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: Coming Up with the Story

How do you pick the right story when you make your short film?

Aside from using in a bathtub. That is assumed. 

Almost every independent filmmaker has to struggle between telling the story they want to tell and telling the story other people want to watch. Independent filmmaker Hal Hartley told No Film School “people don't go to movies unless you see sex and violence. So no matter what you are to address …, no one's going to pay attention unless there's a girl and a gun. And so I try to just wrestle with that.” The juggling of these things becomes something of a Faustian bargain between making something meaningful and something enjoyable.

I wanted to challenge myself with my first short film—Kelly vs The Philosophers—to effectively tell a story that was both deep and really fun to watch. Now, I have an advantage because my favorite movies are the ones that have appeal to the elites and the masses, such as Gladiator, Silver-Linings Playbook, Inception and Iron Man. So to me it’s not a Devil’s pact as it is just making the kind of movie I’d like to watch. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

The story for Kelly vs The Philosophers came about when my politics professor David Tubbs told the class that we should “struggle” with the philosophers he was assigning us to read. He believed if we argued mentally with what they were saying we would get a lot more out of them than if we just passively accepted or dismissed their ideas. For me, my first thought was? What if I too that idea and had a student literally fight with the philosophers, action-hero style? And what if I played against type and made the action hero an average girl rather than action archetype? From there the ideas came quickly and easily.

Our lineup of philosophers was actually pretty intimidating, right?

The film, when it finally premiered, opened to enthusiastic reactions at my school. Everyone enjoyed it and were—best of all, also—engaged with the ideas. That convinced me that I was on the right track with my self-challenge to make movies that are fun and important.

Four takeaways.

1. Don’t feel like you’re cheapening the story by also having it be fun. You don’t have to be. And it will mean more people will engage with the story you want to tell.

2. Play against type. A lot of the magic of the story came from gender-swapping the lead character from the expected guy to girl. That makes your story a little different and sparks creativity.

3. Know your audience. My college was very into philosophy. So taking an idea that was relevant to the student body meant that the people I would be showing it to could get excited about the idea.

4. Love what you’re telling a story about. I love philosophy and I love action and comedy. These are things that are worth celebrating to me. People love to see other people share what they love with them—even if they don’t already love them. People can tell, and believe me, it’s infectious.

Do you have a story about coming up with a story for your film and what you learned? Sound off in the comments below!

How Teen Titans Taught Me to Write Screenplays

I learned screenwriting to save a girl.

Unless your film is just a bunch of pretty nature shots and your friends standing around wearing profound expressions (so basically like every Terrence Malick Film—only without Hollywood stars) you will need a screenplay for you film. (Even Terrence Malick probably has a screenplay. Although it’s likely just a page long.)

I have no idea what's going on... but I'm sure it's profound.

There are two basic things you need to be able to do to write a screenplay: you need to be able to tell a good story, and you need to be able to write it in the correct format. Good storytelling is hard. It can't be taught; it has to be in your blood. But even if you love storytelling like I do. I was not disciplined enough to force myself to go through the hard processes of learning to do it in a way that someone else would accept my work.

This is the thing I will keep going back to in this blog. Filmmaking at every stage is hard. You need a motivation to push you to do the hard work at every step of the way and force you to do the crappy work. Sometimes it's an unexpected one.

I got mine when I got my heart broken by the show Teen Titans.

That's right. Not Titans Go. The good one. Back when it could be funny and dark and have something called character development. Back when we could have this:

Wow... did they just, I think they just... yeah, they just.

Rather than this:

Watching the show, I fell in love with all the characters. But mostly the relationship of two characters: Beast Boy and Terra.

Teen Titans was one of the few comic series’ I had not read. I had no idea how tragic their love story was going be. I just loved the sweet love story that they had at first. Then, they ripped my heart out and used it to play ping-pong.

Maybe it was because I was going through real heartbreak at the time. But this loss of a fictional character upset me a lot. So I dedicated myself to bringing her back. And not just in fanfiction. No, I was writing a full screenplay for a Teen Titans TV movie I would submit to Cartoon Network. Never mind that I had never written one before. Never mind that the show was canceled. Never mind that I had no connections to the industry or ways of getting them to look at my script.

And my friends call me a relentless optimist now.

I worked on it every day. I wrote it and rewrote it. I realized how bad my dialogue was and rewrote it. I researched proper script formatting. I re-researched it and realized my first research was wrong. I learned to type. I had not been able to type with all my fingers before, but writing this script forced me to learn.

I showed it to a producer friend of mine who then told me how to:

a) keep my dialogue from being too wordy.

b) make sure the action doesn’t stop for the dialogue.

I went back and rewrote again.

When I finally finished my producer friend had said she would show it to some people. But when I tried to contact her she dropped off the face of the earth. Seriously. She just never responded to e-mail or phone. I never heard from her again.

After that I just submitted the script to Cartoon Network and hoped for a miracle from God.

It never came.

But God—because I believe God was guiding things—used that to get me started on my filmmaking path. Because what did come was another TV spec script. Then another one. Each time I got a lot better at how to tell a great story with great characters and great dialogue in the right format.

Then came a little script called Kelly vs The Philosophers.

But that’s another blog post.

If you'll excuse me... I have to writing that Oscar worthy screenplay no one will ever see.