Now, when you’re shooting for editing, you can do so to various degrees. A prime example that’s often brought up when shooting for editing is mentioned, is Robert Rodriguez’ El Mariachi. Hear the director explain how he planned his shots with the final edit in mind.

This is obviously taking it to the extremes. With digital cameras, laptop workstations and powerful editing software, your options are plentiful, even on a budget. So let’s take a look at how director and co-writer of The Storyteller, Joe Crump, approached the shoot – knowing that he would also be editing the footage. Here’s our conversation.

Why did you decide to edit the film yourself? Pros and cons to this approach?

 

In filmmaking, the story is told three times, 1. by the screenwriters, 2. by the director and 3. by the editors. I wanted to be involved in all three parts of this process. I also love to edit and my co-editor was my daughter, Katie Crump – who sat by my side and helped me craft the story.

 

So the pros of doing it myself is that it’s a hell of a lot of fun and I got to spend a lot of time with Katie. I also had help syncing the dailies from Nick Andrews, Saxony Wynecoop and Emelie Flower… which made our job a lot easier since they had to be done manually.

 

The cons – I couldn’t blame anyone else for my mistakes as a director or not getting coverage. I was told by several people that I should let someone else edit it – that I was too close to it – and I suppose that may turn out to be the case, but I don’t think it has. In fact, I think being close to it might have helped.

 

Knowing you would be editing yourself, how did you plan ahead? Did you organize the footage in a certain way?

 

We had a wonderful script supervisor, Michael Blomquist. He kept amazing notes and handed us a very detailed log when all was said and done. We also had a sound log that was very helpful from our sound mixer Bud Osborne. We kept all the camera file names so it was easy to cross reference.

 

After that, we kept track of everything by the day we shot it. We then created sequences that were about 5 minutes in length – we’d break them up by shot.

 

We then nested each of these sequences into one long master sequence. Using nested sequences speeds everything up and makes it much easier to find the shots you are looking for on your timeline.

 

We used an Alexa Mini and our camera original files were ProRes 4444, which won’t play on a PC – so we ended up making proxies to edit picture. While we were editing, (we used Premiere Pro CC), Adobe upgraded Premiere and now we can play the camera original on the PC – we still can’t open those files on a PC in Quicktime without hacking the metadata – and that caused the software to crash… you gotta love Apple and their proprietary codec.

Did the fact that you knew how you would be editing the film inspire any of your choices while shooting? Shot compositions? Long takes vs short takes? Blocking and actions?

 

Yes, absolutely. I spent a lot of time creating a shot list before I started directing. This is my first narrative feature film, so I had a good deal of fear and trepidation going into it – thinking that somehow, when I got on the set, everything would go to hell and I’d forget all the important things I needed to include or watch out for in the film. My shot list was 100 pages of notes, 100 pages of location pictures and diagrams and 90 pages of script. I broke up my shotlist into binders that we broke up by location. That way I wouldn’t have to carry all 300 pages, just the pages I needed for that particular location. Yes, this was probably overkill, but it makes things a lot more relaxing when you are prepared and it made it possible for me to work with my Director of Photography, Dan Clarke to come up with some additional shots that were better than I had planned on my own. As the shoot went on, my expectations of what our shots should look like and do got higher and higher. I didn’t just want to tell the story, I wanted to do it elegantly – and sometimes, you have to be there on the set to see something, an angle, a space, a camera move, the right angle of daylight… and take advantage of it when it appears. This takes a calm set and an fully engaged crew.

 

I was expecting to have a lot more emergencies than we ended up having. I was fortunate to have a great production team keeping things moving, headed up by our Producer, Rachel Noll.

 

We have a lot of live music in the movie, but we don’t just stay on people singing, we tell the story while the music is being played – so Rachel Noll (co-writer) and I designed a lot of the montage sequences around these songs. We freely played with time, location, memory – all that stuff during the songs. We also had to estimate how long it would take for certain images and sequences to play – how much screen time they would take – and I designed the shots so that we only had to shoot the parts of the song that we would actually show. I would like to have had more time to shoot more coverage, but it all ended up working pretty well when we got into the cut.

