Note: This is not a repost from 2008—despite the camera referenced—it’s a brand new post on April 2, 2017.
“Buy a camera and start shooting. It’s that simple.” Advice from a filmmaker whose first feature just played at SXSW
Let’s say you work at a taco joint and think to yourself, “Man, I’d sure like to make a feature film,”—where would you start? Oh, and the problem is you have little money and no real film experience. Were would you start?
There are many options including going to film school, working as a PA and learning as much as you can on the set and working your way up, or you could go the Parker Smith route.
Parker who? What? (Yes, the guy who gave that simple advice to buy a camera and start shooting.)
Parker Smith’s film Ramblin’ Freak debuted at the SXSW film festival just a few weeks ago. In a No Film School podcast interview with Joe Fusco, Smith said he basically binge watched documentary after documentary, bought two DVX 100B cameras, and hit the road with his cat and learned to be a filmmaker by shooting 55 hours of tape.
Yes, tape. Kickin’ it old school with DV tape. I bought the Panasonic DVX 100 camera around 2003 shortly after it first came out. I was on a shoot with Orlando DP Ben Mesker and he was raving about the 24p film look of the DVX. This was in the days when high-end video shoots were done using DigiBeta cameras.
The standard rate in the early 2000s for a two person DigiBeta shoot was $1,300-1,500 per day. The DVX sold for around $3,500. I’ll never forget running into Randy Baker, another producer/cameraman friend, at a bookstore in Orlando and him encouraging me to buy the DVX 100 telling me it’d pay for itself after a couple of freelance shoots.
That’s what I did. Changed my life in some ways. (Much as the Canon 5D did later for others.) That DVX camera helped me as I went out on on own in what ended up being a 13-year self-employment production run. Over time I moved up the Panasonic food chain (HVX 200, AF 100), but that DVX not only paid a lot of bills, but opened doors for me shoot documentaries in Russia, Jamaica, South Africa, and Brazil.
With my trusty (now classic) DVX 100 camera in 2006/Cape Town, South Africa
When I flew in a seaplane over the Amazon River, in one of my coolest production experiences ever, I was shooting with a DVX100. And part of the DVX legacy is DP Nancy Schreiber won a best cinematography at Sundance for shooting November (2004) shot on the DVX, and the Duplass brothers shot The Puffy Chair (2005) also with the DVX.
But today, a DVX is only worth around $200. It’s a stand def camera. Why shoot in a digital world today on standard def on cameras 10 years old? Because you have a goal to be a feature filmmaker (and you have little money).
Embrace your limitations. That’s what Parker Smith did.
“I’ll actually have a shift delivering tacos the morning of my premiere. I will be off in time to attend though.” Parker Smith Interview with Jason Whyte/@jasonwhyte before the Rambin’ Freak premiere at SXSW
Now I don’t know if Smith has a distribution deal or not, but from the buzz I’ve heard, I’d say his documentary is worth a minimum of $100,000 in a Netflix deal. Not bad for a guy working at a taco joint who had a dream, an idea, a cat (people love cats, never forget that), and the willingness to shoot with cameras that most 16-year-olds living in McMansions wouldn’t even use for a web camera.
I doubt Smith will be shooting on a DVX again, but like many of us former DVX users, it will always hold a special place in his heart.
P.S. The DVX 100 now has a big brother, the DVX 200 that shoots in 4K. I’ve been to a demo for it, but haven’t shot with it yet. Writing this post has made me all nostalgic again for the DVX which I think when I stopped using it had logged around 900 hours.
“Visiting the set of Piranha and talking to the people involved in making it helped me learn one of the basic rules of film production, which is talk is cheap and action is expensive.” John Sayles
The term low budget is relative. Some talk in terms of a $10 million film being low budget, others talk about $500,000. being low budget and others talk about $10,000. being low budget. Talking about film costs is like taking about affordable housing in Manhattan, New York versus Manhattan, Kansas (The Little Apple)—they’re two different worlds.
In his book Thinking in Pictures, writer/director John Sayles talks about the writing parameters for writing low budget films using a union cast and crew. But in general most of his considerations ring true for any size productions. If you’re trying to keep your costs down on a script you are writing, Sayles says the first requirement is an understanding of what costs money in making a movie.
