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DIGITAL
FILMMAKING
101
AN ESSENTIAL GUIDE
TO PRODUCING LOW-BUDGET MOVIES

SECOND EDITION

DALE NEWTON & JOHN GASPARD

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xii

Introduction xiii

Chapter 1: The Dream ~ Taking a Leap 1

Chapter 2: The Script ~ If It Ain’t on the Page… 5

The Basics 5
Story 6
The Three-Act Structure 6
Writing for a Tiny Budget 7
Creating Unique Characters 7
Mystery 8
Twists 8
Dramatic Tension 9
Building Drama or Comedy 9
Testing Your Story 9
Number of Characters 10
Number of Locations 13
Write What You Own 15
Night vs. Day & Big vs. Small 16
Other Constraints 17
Finding the Write Stuff 18

Chapter 3: The Budget ~ And How to Budge It 23

Essentials 24
Almost-Essentials 24
Luxuries 25
The Budget 27
Four Budget Options 30

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Pinching the Pennies (Until Abraham Yells) 30

Squeezing the Budget 32
Screenplay and Rights 32
Cast and Crew 33
Set Construction 36
Model Building 37
Wardrobe 38
Makeup and Hair 40
Lighting and Lighting Supplies 42
Camera Equipment 44
Sound Equipment 48
Vehicles 50
Meals 50
Locations 51
Tape Stock 52
Digital Still Camera and Production Stills 53
Storage Vault Rental 54
Non-Linear Edit System 54
Editing Software 56
Film-Look Software 57
Video Dubs 57
Music Recording 58
Sound Effects, Foley, Dialogue Looping 59
Titles 59
Sneak Preview 59
Final Output and Preview DVDs 60
Publicity Photos and Packets 61
Photocopying Scripts, Miscellaneous Photocopying 62
Postage for Publicity and Preview DVDs 62
Video-To-Film Transfer 62
How to Shoot It for Less 64

Chapter 4: The Business ~ Ultra-Low Budget, Inc. 65

Business Decisions 66
Money 67

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Professional Help 67
Insurance 69
Employees 70
Rights 74
Legal Liability 76
Business Structure 77
Liability Waivers 86
Copyright 87
Tax Obligations 89

Chapter 5: The Money ~ “Hello, Uncle Burt? You Don’t

Remember Me, But…” 95
Investors 95
Credit Cards 97
Scrimping 98
Grants 100
Favors 102
Found Money 102

Chapter 6: Preproduction ~ “Being Compulsive Is Not

a Bad Thing. I Know. I Double Checked.” 105
Digital or Film 106
Video Format 107
Shooting Ratio 108
Publicity 109
Time for a Breakdown 110
Step 1: Marking Script Segments 111
Step 2: Script Breakdown Pages 114
Step 3: Making the Strips and the Production Board 116
Step 4: Sorting the Strips 123
Step 5: Laying Out the Shooting Days 124
Props, Action Props, Locations, and Assistance 128
Choosing a Look 130
Technical Preparation 131

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Chapter 7: Casting the Cast ~ To Be or Not to Be for Free 137

Finding Actors 137
Talent Agencies 138
Local Theaters 139
Open Auditions (a.k.a. Cattle Calls) 139
Auditioning Actors 140
A Place to Audition 140
A Traffic Manager 140
Sides 141
A Schedule-Conflict Sheet 142
Video Camera and Operator 142
The Audition 143
The Ten Commandments of Auditions 143
Casting the Cast 151
Asking People to “Work for Free” 152

Chapter 8: Corralling the Crew ~ Assembling the Dream Team 155

Finding Crew People 155
Interviewing the Crew 158
Desired Characteristics and Attitudes 159
Specialized Skills or Attitudes 160
Choosing the Crew 163
Selecting a Director and Producer 164
Letting Your Crew Do Its Best 166

Chapter 9: Production ~ Lights, Camera, Chaos! 167

Training 167
Twenty (Thousand) Questions 168
The Big Lie 170
Read-Through and Rehearsals 171
Shot Lists 174
Long Takes 174
Abandoning Your Shot List 175
Continuity 176
Touchups 177
Where to Begin… and Where to End 178

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The Geography Lesson 179

Directors vs. Producers 180
Sound Advice 181
You’ve Been Framed 183
Shooting for a Film Look 184
Feeding the Masses 185
Extra! Extra! 185
Photo Opportunity 186
Action and Stunts 187
Intimate Scenes 189
Viewing Dailies 190

Chapter 10: Special Effects ~ Please Pass the Construction Paper 193
Miniatures 194
Mini-Sets 196
Replacement Shots and Continuity Tricks 197
Poor-Person’s Process Shots 198
Specialty Costumes 200
Specialty Props 202
Animation and In-Camera Effects 204
Titles 209
Camera Rigs and Effects Gear 210
Chemistry and Science Effects 213
Don’t-Try-This-At-Home Effects 213

Chapter 11: Postproduction ~ The Light at the End of the

Tunnel: Completion or Oncoming Train? 215
Editing 216
Finding Your Editor 216
Editing Equipment 217
Working with Your Editor 219
Editing for a Film Look 219
The Rough Cut or First Cut 220
The Fine Cut 222
Sound-Effects Editing 223
Dialogue Looping 224

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Music 227
Using Existing Music 227
Finding a Composer 228
What to Give Your Composer 230
Working with Your Composer 230
The Final Output 232
Keeping in Touch 233

Chapter 12: Distribution ~ Meet the New Boss.