 

How did the intended use of visual effects in certain scenes affect how they were shot – and how does this play into how you are now editing those scenes?

 

We tried to use practical effects whenever we could. Dan put an LED light on the end of a wand and we floated it into the scene for the fairy effect. Some of the shots we don’t have that effect and you can tell because the light being cast from the LED gives a wonderful look on any object or person near the fairy – when we didn’t use it (usually because of time constraints), we had to fake the glow on their faces in After Effects. That worked too, but it was time consuming in post and never looked quite as nice.

 

We also shot a lot of Day for Night. Our main actor was a 10 year old girl (Brooklyn Rae Silzer) and because we shot under SAG Ultra Low Budget rules, we had to limit the times and hours we could use her. Most of the work we did in the woods was day for night – same with the work we did outside on the Fairy Bridge. Dan Clarke, our DP, also did most of the VFX work on the film… some of the effects have 35 or 40 layers in 3D space.

35-40 layers of effects in 3D space is a far cry from the simplicity of the shots described by Robert Rodriguez in the video at the top, but both approaches share a common goal: Making the best film you can with the means available to you.

For more on shooting day-for-night, check out our article on the subject here. And if you would like to take a peek behind the scenes of The Storyteller and see how some of the VFX shots were created, here’s a video of an early visual FX test.

With a tight budget and a whole lot of creative tenacity, you may still be able to fund your first feature simply by charging your expenses on your personal credit card, but it’s hardly the way to go anymore. Crowdfunding, bank loans, angel investors – there are more options available to you and most of them are less risky than a possible 19% APR weighing you down the next few years. Still, credits cards are bound to be used during production, so think ahead and figure out what’ll serve you best in the long run.

Do you have a production company? Is it registered as an LLC? Do you need a company credit card or can you simply use a personal credit card? Next, think about whether you are better off charging all expenses on one card or spreading them out over several. Some cards offer cash back rewards, while others may help you accommodate your crew while on location, or make air travel a little easier.

And start thinking about these things at the very beginning of pre-production. If you start earning miles on a Chase Sapphire card six months before shooting, you will be able to fly in your lead actress on points. If you charge your daily expenses on a Hilton Honors card, you will have enough points to put up a small crew for a day or two on location. That is, if you qualify for the respective card’s sign-up bonus, which can take anywhere from 1-3 months.

Do your research on sites like thepointsguy.com and nerdwallet to figure out what’s best for you.

For larger productions, consider the CASHet Card – a cash rewards credit card specifically created for filmmakers, with advanced spending monitoring and restrictions, unlimited additional cards and much more.

And remember, credit card companies make a living encouraging you to spend money you don’t have, so always have a long-term plan for paying off debt and sustaining a good credit score.

Whether transporting us to Mars, sending us to school at Hogwarts or putting us in a dystopian future where we must fight for our lives, a story is only limited by how far the writer’s imagination can take them. However, in the filmmaking world, there is a limitation that exists for all films, studio blockbusters and indies alike: The Budget.

Now, a budget isn’t just saying, “I have this amount of money… let’s go make a film!” On its most basic level, a budget outlines every element that goes into the film and determines how the money is going to be divided amongst those different elements.

When creating a budget the Producer, Line Producer and/or Filmmaker will sit down with the script and literally go through every line (hence the name Line Producer) and calculate how much money each element of the script will cost. How many locations, what kind of costumes and art direction is needed? Are you going to spend more on a location that needs little dressing but is going to need more shooting days OR are you going to rent a studio and build the location in-house? These are creative questions that are dependent on your budget.

It’s important to remember that the size of the budget directly corresponds to the expectations for the film. Simply put – a higher budgeted movie needs to make more money.