“Anything set in a historical period costs more for costumes, props and sets than the same story in a contemporary setting would (unless you’re doing Adam and Eve in Griffith Park). Shooting on location brings with it the expense of lodging, per diem, travel days, long-distance phone calls and shipping of film materials. Each speaking part you add means another day or more of Screen Actor Guild (SAG) minimum wage, even for a few lines. Music you don’t own the publishing or performing rights to can cost a fortune. Precision camera movement calls for a crew that can pull it off—the best people in those categories are expensive to hire. Star actors cost a lot more than SAG minimum and can run you into lots more maintaining them in the style to which they’ve become accustomed. Special effects and stunts are more expensive and increase your insurance bills. Action scenes and stunts are more expensive to shoot in terms of shots and man-hours per screen minute than dialogue scenes are. Special equipment—cranes, Stedicams, helicopter mounts—all cost a lot. Each additional day you shoot has a price tag on it.” John Sayles Thinking in Pictures: The Making of the Movie Matewan
There are those that think you shouldn’t inhibit your writing by worrying about the expense of shooting. Just tell the story as best you can. But it’s not easy to get any film made, so if you’re not working on Steven Zaillian-sized projects at least consider this post food for thought. Every film has concerns about costs and sometimes whole scenes are cut because of budget restraints and others need to be re-written to accommodate the budget.
One famous scene in a studio film that was changed from how it was originally written was in Rocky when Rocky Balboa pays the skating rink maintenance guy to let Adrian and him into the rink when it’s closed. The scene was originally written to take place on a busy skating rink, but the producers decided they didn’t have money in the budget for all the extras, so it was re-written to basically be just Rocky and Adrian and it turned out to be a solid scene. Probably better than how it was originally written.
“Embrace your limitations” should be the motto of the low budget filmmaker. (Actually, I think I first heard that phrase was from DP Nancy Schreiber on the DVD commentary of the $150,000. film November in which she won a cinematography award at Sundance for shooting.) Don’t worry about what you can’t do, focus on what you can do.
Sayles writes, “The ideal low-budget movie is set in the present, with few sets, lots of interiors, only a couple speaking actors (none of them known), no major optical effects, no horses to feed. It is no wonder so many beginning movie-makers set a bunch of not-yet-in-the-Guild teenagers loose in an old house and have some guy in a hockey mask go around and skewer them.”
But it doesn’t have to be a horror film. Here’s a short list of films of various budgets that all took advantage of shooting mostly in one location (some with no wardrobe changes over the course of the film):
Buried Panic Room The Tenant Phone Booth Clerks Closetland 12 Angry Men The Breakfast Club Clue Dogville Paranormal Activity
Obsession Lifeboat
Rear Window Rope
Take note that those last three films were directed by Alfred Hitchcock. “Embrace your limitations.”
While Titanic has been the pinnacle of the Hollywood blockbuster there has been a somewhat quiet movement in the film industry which came into prominence in 1999.
The use of video came on the scene in the 1950s its claim about the death of film were greatly exaggerated. Fifty years later those claims are starting to resurface.
In 1995 Sony released the Sony VX1000. The first digital video camera that independent filmmakers got excited about. Lars von Trier jumped on the digital bandwagon in directing and shooting the feature film The Idiots with the Sony VX1000 which he showed at Cannes in 1998.
As digital filmmaking became more popular the debate continued over whether this was really filmmaking since film was no longer being used. I remember being at a film festival in the ’90s when a New York filmmaker stated that he didn’t make videos, he made films.
Then this little hybrid movie came along in 1999 called The Blair Witch Project that was a game changer. Shot with a mixture of 16mm film and a consumer video camcorder (Hi8 I believe) Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sanchez, Robin Cowie, Gregg Hale made the film for $35,000. that went on to make in the ballpark of $250 million worldwide. It still has the record for box office income against production costs. (We’ll see if Paranormal Activity beats it. A film inspired by The Blair Witch Project.)
When film historians look at the shift in the film business I think they will look at The Blair Witch Project and 1999 as the most important year for change. The Blair Witch filmmakers were not only from outside L.A. (they met in Orlando), not only found great success making a film shot in part on video, but they used the Internet to market the film in a whole new way.
Because I was living in Orlando at the time I like to point out they the Blair Witch filmmakers pointed out that Ralph Clemente who heads up the film program at Valencia Community College was a great inspiration to them in making a different kind of film. I studied with Clemente when he was teaching at the University of Miami film school and was happy he got a special nod.
The list of films made digitally grew and grew. In 2000, Spike Lee chose to shoot most of his $10 million dollar film Bamboozled with the Sony VX1000. In that same year Academy-award winning director Michael Figgis released a DV feature Timecode. Also in 2002 Steven Soderbergh shot the DV feature Full Frontal and Jerry Seinfeld was executive producer and featured performer for the DV documentary Comedian (2002).
Another landmark film was released in 2002, Aleksandr Sokurov’s Russian Ark— a film that was shot digitally in one take. I saw Russian Ark in one of those grand old theaters in Chicago and I really thought it was a perfect mix of the past and future coming together.
