Paxton, IL
Drove down to Paxton, IL today to see about a house to make a movie in.
There’s a real joy to this part of making a movie, getting out and meeting people that welcome you into their home and are excited about helping you and then taking for hours about how the house isn’t perfect but it will work and now we can relax because of the 3 possible disasters that might derail this thing, one at least has a workable situation and if it all works out then we get to spend 2 weeks in a quaint town with good summer air with good people and the chance at at a transcendent shared experience.
And then we found this burger joint across the train tracks with a menu that I thought was a joke but it was real and the burgers were $1.20 and fries were 80 cents.
And sometimes I hate how flat IL is but then I think of that DFW line that goes:
Very old land. Look around you. The horizon trembling, shapeless. We are all of us brothers.
Which is a very good line, to my ears at least, and I don’t know where I’m going with this except that there’s a real joy in doing things that are overwhelmingly difficult and it brings out emotions and fears and pleasures that I never knew I had, like when you do a new exercise and you get sore in muscles that you never noticed before.
Good night and look up Just Hamburgers if you’re ever in Paxton.
$10k Short Film Budget Template
I put together a template for a short film with a budget of $10k. It assumes two days of shooting, which would be anywhere from six to twenty pages, depending on how fast you can move and how many setups you have.
The columns update automatically as you adjust crew rates and how many days they are needed.
The numbers are not meant to be exact — a lot of it depends on what your production needs are, how many days you shoot, and how many favors you can call in. It’s definitely possible to make a short film for less than $10k. You can do it for under $100 actually, but if you’re doing that, then you don’t need a spreadsheet to keep track of the budget.
And knowing what I know now, I probably wouldn’t make a $10k short film. There’s no market for short films and I would rather put that money towards a feature film. If you’re going to raise $10k, why not raise $25k? If I’m going to do a short now, it’s going to be in the $500 – $3,000 range.
Click here to open the budget spreadsheet. To edit it, you have to save a copy to your own Google Drive.
The Level-up Method of Filmmaking
Making a film (can be) complex.
Start with something very small, a microshort.
Then with each additional project, add another layer of complexity. If you’re feeling bold, you can add many layers at once. Too little challenge and you’ll get bored. Too much challenge and you might get overwhelmed (or rise to the occasion).
Either way, you can add something new every time you go out:
- SAG actors
- Asking other people for money (crowdfunding)
- Getting investors
- A bigger crew
- Locations that you don’t own
- Professional post-production
- Insurance
- Permits
- A camera that you have to rent
- Enough lighting equipment to require a truck
- An art department
- A composer (instead of free music)
- Special FX
- Stunts
You can also up the creative difficulty:
- More developed characters
- Blending improvisation with scripted work
- A larger cast
- More visual storytelling (or more dialogue-driven)
- Adapting an original work
- Challenging material
- Risky, personal material
My sweet spot is where I’m pushing myself and it feels like there a real risk that it will fall apart but I’m also having fun and experiencing the joy. Suffering and stress don’t have to add up to unhappiness.
Pre-production stress
Last month I met with a DP to set a date for shooting a short film on June 10th. I wrote it and I’m going to direct it. And I’m producing it as I don’t have a go-to producer yet, a real partner to handle the big picture stuff of securing locations and finding talent and all that.
It’s not fun. I don’t hate it but it is not fun. What I don’t like about casting and hiring and finding locations and arranging all the resources to be on a certain day is this: it’s asynchronous. It’s a big spreadsheet with a lot of pending items. You can’t brute force it. You can’t spend 12 hours straight just knocking it out.
You have to wait for people to get back to you with someone’s email and then they do and you email that person and then you have to wait to hear back from them and they say “no, sorry, we don’t want you to film in our bar” and then you have to find another one.
It’s loose ends all over the place. Interlocking pieces that depend on other pieces, and endless if/else’s branching out in the rows and columns. It makes me slightly insane.
But there’s a date set, an immovable date slowly creeping toward you. Having gone through it a few times now, I know that on that date, everything will be there. Maybe not the way I hoped, but everything we need will be there.
The only thing that keeps me up at night is rain.
The possibility that it will rain on June 10 and that not everyone will be available for the rain date of June 11. Or that the Gods just decide that it will rain all that weekend and I have to decide if we’re going to make a mess in the mud and put everyone through a rainy production (if that’s even possible?) and scramble for tents at the last minute, or if we have to call the whole thing off and re-schedule.
On the bright side, it gets better. Going through this with The Deadline was crushing. There wasn’t a day from January 1 to March 22, 2016 when I didn’t feel like it was all going to fall apart at any moment. Now, it’s not so bad. It’s stressful, but I know that it will work out. If an actor drops out at the last minute, I’ll find another one. If the DP falls ill the morning of, I’ll figure something out.
You plan as best you can and then when shit goes sideways, you just take a deep breath and say “ok, what are our options?” It’s a kind of zen-like clarity that I actually enjoy in way. Once you’ve decided completely that you will make this thing happen, the setbacks don’t seem to matter. There’s no time to care or be angry.
The ship is moving and there’s no stopping it. When the ship springs a leak, do you jump overboard? No, you get a bucket and start bailing out the water. When your first mate mutinies, do you curse his lack of loyalty? No, you push him overboard and promote someone else. OK maybe this analogy is getting out of hand.
Anyway, it’s not life or death. It’s just comedy or art or whatever you want to call it. Once I’m done with this fucking spreadsheet, it will all be fun again.
