biggest problem with shooting on an iPhone is that its fairly basic when its comes to actually filming with it. There are rigs out there that are fairly inexpensive like 'The Beast Grip' (£150-£300) that allow you to do things like use pro lenses on the camera, but at that point I start to think that maybe you should just go back to your normal camera and just spend that money on a Canon Rebel or GH1. Also I'm not sure about dropping an extra £300 on my already £600 phone. So as usual I started looking for a more low budget solution.

The biggest upside of shooting on an iPhone, as far as I'm concerned, is that its so portable, Mainly because it fits in your pocket. Adding rigs and lenses and such starts to take away from its best function in my eyes, the fact that its almost invisible, this also make its great for guerrilla filmmaking without drawing attention. So I was looking for a way to just make the phone function as a camera without turning into something the size of DLSR.

What I've put together here is a list of add ons that I picked up to helps give me a little more flexibility with phones camera and the whole set should cost you less than £15/$20.

FilmicPRO (£8/$11)

FilmicPRO App for iPhone

This is the foundation of turning your automatic phone camera into a useable camera for shooting. It was available for £2.50($3.99),  but checking whilst I updated this, I found they had raised the price a tad to a whopping £8!. Its fair enough, its a great app that allows control over White Balance, Exposure and Focus and the ability to lock them once you have your image the way you want it. 

Depending on your phone you can shoot up to 4K resolution at 100mbps and its give you greater control over other input like audio and data rates as well as giving guides for various ratio sizes and will even export in your chosen ratio should you wish. Pro seems to work on anything for iPhone 4s and upward and for a HUGE 79p there is FilmicClassic that gives you the same functionally (without the higher resolutions) on older models. 

The app is also available for Android devices too. I got it for Free a couple of years ago during a promotion so its worth watching out when they do something like that again, but if you dont want to wait, £8 isn't much to drop for such an impressive video app.

Check it out FILMICPRO Official Site for more info. 

MINI TRIPOD (£1/$1)

The PoundShop/DollarStore is a wonderful, magical place. One of the reasons is that they sell things like this. A tiny tripod with a phone mount at the top. Now on its own this thing offers up increased stability just using it as a mini camera handle. It just removes your hands from the actual camera to give you more stability in your shots. 

The main reason to grab this, is for the actual phone grip at the top, this is because it has a 3 1/4 inch screw that fits to most tripods and rigs. This means that I can effectively use the phone camera on my nice tripod, My slider, my crane and even my steady cam if I wanted to. It just makes your Phone camera that much more adaptable if you're shooting on it.

SELFIE STICK (£1/$1)

I hate these things, for their intended purpose anyway, I initially picked on up at the Poundshop/DollarStore to use as a quick boom pole for a shoot just to get my on board mic a little closer to the subject. It, again, came with a camera grip and I soon found that I could get some interesting shots using it with the phone, due to how light weight it was.

Since then I've been messing with it and, using two of them, have managed to make a basic shoulder rig and even mimic crane shots. Like I said, its also worth having to get your external mic in closer too, but in all honesty its a fantastically adaptable little tool. 

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CLIP ON LENSES (£5/$7)

The camera(with FlimicPro) is pretty awesome in terms of functionality. Its not going to give you quite the depth that you get with a more expensive camera and really operates more with the functionality of a Camcorder. One of the biggest sticking points that I came up against was the fact that the camera had limited lens options apart from being able to zoom slightly, or move closer or further away.

For £5 on ebay, I picked up a selection of clip on lenses that simple clip and adapter over your camera  and then allow you ad a variety of different correctional lens over the pre existing camera. With this kit I got, There clip on adapter, A 2x Zoom lens, A Fisheye lens, A Wide Angle Lens and A Macro Lens for extreme close ups. They are a great little collection, especially for the fact that they cost a couple of pounds and they make the functionality of the lens just that little bit better. 

