Filming an indie film. Man, what a drag. I’ve never done it, but I’ve been part of the plans for it. Worst case scenario – one cheap camcorder, hand-held, no microphones, no lights.
I don’t care how you edit it, it’s going to be bad.
I’ve been told people film movies with iPhones and a selfie stick.
If you want an indie movie to be good, you need good cameras. If you can get good visuals out of an iPhone, go ahead!
But make sure the lighting is good. There’s all different kinds of ways to light a scene. If interested, do a study on it.
If you’re going to film something and haven’t studied lighting, stop now. If you want something that’s for your family and friends to laugh over, go ahead. Otherwise, study lighting.
The only way to get good sound is to use microphones. You need two booms, one mic stand. Position the microphone ABOVE and BETWEEN the actors. People towards the back of the room will have to go back and dub their voices if all you have is one mic and no mixer.
Microphone – omni-directional. You need to buy an omni-directional microphone, preferably with a wind screen. Otherwise, every time there’s a puff of wind, it’ll obscure the dialogue. How do you buy an omnidirectional microphone? simple. Go to a website and look at “omnidirectional microphones”. Be aware most of them are low impedance, meaning you’ll need a DI box to transform them from Low impedance (XLR connector) to high impedance (phone jack).
video editing. you need a good video editing program, like Lightworks. some people use Adobe now. The standard was Vegas for years… apparently, when Sony sold Vegas they took out features. Not very good.
Now for the hard part. The filming itself. There are blank templates for storyboarding. You need a call sheet listing shots and locations. And you need a film board, with each scene clearly labeled on it. Use the scene #’s from the script. “24A, Ryan shoots Philip. Take six.”
That labels the scene for the director and the editor
Plan, plan, plan. There’s a lot of expensive software available through the Writers’ Store to plan and execute movie filming.
The less work you put into it, the worse it will be. The more, the better. Unfortunately, the more it costs, the better it is. Yes, there has been indie movies made for very little money. But that takes a talented director and producer. Count on it costing you some money. If you don’t have it, you’ll have to crowdsource it or gofundme.