Same as the Old Boss. 235
The Distribution Stream 237
When Should You Approach Distributors? 237
How to Find Distributors / How to Be Found 238
Film Markets 239
Festivals 241
The Direct Approach 242
Website Promotion 245
Getting Someone Else to Do It 245
The Budget Question 246
Lying 247
An Alternate Truth 247
Skirting the Issue 247
The Truth 247
The Deal & Other Details 248
What You’ll Need to Provide 251
Self-Distribution & Self-Flagellation: How to Tell Them Apart 255
Theatrical 256
Home Video 257
Internet 259

Afterword 261

Enlarged Appendix 262

Sample Script Layout 263
Sample Forms 265
Call Sheet 265

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Group Release 266

Cast and Crew Release 267
Location Release 268
Artwork Release 269
Shot Log 270
Equipment Rental List 271
Sample Menus for Weekend Film Shoots 272
Press Kit: Sample Synopsis 275
Press Kit: Sample Credit List 276
Press Kit: Sample Production Notes 277
Other Resources 278
Independent Feature Film Project Offices 278
Websites 279
Features and Shorts 279
Educational Sites 279
Film Festival Resources 280
Film Commissions 280
Movie Scripts On-Line 280
Educational Resources 280
Tape-to-Film Transfers 281
DVD and Tape Duplication 281
Videotape, CD, DVD Suppliers 282
Equipment Retailers 282
Where to Buy Movie Scripts 283
Publications 283
Magazines 284
Copyright and Script Registration 285
Photo Processing 285
Business Information 285
Corporate-Stock Rules 286
Business Tax Forms 286

Bibliography 287

About the Authors 291

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Chapter 1
The Dream ~ Taking a Leap

Everything we’re about to tell you is wrong.

Really?
Well, no. Not really.
However, a healthy dose of skepticism will help sustain you on the long
journey that lies before you. The process of making a digital feature requires
breaking lots of rules. Sometimes all the rules. Even the rules we’ve laid out
in this book.
However, if nothing else, the rules in this book can act as a good
starting point and touchstone for you to return to as you make your way
through the preproduction, production, and postproduction processes.
And how, you impatiently ask, do you start on this amazing, frustrating,
and often exhilarating journey?
With a dream.

≈•≈

They used to call moviemaking a “silver addiction,” referring to the old

days when silver salts were used to create film stocks. Although you won’t
need film stock to make your movie, you will need that addiction. And it
better be a strong one. It has to be, because often the dream of making
your movie is all that carries you over the long days/weeks/months/years
that it takes to go from idea to screen.
Since you’re reading this book, odds are that you already have at least
the beginnings of a dream. You have:

• A story you’re dying to tell,

• A character you’d love to see developed, or
• An idea or issue you’re burning to explore.

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The next step is to look at that dream with a cold, realistic eye: Is it a
reasonable dream? Can you produce it with few resources?
While there’s certainly no absolute answer, there is a ballpark that you
should at least try to play in if you’re going to work at this level. For example,
is your story idea a historical costume drama, involving large crowd scenes
and multiple, historically-accurate locations? If so, then keep dreaming. Or
is your idea a small, contemporary dramatic (romance, comedy, suspense,
horror, farce, mystery, melodrama, science-fiction) story that can take place
in just a few locations with a handful of characters? Great. Now you’re in
the ballpark.
Once you’ve defined your dream, you’re ready to take the next
important step. Start telling people that you’re going to make a movie. It
doesn’t matter where. At a cocktail party, after church, on a bus, or at the
water cooler. It also doesn’t really matter who. Your parents. Your significant
other. Your co-workers. Your dentist.
It only matters that you say it out loud. “I’m going to make a movie.”
Why do you have to say it out loud to someone else? Two reasons. The
first is that, since this is a statement most people aren’t used to hearing,
you’re bound to get some interesting responses. Responses along the lines
of, “What’s it about?” “Where are you getting the money?” and the best
of all, “Great. Can I help?”
While all these questions are valid and important, it’s the last one that
you’re really listening for, because once you’ve got the dream, the next
step is to get other people excited about it. You need other people excited
about your project because there’s virtually no way you can do it all alone.
The second reason you should begin telling people that you’re going
to make a movie — saying it often and out loud — is because it takes your
dream and begins to make it real. Just saying it isn’t going to make it happen,
of course, but it does put your pride on the line. You’re more likely to push
forward if your friends start asking, “Whatever happened to that movie
thing you were going to do?”
It also makes the idea more concrete, and it raises other questions that
you have to start thinking about. When will you start shooting? Where will
the equipment come from? How will you fund it? Who’s going to be in it?
When is it going to be done? How are you going to edit it?

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The following chapters will provide you with the means to answer
those questions. But nobody’s going to ask the questions until you make
the statement… out loud.
“I’m going to make a movie.” (Congratulations. You’ve just taken the
first step.)

