I got some great news today, although it’s news that makes me feel bad too…let me explain. I found out earlier today that this site, the Film Sensei (http://www.filmsensei.com), was named as one of the 50 Best Blogs for Filmmakers by Moviemaker Magazine. That’s freaking fantastic and it’s great to hear that people respond well to the blog. That’s the part that makes me feel all oogly inside.
The reason that fantastic news makes me feel bad is because I’ve neglected the site terribly over the past few months. I’ve had a bunch of other stuff on my plate — including putting a new film together, my illustration and publishing work (http://www.elfsong.com) and a new addition to my family (baby Morgan Christina Nastos, born December 29, 2009).
I guess what the listing means is that I’ve got to get things back on track with this site and start putting out some new tips, tricks and info every week. Starting this week, look for a new article every Thursday. I’m going to ramp back up to doing video posts at least once a week and upping my article output to at least twice a week…just give me some time. Having a new baby really puts a hurting on my free time right now.
Thanks again to everyone over at Moviemaker magazine for the nod and thanks to you, my loyal readers. Take care and keep shooting!
I haven’t done a good independent filmmaking book review in a low time…in fact, I think I’ve only ever done one before and it was many moons ago (over a year ago with my review of Dov S-S Simens’ book “From Reel to Deal”). It’s funny, I read quite a bit (1-2 books a week), but I can never seem to find the urge to write up a review of any of the books. It must be some sort of left over rebelliousness from high school and how much I hated doing book reports. My incredibly evil 9th grade english teacher, the satanic Ms. Thom, must have done more mental damage with her class than I had realized! Today’s post is my little way of healing that damage.
Back at the end of 2007, I was trying to find a cool book for independent filmmakers. There are literally thousands of books (and quite a few really good ones) on theoretical filmmaking. What I really wanted, though, was something more practical. I wanted a book that was a nuts-and-bolts, real world instruction book for an independent or no-budget filmmaker. Something that gave actual examples of guerrilla filmmaking techniques and showed how to replicate and use them.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but what I was looking for was a book called “The DV Rebel’s Guide: an all-digital approach to making killer action movies on the cheap.” Yes, I realize it has an unbelievably long name and I am usually morally opposed to unbelievably long names for products. This time, however, I’ll make an exception because this unbelievably long name tells you EXACTLY what the book is about. Full Story →
A few weeks ago I talked about a microbudget filmmaker I met while in Dallas at the Texas Frightmare Weekend by the name of Abel Berry from BS Entertainment Films. Abel was a great guy and his movie, “Spoils,” was a neat little flick about a killer clown. As I mentioned earlier, the cool thing about Abel was the fact that he should “Spoils” on the awesome little Canon HV20 (now the Canon HV40) consumer HDV camera. This camera is an amazing tool for independent and no budget filmmakers and it was great to find someone who had actually gone out and shot a feature length horror film with it. That’s right, a feature film shot with the Canon HV20 / HV40. How cool is that?
Well, Abel and his crew are now deep into production of their latest no budget horror flick, “Kodie,” and are once again using the Canon HV40. Even better, Abel is posting a series of video blogs talking about the production and extolling the wonders of the Canon HV20 / HV40 cameras.
Check out Abel’s video and keep an eye out for this young filmmaker…I think we’re all going to be seeing a lot more of Abel and his team in the future!
One of the aspects of independent filmmaking I get asked about quite often is on writing a screenplay. The subject is always a strange one for me to talk about because I’m not a traditionally trained screenwriter by any means — heck, I went to comic book school. I’m just happy I know how to (barely) read! Every professional writing gig I’ve had in film, television or comic books has either been something I stumbled on to or created for myself — that includes my feature film work and even the stuff for Disney TV Animation. I’ve never submitted or been hired from a spec script, the work has always come from someone I know asking me if I wanted to write something for them.
The first feature screenplay I wrote (for “Bite Me, Fanboy”) was for a film I was financing myself and the second (for “Stinger”) came from me harrassing Morris Ruskin over at Shoreline until he gave me the gig. The Disney work came from producers I’d been working on and off with since the mid-1990s.
