Stage A
'preparing'
1) Have someting on you on which you can write/type an idea for a film or a scene
2) Create a folder on your pc for your movie where you store all files related to it
3) Create, cast and prepare the characters applying situations rather than dialogues
4) Search for musicians and/or design music and sound for the film
5) Organize the sound recording, the devices and mics to use during shooring and determine
what exactly to record
6) Prepare music production and mixing on pc
7) Prepare editing on a pc (software+hardware)
8) Search and secure a telecine/scanning service to digital video format for editing
9) Buy a cheap harddisk drive for telecine/scanning purposes
10) Pick your camera and buy it
11) Arrange co-director of photography and master the tag-method of filming
12) Search and secure a super8 mm film dealer and developer in your area
13) Orientate on your film-stock you’ll choose to shoot (negative/reversal,
indoor/outdoor film stock)
14) Pull or Push?
15) Crowdfunding or self-financing?
16) Make several cyber-accounts for specific web-services related to your films and filmmaking
17) Select film festivals for submission using FilmFreeway
ON THE SCRIPT
The main thing is to have a blueprint created for your movie within everyone involved can work and
that has to start somewhere. Finishing a script is the start of the process of filmmaking and not about
writing a story. Improvisation and intuition are key-factors. The film 'Shadows' by John Cassavetes is
one of the strongest examples of what is being meant here regarding the script opposed to cinema.
Diane Dorr-Dorynek describes John Cassavetes approach to filmmaking in jazz terms;
"The script formed the skeleton around which the actors might change or ad lib lines according to their response to the situation at the moment, so that each performance was slightly different. A jazz musician works in this way, using a given musical skeleton and creating out of it, building a musical whole related to a particular moment by listening to and interacting with his fellow musicians. Jazz musicians working with actors could conceivably provide audiences with some of the most moving and alive theater they have ever experienced." (source: Wikipedia)
1) Have someting on you on which you can write/type an idea for a film or a scene
This can be anything of course, physical notepad, netbook, smartphone... whenever an idea comes
to you, write it down. Ideas for your movie can come frome everywhere, life itself, other films where
we strongly recommend (neo)realist films, newstopics, your own situations… For inspirational input
for your filming, we would also recommend the impressionist paintings but especially the fauvist paintings and paintings of other movements collaborating in that area such as Die Brücke, Der Blaue Reiter, The CamdenTown Group, The Cumberland Market Group, The Euston Road School and Les
Nabis.
To help and inspire you we also strongly recommend to apply Jean Epstein’s theories and to implement the Remodernist Film Manifesto in your filmmaking as well as the writings of André Bazin.
Use this list of films for inspiration, a selection of masterpieces that are recommended by filmmakers
we are affiliated with.
Guerrilla filmmaking is a process and cannot be written down all at once as in traditional film
productions. Traditional detailed screenplays are meant for all the disciplines (directors of
photography, actors and editors) so they’ll have directions what has to be done during principal
photography and post production. Shots, cuts and dialogues are all presented where the cast and
crew are merely to follow this.
Since you’ll be covering all these aspects yourself with a co-director of photography and working with
non-actors, a detailed screenplay is not necessary. As a matter of fact it is not even wanted in guerrilla filmmaking. What is important is to give your actors and the co-director of photography you’ll be working with total freedom. If you choose someone (most likely friends or family) to do one of your characters, it is more effective to write out the character you have in mind and in this to be as detailed as you can be, rather than having them memorize pages of dialogues. Your actors must carry the scenes and be natural. Therefore it is important to equip them with enough fuel in the form of the character description and the scene description (the situation) so they will come up with their
own dialogues related to the situation you as a director have written out.
This is total opposite to the advice to write out a detailed screenplay beforehand. In creating characters you must be as specific and accurate as you can be. Your characters must be real persons
with believable character traits. The only way to do this with non-actors, is to create the characters
with someone in your mind and fleshing it out together with that person. The one you’ll ask to do
one of your characters, will have a huge influence in creating that character so involving them early
in your filmmaking process is essential.
The reason why we already are mentioning the casting process before one word of the actual
screenplay or even an idea has been written, is that your characters will make your movie in a way.
You of course determine your movie, but your characters and the people you choose to portray
them, must bring your film to life. Start out with making your characters rather than starting your
script how it should be written the traditional way. A close interaction with the non-actors where the
character description you’ll have to create, is explained and further given form to, is necessary for
them to give a naturally performance during shooting. Creating characters can take time and it will
take some characters to create before you’ll really have an idea what your feature film will be about.
These characters will all have their own life situation and if you relate them with each other, they have the potential of a lot of situations of course. This is in your hands but you’ll have to set them up.