≈•≈

Making a feature-length movie, even for someone who’s done it before, is

a daunting process. For someone who’s never done it, it can be downright
overwhelming. Take solace that it isn’t one long process, but is instead a
series of discrete and attainable steps. Each step leads logically to the next.
You also don’t have to navigate these unfamiliar waters without charts.
Others have done this before, or at least something similar. The model for
making a digital feature is very similar to making any type of feature-length
project, whether it’s a low-budget Roger Corman–style masterpiece or a
mega-mondo-budget Hollywood spectacular.
Reading this book and others on writing, producing, and selling
movies can provide valuable background. Taking classes can be good
preparation on specific parts of the process. Working on other people’s
movies (regardless of the budget) can be an education in itself on what to
do and what not to do.
One of the best sources of information we’ve found is people who
have made a feature before, whether on film or digitally. They’re generally
more than happy to talk to you. They’ll mention a few pitfalls to watch out
for, recommend some cast and crew people, suggest who else to turn to
for free advice, and maybe even volunteer to help. At least, that’s been our
experience.
If there’s one thing we learned, it’s that dreams are contagious, and
you should try to infect as many people as possible with yours. You have a
long, challenging journey ahead, and you’ll need their help if you’re going
to start — not to mention finish — a digital movie.
Regardless of the length of your journey, there is a destination — the
moment when the finished movie is projected in front of an audience. And
at this moment you can see the fruits of your labor — your dream — come
to life. The audience laughs. They cry. They gasp. They applaud.
And your dream has become reality.

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Chapter 2
The Script ~ If It Ain’t on the Page...

Analogy #1: Just as the basement is the foundation for your house, so too
is the screenplay the foundation for your movie. A strong foundation
makes for a stronger house and a stronger movie. However, unlike your
basement, you can’t fill up your screenplay with extra stuff you’re not using.
There’s just no room in your digital movie, in your shooting schedule, or in
your budget.
Analogy #2: Your screenplay is your road map. It tells you, your cast,
and your crew where you’re headed and how you’re going to get there.
Without a good road map, you might make it to your destination but not
before wasting a lot of time and money, two commodities that are in short
supply.
A dramatic feature-length movie is only as good as its screenplay and
rarely any better. While this is certainly common knowledge, you’d be
amazed at the number of filmmakers (and we’re not just pointing fingers at
Hollywood here; independents are just as guilty) who dive into production
with a screenplay that simply isn’t ready to be shot.
Therefore, be prepared to spend a lot of time on your script. It’s a
difficult process, but you’ll be happier about it in the end, and the results
will show in your finished production. Making a good movie out of a bad
script is not unlike the proverbial silk purse and sow’s ear. It’s simply not
going to happen.

The Basics
While this chapter isn’t intended to provide you with an exhaustive course
in screenwriting, it will give you the basics you need to construct a script
that can be shot on your ultra-low budget.

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(For further reading on the finer points of screenwriting, along with

sample formats, please refer to the appendix. There are a number of
excellent books out there on screenwriting; however, remember the
words of screenwriter William Goldman, “Nobody knows anything.” For
every absolute rule someone states about screenwriting, you can always
find several examples of successful features that have broken that rule. The
appendix also lists where you can buy or download screenplays of existing
movies, which can be an excellent educational resource.)

Story
As an independent moviemaker with no budget to speak of, story is your
friend, your biggest asset, and your secret weapon. The reality of making
movies on this scale is that you’re not going to impress a distributor or
festival planner with your big-name stars (unless you’re married to one),
your exotic locations (unless you live in one), or your stunning crowd
scenes (unless you have a stunningly large family). You simply don’t have
the bucks for them.
That leaves you with story, the one place where you can compete
head-to-head with the Hollywood big kids. You can have a better story in
your $8,000 digital movie than there is in some $100 million box-office
bomb starring the latest rock star/actor in a remake of some baby-boomer
Saturday-morning cartoon.
Story is your best selling point. If the story is great, shortcomings in
lighting, videography, sound, set design, and so on will be forgotten as the
viewer is drawn into the narrative. Consider the early films of D. W. Griffith
or Charlie Chaplin. No sound, only natural light, black and white, static
camera shots. Yet they are still powerful, entertaining, and remembered
today because they presented engaging characters in interesting stories.

The Three-Act Structure

We’re big fans of the three-act structure: Act One (known as The
Beginning), in which you establish characters’ motivation and set the
scene, which leads to an inciting moment, catharsis, crisis, or conflict that
requires the main character to make a decision about what he or she wants
to do.

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Act Two (also known as The Middle), in which the main character faces
challenges and obstacles to carrying out that decision, leading to a “scene
of recognition” in which the character reaffirms his or her commitment to
the decision.
Act Three (you guessed it, The End), in which the story reaches its
climax, and the main character succeeds or fails to achieve what he or she
wants.
Of course, this isn’t the only way to structure a screenplay, but it’s
tried and true, and 90% of the successful and well-loved movies follow
this pattern.
There are, of course, exceptions to the rule. Quentin Tarantino took
the classic three-act structure and turned it on its ear with Pulp Fiction,
which contained a three-act structure, but ordered them as Act One, Act
Three and then Act Two.
Christopher Nolan put his own spin on those three acts, structuring his
film Memento so that we see the story’s conclusion at the beginning of the
film and then work our way backwards so that the beginning of the story
occurs at the end.
If you have in mind a bold, innovative, stunning new screenplay
structure, go for it. It just might be your ticket. If you haven’t been struck by
a bolt of inspired genius, then stick to the proven, audience-tested structure.