The lenses are great and although, if I have my protective case on I get a little vignetting on the wider lenses, zooming in slightly fixes the problem and they really give me a lot more options when shooting. They also fit in a tiny little bag that comes with them and can fit in your pocket. 

Here are some pictures of a Ninja to give you an idea of the difference they make.

Standard iPhone Lens

Zoom Lens 

Fisheye Lens

WideAngle Lens

Macro Lens

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This lot aren't going to turn your camera into a rival for Arri Alexa or even a low end DLSR, but they will give you more functionality and more options when it comes to shooting. The saying goes that 'The best camera is the one you have with you" and in this day and age your smartphone camera is the camera you are most likely to have on you at any given time. 

VHS App

The camera is till fairly basic and so getting decent professional looking image can be tough going, but the upside is that using your phone forces you to think about things like composition and lighting more, which can only be a good thing. There are some pretty cool apps out there that add different kinds of style to the camera too. We're having a lot of fun at the minute using the VHS app from Rarevision (£2.99) and the Lens+ App (Free) which allow you to recreate old film stocks and video styles which make for some cool and creative shooting. 

Remember, i'm not saying that you should replace your camera with a smart phone, I'm just suggesting ways that you can make a camera that you carry with you everyday more functional, any camera can look bad in the wrong hands and any camera can look great in the hands of an expert, but its worth exploring what you can do to make your smartphone work for you as a filmmaker.

MJ

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RAISING THORN : Why I'm Glad my 1st Feature was My 3rd Feature.

4 years ago today I handed over the first draft of a script to my producer and partner Anna, I had been working on it since I was about 15 and on 29th of February 2012 I finally finished it. The date was important, I had set it as a deadline almost four years earlier, because the films story took place on February 29th, it seemed fitting. 

In all honesty I always thought Legacy of Thorn (Known as Thorn then) would be my first low budget feature, but as fate would have it, it was my third. Looking back now at all the delays and mishaps that led to the film taking almost 10 years to get off the ground it all seems like a blessing in disguise. The film happening when it did was great for a lot of reasons, the main one being, that, until that point, I hadn't really been ready to make it.

I had come up with the story when I was pretty young, initially starting life as a Halloween fan film idea of sorts, I quickly went a different direction, taking the elements from my idea that were factual and therefore I could use them with out a law suit (mainly the nordic rune elements that inspired Halloweens later sequels) and then starting with everything else from scratch. Overall it was a pretty simple concept, Kind of Halloween meets The Terminator (Two films which I always felt went hand in hand in terms of tone) but told between two time zones that ran against each other. 

The problem I always had with the traditional 'Slasher' set up, was that they always have a strong opening and then 40 minutes of downtime before they got to the 'good stuff'. The solution I eventually came to was to think of it as two films. One set on February 29th 2008 and one on February 29th 2012, the first playing backwards and the second forward. This way, not only could I break up the downtime, but I could essentially conceal important elements in the story that would feel otherwise mundane. Of course, 15 year old me would have been able to understand any of that. 

So as I tried to get the project off the ground, It never seemed to work quite how I imagined it, over the years I would try and make it work, but at the time didn't have the correct understanding of screenwriting and story structure to do so and so I focused my attention on other things. I was disheartened, because I'd always imagined it would be my first 'proper' feature. Another disguised Blessing.  

Eventually, over 10 years later, after making a butt load of horrible short films and some ok ones, I felt a little more confident that I had the filmmaking tools to make it work. By this time I was in preproduction on my actual first feature 'Creepsville' that I had started to develop with another writer after we graduated. Of course, I still wasn't sure I was ready and so I decided to makes another short film to help us get our heads round using the gear we'd be shooting on. 

I dusted off the old script for short film version of Thorn I'd written (Essentially a scene taken from the bigger movie), another writer friend of mine asked if he could polish it up, and then we shot it in an evening in my friends garage, we put it out there and people dug it, it even won first prize in the Scary or Die competition in 2009 against some pretty amazing entries. It was at that point that I started to feel like 'Thorn' should have been my first feature, and again I felt disheartened. Once again, it was a blessing in disguise. 

