How I Made My Biggest Short Film in Three Days

How do you film a 20 minute epic fantasy adventure short film in three days with no budget while you’re in school? 

If you said blackmail, slave labor, or sell your soul to the devil, then you're a horrible person. Also, you are probably a filmmaker. Also, have you been reading my notes?

Also, can I introduce you to this guy?

(If you didn’t get that joke it means you haven’t seen the short film yet. Which you can rectify below and then read it again to laugh uproariously. )

I did this question back when I made my last student film Happy Never After. After filming my previous film over six weekends in a schedule that made everyone involved hate life (and me) and pray for the I they knew would not come I decided to try a different strategy: one, breakneck pace weekend where we work like crazy and get everything done. As crazy as it sounded--and it sounded Joker, Annie Wilkies, and Norman bates on a road trip in a stopped car crazy--it worked. What I learned helped me learn the best ways to use your time best to get the most from your crew in the shortest amount of time.

1. Preplan, preplan, preplan.

Everything that went right that weekend went well because we pre-planned things well. Everything that went wrong went wrong because we didn’t pre-plan enough. The Cinematographer, Forest Erwin, and I went over the vision for the look of the film and the shots and scenes beforehand so we knew exactly what we were shooting, where, when, and for how long. We figured out we could save so much time if we divided our shoot into everything we filmed in the FiDi (Ron/Sarah’s coffee meeting, flashback, walk by the water) Day 1, the chapel scene Day 2, and everything else in Brooklyn (zombie chase, funeral, party) Day 3. This served us amazingly well. This meant everyone knew where they should be when and for how long and could plan their other stuff accordingly.

2. Have dedicated people.

You can’t convince people to give up so much of their weekend for free unless they really want to be there. Nobody will do it unless they really like you or really like your idea. Fortunately, I had both. I had made a lot of amazing friends while at school who wanted to work with me, and a great script I'd written that people loved. My cinematographer was excited about the project, my actor friends were excited about it. Everyone wanted to make it work and so they put in the work to make sure it did. They even convinced their friends and family to be on the project too. Most of the extras where there because of our line-producer, Deryka Tso. We got the church because of Forest. If they didn't, the movie could not have happened. So make friends and have a good script is the lesson here. 

Was it hard? It was hard, but selling your soul to the devil is more costly in the long run. 

Don't ask me how I know.

What say you? What are stories you have about making a film at a breakneck pace on no budget? Let me know in the comments.

How to Make a Short Film: Surviving Your First Day of Filming

The first day of shooting a short film—or any film—can suck. Here’s how I learned to make it suck less.

Chillin' on set waiting for the action (Rachel Kyle, Jennifer Verzuh)

At the point you are on your first day of shooting to make your dream project you have somehow convinced/conned a bunch of people to believe, a) you have a story worth telling and b) that you’re capable of leading that story to screen—keeping all the spinning plates in the air on set and managing every crisis that comes up. But when you get to set you prove you either can or you can’t, you either get the shot or you don’t.

Sometimes a sword is just the answer to your problems

And even when it's not it's awesome.

My first day filming my first short film (Kelly vs ThePhilosophers) was one crisis management after another. We had lost one of our costume people the other night and so the costumes hadn’t been tested. We were left with costumes that didn’t work and hadn’t been tried on the actors. Several actors had to pitch in to pull stuffing out of jackets or run back to their apartments nearby to try on different sets of outfits. Because the DPs and I didn’t thoroughly block things out beforehand, a lot of actors who came in their timeslots had to wait around for us to be ready. This was frustrating for them and stressful for me. (Remember this, guys? Ahhh good times.)

No, this is an actual scene. The set didn't come to blows. (Marry Cassella, Rachel Kyle)

But it worked out. Here’s what I learned.

Lesson #1. Do pre-production right. Almost all of these things would have been avoided if I put more work into pre-production. I’ve learned you can almost never do too much with pre-production. If we had planned out for costumes to be done long before, if I had planned more blocking of the scenes before the actors were there, things would have gone more smoothly.