Writing for a Tiny Budget

While the traditional three-act screenplay structure can apply to any movie,
there are special considerations that you must be aware of in crafting your
ultra-low-budget feature script. And we do recommend writing the script
specifically for a tiny budget. It’s easier to make your limitations invisible if
you aren’t imposing them on a bigger-budget story. With that in mind, here
are some of the building blocks for your screenplay:

Creating Unique Characters

Any respectable movie needs interesting characters that the audience cares
about. This is doubly important to your project. Unique, unusual, remarkably-
true-to-life, or endearing characters will help you attract an audience, which

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in turn will help attract attention to your movie. But of more immediate
concern, juicy roles will draw the high-quality actors you need. This is a
case of one strong asset attracting another. Actors live by their resumes, so
the better the role, the more good people who will be auditioning.
Director/writer Dylan Kidd used that as his guiding principal in writing
his low-budget classic, Roger Dodger: Create a strong character, and a
great actor will want to do it, regardless of the budget. Confident that he
had a great main character in Roger, Kidd spotted actor Campbell Scott in
a café, asked him to read the script, and the rest is history.
Along this same line of thought, give good lines to all the characters,
even the waitress in the walk-on role. Speaking parts are the currency of an
actor’s resume. Since you can’t pay them much — or any — money, give
them something useful, a good scene for their reel.
The late Jim Varney did a whole series of silly Ernest movies on
the strength of a character he created in a popular car ad. Jeff Goldblum
virtually launched his career with “I forgot my mantra” in Woody Allen’s
Annie Hall. And Bronson Pinchot leveraged a short scene as Serge in Beverly
Hills Cop into a hit TV series.
Bottom line: Give all your actors something interesting to play.

Mystery
A bit of uncertainty can really help propel your story forward. As the saying
goes, “Don’t spill your popcorn in the lobby,” which simply means don’t tell
the audience everything at once. Let the story be revealed. Make the
audience want to see the next scene to learn the truth about a character, to
see how a scheme unfolds, to find out what that crazy person was building.
A little mystery can go a long way towards preventing your story from
slowing down. But — and this is a big but — make sure the answers are
worth the wait.

Twists
Keep your audience engaged in the story by turning the plot direction on
its ear occasionally. (The heroine in peril was actually married to the villain!
The priest is the blackmailer! The dog can talk!) If they are concentrating
on the story, they’re less likely to notice that you couldn’t afford a room at

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the Ritz for that romantic scene and are instead shooting in your parents’
attractively-paneled basement rec room.

Dramatic Tension
Don’t forget to create conflict between your characters. Who are you most
likely to watch, the couple on the corner quietly holding hands or the ones
with the flailing arms who are shouting at each other? Make use of that
rarely-admitted-to human instinct, voyeurism. This is an easy point to forget,
but the fact is that if your characters agree on everything, you don’t have
much dramatic tension. And without dramatic tension, you won’t have
much of a movie.

Building Drama or Comedy

Many of the strongest movies set the stage for their climax in the first act,
sometimes even in the first moment of the story. Usually this means that some
essential characteristic or life experience of the protagonist is presented early
in the narrative. This aspect of the person then becomes a pivotal challenge
for the character as the story’s climax unfolds, causing the story’s ending to
resonate back to the beginning.
An example is The Truman Show. In the early scenes of the film,
Jim Carrey’s character can’t leave his island home for a job assignment
because he has a life-long fear of water after the childhood experience
of seeing his father fall from a boat in a storm and drown. At the story’s
climax, the character must face his deepest fear and sail a boat in a raging
storm in order to achieve his goal. Way cool; do this if you can (and we don’t
mean sail a boat in a storm).

Testing Your Story

Test your stories on your friends — the ones who will tell you if it stinks. If
you don’t have any friends who are that honest, find people you don’t
know well. If your story wins them over, it’s good. The point is, make sure
you have a tale that people want to be told because, at its heart,
moviemaking is storytelling.
You can also get actors to read your script in a public reading —
basically readers’ theater — or join a writing group and read it to other

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writers. You’ll get feedback, and even better, it will turn your wince
detectors up to full sensitivity. It’s like having a new friend over to your
house for the first time: You find yourself cringing at every bit of peeling
paint and every stain in the carpet as you look at your house through
another person’s eyes. Reading the script aloud will do the same for your
story. You’ll know where it drags or where it becomes implausible because
you’ll wince. Keep track of where that happens and fix those spots.

≈•≈

These are the things you need for a successful screenplay. Next we’ve got
the list of things you can’t have if you want to finish your ultra-low-budget
movie.
Cash constraints can be gratifying to overcome, and we think they
bring out the true creativity of a production team. If you can just throw
money at a problem, you tend to take the first solution that comes to mind,
usually the one that’s been done a dozen times before. If you have to come
up with a novel solution to your problem, you’ve usually added a new creative
element to your movie. A tight budget can squeeze those creative juices out
of you. So here’s a list of constraints to inspire your best ideas.

Number of Characters
Limit yourself to three main characters, or barring that, don’t include more than
three main characters all together in a scene or have them all interacting
at the same time. For instance, if you have a party scene, break up the
conversations into subgroups of three or less. Why? You don’t have time
and money to do more.
Equipment rentals mean every minute you spend in production is like
having dollars slip through a hole in your pocket. Your cast and crew will
be giving up real pay to essentially work free for you, and inevitably their
neglected spouse, a bill-wielding landlord, an unexpected illness, their
waning interest, or real work will cause them to leave your production. The
longer you shoot, the more likely you’ll lose key people. And the number
of main characters in your movie directly affects your production time and
production costs.