Creepsville came and went, It was a tough shoot and that was for a relatively simple concept. We got to the end, but the shoot had been a huge mess, After graduating University a year before, that was still a shoot that I've always considered my 'True Film School'. The film suffered in a lot of ways from my lack of experience. I thought to myself, this could have been 'Thorn', I could have fucked that up, and I felt less disheartened.

In 2009 Post on Creepsville was underway and taking a long time (I was fairly hand offs with it) and rather than sit around waiting I started working on the idea for my next film. "This time" I thought "It's sure to be Thorn". 

Then out of the blue I got wind of two films that were in production that sounded scarily similar to my 2005 feature script 'Slasher House'. I panicked, SH was one of the best ideas I'd ever had (make of that what you will) and it was a pretty low budget screenplay. One location, small cast. I realised it was now or never and I polished up the script and moved the film into preproduction in a bid to 'Get there first'. (Ironically the two film never even went under the lens). 

Thorn ended up on the back burner, but this time it felt a little better. See I had planned for Slasher House to be an ensemble movie and the 4th in a series. Thorn being 1 of 3 leading up to it, The other 2 being Hollower and Cleaver : Killer Clown. This would mean that I would have to change my whole series structure, but the upside was, Thorn played a big part in the Slasher House script. I decided that Slasher House would serve better as an introduction to these characters and we could tell their stories later on. Which we did.

Legacy of Thorn (2014)

Slasher House was shot in 2010/2011 and locked picture in 2012, the day after the Premier I receive dozens of calls and messages asking of there was was going to be a Thorn movie. By the time it came out on DVD in my homeland (The UK) Thorn was already an audience favourite. Now I felt like if there was a time for the Thorn movie, it was now, but whilst making the film, I'd had an inkling this would be the case.

Like I said at the beginning, a few months earlier on February 29th I had handed the first draft of a script to Anna and during this time I had been working on getting the final script ready. The script was HUGE and there was no way that I, as an inexperienced filmmaker, could have made it as a first feature, I mean the finale features a goddam Helicopter for crying out loud. 

The true blessing was that the film allowed itself to be ready before it would allow me to make it and I'm glad it did. Legacy of Thorn is one my proudest filmmaking achievements and had I made it earlier I'm not sure I'd be able to say that.

In February 2013 we started preproduction of Legacy of Thorn and one year later it Premiered in London on February 28th. Of course there was a whole adventure along the way, but that is another story for another Leap Year.

MJ

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ALSO IF YOU'RE BASED IN UK, MICROBUDGET MASSACRE AND THE MILTON KEYNES FILM NETWORK ARE HOSTING THE FIRST OF THIS YEARS SPECIAL 'MYCHO MICROBUDGET MASSACRE MASTERCLASS' LIVE SHOWS ON TUESDAY 8TH MARCH.  

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TO GRADE OR NOT TO GRADE

I was recently asked by a filmmaker friend, if he should shoot flat to give him some room to colour correct and grade in post or if he should use physical lighting to get the look he wanted. I thought it was an interesting question and it had me look at how I approach that aspect of filmmaking and how and why that has changed since I started making movies. 

Ungraded shot from
Code of Silence Music Video

If you've seen any of my work, you'll know how important colour is to me when I'm putting together ANY project. It is one of the first things I consider when I begin pre production. A lot of inspiration for this comes from Italian Director Dario Argento and his use of colour thematically across his work in the 70's and 80's as well as the fact that I grew up reading comic book and 'marvelling' at their use of vibrant colour as a language. As result colour always seemed like an equally important aspect of any visual medium to me. Especially filmmaking. 

