Online Film School Blog

If you’re running out of reasons why you’re avoiding starting your film, then this Nike commercial will give you a fresh supply of excuses.

Tags: motivation // Add Comment »

Click here to learn more about The Complete Music Video Production Package.

www.musicvideotrainingcenter.com/freefilmschool.html

Don’t read this …

unless you’d like to become a successful music video director.

A few days ago I posted about how doing music videos was a great way to break into filmmaking. There are musicians everywhere who’ll pay you to make short, creative films to promote their careers. You can get paid to have fun while you gain experience and build your portfolio.

Since then I’ve met a very nice young man who HAS become a successful music video director. His name is Jag Johnson and he’s put together a very awesome training package that will teach you just about everything you need to know to break into directing music videos. He’s even offering a significant price break to anyone who orders it through freefilmschool.org.

I you think you might have ANY interest in shooting music videos then click on the link below on my blog, or go to the link you see in this video, and check it out.

I recommend this product.

So get the course, then go make a music video.

Click here to learn more about The Complete Music Video Production Package.

www.musicvideotrainingcenter.com/freefilmschool.html

So get the course, then go make a music video.

Tags: entertainment business, film directing, film marketing, filmmaking tips // Add Comment »

This week we lost one of the truly great indie filmmakers.

Stan Winston died this weekend at the young age of 62. Many would argue that Mr. Winston was not an indie filmmaker because of the many big-budget blockbusters he worked on. But the fact is he was a true indie filmmaker at heart, from his early days tinkering in his garage learning how to create horror and creature effects, right up to the end.

His early efforts were wasted on terrible films. His big break didn’t come until he met a struggling young filmmaker, with an idea for a Science Fiction film about a killer robot, that time travels back from the future.

The name of the project was The Terminator, and young James Cameron had ridiculously little financing, considering what he was trying to accomplish. Despite the budget limitations, Stan Winston and James Cameron created special effects that rivaled Hollywood’s best, while creating a timeless genre masterpiece.

Two years later they did it again with Aliens. On both projects they worked with then mostly unknown actors and tiny budgets, but made up for it with Cameron’s imaginative storytelling, and Winston’s spectacular special effects.

Stan Winston’s special gift was for creating effects and creatures that were at the same time imaginative, futuristic and completely believable.

Although he worked on many big, well financed films - everything from Jurassic Park and Predator right up to this summer’s Iron Man, and won four Oscars in the process - he never lost his love of the challenge of creating clever low budget effects, for cash strapped productions.

He showed how far you can get with the simplest materials, and a lot of imagination and craftsmanship. If you need someone to emulate on your own road to success you could do a lot worse than pick Stan Winston.

Now go make a film. Do it for Stan.

Tags: entertainment business // Add Comment »

Here’s a question I hear a lot. Hey Prof, I think I’ve got talent. What’s the easiest way to get started as a film director?

The fact is Hollywood doesn’t have a lot of openings for new directors. But there is always demand in the film industry for really talented people who have demonstrated what they can do.

So how do you get experience and get noticed? You can go broke making your own indie films and hoping someone notices. But what are some other ways to become a film director? Where do new directors come from?

Well, in the early days of the industry the directors were mostly theater directors. In the 70s they were hiring sharp kids right out of the film schools. But now I notice that many of the new directors coming on the scene got their start in one of two ways: Either shooting television commercials or shooting music videos.

Breaking into television commercials is about as hard as breaking into Hollywood.

You’ll have to do a lot of self promotion to get the big ad firms to take a chance on you and you’re never going to make it into the big time unless you have your own studio and a lot of expensive equipment.

So, what about breaking in by doing music videos? That’s a great way to start for this reason.

There are musicians everywhere who are trying to get there break and they realize a good music video could be just the thing that gets them noticed. If you’ve got the basic skills and some basic equipment you can approach local bands and offer to do a music video for them. Chances are you can get them to pay at least a few hundred dollars for your expenses, especially when it turns out well.

