#1. The Script

It all starts with the story. Any investors will want to know that your script has gone through rewrites, readings, and has been given the professional blessings of several experienced directors, line producers and actors, effectively telling them that the final script is thoroughly tested and viable for production.

#2. The Shooting Schedule

Remember the line producer we just mentioned? When you find a line producer who sees the potential and marketability in your script, keep her number and start negotiating her fee. A good (read: experienced and with several credits) line producer will be able to take your script from words to numbers. Your line producer will break down the script, create a shooting schedule and subsequently a defacto production budget.

#3 The Production Budget

This is a puzzle you don’t want to put together on your own – and investors will want to know that the budget you present them with has been done by someone who knows exactly what they’re doing. Your line producer should completely describe all costs of production, including editing, writing, post-production, directing, producing and marketing. Check out this leaked budget for M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village – not that your first business plan should be in the $70 mio. range, but it should be detailed and professional.

#4 The Marketing Plan

Describe who the film is targeted and why they are gonna love it. Describe how you are gonna reach that target and which similar films has done the same thing successfully. Describe the cost and the timeline. Creativity is great, case studies and proven methods are better. Together they are unstoppable.

#5 The Distribution Plan

This is one of the most important parts of the business plan, but also one of the most tricky. After all, how is your film ever going to make any money if no one is going to see it? You need distribution and you need to describe exactly how you are going to get it. Describe how you can guarantee a theatrical release, PPV sales, cable rights, overseas rights, DVD rights, subsidiary sales and any other avenues of distribution you have planned for your film. Don’t sign a distribution deal before securing financing – it might turn out to work against you in the long run – but know exactly how, why, when and with whom you are going to secure one.

#6 The Cast and Crew

Now comes the fun stuff. Numbers alone are not going to make your film a success, you need a team that investors (and the general public) can believe in and rally behind, and this is your opportunity to showcase them. Though there may not be any actual contracts signed at this point, you would do well to get letters of interest from key crew members (director, cinematographer, production designer, composer) and include biographies, as well as samples of their previous work. Same thing goes for the key cast. Though not signed onto the project, you might be able to get letters of interest from the actors and actresses you believe would make this film everything it can be. In some (read: most) cases this will not be possible, but don’t fret. You can still include cast pictures, biographies, resumes and samples of previous work simply as examples of your vision. Don’t include A-list talent unless you have a letter of interest. Be realistic, be reasonable and be smart. Include cast fees and availability, if you can get it from their respective agents. Your investors are going to want to see that you can make your vision a reality without Jennifer Lawrence and Joaquin Phoenix, and that you can do it with a reasonable budget.

#7 The Visuals

Consider this the one-two punch of business plans. You start out presenting the facts and the plans and the market research, then you make those numbers come to life by attaching cast and crew. You have piqued your investor’s interest – now you start sweet-talking. Adding visual components to your business plan will make your project more tangible and give it a certain sex appeal – and we all know that sex sells, right? Include a couple of storyboarded scenes, pictures of locations, samples of your previous work and distinct visual style – even a professional film poster. You can add additional visuals and look-books as an addendum to the business plan so the numbers don’t get lost in flair, but make sure that what you are presenting – the complete business plan as it reads from start to finish – is a clear vision of your film.

#8 The Revenue Projections

Back to what most filmmakers might consider a bog of eternal stench, but which your potential investors will find just as sexy as the visuals described above: The revenue projections and rock-solid market analysis. Show how 15-20 recent films comparable to your own performed in theatrical release and on VOD/PPV. Be specific. Do lots and lots of research using resources like boxofficemojo.com, the-numbers.com and filmspecific.com. Go the extra mile and include revenue from product integration and state film production rebates. Companies like brand-inentertainment.com and Entertainment Partners will be useful resources.

#9 The Letter of Intent for a Completion Bond

If you have all of the above-mentioned sections sorted out and you have (tentatively) secured your locations, you can get a quote from a bonding agency. Your line producer will likely be the one to do this, as she will (hopefully) have done it before and have a working relationship with a good agency. Providing a letter of intent to get a completion bond will give your investors added piece of mind.

#10 The Letter of Intent for Insurance

Investors are not going to want to bet there money on anything but an (almost) sure thing. One way to eliminate risk is to have your film insured. Get a quote and a letter of intent to insure your film from a reputable insurance company. Again, this will be something your line producer can/should help you with.

#11 Wrap it up nicely and get it out the door

Rarely will you need to have a physical copy of your business plan handy, but make sure that your digital package looks and feels like the real thing. Check and double check spelling, grammar, formatting, graphics, alignment, colors – and then click “Save as PDF”. PDFs cost $0 to send, so make sure this gets into a lot of hands. If you attend film markets or social events where angel investors may be present, carry USB sticks with the complete package or an iPad with a presentation-ready package.