Needless to say, in spite of my experience, when it comes to giving tips on how to write an independent or low budget screenplay, I don’t feel like the most qualified person around. So, what I’m going to do for today’s Film Sensei independent filmmaking tips post is tell you “how I” write a feature length screenplay (as opposed to tell you “how to” write a low budget screenplay). I will say in advance that my particular method of screenwriting may not work for you and may, in fact, scare the hell out of any “real” writers out there reading this post. You have been warned. Full Story →
Yes, it’s that time again here at the FilmSensei.com for a brand new batch of independent filmmaking tips. For today’s indie filmmaking tips I’m going to go back to the beginning and talk about the making of “Bite Me, Fanboy.” To be more specific, I’m going to talk about everything I wish I knew when I was making my first no-budget independent film.
Now, anyone who has every sat around and talked to me about low budget filmmaking has heard me drone on and on about my first feature film, “Bite Me, Fanboy,” and what an incredible experience it was for me. Back when we shot the movie in 2001 I already had about 8 years of experience as a film/tv storyboard artist and a tiny bit of TV directing, but I had never directed a film of any kind — up until that point I had never imagined even wanting to do a film of my own. Comic books were my life and my one true love then and I couldn’t imagine going out of my way to work in another industry.
I had just finished up a gig as a producer/art director at Click Entertainment, a video game company in San Francisco, and was trying to figure out what to do next when a friend of mine (who is no longer with us) suggested we get together and do a microbudget film. Never having done it before and not realizing the amount of pain and anguish I was about to put myself through, I said “Let’s do it.” Somehow, in spite of a lot of inexperience and a couple of insane crew members, we finished shooting “Bite Me, Fanboy” in about 6 weeks (all on weekends). From there it took almost 4 years to get the no budget film completed and out on DVD, mainly thanks to a couple of different people disappearing with the film assets for a few of those years. I’m finally going back and re-editing the film the way I feel it should have been done to begin with, cleaning up the footage and remastering the sound.
Being able to do that work now, about 8 years after we shoot the film, is an incredibly interesting exercise in hindsight. What I’m able to do is take a look at what I did back then through the eyes of a much more experienced me. I see a lot of things I know now that I wish I had known then. Going through that inspired me to put the following guide together that I like to call: Full Story →
I am writing today’s post for a selfish reason and, to tell the truth, out of a little annoyance. You see, due to some video posts I put up last year about items I purchased from a company called in India, I get quite a bit of email asking about Indian film equipment. And “quite a bit” is a relative term — I receive 100+ emails a week asking about Indian Matteboxes, follow focus units or Steadicams from India, which is a lot unless you compare it to the number of SPAM emails I get offering to sell me ways to increase the size of me penis. Unfortunately, those number in the hundreds per day and I believe most of them are sent by my wife…but I digress.
Anyway, a little over a year ago I decided to bite the bullet and give ordering some of the Indian equipment a try. I had been seeing them on eBay for 6 months or more at that point and had always been tempted by their pricing. The reason I say I was taking a chance is because I couldn’t find any “real” reviews for their equipment. I saw a lot of online coverage that was obviously produced by the company, , under various names and I came across a few reviews by people who had been given the equipment in exchange for giving it a good review (if you’ve searched for information online then you know the Youtube videos I’m talking about).
So what I did was start with one of their cheaper items, and an item I knew it would be tough to mess up: the Cine City Indian Mattebox (or whatever they call it). The matte box arrived incredibly quickly, something I found to be a regular feature with the Indian Cine City — they have great response time for orders. And, the mattebox was better than I had expected. It was an obvious knock-off, but was amazing for the price. I am constantly complaining about how the film industry is forced to pay for over priced brand names and finding something more appropriately priced, especially for independent and low budget filmmakers, was a breath of fresh air. Full Story →
When the Film Sensei promises something, he delivers! Well…most of the time. Here is my video review of the Alzo Quad Pan-L Fluorescent Light bank. I had a longer text review of this fantastic budget fluorescent light bank for indie filmmakers last week, and this is my follow-up. Check out the earlier review for a more detailed look at these lights. I was impressed enough with the units at a recent music video shoot that I ran home and ordered one to test out for myself. I am definitely in love!
If you’re an indie or guerrilla filmmaker looking to add the power of fluorescent lighting to your low budget lighting kit then you’ll want to check out the Alzo Quad Pan-L lights. Great units at a great, under $400 price.
We found out on Thursday that the site had been hacked. Some evil computer arch-villain or villainess had placed a string of code on our homepage, which caused all sorts of warnings for people trying to access the site. After a few loyal readers emailed me to let me know it happened and thanks to the fine folks at Google, we were able to figure out what happened and how to fix it. Yay!