Once you get going and gain a reputation the bands will come to you and you can start to make a decent income while you get great experience. Eventually with any luck at all one of the bands is going to make it big and everyone will want to know who shot their videos.

Then your fabulous talent will get noticed by the people who are making and financing films. And that’s when someone will say to you, “I’d like you to direct my new film.”

In the mean time you get to have a lot of fun working with creative people, trying new ideas and getting paid for it.

Go make a music video.

Tags: film directing, filmmaking tips // Add Comment »

I no more than published my last post about the importance of video monitoring scopes than I spotted an announcement from Panasonic of the AG-HPX170 camera. A very close cousin to the popular AG-HVX200 that now includes both a vectorscope and waveform monitor. I don’t know if they are big and detailed enough to be useful but this is still a nice development.

I hope to see this feature in other low-end pro-grade cameras. Along with some other nice improvements in the lens and CCDs this looks like a camera to beat. Check Panasonic’s web site for availability.

Tags: Uncategorized, filmmaking hardware // Add Comment »

No me! You say.

But listen up. The problem is your video camera can only capture a very small range of the brightness value that are present in most scenes. Even if you’ve check your camera’s histogram and zebra (if it has them) and decided you are nailing the exposure you may be wrong.

There may be important shadow or highlight details that are going off the ends of your histogram. Are you consistently exposing your talent’s faces? If you are using green/blue screen to substitute a different background do you know if you are exposing it right?

Chances are you are not getting the exposure you need. But you ask, “How can I possibly know until I get into the edit suite?” This is a big problem for many indie filmmakers whether they know it or not. The Hollywood films and TV shows shot on video take advantage of banks of video monitoring scopes to ensure that exposures are right and consistent between takes. But those scopes cost tens of thousand dollars. What’s a poor indie to do?

If you’re filming with DV or HDV there is a solution you probably can afford. More about that in a minute.

A couple of years ago I produced a DV comedy short that used a lot of blue screen to help put my actors in elaborate settings trying to reproduce the look of old films. I ran a few tests before I started production and realized I just couldn’t get the exposure accurate enough to pull a clean mask. DV is a terrible format for shooting blue screen because of the limited color information in the images under the best of circumstances.

In most of my tests I discovered that my blue screen exposures were too bright and washed out or too dark and gray to get anything close to a good mask. I invested in a software product named DV-Rack (since bought by Adobe and sold as OnLocation). This program takes the fire-wire signal from the camera and performs a real-time analysis in order to reproduce the look of a full set of video scopes on the display of your computer.

Without going into a lot of detail those scopes allowed me to see all the important details about my video signal and adjust the lighting and exposure for the best results possible.

OnLocation is a Windows only product at the moment but can be run in BootCamp. A Macintosh version is in the works or, if you are in a hurry, a similar product for the Mac is Scopebox.

Are you still shooting your films blind? Get one of these products and your eyes will be opened.

Tags: filmmaking software, filmmaking tips // Add Comment »

I just got an email from the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) inviting me to post one of my films on their site for viewing. What’s this all about? Should I feel honored?

Several things are involved.

First of all IMDB recently bought WithoutABox. WithoutABox.com is, of course, the wonderful service for indie filmmakers where you can submit your film to just about any film festival in the world with just a few clicks. After you’ve entered all the important data about your film including an electronic press kit you only have to select the festivals you want and enter your credit card. WithoutABox does the rest.

The IMDB always seemed to be more about big studio films. With the purchase of WithoutABox it is suddenly interested in all the indie films out there. It was always possible, if not easy, to get your indie film listed on IMDB if it had been selected for showing in a recognized competitive film festival. (Since I have a film that qualifies I went to the hassle of filling in all the forms and providing the proof necessary to get it listed.)

Now the IMDB is suddenly very interested in my short film, as well as all the others they list. Why? Profit, of course. All these films are valuable content for IMDB - if the owners are willing to put them on the site. Suddenly IMDB has a lot of interesting content which brings in viewers who will click on ads and make money for the IMDB.