Graded shot from Sinnergod/Blaze Bayley video 2012

Its strange to think that, even as short a time ago as the late 90's, colour wasn't given a lot of thought when putting together the look of a film. Go back and look at almost any big budget film shot in the 90's, they all have a the very same, flat, grey cinematic look, that not exclusive, but for the most part. I mean back in the early 2000's David Fincher was still considered a stylised 'out there' director and he was certainly one the directors who paved the way for this line of thought that 'colour' was, in many ways, as important as anything when telling a story. 

As we come closer to the new 20's, every film that appears in theatres is now heavily 'stylised' in its own right, a far cry from their 90's counterparts. Grading is now a permanent part of the workflow and it looks like its here to stay. So today I wanted to talk about my approach to colour and grading and how it has evolved over the last few years since I started making feature length films.

*Please remember, as with resolution, lighting, lens choice and compression, Colour and grading is a very small part of what makes an image look 'cinematic'.

TO GRADE OR NOT TO GRADE

Since I started filmmaking I've graded hundreds of projects. Being an early adopter of programs like HITFILM (Back when it was called AlamDV over a decade and a half ago) one of the programs primary functions outside of VFX was colour grading and it was a new an exciting tool for us as backyard filmmakers. Soon everyone was adopting it and grading became a huge part of the no budget workflow in a world where there had been no room for it before and it opened up a world of possibilities for us as visual storytellers.

The problem arose for me when I started to notice a trend, a well documented trend, that you've most likely come across before. All films started to look the same and when Hollywood finally took the tool to its full extension we started to notice that every film came with the same look. 

That 'Orange and Teal' thing that you now see on every big budget movie that hits theatres in this day and age. I hated it. Not the grading itself, I actually really like the look of a lot of these films, but just the fact that all films both low and high budget started to all just look exactly the same and in the medium of visual storytellers that is dangerous ground to walk on. In many ways, 'grading' films has made us lazy, its become the go to tool of the 'fix it in post' generation.

TO GRADE

When I made Slasher House (back in 2010) I didn't have the equipment or the know how to really get the look that I wanted for the film. I had a clear idea of what I wanted and how the final film should appear on screen, but I was left with the option of lighting it flat and colour grading it in post. The film, for better or worse, is known for its 'nuclear' grade' and, for the most part, taking the grading approach and pushing it as far as I did really helped get the film noticed. But for me, I just wasn't happy. It didn't feel natural, it felt artificial. It felt lazy.

Ungraded shot from +Slasher House 2010

Final Grade from +Slasher House 2010

 Grading is an extremely useful tool, when I'm pushed for time on set its sometimes easier for me to shoot with a flat profile and spend my time in post just getting close to the look I want. It is an extremely powerful in terms of setting tone and it can help tremendously if you are relying on your post production time.

Graded shot from the MychoTV web series. 2011.

I directed a web series in 2011, and we had very little on set time. Sometimes about 2 hours to shoot entire sequences and we just didn't have the time or the equipment to light the way I would want to, so shooting flat and taking care of it in post was the best way to go. Its very much the same story on a lot of music shoots, with limited time with bands or performers, I'll make the choice to shoot flat as possible and do the work in post afterwards. For short form stuff, its an approach that works great for me, but in terms of how I want stuff to look, its still a compromise.

The same thing happens when I'm shooting bright, daylight exteriors. Apart from work with colour temperature, there isn't really too much I can do in terms of lighting when I'm working on a low/no budget. So I'll usually make the choice to shoot smart with available light, shoot with a flat or neutral profile and make any adjustments in post if needed.  

For me, this comes with drawbacks, It feels artificial at times and thats not the aesthetic I look for when I'm shooting. After doing this for a couple of years I decided to rethink my approach.

NOT TO GRADE

Ungraded shot used in Legacy of Thorn 2013

For my next feature in 2013, Legacy of Thorn, I was determined to evolve the look of the film and made the choice very early on that I wanted everything to be as physical as possible and I decided that I wouldn't stop with just pour practical effects. I decided that I would shoot everything as I wanted it to appear in the final film 'in camera'. The result was far better, it felt more natural, more real. I'd never been happier with how one of my films looked and I knew, for me, that this was the way I wanted to do things from here on in.

