Who is my audience? Intro Part 2

In today's digital market you can self distribute, but I think it is a massive amount of work marketing instead of working to make features.   I'm much more interested in a sale of this project to someone because; a) to have a film purchased for distribution means something in this business -- most films made don't get sold or are sold off at a loss, and b) I don't want to be in the film distribution business. 

I want to make films and let others sell them.  I'll gladly give a percentage away for not having to deal with that.  It does mean I risk getting screwed by the distribution company, but the risk of screwing myself doing it all myself is fairly high, especially for a first timer.

So you need an attorney.  Attorneys run the film business, not creatives -- which is to say, bottom line -- if you don't have the paper to show you legally own every sound, every image of actors, locations, everything, they will not be interested in purchasing your product.  And if you self-distribute without same said paperwork, you open yourself up for lawsuits.  For example, did you know your DP owns the copyright to the images in your project?

More on all this later, but for now, find yourself two simple, one page contracts:
1) what's called a Work For Hire deal -- will do just fine for everyone who does not have percentage points from actors to crew
2) a location release
Templates for both these are easily found with a web search.  Your deals with people where you are going to share profits needs a more complex contract and you will need an attorney to look over anything you do.

But download these templates now.  You will need them before you shoot your first official frames.

The downstream consequences of not having your paperwork done can be disastrous

Who is my auidence? Intro

Who am I going to sell this project to?

I've covered this question last, but my no means should you be waiting until the end of your project to search for an answer.  In fact, as you begin shooting your test shots of the world around you, get this question answered.  It will control what story you tell and how you tell it.

At a budget of $4k, even if it is your cash, you will make the feature you can make, not the feature you want to make.  You must maximize what shows up for your camera that day -- every day -- and what shows up may or may not be what you had in mind.

So figure out what you can make, based on what is around you, who is around you, and when you can get the people you need in same place at the same time, ready to shoot.  If you have begun taking shots of your world -- what sort of story could you see happening in those locations?  A rom-com?  A thriller?  A caper?  A drama?  You need to know this before you begin answering the "first" question -- What is your story?

Ask yourself who will pay to see what I'm making -- who is my audience?
And, at least as far as I'm concerned, who will pay to distribute my film?

Know your genre audience.  This is generally covered in commentary on what emotional moments audiences expect in particular genres (if you need help with this, Truby is a great resource).  If you don't give the audience those moments, you better have a good reason why.

I intentionally undermined the core emotion audiences want out of a revenge thriller.  But I got to comment in a way that will not be available to me in the future -- I hope anyway.  I mean, let's say I get lucky and next direct a film at the $3M level.  It won't be my $3M and there's where it all comes down to.  Other than now, when else am I going to get to do exactly what I want ever again?

I chose a very narrow market segment; the sort that used to frequent art house cinemas and like to be challenged.  Maybe not a wide return potential, but then I didn't spend that much to begin with.  Interestingly, it has been appealing to a wider market -- how wide remains to be seen.  I'm writing as I complete the project, so I don't know what the sale is going to look like.

However, it is my contention that now  you can saturate whatever market there is for your product because my product is referenced in their social media messages and available on the the phone in their hand instead of at odd times in the run-down art house movie theater half-way across town.  Which is not to say I'll be putting my project up on line myself -- I hope.

How to record your story? Scoring

6) scoring -- in the current feature market, you must have music either original or recordings

Scores are like automobiles -- you can DIY a go-cart or purchase an Aston-Martin.  What will help you determine how you should go is the response you get from others about the project.  If it seems worth investing more, go ahead -- you've only spent $4k so far so you can afford to splurge a little at the end if it seems worth it.

Since Holiday worked as well as it did, we went beyond our $4k budget by attracting our first investor who was interested in what I was looking for: an original percussion driven score.  This got me a room full of percussion instruments:

Which meant me spending most of two months sitting in this chair:

Which seems really awesome, and I got a lot of what I was looking for, but it was an arduous journey I'll get into later that did not go the way I planned.

But you don't need to spend any money.  At one point, my co-producer and I were going to just sit down with my Alesis QS 8 and a guitar to create the score for free.  You'll have a range of options, but you will need music if you want to be competitive in the feature market.

How to record your story? Editing

5) editing -- logging, trimming, selecting in and outs, match cuts, edls, credits, final mix, mastering, color grade, digital fx

This is the place you begin answering the question of how.  When you have your story plotted and characters set, before you shoot any scene, imagine yourself in the editing room looking at the footage from the shoot.   What do you want to see?  What is important -- the location, the actor, a prop?  What shots do you want to cut from/to?  How do you plan to edit the scene?  You have to imagine the scene already shot and edited in your head so you either know what to shoot or know what to tell your DP you want shot.

My life for the last two-and-a-half years:

I was here at the end of every shoot day transferring, logging, backing up, rendering, then a year editing picture and a year editing sound -- that's just the way it went.

Set up a place you can work every day.  Plan your shoots from the edit room.  What do you want to see on the monitor?