MDB never had much of a monetization scheme since it began as a volunteer effort. The income has come from advertising and fees charged to post headshots and film posters. IMDB must have seen the success of the various video site, such as YouTube, and decided to get their share.

So if you qualify to have your film put on IMDB, do you want to?

If you haven’t found any other way to sell your film you might as well. It’s worth some publicity value at the least. But if you are still exploring options for selling your precious film you probably don’t. As an option you can just post a trailer for your film. That sounds like a no-brainer to me.

What do you think?

Tags: film marketing // 1 Comment »

One of the elements of successful film distribution that is often overlooked by independent filmmakers is the publicity photos. If you want to sell your film you need a complete set of high-quality photos that can be used in publicity such as “stills” and posters.

In the time and money constraints of very low budget filmmaking no one takes the time to get out a good digital camera and get all those shots. Still frames from DV or other standard definition video is just too low quality to blow up into publicity stills.

HD is another matter. Individual frames are up to 2 megapixels and may be high quality enough to serve as publicity stills if they are well lit and sharp. Don’t forget to get some still shots with a quality camera but if you don’t have everything you need run through your footage in your editor and export the best and most dramatic frames as still JPGs to supplement your quality stills.

Check out this article for typical film publicity photo requirements.

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This morning I was reading my favorite SF Chronicle film reviewer’s column and was reminded of one of the most basic rules of filmmaking.

In his article Few Saw This Film, But Now You Can, Mick LaSalle talks about a powerful film from 2007 that has just come out on DVD. The name of the film is Grace Is Gone and you’ve probably never heard of it. The film tells the story of a husband and father dealing with the tragedy of his wife, a soldier in Iraq, being killed. John Cusack plays the father in a performance that had early critics talking Oscar.

The film bombed at theaters. Despite the excellent performances by Cusack and the child actors, and generally good reviews, the theme of the movie was just too downbeat. When movie goers read what the movie was about they stayed away in droves. The movie was quickly pulled from theaters and is only now coming out on DVD.

There’s a large audience for “weepies”, sad movies that make you cry, but movie audiences are looking for escape from their daily lives, not to have it rubbed in their faces. A quick check of IMDB uncovered that the best Vietnam war movies were all released after the war had become history. The war ended in 1975. Here is a list of some of the best films about the war.

• The Deer Hunter (1978)
• Platoon (1986)
• Full Metal Jacket (1987)
• We Were Soldiers (2002)

Filmmakers and screenplay writers, give your audience a break. If you’re thinking of creating a highly topical film realize that audiences view movies as entertainment. Even a “weepie” has to have uplifting elements and take your audience away from the frustrations of their daily lives.

Tags: screenwriting tips // Add Comment »

The entertainment business is not the easiest way to make a living but if you want to understand the route to success you only need to study the name of the industry for a minute.

The entertainment business is the “Business of Entertaining”. So you need to create something entertaining through some combination of a compelling story and awesome spectacle that people are going to want to see and will tell their friends to go see. At the same time you need to understand and follow all the time-tested rules of good business practices which include marketing and professional relationships.

Every time I hear a beginning filmmaker telling me about their cool movie idea, that is almost completely lacking in any entertainment aspects with a broad appeal, I want to grab them by the neck and try to shake some sense into them.

Most of the ideas are a bland rehash of the latest summer comic book flick. Perhaps it would be interesting to five of their nerdy friends but a significant segment of the general population would find nothing original or interesting.

It’s also clear that these would-be moguls haven’t the first concept of how the business world operates. They have no understanding of basic business law, of how to find and nurture useful relationships in the industry or how to go about marketing a film.

If you want to succeed in “show biz” start by learning how the business world operates and, at the same time, learn what makes great storytelling. With those skills under your belt you just might be unstoppable.

Tags: entertainment business // 1 Comment »