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Here’s how it works out. Your fiscal and temporal resources (money and
time) will only allow for a three-to-one (3:1) or four-to-one (4:1) shooting
ratio. A 3:1 ratio means you can shoot only three minutes of tape for each
finished minute of your movie.
For example, let’s say you’re shooting the climactic scene where Rhett
walks out on Scarlett (apparently you’ve ignored everything we’ve said
about historical costume dramas and crowd scenes). With a 3:1 shooting
ratio, this gives you just enough tape to shoot the scene in a master shot
showing both of them and then to shoot two other takes with different
camera setups for a close-up of Rhett and a close-up of Scarlett. That’s 3:1,
with no margin for error.
If Rhett screws up and says “Give a hoot” in the master shot, you can
do a second take — which would move you up to a 4:1 ratio for this scene
and force you to shoot some later scene in a 2:1 ratio to compensate — or
you can make sure that you get him to say “Give a damn” in the close-up.
Most of the time you’ll try to work in a 3:1 or 2:1 ratio to save time and
tape for that tricky shot that’s going to need a 5:1 ratio.
So what’s shooting ratio got to do with the number of main characters
in your script? Let’s add Ashley to the scene with Rhett and Scarlett, and
you’ll quickly realize that you’re into a 4:1 shooting ratio — a master shot
and three close-ups (Ashley, Rhett, Scarlett). And that assumes there are no
mistakes that require a retake. The more group scenes like this in your
script, the more your expenses for tape and equipment will rise and the
more your production schedule will stretch out.
Here are the numbers. We find that each camera move for a new setup
consumes about 15 minutes to adjust camera, lights, focus, and whatnot.
With an extra setup for each of the 20 to 25 scenes you need to shoot a day,
that adds up to about five hours of lost production per day. Over four week-
ends of shooting, that’s almost two more weekends spent on extra setups
(emphasis on the word “spent” because it comes out of your wallet).
“But what about retakes from the same camera setup?” you plead. “It
doesn’t take much time and the extra tape costs will be cheap.”
Not necessarily so. While the tape costs won’t be much, the time still
adds up if this is your standard operating procedure.

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Back to the abacus: It would be hard to reset a scene and reshoot it in less
than two minutes. Those 20 to 25 scenes you need to shoot each day trans-
late into 60 to 75 setups a day in a 3:1 ratio. Already hard to do in a 12-hour
day. Now use two minutes more on each of those setups, and you’ve just
added 120 to 150 minutes — two hours or more — to each day’s shooting.
Keep this up, and you’ll have to sleep on the set to get any rest. While you
can afford an occasional retake, don’t get the cast, crew, or director used to
it. Stick to a 3:1 ratio if you want to get your production done for $8,000.
And keep in mind that some great directors — like Clint Eastwood —
often make do with only one take of a scene. Who wants to argue with Clint?
So does this mean you can only afford to do a movie with two characters?
By no means. But on the other hand, you probably aren’t going to do a story
about a baseball team whose players are inseparable.
In our film Beyond Bob, we had seven principal characters because the
script was not originally written to be done on an ultra-low budget. To help
squeeze it into the low-budget realm, the script was rewritten to break up
dialogue among smaller groups of characters. We kept to a 4:1 shooting
ratio only by making editing decisions in the camera and by breaking
scenes into sub-groups of characters. Rarely do all the characters appear in
the same sequence, and if they do, they don’t all talk.
While we limited ourselves to two or three main characters in the
scenes of our digital movie, Grown Men, we completely abandoned the
shooting-ratio rule and tried a different approach. Each of the four different
story segments — which had different casts — and a framing segment
were slated for two weekends of production with a 6:1 or 8:1 shooting
ratio (thanks to equipment loans that kept us off the rental clock).
This allowed us to spend more time creating nicely lit, well-composed
shots. It also gave the actors more takes for each setup. However, time
was still limited, and every scene was storyboarded so we knew exactly
how many setups we had to get done in a day. This approach worked
because we didn’t need the same actors and crew throughout the shooting
schedule and because we didn’t have to rent our major pieces of equipment.
We still think a 3:1 shooting ratio is a good balance between cost and
results if you’re paying for rental equipment. By keeping the cast in each scene
small, this is relatively easy to do.

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The perfect number of characters in a scene from

Grown Men. (Pictured, Amy Shomshak and Jay
Nickerson. Photo courtesy of Granite Productions,
Unlimited)