The next too features I worked on had very little in the way of colour correction at all. In fact Cleaver : Killer Clown, had none apart from a couple of slight colour balance shifts and some adjustment to brightness and contrast in the odd shot to match colour, but again, for the most part the film footage you see on screen is the footage I shot in camera with nothing altered. 

Ungraded shot from Cleaver : Killer Clown 2014

After getting through 2 films using almost no colour correction at all, I felt that I had found comfortable space to work in, that really worked for me and the style that I wanted to bring to my films. Using combination of lighting, gels and colour temperature in camera I found it easy to get the look I wanted without ever having to run it through colour software at all. This had some huge benefits for me.

Ungraded shot from Hollower 2015

First off, because I was doing it this way it made me think about the film and its colours in a lot more depth, right down to props, costumes and even hair colour of my actors. The approach 'forced' me to look at how I was using colour to help tell stories and best of all, saved me, literal weeks in post production because the footage was as close as I wanted it to final product meaning that a large part of my post workflow suddenly just disappeared.



Now technically I actually DO do 'some' form of colour grading, the difference being that I do it 'in camera' before I even shoot anything, but I'll talk more about that next week.

SLASHER HOUSE 2

Graded shot from Slasher House 2010

When it came to Slasher House 2 I was faced with an 'interesting' dilemma. The look of the original film had been popular with the vibrant colours of the grade really standing out as a feature, but I had evolved my filmmaking style since then to use as much in camera lighting as possible. The challenge was taking the style of the original film and recreating it, physically, in camera.

The approach I took was using gels to emulated the colours and choosing costumes and locations as wisely as I could in order to keep the unique colour aesthetic, whilst helping it match the 'in camera' style that we had now employed in our filmmaking. This mixed with adjusting the cameras colour temperature and the contrast/saturation on my 'custom picture profile' helped me get the look I wanted, that has way more depth than I could ever add with a computer in post.

Ungraded shot from Slasher House 2015.

The added bonus of this, now that we're shooting our first 4K film, was that I could cut my footage with very little post processing, meaning I risk very little degradation in the image, which is more common when shooting compressed images. It also means that I can work faster and have a finished product in much less time simply by taking a little extra time on set getting it right.

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Overall the most important thing is that this is what works for me personally, everyone has their own style of working and their own way of doing things and above all, you should be finding the approach to the look of your film that makes you the happiest. 

Ultimately my advice to my filmmaker friend was, "do it however YOU want to do it, its your film after all". I understand the importance of both approaches and I've seen some amazingly well graded stuff that puts my stuff to shame, and the same is true when watching people get their look right 'live on set'. It doesn't really matter how you achieve what your looking for, its all about making YOUR films YOUR way. In the end, as always, thats all that really matters.

MJ

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SEEING THE LIGHT : Our £100 Lighting Set Up

MJ Dixon is an Award Winning Filmmaker and Director of Low Budget worldwide releases including Slasher House and Legacy Of Thorn. He has also seen over 30 music videos and shorts appear on major TV channels around the world as well as running filming workshop The Micro Budget Massacre. He mostly spends his time leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that his next leap, will be the leap home. 

READ FIRST!! Once again, please understand that this is just my outlook and opinion on aspects of filmmaking, Im not saying its right or wrong, it's just how I do things and how I view things, Filmmaking is about listening to everyone, your peers, professionals and everything in-between. This article is here to be nothing more than helpful to people looking to make movies, hopefully thats you. 

CAUTION : Obviously working with any electrics that create heat is dangerous, make sure any lights you get have the required protective glass and caging and of course just like tungsten lights be aware that, if not set up correctly, then it can, like anything on set, be very, very dangerous.

Lighting is the most important tool at your disposal when in comes to shooting anything. That sounds obvious, I know, but in advent of DSLRs and their ability to shoot in low light conditions, I slowly watched a lot of filmmakers around me slowly begin to ignore lightning all together as they struggled less and less to get a 'usuable' image, and slowly they stop reaching for the best image. 