Obviously, much more on this topic later.

How to record your story? Sound

4) sound -- microphones, production sound, ADR, sound libraries, ambient layers

Smartphones now shoot 4K, but the sound recording still stinks.  But even if it gets really good somewhere down the line, you will still, most certainly be creating your sound in post on a $4k budget.  The main reason for this is that the sound where you are recording most likely with stink.  So it doesn't matter how hi-fi the wi-fi camera sound gets, if the sound at recording time is terrible, you will be replacing it in post.

All of it -- ambient sound, location sounds, foley, dialogue.  This means you need your actors to come back much later after you have an edit and do their dialogue to the edit.  Either that or replace them all with other actors.

But there are many cheats.  The actors speaking Russian in Holiday were not speaking Russian on camera.  With careful editing, however, it works.  In other locations, like the Venice boardwalk, the wind was always peaking out the sound at some point in every take, so those had to be created from a mixture of actual camera sound and layers of other ambient crowd tracks usually about six tracks deep.  More on all this later.

How to record your story? Behind the camera

3) what's behind the camera --  director, camera person, shoot/equipment logistics, catering, equipment upkeep, data storage, production notes

This only concerns what is directly behind the camera to make sure the shoot works.  There are other issues like legal and business, but I'll address those independently in the "Who" part of "What, How, Who?".

As part of answering the question "How do I record my story?" you will need to choose a director.  I'm guessing if you are following this blog you intend to be the director whether you also choose to run camera or act in front of the camera (it will almost certainly be one or the other).  On a $4k budget, you will be doing more than one job.  How you and your group split up accountabilities depends on what skills each bring to the table.  And I can assure you on this budget, that group will be small so look for people with lots of skills.

On Holiday, I was director and cinematographer.  That both solved and created its own issues.  Your project may or may not split that way.  I liked it because from a director's POV it was about as close to "pure film making" as you can get -- just me, a camera, and an actor.  I knew my co-producer/actor quite well as thus was able to often anticipate how he would move.  That's always the trick in documentary film making or live sports events: anticipating your subject rather than following it.  Often we did only one take and moved on.  Many of the shots were long takes we knew we would chop up in post later.  So know your lead actor or if you are the lead actor, make sure your DP knows you and can anticipate your choices.

A quick thought on this before I move on: from my experience in making films, both as a director and in working for other directors, choose one person to be the director and don't change.  If you are the one buying, it most likely should be you and you alone.  That is, unless either you have a unique relationship with someone or you know two people who do and they are both willing to take your project on, put yourself in the director's chair.  There have been teams that have been successful, but they are rare, not the norm for a reason and the last thing you want to do is generate additional challenges for yourself.

How to record your story? Camera

2) the camera -- lenses, exposure, framing, angles, movement, supports, lighting, hard drives, monitors

Feature story telling is a visual medium, first.

I will spend very little time on the techie side of this camera v. that camera.  There are certain challenges working with a fixed focal length lens which is currently the case with most cell phone cameras -- digital zoom and add on lenses don't count -- I've used both, to very limited usable results.  Also auto exposure and auto focus are awesome sometimes and awful at others.

But there are hardware/software solutions on the horizon: The Light camera, and new, beyond 2-D possibilities: The Lytro 360 camera. 

The point being, many of these techie issues will go away, even on a budget of $4k.  If you are relying on technology to save your project, use the $4k you have to go on vacation.

I shot my project at 1080HD almost exclusively, even though I could have recorded at higher resolutions -- more on that later.

There are some very hard facts about what happens when you do a Fourier transform on reality, the result being a two-dimensional sequence of images your eyes mistake for continuous and your emotions mistake for reality.

For example, as to lenses on Holiday, I'll get into why about 25% of the shots are wide angle:

 about 74 % were medium shots:

and about 1% long shots:

Of course, no matter how good your lenses are, your lighting is critical.  More on all this later.

How to record your story? Front of camera

1) what's in front of the camera -- casting, acting, locations, props, vehicles, logistics

It doesn't matter how good a DP you have, if you don't have anything interesting in front of the camera all you have is unusable footage and wasted time.  Every time you cheat here -- and you will have to many times, trust me -- you risk finding yourself with serious problems downstream.

During production, my co-producer and I pretty much split the duties between us using the camera as the dividing line.  He handled most of the issues in front of the camera, I handled stuff behind the camera.  And I mean everything in front of the camera.  Here is the Topanga Caynon location before he added the green bus and landscaping:

Which became this:

He also did all the casting, including his co-star, seen here in a test shoot inside the green bus:

Which became this:

He came up with a bunch more stuff I'll get into later.  Locations, props, transportation, casting, everything in front of the camera all need attention.  Corollary: Anything outside the field of view of the camera does not exist in the character's world.  Only show the audience what you want them to see and make sure what they see is interesting.  Much more on this later.

Have you begun working on your story by shooting images?  This will begin to answer questions of what and where you might have available for a story.