Lesson #2. Work with forgiving people. It makes so much a difference when you're starting out--or anytime--to have friends who love you working with you. Because these were all my friends—as well as great at their jobs—everyone was on my side and wanted to make things work. During the whole debacle, I didn’t have one person act angry with me, annoyed with me, or give me a hard time. Everyone was helpful and supportive.

I say this over and over, but there is probably no better lesson to learn than that the people you work with matter. As a filmmaker your film family is your closest family for the time you’re filming. And if you can build as great a film family as I did not only will your filming suck less—life will suck less.  In fact, it will be great.

Lara Jane, Rachel Kyle, showing what we all feel.

Love all you guys. You are the reason that first day--and every day--didn't suck. It was amazing. 

Josh Shabshis, Hope Epperson, Alex Foley

How to Make a Short Film: Explaining Your Vision

How do you, as a filmmaker, communicate your vision?

Epic pose with "Kelly" star Rachel Kyle

One of the most important things that a director does when trying to make a short film or any film is communicate his vision. Quentin Tarantino said: “As a director ... Your job is explaining your vision. Your job is articulating … what you want on the screen.” If you explain to everyone well what your film is supposed to look like, feel like, be like, then they know how to use their unique creative talents and expertise to make that happen. (A phenomenon I also discuss here.) You don’t have to micromanage every detail for things you don’t know. Like costume design. Do I know the best way to make costumes? No, I do not.

In case you doubted...

But how do you, a budding filmmaker, explain your vision to your team?

The best way I’ve found, as a filmmaker, is use two things they already know. This is actually a very common way to “pitch” films to producers. Sky High was called Harry Potter meets The Incredibles. The Martian was called Castaway in space.

Along with the inevitable Die Hard everywhere combinations

My first short film Kelly vs The Philosophers had such an odd story people had a hard time getting it.

“So it’s an action-comedy about a college student who fights the phantoms of various philosophers she’s studying for class.”

Totally blank expressions.

So I changed tactics. Since it was a video-game eque action comedy and my college was big on classical education, I added this to the pitch.

“It’s like Scott Pilgrim vs The World at our college.”

“Ohhhhh, that sounds really cool!”

Right away that helped me with pre-production. My chief editor Benjamin Capitano made a night of it and went to Midtown Comics and looked through a bunch of Scott Pilgrims and other comics. Then we spent a night watching the movie again. There was popcorn and laughter in the apartment. I can neither confirm nor deny Scott Pilgrim battle reenactments. 

We take our work seriously (Ben, left. Me, right)

This was also helpful with my costume designer, Megan Ristine. Once she knew we were going with a  Scott Pilgrim vibe, she was able to lend her experience to making the outfits believable but over the top—authentic, but with character. The actors also knew where to ground their performance on the realism scale with less coaching. We had such a fun time with it together, laughing about the concept and everyone throwing their own ideas into the pot.

Megan Ristine in her element.

This is the best part as a filmmaker: when you’re all on the same page with the film, it’s not just your vision anymore. It’s all your vision you’re sharing together. Everyone wants to make this movie, not just you. That’s how real communities are formed that last a lifetime. And that is one of the best things you can have when you make a short film, or any film at all.

Cast and crew photo. Left to right: Taylor Pope, Jennifer Verzuh, Joshua Shabshis, Hope Epperson, Megan Ristine, Rachel Kyle, EC Hannah, Alex Foley, Bryce Lewis, Brian Stewart, Josh Simons, Lara Jane

How to Make a Short Film: Filmmaking When the Cops Show Up

(Zeke Ward [Left], Coner Dee [Right]
Photo credit: Tianna Halldorson. Meme Credit, Ashley Morris.)

I took a one week filmmaking course a couple years back. (The extent of my formal filmmaking education.) Someone asked the professor how they get permits to film somewhere or what they do if they can’t film somewhere and the cops show up.

His reply? Don’t get caught.