Please, please, please be aware that there are many hopeful filmmakers looking for easy money, so there are just as many scammers looking for the same. If you find yourself in negotiations with an interested investor, always require proof of funds and only ever go into business with investors that have a proven track record. If something is too good to be true, it’s because it is. Do your due diligence.

h/t Bright Hub and Nancy Fulton

And let’s be honest: As much fun as it is to make movies, it’s all the more gratifying if you recoup your expenses in the process. Here’s one thing you need to know before you get started…

When you produce a film there are many things to consider, arguably most importantly things like budget, schedule and safety. Sure, you should have a good story too, but let’s trust that the writer and director has that one covered. As a producer you want to make sure that your director’s vision can be realized within the budget you have available, without adding extra shooting days or compromising the safety of cast and crew. But you can only identify these possible hazards (financial or physical) if the script is locked.

We aren’t doing it for anyone in particular. We are funding it ourselves. We don’t have any guarantees that it will be bought or distributed on television or cable. Fortunately, other than the equipment, our costs are mainly travel.

I’m doing it because it’s a lot of fun and I get to work with my sister, Kristina Wagner. Here is a picture of us from last week in Los Angeles, relaxing after 4 days of shooting.

Kristina is an actress turned historian. She was a feature player on the daytime television show “General Hospital” for over 20 years. She went back to school and got her degree in history. This film project developed out of her senior thesis.

There are so many layers to this story, it has been a fascinating process hearing the different perspectives about internment from both victims and those who were involved with carrying it out. I think it’s shaping up to be a very compelling, very heartfelt, 90 minute feature.

So – with that said, I wanted to talk about the mechanics of interview lighting.

Here are the restrictions we are dealing with…

The set up has to be very quick. Within 15 minutes from the time we arrive, we want to be shooting. When I worked for CNN back in the 80s, we had 2 or 3 guys setting up interviews. Our set up time for an interview like this was typically 30 minutes.

With this project, I had to do the set up on my own – a one man band – finding the shot, setting it up, lighting it, setting up sound – and doing it without much equipment. Most of these interviews are in the homes of the interviewee – and we wanted to keep our footprint very small.

I’ve used two different cameras. A Canon 5D Mark III and a Sony PMW EX-1. I’ve owned the EX-1 for 4 or 5 years. It gives beautiful images, but has a small sensor. The 5D is an amazing camera and the low light capabilities are better than the EX-1.

Since we are doing available light in most situations, I decided to do most of the project with my new 5D Mark III.

This first interview (above) is the only one I did with the EX-1. We shot it in a mansion where the internees where held in South Chicago. The gain was set at 0dB, the aperture is wide open 1.9f and we were shooting 1080p at 24 fps. The native ISO on the EX-1 is about 500, based on my measurements.

This footage has not been color graded yet. I wanted to show you the lighting the way it was captured. I did shrink the size of the shot so it would fit on the page.

So let’s talk about the light sources.

The room has windows on two parallel walls. You can see them bordering the left side of the frame from behind Eberhard. The room is 30 feet across. He is sitting about 12 feet from the back wall and about 20 feet from the windows in front of him.

Kristina is sitting to the right of the camera doing the interview in an attempt to keep his eye line very much on axis with the lens. I believe that the closer you can get to being on axis with an interview like this, the more personal the shot will feel. As you go off axis, you create separation between the subject and audience.

He is lit from the front with a 24′ china ball with a standard 100 watt light bulb ($6 for the fixture).

For the interview, I placed the china ball a couple of feet above his head on a C-stand to the right and about equal distance between the camera and the subject. It is very close to the axis of the shot. There is also a fold out white reflector on a stand about 2 feet left of the subject, providing some fill. A 100 watt bulb doesn’t put out much light compared to the window light – but it softened the shot beautifully.

I also like the eye light that we are getting naturally from the china ball and the fact that I was able to angle the shot in a way that kept his glasses from reflecting the bank of diffused windows in front of him.

I opened the back curtains enough to give a nice sheen on the fireplace to the right. I also kept the actual window out of the picture since it would have blown out if I left it in frame. The light from the window is giving his jacket the back rim light.

One thing you may notice is the bluish tone to the shot because a lot of it was daylight. The bulb in the china ball was a “Reveal 100 Daylight” bulb that I got at the grocery. They are not balanced at 5200 kelvin even though they are called daylight bulbs – they seem to be closer to 3900k if you don’t use a dimmer.

It took me longer to write about how I did it than it took to light it.