Number of Locations
To stay on an $8,000 budget, you’ll have to
do all principal videography in four week-
ends or less. Trust us on this one. In order to
accomplish this, you have to control yourself on the number of shooting
locations.
Now this doesn’t mean you can’t have a variety of locations, just that
you need to have big chunks of dialogue occurring at a limited number of
locations. The main reason is time. If you move your entire crew from one
location to another during one day of the shoot, you’ll lose a minimum of
an hour for each move in addition to the travel time itself. This is more than
merely an hour because during that hour you’re also paying equipment
rental, you’re losing daylight shooting time, and there’s always the prob-
lem of having the crew and cast wander off “to get a soda.” You also lose
the momentum and pace your director has been trying to establish in order
to shoot 12 pages of script a day. You don’t want to do this. Enough said.
By keeping a couple of points in mind as you write your script, you can
provide a nice variety of locations without wasting precious production time.
The first thing is not to introduce a new location without using it for a
lot of pages of dialogue or action. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean
continuous use of the location within the story. Since you’ll be shooting out
of sequence, it doesn’t matter when in the story you use this setting, just
as long as it totals up to blocks of 12 pages — the amount you’ll shoot in
a day. This way, you can set up your crew and equipment at that location
and shoot for the whole day. It’s easy enough to switch locations overnight
just by taking the equipment home and bringing it to the new location the
next morning. No production time wasted.
If this seems like a stifling limitation, keep in mind that the same loca-
tion can include many settings. For example, a house we used in Grown
Men served up an easy half-dozen settings and an office building we shot
in provided over a dozen distinct locations.

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A location also can be made to look completely different to create a

new mood for a different scene. You can change lighting, add props and
furniture, change characters, or completely change the interactions between
the characters. All of these will reinvigorate the scene, and the audience will
scarcely give a thought to whether they’ve seen this location before.
You can also pick a bland setting and redress it to serve as more than
one location. If you could afford a sound stage and set pieces (which you
can’t, so forget it!), this is how you’d shoot all of your interiors for the same
reason Hollywood productions do: to save the costs and time of moving
cast, crew, and equipment. You can find a location that can serve the same
purpose for you.
For example, in Resident Alien, we shot in Dale’s living room and work-
room for one afternoon. We spent the morning shooting in his backyard,
so the whole day really counted as one location. With the use of office par-
titions, desk, computer, file cabinet, chairs, and careful camera angles, we
transformed the neutral-colored walls of the living room into a welfare
office. Not three feet away, again using a few selected decorations and
pieces of furniture, we created the interior of a North Dakota farm house.
Another 12 feet away in a workroom with unfinished gypsum-board
walls, we moved a few appliances, propped up a few more pieces of gypsum
board for additional walls, and — voila! — we had a motel laundry room
in central Minnesota. Four hundred miles of travel in less than two dozen
feet of distance. And no one has ever suspected when seeing the finished
film. So if you’re planning to repaint the living room, pick something
nondescript.
You may have noticed that we’ve mainly referred to interior locations.
That’s because your script should primarily take place indoors, unless you
live somewhere where the weather is reliable. (We don’t.) On your fast-
paced schedule, you need as much control as possible, so limit the outdoor
dialogue scenes and try to locate them near an indoor location you can
switch to in case of typhoon, blizzard, tornado, or other acts of God.
To compensate for shooting most scenes as interiors, you can add a
large number of establishing shots to your script that won’t need dialogue or
extra lighting. (You won’t have to rent a lighting kit. If you own or borrow
the camera, then these shots become virtually free.) You can even have

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your actors in the shots as long as there isn’t dialogue. This second-unit
shooting is cheap and can be done as time permits.
We shot the first ten minutes of Beyond Bob — which were essentially
silent exteriors — as second-unit work over the course of three months
after principal photography was completed. So, if you want other interest-
ing locations, just write them as simple establishing shots in your script.
We’ve even used miniatures of building signs and other exteriors to get the
look of a bigger-budget movie.
Remember, every time you introduce a new location, think of where
else you can use it in your story.

Write What You Own

Another point you can never forget while writing the script is that you
have no money! Nada! Zippo! All of your money is going for equipment,
tape stock, and food for the cast and crew. So don’t write in any props or
locations that you don’t own, can’t beg or borrow, or can’t sneak into
long enough to get your shot.
Forget about that old truism, “Write what you know.” You need to
write what you own. Robert Rodriguez took that dictum to new heights
when he based the script for his breakout movie, El Mariachi, on those
items he knew he could get for free: “A pit bull, a motorcycle, two bars, a
ranch, and a turtle.”
Clearly, expensive set dressings are not going to be your strong suit.
They’re simply too time-consuming and expensive. However, you can
enliven your scenes by using unique props and costumes.
On Grown Men, one story segment was set in the apartment of a
character who flits between artistic pursuits. Taking advantage of this
character trait, we borrowed an artist’s warehouse workspace to create an
interesting setting. And because the building was something of an artist’s
colony, we were able to borrow many distinct (and large) pieces of art,
simply by walking down the hall and knocking on doors. Props worth
thousands of dollars can be just a phone call away.
Also look around where you live. It may be old hat to you, but unless
you live in Los Angeles or New York, it’s a unique regional location for the

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rest of the world. What is mundane to you may never have been seen by
most audiences. In his offbeat film Plan 10 from Outer Space, filmmaker
Trent Harris used local Mormon statuary in his hometown of Salt Lake City
as truly memorable settings for several of the movie’s scenes.
This is one of the biggest reasons we’re fans of regional moviemaking;
90% of the films released look like the terrain within 100 miles of Los
Angeles. There are thousands of interesting settings, urban and rural, that
are rarities on the screen. So when you think of locations for your scenes,
pick settings that are unique to your neck of the woods. What is an
expensive location shoot for Paramount is a cheap backyard set for you.
Your neighborhood can add hundreds of thousands of dollars of visual
impact to your movie for next to nothing. This kind of thinking will have
distributors guessing you spent a million bucks on your digital feature.
Sometimes what you don’t have can be turned to your advantage.
When Kevin Smith made Clerks, he had complete access to the convenience
store that served as his primary location.
The one drawback was that he only had use of the location at night,
and his story took place during the day. Not having the budget for lights
to create the illusion of sunlight, he took this disadvantage and made it his
character’s problem. Dante, the beleaguered store clerk, arrives at work to
find that someone has jammed gum in the lock that secures the metal
shutters over the front window of the store. As a result, he can’t get the
shutters opened.
This is just one of the many problems that plague Dante throughout the
day. Smith took a problem and turned it to his advantage as part of his story.