Shooting in available light, is great. It's cheap, it's quick and it's easy and it's something I employ from time to time depending on the situation. That however simply doesn't always cut it, especially if you want to make dynamic looking films. Shooting in flat available light and colour grading after is brilliant for a quick fix, but really learning to light your films will a world of difference and will set your films apart from the standard colour graded footage that has become so popular in recent years. 

The trouble here, is that lighting equipment can set you back by thousands of pounds/dollars/euros to get a simple set up. The fact is though, it doesn't have to.  Our set up cost us, literally, just over £100 and I've never had to replace it.

Our £100 Lighting Set Up

I've shot for over 3 years now on a set up that cost me £100.75p (that 75p drove my OCD crazy). It's made up of three 500w work lamps and two 500w floor lamps. All these lights have lit everything I have made in the since 2011, including 2 feature film, half a dozen short films and over a dozen Music videos that have aired on major tv channels across the world. They run off a standard mains adapter and fit in a medium sized travel bag (although it is heavy) and it has never let me down. You can buy these things at most hardware shops and if you shop around I imagine you'll find an even better deal than we got. 

For barn doors, my set up becomes super, super low budget. It involves aluminium BBQ trays (6 for £1) and some pretty standard acetate for 50p an a3 sheet from the craft shop pinned to the trays with metal clips that come in packs of 20 from the £store. It's the most low-fi set up you will ever see in your life, but film is about the destination not the journey. For diffusing. I used greaseproof paper, and just cut it to size it cost about 50p a roll. I've bought one roll in 3 years. 

When I'm attaching BBQ trays to sheets of coloured plastic and hooking them on plastering lights, clients, crew, cast all look at me like I'm a mental case. However when they see the final product all that goes away when they see the result that I get. It's doesn't matter how you get your look as long as you get it (safely of course).

It may seem a little crude, but it gets the job done and I swear by in for any filmmakers that struggle to afford equipment. The only small drawback is that using acetate this close to heat source usually melts it out of shape after a day shoot. So I find that I buy new gels as needed per shoot, On average it usually costs me £1 to replace them. 

Lighting Set Up Cost Total = £104.25

The reason they work however is nothing to do with thier wattage, or brightness, or BBQ trays or how they plug in. No they work because I learned how to use them effectively and when you are shooting on something like an SLR, it's more important to understand how to light your scenes than ever, because it's the difference between a 'usable' pictures and something professional looking. 

 

On our latest feature Legacy Of Thorn, almost every scene was lit using this set up. 

I learnt to light properly on digital video and transfered those skills in the advent of DSLRs. it an important skill to learn and once you get it it will change the way you think about your films forever.  

I also understand that LED lights are becoming more common place, but currently a decent 'professional' set up is far from affordable off the shelf, although it doesn't have to be. I'll talk about that next time.

MJ

IF YOU FOUND THIS HELPFUL OR HAVE ANY QUESTIONS THEN PLEASE DROP THEM IN THE COMMENTS BELOW. 

CHOOSING YOUR VICTIMS : CASTING A LOW BUDGET MOVIE

When casting its true that I usually make the final decision on who we go with, but most of the leg work in regards to dealing actors and their auditions before we start shooting come down to my Producer, Business Partner and Better Half, Anna. Who not only gets the talent there, but spends most of her time dealing with them on set. It only made sense that she shared her wisdom when it come to the delicate and yet deadly world of... Casting.

As a low budget production company we rely heavily on recommendations and professional contacts when casting. You need a cast that will power through a difficult shoot with the end goal in sight: the finished film which everyone has put their heart into and everyone can be proud of. The last thing you need on a low budget film set when everyone's knackered, starving and freezing is constant demands for brown M&Ms and a bloody great Bengal tiger.

