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  Chapter 11: Brief Directory of All the Paperwork You Need. Finally, a checklist of everything you might need to prep your movie.

  Chapter | One

  Ideas

  OVERVIEW

  You can make great movies if you find out what makes you different. Be your-self and put your own fingerprint on your movies. Forget about finding a unique new story or blend of other stories. The trick to being original is simply to give people your own unique way of seeing things. It’s not what you say; it’s the way that you say it.

  FIGURE 1.1 Setting up a shot for the sci-fi movie The Day I Tried to Live, by Richard Chance and John Chance.

  HOW DO YOU FIND OUT WHAT SORT OF MOVIEMAKER YOU ARE?

  1. Follow your instincts.

  This means relying on your instinctive, snap decisions. Trust and learn to follow your first impressions and your instincts. If an idea grabs you, chase it.

  2. Avoid emulating other people.

  The problem with having a big movie collection on your shelf is that it is hard not to be influenced by what you see. If you want more original ideas that are uniquely yours, focus on anything in any art form other than movies. Look at short stories, radio, songs, comics – anything except movies.

  3. Focus on your own experiences.

  You don’t need to make your movies autobiographical – most people don’t feel that comfortable with having their real lives splashed up on the screen. But use locations and people familiar to you, giving a made-up story a realistic edge. Or you can use a single moment you experienced and reinvent it somewhere else. Luke Skywalker stuck in a nowhere town on Tatooine and yearning to travel fast and far is arguably his creator George Lucas returning to his own small-town youth and love of fast cars. This grain of truth makes it something we can all relate to.

  4. Don’t think about the outcome.

  One sure way to stay true to yourself is to focus on the day-to-day process of making your movie, rather than how it’s all going to look when it’s done. Keep your thoughts on the here and now, looking at how to deal with each small hurdle each day.

  5. Mix and sample.

  Take a look at what is in the news, or ask other people what they are hung up about, what scares them right now. A good way to take your ideas further while still being yourself is to use small parts of your own experiences and mix them with bigger, wider ones – those which make up the zeitgeist. Can you merge these ideas with what you have gone through? Or mix them with genre movies? The results could be interesting – as in George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, which mixes zombies with Romero’s own feelings about consumerism. Or apply your own experiences to a completely different setting – such as Blue Velvet, where a coming-of-age movie gets transplanted into a surreal nightmare setting.

  6. Next up, look at the techniques you use to make movies.

  Technique means the way you shoot, edit, light, and all the rest and it’s where most filmmakers tend to fall over in their desire to copy other filmmakers. The techniques you use should only arise from your main theme. Everything can come from that first germ of an idea. Play around with every different way of doing things until you know you find the one that’s right for you.

  7. Next, pitch it to a few people and get reactions.

  You might find that on each telling the story gets refined and sharpened. The bits that are not important to you get left out and you focus on the essentials.

  8. It’s fine to get feedback about your movie.

  It won’t be so weak that any contact with the outside world destroys it. If it feels too vulnerable to people’s comments then it needs to return to paper and get mapped out some more. Listen to what people say about your movie, write down their comments, and then later settle on which ones you like and don’t like.

  9. Next, work with actors to improvise the script and add more ideas as you work with it.

  Experts’ Tips

  Gary Teperman, writer/director, New York

  “I think that most originality comes with life experiences; writing about who you are, what you see, what you know and what you imagine. I think that traveling a lot helps, learning about different cultures, reading different kinds of material. It’s hard to be original these days because of all the competition in the market and being original doesn’t always sell, but it can be done. People shouldn’t try too hard to be original; just learn and write.”

  Ben Rutkowski, filmmaker, USA

  “Ask yourself what would happen if the exact opposite thing happened at that moment.”

  * * *

  TRY IT OUT

  Write down your responses to these questions. But don’t think more than a few seconds about each one, just write the first things to come into your mind.

  1. What was the worst day you ever had?

  2. Who is the most memorable person you ever met and why?

  3. What place has stuck in your mind the most and why?

  4. Have you ever let someone down, double-crossed someone, had your actions uncovered, given something precious away, been in real trouble?

  5. What’s your worst nightmare?

  6. Who would you most like to meet and why?

  AND THEN …

  If you want to make a movie about these experiences you could try remaking them in a new way.

  To start, write down the locations, the individual characters, and the events in your own experience (say, arriving at a new town to live in).

  Next to it, write down a new version where line-for-line you create new archetypes for each one – usually going slightly more over the top than in reality. The new town becomes a dark Gotham city, the characters become alter-egos of the real people, and the events themselves become hyped up and exaggerated.

  CREATE MOVIES OUT OF A SMALL IMAGE OR IDEA:

  For example, you might come up with a core idea of a face in a mirror.

  You think about this some more and focus on the spookiness of it and the stillness, darkness and color of it.