Let’s look at a few interviews that I shot with the 5D Mark III.

Yae is sitting in her living room. There is a bank of windows along the wall to the left. I was able to get the background to go out of focus a bit more because of the larger sensor on the 5D, the wide open aperture and the 105mm lens.

When I purchase the EX-1 a few years ago, everyone was saying that the “film look” could be achieved on video by shooting 24 frames per second. I never found this to be the case. The way to get the film look is by using the shorter depth of field that only a large sensor camera can give you – the Letus 35mm adapter works, but it’s a pain in the butt to use for run and gun work and impossible with a zoom lens.

We were even more limited in our space in this house than we were in the previous one so getting the background to go out of focus was more of a challenge. I shot it with a 105mm lens at 3200 ISO. The aperture was opened to 4.0f and the shutter at 1/50th.

The picture on the 5D Mark III is amazingly noiseless at 3200 ISO and I’ve been surprised and pleased by how well 6400 ISO looks as well. I think the low light capabilities make this camera perfect for the low budget filmmaker. When I started shooting back in the late 70s on 16mm film, we used Kodak 7247 negative stock that was rated at 100ASA (now called ISO). There is no way we would have been able to get an acceptable exposure at 100ASA with the lighting set up we used this time.

Low light cameras like this have made life much easier AND I think it is changing the style of lighting. I could talk about my opinions on this for quite a while, but I’ll stick with the issue at hand for now.

The glow from the left is coming through the shears of the living room windows (it was bright outside, but the window was in shade). I used the china ball again, but this time I put it closer to the subject – the bottom of the ball was about a foot higher than her head and it was about 3 feet away from her face slightly to the right off camera axis. There is no other lighting in the room. You can see some window reflection in her glasses, but as she
moves, it didn’t bother me.

We also moved around a few props that we found in her living room to give the background some interest and to express a bit of her personality and heritage.

Another note: I am using a 7′ monitor mounted to the camera hot shoe to help with focusing. It also allows me to angle the monitor so I can sit down during the interviews – which are lasting between 1-2 hours.

It’s a cheap Marshall monitor ($250) and has a lot more contrast than what you see in this screenshot. It also separates the colors differently – I was a little nervous when I first started using it because it made the different color temperatures in the shot pop out. In this shot, her face, on the left side went much bluer on the monitor.

I probably could focus fine with the screen on the camera or use a loupe attachment, but I am also using a camera stabilizer with a vest for other shots in the project and needed a monitor for that, so I bought one monitor for both functions.

While I’m at it, I also bought a Beachtek DXA-SLR XLR adapter ($450 from bandh.com) for my mics. It works wonderfully and we are getting some excellent sound.

Here is another shot.

This was a challenge to light since it was very close to dusk when we shot it.

Again, I was at 4.0, 1/50th, 3200 ISO and shooting 1080p, 24 fps. We get a different look because the china ball is now the main keylight. It is positioned above and to the left of frame and Kristi was sitting slightly off axis to the camera lens on the left to direct his eyeline.

I also made a mistake putting him in a high backed chair. When you do this with folks, they often end up leaning back and slouching which doesn’t make them look as good.

I love what the back window and the reflection of the yard outside did, bringing green and blue reflections to the glass on the furniture in the background. We moved the plant on the right to give a bit of shape to the window area and adjusted some of the stuff in the background. I also like the sheen off the dining room table. There is depth and personality to the shot. I turned on the light in the china cabinet and you can see the top shelf went a bit orange since the tungsten bulb in there was a very low color temperature. I wouldn’t do it that if I had it to do again.

I have a higher contrast ratio on this shot and I could have used a reflector on the right side of the shot filling in and softening his face. Overall, I’m satisfied with the shot and think it represents him and what he has to say very well.

Here are a couple more shots that are different environments, but are lit with the same tools.

All of these folks were very interesting to talk to and we got a lot of very usable footage.

A lot of interview lighting that I see these days is so harsh. One of the things we wanted for this film was a softer, friendlier look. All of these folks were children during WWII and were thrown in to a very difficult situation with their parents. We are looking for the heart of the story.

The memories they have and how those memories conflict with each other tells a fascinating story about human memory, family, hardship and how the human spirit overcomes horrible events. It also speaks to the concept of fear molding public policy – about a nation who sees itself as the “good guy” can abuse it’s power when it’s people are frightened.

I’m looking forward to the upcoming interviews and editing the piece together. I’ll keep you posted as we progress. The next shoot will be in Frankfort, Germany in October where we are interviewing German internees who were repatriated during and after the war.

And it’s not a coincidence that we are going to Germany during Oktoberfest. Hofbräuhaus and quart mugs of beer, here we come.