The most important thing for us when casting, much more important than experience, is that we can work with the actor to get the best out of them, us and the film itself.

Jade Came recommended by another filmmaker

The process we have found works best is to have a mixture of casting within our extended circle, people we know or people who have worked with people we know, and using casting sites to find our cast. We shortlist the applicants down to the people who have the right look for the role and ask them for a video audition to save them the expense of travelling to us. We give them a portion of the script to read to camera and send to us which gives us a good idea of their commitment and acting ability.

From the start, in the casting call itself, it's always best to make what you want from them very clear - if you want nudity in your film (as we almost always do making low budget horror) tell them exactly what you'll need so nothing is ambiguous. If you do require nudity, be respectful and put the actor at ease. 'Get your boobs out and I'll make you a star, baby' was never the best chat up line and I'm guessing they've heard it before. What one person could see as harmless flirting may be extremely off putting to an actor when you're asking them to take their clothes off. You might mean it playfully enough, but a lot of models and actors have had bad experiences with perverts with cameras who pretend they're making a film. Just be professional. Tell them you'll have a closed set and, in the case of actresses, you'll keep the male presence on set for that scene down to a minimum. That said, if they do show any reluctance to do nudity in a scene that requires it, don't cast them. You don't want to make anyone scared or uncomfortable and it could lead to you having an actress on set on the day who won't do the scene or may not show up at all. Be respectful and be completely up front. Also, put chastity belts and/or shock collars on your crew as necessary. You know which ones I mean, yeah those guys.

Let them know how tough it will be, they probably won't believe you but tell them anyway. Tell them it will be long hours, very little sleep and difficult conditions if you don't, you can't really blame them for complaining when they get on set, especially if they have never done a long shoot away from home before. But tell them it's worth it, because the end result will make you all proud. We use the very helpful mantra 'pain is temporary, film is forever', good old Troma!

Paris was an actor in our extended social networks

If someone's taken the time to apply for your project, take the time to respond to them even if they're not successful and to thank them for showing some interest. It's a tough world for actors at the moment with so much competition for paid work that it's difficult to put the time into applying for something they may not earn any money from. It may take a while to respond to everyone, but it's worth doing to show them some gratitude. Casting sites sometimes make this a bit difficult but when people apply by email it's no problem.

If you can only pay expenses (which again is usually the position with us in our collaborative projects) make that very clear too. If you can't pay an actor up front, explain that but tell them that if the film goes into profit then that will be split between everyone involved, just don't make any promises you won't be able to keep. It's very difficult to make money out of an independent film so make sure they know that. There are things you can do for them like provide them with references, recommend them for future work and help them along in their career with head shots, help with showreels, etc. You have skills that are worth money too.

I can normally tell whether we'll be able to work with someone from my initial communication. If they seem disinterested or unhelpful at that early stage, it's unlikely to get better. If I have to constantly chase them for a response or their audition it may be that their heart isn't in it. If they're way too over the top and are 'poking' me on Facebook every other day, I might end up killing them on a hectic film set. People are busy and sometimes life gets in the way but just use your best judgment of how well you think you can work together and make sure the relationship can be a productive one for all involved.

Also, like I said at the beginning, the independent film network is usually a fantastic and supportive place to be. I've been more than happy to recommend actors I've worked with to other filmmakers and I've also asked for references off filmmakers as well. This way, the people who are great to work with will be pushed forward and the people who aren't won't be. It's invaluable when working within low budget constraints to get some kind of vibe about how they are to work with from other people. If someone was a no show on someone else's film for no good reason then you don't want to take the risk with them on yours. Ask questions you feel would be the most important for your project: Did they perform well and were they respectful to the set and the other cast and crew? Did they throw a massive diva strop and murder anyone? Well...that they weren't supposed to murder.

Craig and Jane were cast in Legacy based on their Previous work and their auditions

It's worth bearing in mind that actors speak to each other too and will compare their experiences in dealing with you as well. They're your family for the duration of the project, just treat them like that. Unless you hate your family, in which case maybe treat them like your therapist's family, I guess.