  You ask yourself what the face is, and who is looking at it. Don’t think about the answers long – just go with your instincts to get the answers.

  You expand further to get a location or setting, using an old house you pass on the way home each day.

  Then you start to think about the characters more – who they are and what their stories are.

  After following this track for a while you can then start to link up some of these things and a narrative starts to emerge, based on motives: who is doing what and why?

  This can all sound too easy but it should be; it’s come from you after all, and you know the idea inside out.

  DIG DEEPER

  Add in something more by digging down into the idea you have and adding extra ideas underneath the main events. It’s called subtext, just like it’s “under the text” or between the lines. So wherever you have an event, try to add in the subtext to it. Why bother? Because all the motivations, feelings and desires of the characters in the movie don’t sound right if they are shouted out loud – instead they need to be hinted at, suggested and just kind of understood by the viewers. It just sounds too cheesy when people announce the subtext out loud.

  So how do you get subtext on screen? Literally, as you write down what happens in the movie, leave a space on the page (set it to double-spaced as you type) and write what is underlying this moment. Write down what people’s feelings are, often contradicting what they say on screen. Tell the actors what they need to say but also what their underlying feelings are.

  Chapter | Two

  Buying a Camera

  OVERVIEW

  No matter what they tell you in the video store, you don’t need half of what they sell. Find out what essentials you need in your next camcorder.

  Table 2.1 What do you need in your next camera?

  Camcorder Feature What it Does What to Ask Your Store For:

  Manual controls Allows you to override the auto settings. Complete manual override on aperture, shutter, focus an
d white balance.

  Auto controls Allows you to shoot and have the camera sort out the image for you. It lets the right amount of light in, focuses and more. Every camera has auto settings. Auto is OK for shooting on-the-run but you need manual settings when you really want to control the image.

  Optical zoom Optical is “real” zoom. It works like a telescope and gives you a neat, clear image. 20× optical zoom or more. It lets you zoom in without losing picture quality.

  Digital zoom Next to useless, it just blows up the image you already have, reducing quality. When they try to wow you with high digital zoom tell them that’s only useful for faking your own UFO videos.

  LCD screen A flip-out color monitor to let you view what you are filming. 2.5-inch screen minimum. A large screen (above 3 inch) is useful but uses more battery power. Avoid touch screen playback.

  Camera to PC ports The cable you use to connect the camera to a PC. You need the fastest way to get images onto your PC, but also which doesn’t drop frames. It has to be a Firewire port. USB 2.0 just isn’t quite as good.

  Sound recording Some camcorders use only the on board mic to record sound, while others have an external mic socket so you can plug in your own mic. At least one external mic socket. Don’t rely on the on board mic at the front of the camera.

  Headphone socket Allows you to plug in headphones to listen to what you are recording. One 3.5 mm headphone socket.

  Sensor/chip A chip that encodes and feeds information from the lens, dividing it into color and intensity of light. The size and number of the chips (the charge-coupled device) that pick up the images is crucial. You’ll notice the difference in picture quality. The choice is one chip for most cameras, or three chips for higher end and professional cams. 1 × 1 megapixel CCD. If you can afford it, go for three CCD chips but check the size of these as some cameras offer three chips but they are smaller than usual. 1/3-inch chips are ideal.

  Backlight compensation This offsets the silhouetting effect you get when you shoot against a bright background. The image is digitally altered so that the bright areas are toned down and the darker enhanced. This is not an essential feature. Don’t ask the store for it.

  Battery Portable power supply. At least two batteries – both Lithium-ion.

  AVCHD Advanced Video Codec High Definition fits more HD video onto a card/tape, using MPEG-4 compression. It’s a good idea, but some people don’t like the fact that mostly it records “interlaced” video: it includes only every second line of the image on the TV screen, interlaced with lines from the rest of the image in the next frame. The human eye sees this as one continuous image, but it saves a lot of bandwidth this way. The problem is that LCD TVs and monitors don’t work well with interlaced. AVCHD is good for holiday video but not for movies. You need the option to record without this.

  Stabilizer A method of stabilizing a shaky image by reducing the screen area. Not a useful feature. It is better to use a real steadying device such as the affordable Hague Pro-Steadymount.

  Internal flash memory A flash memory drive inside the camera to record video. At least 64 GB internal, plus the ability to take SDXC cards or other large flash memory.

  FIGURE 2.1 The Sony HDR-SR7E holds 60 GB on internal flash memory – enough for 15 hours of normal mode footage.

  Table 2.2 How much can I get onto cards and flash memory?

  FIGURE 2.2 The 2 TB Extended Capacity card from SanDisk.

  TYPES OF CAMCORDER

  1. High definition

  2. Standard definition

  With both formats, you have a few choices to record onto:

  1.Hard drive (HDD)

  2.8 cm DVD disc

  3.Memory stick or card

  4.Tape

  Think about camcorders in two ways:

  1. The clarity of image they record. Either Standard Definition (SD) or High Definition (HD). SD has been used since the development of video, and then became the basis for digital video, at 720 × 576 screen lines in PAL (used in the UK) while High Definition is an enhanced format with 1920 × 1080 screen lines.