If you set up the characters as detailed as possible and connect them with your other characters,
you’ll automatically come up with tons of ideas to mould those situations in feature films. I purposely
try not to mention the word story or storyline, because creating your blueprint of your movie what
you can call a script or a screenplay, should not be a story written out into three act with dialogues. It
should be a kickstarter to actually bringing your feature film into production, rather than making a
copy of the script to the screen. By starting early with your characters, you will eventually be able to
define the situations/scenes of which your feature film will be made of. So in the light of being as
detailed as possible, try to write down everything that comes across your mind regarding your
characters at any time possible.
2) Create a folder on your pc for your movie where you store all files related to it
Making a movie can take a while, so you’ll have to keep track of your film over a period of time.
The best way to do this is simply making a folder on your pc and store all the files in them.
This may sound a bit dull and rhetorical, but a proper and early organization of the files of your film is very recommended. It will really be a merit over a period of time and will keep you attention on your project.
3) Create, cast and prepare the characters applying situations rather than dialogues
Creating and casting characters
When you start making your characters, it’s easier to have someone in your mind. Someone close in
your environment. Set up the character you have in mind roughly and have your performer fill it in
together with you through conversations about the character and make notes of these outcomes.
Creating a character and setting it up can take some time, but the carefully you set it up with the
person you have in mind, the smoother the execution will be during shooting. Obviously, casting will
be done automatically once you have chosen someone to fill in your character.
If someone pulls back, you’ll have to re-create the involving character. Much of the details which
were filled in by the performer, will be unusable and thus lost, since the performer is no longer part
of the play. The best thing to do in such a situation is to find someone else and start from the
beginning and set up the character again.
Spontaneous conversations instead of written out dialogues
Writing dialogues would require screenwriters and professional actors. Dialogues must be learned of
course and delivered during shooting on the spot. To have everything according the dialogue in 1
take is impossible and your performers are bound to make mistakes. These mistakes can be masked
by professional actors. But even they make mistakes and require many retakes. What is even more
important than that, is that a perfect execution of a written out dialogues is not the desired result.
The desired result must be spontaneous interactions and conversations that will have dialogues
which are not pre-written, but improvised on the spot. To have your performers learn pages of
dialogues is not the thing to ask to them. What you want from them is input during the creating
process of the character. If pages of dialogues would be learned by the performers, then a fake
performance would occur. Instead of concentrating on the moment and the situation, the performer
will concentrate on the dialogues and of course... at a certain point, will forget parts of it, or make
mistakes. So if we know that this will eventually happen, why not start out with it? Mistakes are not
bad, forgetting what to say, or having silent moments are not bad... but it should not come out of a
situation where the actors are struggling to remember what exactly they have memorized to say. We
don’t have the kind of money to hire in professional actors so we have to deal with another method.
In the guerrilla method the filmmaker must fill in the duty of screenwriting, casting the proper
persons for the roles and setting them up with those persons (directing). During shooting there will
be no interference with the play and the focus will be purely on photographing the situation. Since
there will be worked with expensive Super 8 mm film stock, we can’t afford to have additional takes
or throw away footages with ‘mistakes’. Everything must be filmed in one take. And if you set up
your characters the way we advice, then mistakes will not occur, since there will not be parameters
(dialogues) to make mistakes by. What you’ll get are true interactions of persons that are equipped
with your characters and their take on them. This uncontrolled way of directing/filmmaking where
you merely set up the characters to create situations with each other and rely on improvisations, can
be compared with the way jazz is composed by the musicians on the spot.
4) Search for musicians and/or design music and sound for the film
If you happen to know (friends who are) musicians, try to get them aboard the project. Use their
songs or compose the music for the film with them from scratch. If you don’t know any musicians, try
to make music yourself. If you haven’t made any music before, then it is even better. Your creations
will be unique. Combine your first experimental musical compositions with your first reel of film to
shoot. Go with your instincts! You can use portable keyboards and drumcomputers that you can plug
and play on your pc device. But what really would be the thing to do, is to involve real instruments,
play and record them the old school way on multi-track reel to reel recorders and then digitize them
to mix it with your film.
If you really get stuck in making your music for your film, just check out the basics on music making
on the net. There are a lot of pages dedicated in getting you on the right track…
CGC is working on a music-branch. When this will be on track, we will work on a similar guide which
you are reading, but dedicated to music compositions and how to do this.