Night vs. Day & Big vs. Small

Here’s a simple mathematical equation: Lights = money. As you will have
limited money for your production, it follows that you will have limited
lighting. How does this affect the scripting process? Let us illuminate.
The first requirement is to not write scenes set in large locations that
must be lit artificially. Now if you’re reading carefully, you see that this
doesn’t prevent you from using large locations. You can use the Grand
Canyon during the day; thanks to the sun, you don’t have to rent lights to
do it. Trey Parker used this concept on his first film, Cannibal: The Musical,

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using the splendor of the Colorado Rockies as the backdrop for his story.
The settings were magnificent; the lighting costs were nil.
Night shots seem like a cheap idea, but they actually may require a lot
of money — that is, light — to make them visible on tape. Again, if you’re
reading carefully, you’ll notice we said “may require.” If you limit the size of
the area you are trying to light, the simple lighting kit you can afford (four
1000-watt lamps) will be more than adequate. We even simulated a blinding
UFO landing using this lighting kit by limiting the area we were lighting.
We were also able to shoot under-exposed shots during the magic
hour, just after sunset but before dark, to simulate night. We could see
headlights on vehicles and details in the dark trees and cars without using
any artificial lights.
So, the lesson here is to write scenes requiring artificial lighting only for
small locations or small parts of large locations. For large locations, keep in
mind that they must be shot in daylight, during magic hour (this will have
to be a short sequence that can be accomplished in less than an hour), or
as miniatures that you can afford to light.
Surely, you are thinking, these are enough shackles to place on one
project. Dream on.

Other Constraints
These are only the budgetary constraints you must suffer through. They’ll
seem easy once your project is facing the list of “artistic” requirements from
most potential distributors. Most of these requirements are so lowbrow
(more blood, more girls, more blood, more bikinis, more blood, more sex,
more nudity, and did we mention more blood?) that we were glad we didn’t
pander to them.
Make a movie that’s your vision, a movie of which you can be proud.
When you face the inevitable rejections, you can sleep nights if you’ve
followed your dream. It’s hard to justify risking your hard-earned savings
and thousands of hours of your personal time just to make a return on your
investment. If you’re only in this for the money, there are better investments
that are a lot less work.
Just because most of this advice from distributors is fecal doesn’t mean
there aren’t some valuable points.

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The best piece of advice we’ve heard is to get your story moving in
the first five minutes. Resident Alien doesn’t kick into gear until about 15
minutes in. This is a long time without the aid of a well-known star or
stunning visuals. We’ve been fortunate that most people are willing to wait
for the good stuff that follows. However, attention spans are short in the
world of distribution and increasingly so among audiences, so it’s important
that your story hits the ground running.
This is why we rewrote the opening of Beyond Bob to show Bob’s tragic
(yet oddly comic) death in a hang-gliding accident. It’s a fast, fun opening
that grabs the audience’s attention and keeps it while we set up the story
and the other characters over the next 20 minutes.
You need to make sure something intriguing, startling, or dramatic
happens in the first five minutes to draw them into the story. And then
you darn well better use the next 85 minutes to build on that opening.
Ideally, the viewers will be so captivated by your story that they’ll never get
to think about it being an ultra-low-budget movie again until it’s all over.
By that point, they won’t care if you had a big-name star or a Riviera locale.

Finding the Write Stuff

So what do you do if you’re not a screenwriter but you have everything else
it takes to make a movie? Obviously you need to find a screenwriter, which
really won’t be that difficult. The tough part will be finding the right
screenwriter.
As with every other crew and cast position you’ll need to fill, we
recommend that you opt for excitement about the project and a positive
attitude over experience. Not that we’re knocking experience. Experience is
great… when you can afford it. The main problem with experience is that by
the time someone becomes really proficient at something — like writing,
editing, photography, whatever — they often expect to receive a paycheck
that is commensurate with their skills. And who can blame them? You
can’t, but you can’t afford them, either.
The people you’re looking for are the ones who are really excited about
the project and who appear to have the basic skills necessary to get them
through their tasks. In our case, it was often people who had experience in

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movie production, but usually one or two steps down from the position
they were taking on our project.
For example, a production assistant becomes a production manager;
a boom operator becomes a lead sound person; or an assistant editor
becomes an editor. These are people who want to move up but who
haven’t really had the opportunity. That is, until your digital movie came
along.
The same will probably be true of your screenwriter. Odds are you aren’t
going to get a working, professional, card-carrying Writers Guild member to
write your script for you. First, because you can’t afford them, and second,
because as union members, they can’t work on your decidedly non-union
project.
So how do you find this budding William Goldman? Well, if you followed
our earlier advice (tell people that you’re making a feature), you may have
already heard from a couple writers. Word travels fast, and the word about
feature-length movies seems to travel at supersonic speeds. (We even had
someone call us from New York to inquire about the possibility of being an
extra in one of our productions. In Minnesota. Trust us, word travels fast.)
However, if writers haven’t started seeking you out, there are a number
of ways to beat them out of the bushes. Here are a few:

• Many colleges and universities offer script-writing and play-writing

courses. Call the professors at a school near you, and see if they
can recommend any of their students. You may even get the
professor interested.