  2. The format they use to record. Camcorders use tape; DVD disc; hard drive; flash memory; or SD cards.

  Flash memory/SD cards: Cards are a form of Flash memory, just like stick drives. They cope with being recorded over again and again better than most other storage. They are strong, tend not to malfunction, and are an efficient way to store video, but are easy to misplace due to their small size.

  DVD disc: DVD camcorders record onto 8 cm wide, 1.4 GB discs, slightly smaller than standard DVD discs. DVD discs are considered a bad option by many filmmakers because they compress the image too much. Don’t use them.

  Blu-ray HD: Blu-ray is the common format for high definition DVD video. Camcorders that record onto Blu-ray use a combination of disc, internal storage and flash drives, for ease of use. Blu-ray uses an hour of full HD video for every 7 GB approximately, with discs usually limited to 60 minutes capacity.

  Hard drive (HDD): Many camcorders use built-in memory, similar to a hard drive on a laptop, also called “solid state” or tapeless. Common sizes range from 2–120 GB storage capacity. You just plug them into your PC and go, just like a regular external hard drive, rather than having to capture video from a camcorder.

  Compact flash card: A flash card, only better, with a much higher storage capacity – up to 64 GB – making it ideal for DSLR still cameras, especially ones that record video at high definition.

  Tape: The old school, DV tapes are a versatile and rugged way to record. They store data in diagonal lines of code stuck to a long reel of magnetic tape. A 60-minute tape recorded at short play holds 13 GB of data and compresses at a low rate, leading to high-quality images. The downside is that they are prone to getting crumpled, they don’t like heat or cold, and can get accidentally wiped if demagnetized. Tape is pretty much dying out so make the move to SD or HDD soon.

  SECOND OPINION

  Stop right there – don’t even buy a camcorder, try a DSLR camera.

  Your regular stills camera (or DSLR, Digital Single-Lens Reflex) is no longer just for stills. Now they make great camcorders. The big problem with

  FIGURE 2.3 Nikon’s P90 shoots high quality still images but also delivers 24 frames-per-second video. Take a look at a digital SLR camera like this one before you buy another camcorder.

  DSLRs used to be how you actually recorded video, given that they don’t take tapes, instead using tiny SD cards. OK, so now SD cards hold as much data as an hour of video or more, so a DSLR seems like a good option.

  Stills cameras are the best-kept secret of the video maker. You don’t need to spend more than you would for a mid-priced camcorder and yet the newer generation of digital SLR cameras offers HD video recording as standard. They also have the very best features for getting quality images: the finest lenses, perfect color quality, focusing that makes for a sharp and textured image, and that extra something you can only get from glass lenses made to top specifications.

  Chapter | Three

  Scriptwriting

  OVERVIEW

  Avoid the curse of George Lucas (Seek out the famous advice on typing Harrison Ford meted out to the young director during the shooting of Star Wars IV. Harsh, but someone had to tell him).

  BEFORE YOU START: WRITE A TREATMENT

  Pitch the idea to your friends. Tell them what kind of movie it is, and then describe in 60 seconds what happens. Get feedback from these people and hone the idea until it’s sharp and clear.

  Write your story as a single paragraph. Describe everything that happens, including the plot and characters, but limited to just twenty or so lines. Pinpoint from the start the most essential things about the film: the events, the characters, the atmosphere or mood, and the genre. You then have the “bones” of the idea, onto which you can flesh it out, to make the film credible. You can even rearrange these “bones” to create a new way of telling your story. Later you can write a longer version to add detail and description.
/>   CLASSIC THREE ACT FILM STRUCTURE - LIKE EVERYONE ELSE MAKES MOVIES

  Structure is the overall “shape” of the movie. Some movies are told in flashbacks, some in a straight line. Some have just a few main chunks or “acts,” containing the individual scenes. Most short films have a very clear and simple structure.

  Classic structure tends to unravel the film in a straight line, according to rules that have been tried and tested through decades of Hollywood celluloid. It runs a story like this:

  Act 1: Here’s somebody – the main character – and everything is normal. It might not be a great life, but it’s their kind of normal and it will carry on like this. Except, one day…

  Act 2: …something happens to this somebody and everything gets disrupted, so they now have to take action to get themselves out of this crisis.

  Act 3: Finally, after much suffering and endurance, they overcome these problems and get things back to how they were. But this “new state” of things is even better than before, because the hero has learned something about life and become stronger, or richer, or more powerful, or just a better person.

  This is a clich? but think of it like a dependable chassis which you can rip the panels from and add your own souped-up bodywork. Use this model and it will drive, no matter what plot, characters and crisis you put on top; in short, it delivers.