5) Organize the sound recording, the devices and mics to use during shooting and determine what exactly to record
A very important element of your movie will be your sound. We fully support Jean Epstein’s theories
in filmmaking and his take on photogenie and phonogenie. Read this article to have more
information on this and try to incorporate this in your filmmaking. When you will use music, after you produced it, you’ll simply mix this with your film in the editor on your computer.
When you will use live sound, you’ll have to prepare this. Of course you can make this as cheap or as
expensive as you want. But figure out a way to set your scene up with sound recording devices. We
can’t advise you how to do this precisely since there are a lot of situations that require other
approaches. Also here, check out advises on the net. But if we can give you some advises on this;
don’t work with big boom microphones and other sound equipments that will be sort of a drag to
carry with you and execute the scene with. What you really want are devices that are small enough
to have them attached to the performers and which will be disguised during shooting, simply
because they are hidden. Try to keep an amount of distance between your super 8 camera and the
recording devices. Since your super 8 cam will make a rattling sound, this may interfere with you
sound you want to record. If you have recorded your sound during shooting, get this sound on your pc and categorize it in your film file map, for mixing later on.
6 Prepare music production and mixing on pc
Prepare your music production studio on your pc. A real simple way to make music is to use Sony
Vegas Movie Studio as a multi-track mixer. Making music on your own can be done in elements.
First you start out with a beat or a melody or whatever. Record this. Play this on a headphone, listen to it and try to improvise another musical play with another instrument while recording on the fly. When recorded these 2 musical plays and mixed with each other, play this again, listen to it and
improvise with another instrument… and so on until you feel that your music composition is ready.
Recording your music can be done in a lot of ways, again, check the net for advice. You can use music
production software for it, but an audio recorder which will simply record anything you play on your
computer will also do fine. It’s maybe the most simple way to make music and to record and mix it.
You can use a synthesizer/keyboard simulation program to get busy with this or connect hardware to to your computer such as USB midi controller portable keyboards and drumpads.
If you have recorded something, import this in your editing program as a music track. Import your other recorded music one by one as tracks and put them under each other. Render them when they are properly aligned and you’ll have you music score! You can choose to produce well-thought over
music pieces, but you can also have some fun making music indeed on the fly, improvising and
making your intuition lead the way.
7) Prepare editing on a pc (software + hardware)
You’ll need a decent pc to have your editing done in a smooth way, especially when you will be
dealing with HD recordings such as 2K and 4K. We can give you specs, but if you just go for a computer that has been prepared for gaming, you can't go wrong. Also, since you'll be using the computer for simple editing such as arranging the scenes and mixing dialogues and music/audio instead of special effects and after effects, you won't be needing a high performance computer, but do give some attention on the video-card that you will be using. This has to be of such a quality that it can handle your video editing. Find an editing program you feel comfortable with.
8) Search and secure a telecine/scanning service to digital video format for editing
You’ll need to make your film digital in order to edit it on the computer. You can digitize this yourself,
but we recommend a professional telecine. Search for a photoshop that offers a telecine service for
Super 8 mm film. Determine whether you want Standard Definiton, 2K or 4K. We advice to have this
done in 2K and 4K. When you hook up with 8sploitation Guerrilla Cinema and participate with the feature filmmaking the way we have set it up, we will do the telecine for you freely as part of the service.
9) Buy a cheap harddisk drive for telecine/scanning purposes
If you’ll get raw AVI files back from the photoshop which will make the telecine for you, you’ll need a
external hard disk drive, since the files will be very large. If you’ll get MPEG files back from the photoshop, a USB will be sufficient. Just calculate that a Full HD scan of 1 minute super 8 film is about 200 - 250 MB. But again, we can do this telecine for you if you participate with 8sploitation Grindhouce Cinema and send you your scans back on USB sticks by mail.
10) Pick your camera and buy it
An exciting step in your filmmaking… getting your camera! Unfortunately, Super 8 camera’s are not
being made anymore, so you’ll have to use used models. There is also a poetry in that, that you will be filming with cameras that are no longer made and that you'll have to do it with the camera's that are still left in the world. Search the net on eBay or local second hand markets for used Super 8 cams. They come as cheap as € 10, sometimes even for free… but some can cost a bit more. If you want to have a refurbished camera then that is also possible. Search the net for a company that are refurbishing and selling Super 8 mm cameras. But keep in mind that these camera's are very expensive. Furthermore, check out super8wiki.com for all the specs of a certain camera.