Leaving aside misdemeanors as a go-to policy, as an independent filmmaker doing your independent filmmaking thing, you will rarely have the budget or time to get permits for everything. So what do you do in those circumstances? Encouraging illegal activity aside (something that I would never do, being both a boy scout and a coward), the first thing to do is to know all the laws in your area about where to film. In NYC the rule is basically, if it’s public property and you’re not obstructing anything, you’re good. (I'd recommend having a printout of the law in case you get stopped.) But not all laws are the same everywhere.

Last weekend, my final shoot filmmaking a short film as a student filmmaker with my filmmaking club King's Image Films (KIF), we had to deal with the cops.

We were filmmaking our short film in New Jersey, where we didn’t know the laws there as well. We saw these train tracks and wanted to use them in our shoot. They were amazing train tracks. We didn’t see the “No Trespassing” sign because we were rushed to finish filming.

We were just wrapping up the shoot when we saw the cop car roll up.

The cop was very nice. We stayed calm, explained the situation to him, that we didn’t realize we weren’t supposed to be here, we are just student filmmakers filmmaking a short film, and please be nice to us. He let us off with a warning and got one of us not planning to ever have a career in politics to volunteer our name for their records. He explained to us the dangers of hanging out by a train track (which we knew, but we nodded anyway).

So if the cops do show up?  In my experience, it's the obvious: Don’t act like a criminal. Be respectful, apologize, co-operate, have someone there willing to sign stuff. It’s not a big deal. They usually give you the benefit of the doubt.  I haven’t ever been in the totally regrettable situation where you haven’t finished getting your shots and the cops have already shown up.  My advice is, once again, not to get in that situation in the first place if you can help it.

Or you could just take the filmmaking advice of my professor.

Have light equipment and really fast legs.

Do any of you have stories of run-ins with cops? Sound off in the comments below.

How To Make a Short Film: Make Their Dreams Come True

So long guys. What an amazing journey it's been.
(Photo Cred: Tianna Halldorson)

This past Saturday I finished my last day of shooting a short film with King’s Image Films (KIF). KIF is a student filmmaking organization I started back in fall of 2013 as a sophomore. Now, as a senior, I am preparing to walk away.

It made me so happy to watch my KIF family taking charge of things. The short film was from a script by a freshman, Rachel Sheldon, directed by another freshman, Ashley Morris, cinematography and sound were done by two of my best friends and loyal exec team Tianna Halldorson and Deryka Tso. I am president of the filmmaking org but I was simply there to make sure everything went smoothly and everyone was okay. Soon, I will be graduating and no longer president. One of these people will be the new guy in charge. I feel a lot like a dad watching his teenage daughter leave for college.

Left to Right: Zeke Ward (star), Ashley Morris, Rachel Sheldon,
Deryka Tso, Me, Tianna Halldorson
(Photo Cred: Tianna Halldorson)

My KIF filmmaking family is the best. They are hard-working, talented, passionate and full of love for the film medium. They know how to laugh through the crazy production problems, improvise, encourage each other, and just tell amazing stories in a short film. It was and is a privilege to know them and work with them. I started this club so that people like them could learn to be the best filmmaker they could be in a community that loved and supported them.

When you’re a filmmaker you often get caught up in our own vision. It’s about me. My story I want to tell. My short film. My dream. But we forget that we inevitably bring other people with us. Other people dedicate their time, talent, to make our filmmaking dreams a reality. And in indie films, they’re not doing it for the money. They are not doing it for your dream. They are doing it because—for some reason—they have decided it is their dream as well.

You want to be a great filmmaker? Make other people’s dreams come true. Give that actress the role of the lifetime. Give that cinematographer the best stuff to shoot. Help that screenwriter make the best script she can. Be the person who allows them to be their best filmmaking self. And they will always come back to work with you again. And you will find something more precious than that by the end.

Remember Mad Max: Fury Road? That movie won every technical award for filmmaking there was to win at the Academy Awards. George Miller, the guy who made all that possible, didn’t get nominated for best director. But he made a space for other people to be geniuses who won awards. And everyone who did is glad they worked with them. Same with your short films.

Your film—short film or not—is not just about your dream. If you learn that, you will not just be a filmmaker or succeed at filmmaking. You will gain a family. Without even knowing what you're doing.