Story before budget or budget before story? It’s the chicken or the egg, but for filmmakers who plan on producing the story they write, being aware of your budget, as you are writing the script is important. You have an idea of what your budget will be and what you are capable of producing with that budget. Also, when you begin looking for financing, your budget and script will act as a package that will help convince investors to invest. They can read your script and know exactly how much you need and why.

When drafting your film’s budget you need to go through every stage: pre-production, production and post-production, as well as marketing and distribution. Think of it this way: The budget allows you to see the lifecycle of your film before it’s even been made.

Do not let the thought of having a small budget make you think that you can’t come up with an interesting story. In fact, budget constraints can fuel the imagination.

Take a look at the trailer for this movie that was made for only $60,000 and was one of the biggest hits of 1999 (the same year The Matrix came out)

So now that we know what a budget is and why it’s important, let’s go into some of the ways that you, the Filmmaker, can finance your film.

#1. Self Finance, aka put it on plastic (the Kevin Smith approach) – Every filmmaker knows this story. You take the money you were going to spend going to film school and instead put it into making a film, or perhaps you put it on credit cards and hope the movie makes enough money to pay them back.

As an example, take Clerks. Kevin Smith’s first film was made this way with a total budget just over $27,000 dollars. When the film went to Sundance, Miramax bought it.

There are benefits to this option – if it’s your money that’s financing the project then the film is completely in your hands. The negative is that there’s a higher risk of not making your money back.

If personal investment is the option you choose to pursue, I would highly recommend creating a Limited Liability Company (LLC) for the production. An LLC protects its investor(s) from any loss incurred during the making of the film – you’re only responsible for the money put into the LLC. LLCs also have tax benefits and are free from governed rules in regards to shareholder and company decisions. Basically, you’ll be able to have more control over the decisions taken in the creation of the film and be more protected should there be problems during production.

#2. Equity – Similar to self-investment, this is when you have a number of investors (be it friends, rich cousins or private investors) that also invest hard cash into the film. When they invest the hard cash, they are buying equity in the film.

It’s important to note that this option requires an LLC structure and that investors must be paid back their original investment plus 20% before profit can be calculated.

Want to know more about LLCs? Check out this article on why LLCs are good for filmmakers.

#3. Crowdfunding – This option differs from the Equity option because people aren’t buying into or investing in your film, they are donating to it. Yes, filmmakers can offer a tier structure a la donate $5 you get a thank you, $10 you get this and so on, but they are not required to pay that money back, like it is the case with equity financing.

The trick with crowdfunding becomes creating a campaign that garners attention and raises enough money. Remember, crowdfunding sites likes Kickstarter take a cut of the raised funds. It’s their payment for giving you a platform to collect donations. In addition, campaigns that don’t raise their goal amount do not keep the money they raised. These are important facts to realize when you are not only creating your budget, but also when you’re deciding your target crowdfunding goal.  Can you risk time and money creating a crowdfunding campaign when there’s no guarantee your film will end up getting financed? What will you do if the crowdfunding campaign doesn’t meet its goal?

#4. Pre-Sales – Pre-sales are related to distribution and they can be your best asset in both financing your film and finding private investors. Basically you are making an agreement for where and how the film with be distributed before it has even been made. The amount your film is sold for is based on the package you, the filmmaker, has created: your script, the talent attached and the marketability of your story. After the agreement for the pre-sale of the film has been made, the filmmaker can either use that as collateral for taking out a loan from a bank to complete the budget or lower the cost to private investors. It’s important to note that, like with equity, the filmmaker would have to payback the bank for the loan before a profit can be calculated.

Depending on the budget, if a distributor buys the film in the pre-sale state, the film may have actually already made money before it was produced.

These are the four basic ways for filmmakers to begin financing their projects. Join us next time when we’ll dive deeper into film financing, using The Storyteller as a case study.

Until then, here’s a trailer to a film that the writer/director funded by submitting himself to clinical drug testing.