How to Make a Short Film with SAG Actors (and not kill yourself)
NB: this post was written before SAG created the Short Project Agreement in August 2018. The Short Project Agreement replaces the old Short Film Agreement. You can read about the differences here.
This post is based on my personal experience dealing with SAG-AFTRA’s Chicago local. Most of the information I got from attending a seminar for producers, run by Kathy Byrne, Director of TV/Theatrical here in Chicago, and from actually going through the process while making The Deadline.
This is meant to be a primer for working with SAG under the Short Film Agreement to address the most common questions that come up and demystify the process.
It’s not a complete explanation of every detail of the contract1 Read the contract before you sign it!
Disclaimer: Some of this information has changed since 2016 when I originally wrote it. While I tried my best to get everything right, I may have misunderstood some things. This is not legal advice and is meant to give you an overview and a basic understanding of how things work.
For example, I’m not going to talk about how you’re not allowed to require an actor to be completely nude at an audition and that you must permit them to wear pasties or a G-string. ↩
The day before production
I feel like a child before a 3-day Christmas.
When I get excited with nervous anticipation, everything slows down and I have trouble focusing on one thing at a time.
I’m running around getting bottled water and snacks for set, withdrawing cash to pay for the lighting truck, buying a clipboard, reviewing tomorrow’s shooting schedule, taking notes on what I need to remember to tell the actors during their scenes tomorrow, passing out flyers to the businesses and residents that live next to the location so they know we are filming and have the producer’s contact info in case of questions, prepping the location with the art department, cooking a big batch of food so I don’t have to worry about breakfast and dinner for the next 3 days, and laying out clothes so I don’t have to make decisions about what to wear, and moving anything in my to-do list to after the shoots so my mind is uncluttered.
And playing tennis to spend the nerves so I can relax and will be able to fall asleep tonight.
Total commitment to a single project is an interesting thing, almost a religious practice.
Notes on Pre-production and Planning for a Web Series
For me, pre-production starts with planning and planning starts with a spreadsheet.
Some people use MovieMagic software for managing pre-production but that is expensive (~$750) and it’s designed to work with a script. You upload a script and then break down the schedule and budget based on the actors, locations, equipment, and crew that you need for each scene.
I didn’t have a traditional script and $750 is too damn expensive anyway. Maybe there’s a better, cheaper, version of the same thing out there somewhere. Spreadsheets were good enough for what I needed this time around.
I basically use a two-pronged organization structure for all big projects that I work on. It consists of two things:
- A master spreadsheet where all the important information and tasks are stored.
- A to-do list that contains day-to-day tasks that need to be completed.
For the spreadsheet, I use Excel but you can also use OpenOffice Sheets, which is a free open-source version of Excel.
For the to-do list, I use Remember the Milk, which is probably the most life-changing app that I’ve ever used. It’s free for the web app and $25/year to use it on your phone. Not everyone needs a to-do list (children, monks, drug addicts, etc.), but I do, and this one is essential to keeping on top of what I want to do.
In Remember the Milk (RTM), I had a task that repeated every Monday and reminded me to update the web series spreadsheet and assign any tasks for the week to RTM so that they would get done.
This two-pronged approach is effective because it allows me to keep everything organized in one place (the project spreadsheet) but only the relevant tasks are in front of me during the week in RTM. That keeps things manageable and has a psychological benefit – I don’t feel overwhelmed when I look at my to-do list because it only has a few items that are actionable that week, i.e. I’m not worried about color correction when I’m still in the process of casting.
The spreadsheet becomes a repository for all the tasks necessary to complete the project (and there are a LOT of tasks that have to be completed from start to finish, even for a relatively small project!) and keeps my brain uncluttered.
If, for example, I think of a great location idea or meet a freelance sound editor while I’m in the middle of writing the script, I just drop a note somewhere in the spreadsheet so I don’t have to worry about remembering it.
None of this is sexy at all but it does help me get things done and keeps my mind clear. I love spreadsheets for organizing many aspects of my life. Learn to love spreadsheets!
Or, if you’re lucky enough to have the money to hire a producer (or have a volunteer to co-produce with you), then you might not have to worry about all this stuff. I prefer to do most of the producing the first time around. That way, I can learn what I prefer to delegate and what I don’t mind or even enjoy doing.
Here’s a link to the spreadsheet I used in Google Docs: Sample Production Checklist Template.
I started with something like that, although it grew a lot to fit Words Fail Me’s specific needs. Each item in the checklist has multiple sub-tasks but those are too specific to write out in the template. You’ll probably want to customize it for yourself, depending on your needs.
Make a copy and put it in your own drive or download it to your hard drive as an excel file. If it helps you, great. The point of all of that is not to overwhelm you, it’s to lay everything out so you don’t feel overwhelmed.
YMMV.
Another note: the spreadsheet is generally in sequential order. For instance, the item for “send script to actors and crew” comes before casting. Obviously the casting has to be done before you can send the script to the actors, but I like to group things by category and jot down little reminder in bold to remember to come back to them later.
Scheduling is the part that gives me fits, because there are so many moving pieces that you have to juggle. A spreadsheet helps with that, so you’re not trying to use your email inbox as your project management center.
Grubstake
grubstake: Supplies or funds advanced to a mining prospector or a person starting a business in return for a promised share of the profits.
n. Money, materials, tools, food etc. provided to a prospector in return for a share in future profits
n. An amount of money advanced to someone starting a business in return for a share of the future profits
File this under “words I wish people used in everyday conversation,” as in “lookin’ for some grubstake to get this film off the ground.”