• If you have a chapter of the Independent Feature Project nearby

(see the appendix), check with them about putting an announce-
ment in their newsletter or on their bulletin board (cork, voice mail,
or computer). In the announcement, specify what you’re looking for
(“an ultra-low-budget script”) as well as what you’re not looking
for (for example, “no slasher, horror, or exploitation” if that’s your
plan). This will save you and the respondents a lot of time.

• If your city or state has a film office, talk to the people there.
We’ve provided contact information in the appendix. Generally,

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film boards are in the business of bringing big-buck movies into

your area, but most of them also do their best to help out local
folks interested in movie work. At the very least, they’ll have a
directory of local production talent, which will come in very
handy later on. Odds are, they’ll even know who the up-and-
coming screenwriters in your area are and will help put you in
touch with them.

• If all else fails, you can place an ad in one of the Hollywood trade
papers — Variety or the Hollywood Reporter — or with one of the
on-line services that cater to budding screenwriters. However,
we’d recommend that this be your avenue of last resort for a few
key reasons. First, it costs money to place an ad, and you don’t
have any money to spare. Certainly not to be placing ads. Second,
you will be inundated with scripts. Your mailbox will be stuffed.
Boxes of scripts will land on your doorstep. Your answering
machine will explode from overuse. Your home will be swallowed
by paper. Your body will never be found. Perhaps we exaggerate,
but not by much. And, finally, 99.99% of these scripts will not be
written for your budget level. And cramming a million-dollar (or
20 million-dollar) script into an $8,000 budget is not a pretty
sight. Picture Orson Welles in a Speedo.

If you feel you must take this approach, be sure to specify “ultra-low-
budget” in your ad. This will tell the reader two things: Don’t bother sending
big-budget scripts (they will anyway), and don’t plan on getting paid. Also
specify what you do or don’t want, such as “no horror,” “no period pieces,”
and so on. We’ve put the addresses and websites for these trade papers in the
appendix. Contact them for information on ad rates (and don’t get mad when
we say we told you so).
Once you’ve found your screenwriter, you need to settle on your story.
He or she may have a story or script that can be adapted to your budget.
If so, great. Or you may need to outline the parameters and let the writer
go off and stew on it for a while. Most writers like a challenge, and writing
for an $8,000 movie certainly qualifies.

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Of course, you may already have a story that you’d like the writer to
adapt. This is a fine approach, with a couple caveats:
If it’s a story you made up, you’re in great shape because that means you
own the rights to it. You can do whatever you want with it.
If it’s a story that’s in the public domain, you’re also in good shape.
Public domain means that the author is dead and has been for a good long
time. As such, no one person owns the rights to the material, but it is now
owned by the public. Shakespeare is a good example of a writer whose work
is in the public domain. Stephen King is not.
However, with writers who are dead but not nearly as dead as
Shakespeare, it’s often tricky to figure out what’s in the public domain and
what isn’t. If it’s older than a hundred years, you might be okay, but you’ll
want to check with the Library of Congress on the copyright to make sure.
If the story you’re interested in adapting isn’t in the public domain,
you’re going to have to get the rights from the author, and that’s going to
cost you money. Probably. For example, if you’ve got your eye on a Dan
Brown or John Grisham story, forget it. These guys are out of your league.
But if the story is by a less well-known author, you may be able to work
something out. Regional writers are — not so surprisingly — great resources
for regional stories and may be interested in seeing their work transferred to
the big (or semi-big) screen.
As with everyone you bring on board, you’ll need to establish a contract
with your writer so it’s clear who owns what rights and what is expected of
you and what is expected of the writer.
One final housekeeping note: Whether you write the script yourself or
contract with someone else to write your script, be sure that you copyright
the material and the writer registers it with the Writers Guild of America.
Technically, anything original that you write is copyrighted the moment
you write it. However, it is a good idea to go through the simple copyright
procedures when your script is finished. To copyright your script, you need
the Form PA from the Library of Congress. You can handle it on-line at
www.copyright.gov. As of this writing, it costs $30 to register a copyright.
You should also register your script with the Writers Guild of America.
This registration doesn’t take the place of copyrighting, but it does provide

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you with an additional level of security should there be any question as to

the ownership of your script. You can register the script on-line at
www.wga.org, or mail them an unbound copy of your script. The registration
fee is $20 (for non-members). Their address is in the appendix.

≈•≈

Part of the creative challenge for the screenwriter of an ultra-low-budget

movie is how to turn every penny into screen image. The right script for
your digital movie is literally worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in
apparent value for the finished production, so it’s not a creative challenge
to take lightly or to do quickly.
As you — or your new best friend, your screenwriter — shape your
script, think of what it costs to do everything, and then think of how you
can reuse that expense several more times to get maximum screen value
for it.
Remember, your screenplay is the support structure for the rest of this
project. Build this foundation with the strongest material you can find; it’s
got to carry a heavy load.

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