Anna

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STORYBOARDING : THE ART OF PRE PRODUCTION

One of the first things I do after we lock the script down is start Storyboarding. Now I know there are many schools of thought on this, some people don't like them, some people will only shoot if the entire film is storyboarded and some filmmakers fall into the middle. I would be one of those filmmakers.

See for me how a film is going to look visually is massively important, in regards to shot choice, colour and even placement of actors, I like to think about all that before going into a movie I'm shooting. Weather it be for me or someone else, its important to try and use that visual style to convey tone, size and of course most importantly use it to tell your story better. 

Storyboard from Creepsville 2009

I come from a background in graphic design and so when it comes to storyboards, I get to save on budget by doing them myself, which suits me as a low budget filmmaker, although I know guys who have less budget than us who hire people to draw storyboards because they find them THAT important. It helps filmmakers on various levels, whether it be shooting faster on the day, locking down there ideas or conveying the visual ideas to other crew members. Every filmmaker i've ever met has different reasons for using them.  

However my problem with storyboards lies here, because I have a habit of going into too much detail. On my first feature, Creepsville, I started spending anytime we weren't shooting drawing storyboards out for the upcoming evenings/weeks shoots. Which is a time taking process, but our cinematographer decided half way through the shoot that he wanted them to make sure we got all the coverage we needed and so I was happy to help him as much as could to speed the process along.

Storyboards from Slasher House 2010

When it came to Slasher House, it was requested of me that I storyboard the entire movie for the cinematographer from the offset, who wasn't going to be me at the time, and so I started drafting each shot. After about 2 weeks I had storyboarded the first 5 pages (albeit in great detail) and realised that this simply wouldn't be ready for shooting if I carried on this way. 

After that the cinematographer pulled out and I realised I was going to be stepping in to fill his shoes and so I looked at what I needed to storyboard and decided on only storyboaring the bigger set pieces in the film. Each one still took me weeks, but this made it much more manageable at the time, Because quite honestly, story boarding simple conversation scenes and even very basic action stuff suits became more trouble than it was worth very quickly. 

But an interesting thing happened as I started working out the movie visually, it started to get its own distinctive voice. When I draw I use specific colour pallets, something I carried over from drawing comic books, and it wasn't long before I fell in love with the storyboards visual style and I

The final look of the film based on the Storyboards

realised I was going to have to try and achieve the look of the storyboards in the finished film. We shot some test stuff and graded it and for some reason it worked(This might sound strange but the films storyboards were based on a very intense green and red scheme which I figured would never work in terms of a film), and so pre production became geared toward also making that colour scheme work within the film. 

Less detailed storyboards for Legacy Of Thorn 2012

When it came to Legacy Of Thorn, I had this in mind from the start and so Storyboarding began as a process of quicker sketches to secure the shots we needed for the much more intense action sequences and everything else was planned out verbally in production meetings and then on set when actors were running lines, I would be looking at angles if I hadn't pre planned them already (which wasn't always possible due to the tight schedule) but I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted from the get go. 

What I've learned to do is applying Storyboarding where it's really needed and use pre planning to shoot more conventional stuff is the best approach for me. Storyboarding is useful to me and I enjoy it to a degree, but ultimately it's not always nessassary and really comes down to is how confident you are that you can get what you need in the day in time you have to get it. It does have other important uses within the process though.

So the question is are storyboards important. I would say that,
to me? Yes. They help me find my films voice, and help me to find a better way to tell my story using my visuals. They also help me shoot more intricate scenes a lot quicker, which is helpful on the usual tight schedules that we end up having and on top of that they force me to thick about my film and every shot in much greater depth, So to me they serve a great many purposes. 

However famed action director John Woo doesn't use them, and it might be that you just want to figure out what you're doing when you get there, it really doesn't matter in the end as long as you get what you want out of your film. 

MJ

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