11) Arrange co-director of photography and master the tag-method of filming
A roll of super 8 mm film runs for about 2m30s at 18 fps and 3m20s at 24 fps. When your film roll is finished you’ll have to change the film in your camera. Gladly, the changing of a film cartridge is done real fast in super 8 cams, but still, you’ll have to change it. In the meantime you change your film, you won’t be able to film of course. Normally, in a traditional film production, the scene would have been stopped and started again when the camera would be ready again. But we do not work with staged and scripted executions of our cinema, but rather with the flow of the moment. Thus we can’t stop a scene when it is going on. A solution to deal with this is to cutaway to something else for the duration you are changing the film roll. This can be footages that you have shot beforehand or it may be footages that you shoot later on specifically to use as cutaways.
But if you don't want to use cutaways, arrange another photographer who will shoot the film together with you. When you start filming, your co-DOP will get into place and when your roll of film has almost been shot, you’ll tag your partner (by just pointing to him/her) on which he or she will start filming. You’ll have enough time to change your roll of film and get into place again and wait until you get tagged back by your partner. Continue this tag-game process, until your scene has been shot. You can chose to shoot short takes, but you’ll have to switch a lot and will be very hard to keep track on how far your roll of film is. And even if you do determine this, the one who will tag the other one for the last time (until the end of the roll of film) will have very little time to change the roll of film and get back into place. Back into the editing room you’ll have more work in having all your footages in the right order. So to be practical, just shoot the whole roll of film continuously in one take and then tag your partner. And it is not only practical, it also more in line of the kind of cinema we are supporting. Slow cinema or at least shots that give you time to get into and gives the power to the viewer to determine what is going on, instead of cutting every 5 seconds and forcing the viewer to view the film in this pattern of rapidly different cuts. But of course, the choice is yours.
12) Orientate on your film-stock you’ll choose to shoot
Check out the differences between negatives and reversal film and which film stock you need. Also
investigate the proper film stock for outdoor or indoor shooting. Good thing to know, reversal film
needs proper lighting and is very sensitive for over- and underexposure, where negative film has
more latitude/leeway in lighting. Search and secure a super8 mm film dealer and developer in your area. If you live close to Holland, we advice to contact Super 8 Reversal Lab for film stock and developing services. Again, when participating with us, we provide you the film and the developing of it.
13) Pull or Push?
You can enter the film market in 2 ways. Push or pull method. Push method means an aggressive
output of your film in such a way, that it will be interesting for the retailers to sell your film (DVD/Blu-Ray). It will be characterized by a low pricing for instance.
The pull method means that you’ll create such a buzz about your film and such a targeted strategic
promotion, that retailers will automatically turn to you to buy your film. Nowadays streaming services command the video market and therefore it is not even possible to apply a push method. Because there is no demand anymore of the formats that you would use to push your film (DVD/Blu-Ray). The only way we can thrive in this 'business' is to stick together and work together on an own catalogue of films that we screen specifically under the banner of 8sploitation Grindhouse Cinema. Otherwise your film will be competing by itself with all the other films out there. Your film has to stand out, distinguish from other films and bring something extra to the game. When you hook up with us, we can give your film this X-factor that you will find nowhere else.
15) Crowdfunding or self-financing?
Of course, crowdfunding may be the next best thing for indie filmmakers, but 8GC really believes in
the philosophy that paying yourself for your own movie, will increase the dedication to the
production, simply because you put your own money to it. Let’s face it, free money maybe easy but it
can have some disadvantages. One of those disadvantages is that this ‘free money’ can cause a sort of spending this money or allocating it to stuff which maybe would not occur if it would be paid yourself. If you really want to make a film and if you are really charmed by Super 8, then you can do it. The method explained in this guide is set up for you to film your feature film in parts. In this way it will not cost you a lot of money at once. Set up a scene and calculate how much it will cost you. 2,5
minutes of negative film (Vision 2) will cost you 50 euro’s, developing included. That being said and realising that a film is bestly made when paying for it yourself, we at 8GC would still want to make things easier for both the filmmaker and for ourselves. We have started with a group of filmmakers who are all going to make feature films for 8GC. If this proves to be a success, we will be able to support more filmmakers in making their first super 8 film, by providing the film rolls, the development and scanning of them and doing the submission for the film festivals.
16) Web-services related to your films and filmmaking
There are numerous places on the web where you can showcase you film. But if you participate with 8GC, the trailer of your film will be displayed on its Vimeo channel, where all the other trailers of participating films are to be seen. As an extra service, we will also upload short films shot on super 8. On the website in which you have found this manual, your film will also get a mention and get linked to the trailer or the short film.
17) Select film festivals for submission
The easiest way to do this is through Filmfreeway.com. Of course, the most film festivals require an entry fee without a guarantee for screening. We advice to select a few festivals of your choice, but to aim at the free film festivals. When hooking up with us, we will do this part of the promotion of your film for you.