The site is now back on track with increased security measures. Thanks again to the Google team and those of you who emailed me when you saw that something looked awry. Look for a new post in the next day or so. Take care!
As I’ve mentioned here on The FilmSensei.Com a number of times (and as my wife is painfully aware), I am absolutely love picking up new indie and guerrilla filmmaking equipment to try out. Even more specifically, I love coming across new filmmaking gear while out on a film shoot and getting to play with it. When I come across anything ultra cool I’ll promptly run home and order it up online.
That is exactly what happened at a music video shoot I was directing about two weeks ago. The shoot was pretty standard until, during a move to a small backroom office, a PA dropped and almost completely destroyed two of the rented KinoFlo Diva-Lites we were using. After freaking out a bit (and killing the afore mentioned PA in a manner far too gruesome to describe here), we managed to get our first day of shooting done. Things looked great even with the crew reduced down to only two Kinos (and one PA), but we all knew we were going to be in a little bit of trouble on the next day of the shoot where all four Kino-Flo Diva-Lites were going to be needed. It being after midnight on a Saturday, we were pretty desperate.
Lucky for us, our gaffer, a well-spoken Englishman named Andy, spoke up ever-so-politely and mentioned that he had a fluorescent light kit back at his house. Needless to say, we were all incredibly relieved even when he told us that the kit wasn’t a “Proper Kino” one. We broke at the end of the day and went off to get a couple of hours sleep before starting up again and 10am the next day.
Skip forward to about 9:30am that Sunday as we were all just starting to arrive for the shoot and get set up. I was a bit surprised when Andy sheepishly approached me and started to apologize for his kit. He mentioned that he was a bit embarrassed that he didn’t own a “real” Kino-Flo kit, but that he was still new and wasn’t able to afford the “proper” gear yet. I let Andy know there was nothing wrong with having a budget lighting kit proceeded to ask him 3 questions: Did he have the lights? Were they flicker-free? Would the light color match our main Kinos without a lot of extra work. Full Story →
A day or so ago I received an email from a regular (and very verbal, which I like) reader of the Film Sensei website who goes by the handle of ZeenonProd. Ol’ ZeenonProd was responding to the article I wrote entitled Six Quick Tips to Keep Your Low Budget Film From Sucking. It seems that he thought my article was a bit lacking…let’s see what he had to say:
Matt, dude. Gr8 to see U back updating ur site. Just read ur post about tips for keeping ur film from sucking. It was O.K. but didn’t really tell me anything I haven’t already heard b4. It was all basic. Can U tell me anything more specific to help out on the film I’m about to start from ur personal experience? Give me the dirt from what U have had happen. Thx, brutha. -ZeenonProd
ZeenonProd!
Thanks for the email and the great question. To start off, I’m sorry you didn’t get more out of the “Six Quick Tips” post. The reason the information was basic is because there are a lot of brand new filmmakers out there who don’t know where to start and don’t know how things work for indie and guerrilla filmmaking. I like to aim a lot of articles and posts at those guys because they really want help and have no clue where to go to get it — if they go by some of the more popular indie or dv filmmaking forums, they tend to get mocked or talked down to. There are only so many times a new low budget filmmaker wants to get yelled at for asking “basic questions” or told to “shut up and search the forum.” It’s sad how unhelpful a lot of the forums are for guys who are just starting out.
However, I can understand guys with a bit more experience wanting some more in-depth filmmaking tips from someone who has gone through the microbudget filmmaking experience a few times. So today, in honor of ZeenonProd, I have put together my off-beat new article entitled: Full Story →
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,” was a neat little flick about a killer clown. As I mentioned earlier, the cool thing about Abel was the fact that he should “Spoils” on the awesome little Canon HV20 (now the 
) consumer HDV camera. This camera is an amazing tool for independent and no budget filmmakers and it was great to find someone who had actually gone out and shot a feature length horror film with it. That’s right, a feature film shot with the Canon HV20 / HV40. How cool is that?
. I had a longer text review of this 
back at his house. Needless to say, we were all incredibly relieved even when he told us that the kit wasn’t a “Proper Kino” one. We broke at the end of the day and went off to get a couple of hours sleep before starting up again and 10am the next day.