What was different about Russian Ark from the DV features is it was shot on a high-end Sony HD camera. The quality difference between DV and 35mm is great when projected on the big screen. And films up to that point used DV for a variety of reasons usually related to budgets. Russian Ark reached new heights by shooting a type of film that not only couldn’t physically be shot on film (due to the nature of film loads being limited in time) but the quality for the average viewer was matched on the screen.
Also in the year 2002, Gary Winick’s who directed Tadpole (shot with a Sony PD-150 DV camera) won the Best Director Award at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. Sundance used to have a policy that said they only took films made on film. No videos allowed. The world was changing.
“I could have shot Tadpole on 35mm, and would it have been a better film? I don’t know. Would I have gotten that cast? I don’t know. Part of the reasons for the cast wanting to be in the film, besides the material, was that they were all interested in working in DV, which I presented it to them as this hybrid between the theater and film. And also, I only need you for two weeks and not two months.” Gary Winick
In 2003 Peter Hedges (known for writing What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?) released the DV feature Pieces of April starring Katie Holmes. It won many awards at film festivals and actress Patricia Clarkson was nominated for an Oscar. I love that film and it shows how a story and talent can overcome some technical deficiencies. Hedges pointed out in interviews out that financing had falling through a couple times before when it was budgeted for film so the $150,000 film would not have been made without shooting on DV.
In 2004 the InDigEnt produced November starring Courteney Cox and shot with a $4,000. Panasonic DVX 100 DV camera by director of photography Nancy Schreiber who won best cinematography for the film at the Sundance Film Festival.
Also in 2004 at Sundance Morgan Spurlock earned the Directing Award for Super Size Me and the documentary Born into Brothels won an audience award, both of which were shot on digital video cameras. Brothels beat Super at the Academy Awards. So in less than a decade digital video made some incredible inroads winning international awards and finding audiences.
So in less than a decade digital video made some incredible inroads winning international awards and finding audiences. You can sit around and argue all day about how film is superior to digital video, but folks the train has left the station.
And the standard def DV video cameras have now been replaced by digital High Def cameras that in the right hands can give a wonderful look. The crazy thing is these are cameras in the $5,ooo dollar range. And they are not being used on just low budget features. The Panasonic HVX 200 was used on the $30 million film Cloverfield.
But let’s not forget Paranormal Activity that is purposely meant to look like an amateur video and as of this writing has made over $60 million at the box office.
Yes, this is the point where I bring out the visionary trunk monkey Francis Ford Coppola (the grandfather of the digital filmmaking movement) who had this to say back in 1991:
Coppola was right on track. But can you imagine if he would have said that “some day some little fat girl in Ohio is going to make a film with her cell phone camera….”—the response might have been, “Yeah, right when we’re flying around like the Jetsons.” Yet, in 2005 a feature was shot using a cell phone. Today there are several cell phone film festivals around the world.
Coppola recently made and released Youth Without Youth shot digitally with the high-end Sony F900. The Sony camera (along with the Viper camera) are reaching quality levels that match film resolution. But the biggest talk about the digital filmmaking seems to center around the Red Cameras and we’ll address that in Part 7.
The film verses digital debate is coming to an end.
“The future of cinema lies in the power of the pixel. The injection of fresh ideas and methodologies will only serve to mix up the metaphorical gene pool and empower a new generation of filmmakers.”
Roger Corman
“The comeback of documentaries is strictly linked to the arrival of digital technology. We only see the tip of the iceberg. The whole the notion of distribution will be changed in the next decade.”
Wim Wenders
“I wanted this movement to be like the French New Wave, in which directors told different types of stories and used the language of cinema a little differently, with smaller cameras on real locations.”
Gary Winick
“Cinema has always been marriage of technology and human talent.” Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola is a prophet. As he gets older he even starts to look like a Moses-like figure. (Well, at least Charlton Heston-like.) He’s every screenwriters friend and should be an inspiration to you.
He’s made great films (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now), he’s made money and lost money, he’s won five Oscars, he even has a daughter who’s won an Oscar for screenwriting, he’s been a visionary, an artist, “a idea machine,” he own a resort in Belize and a home in Buenos Aires, and he makes a good bottle of wine there in Northern California.
A few months ago I was doing a shoot in the San Francisco Bay area and had an opportunity to make a quick stop in Napa Valley. I had not been there in over a decade and one of the things that struck me was it reminded me of Iowa. Then I realized why, it’s farm land with many Victorian homes scattered around.
Granted those homes in California are five times more expensive than the ones in Iowa. But the area has a similar feel. In fact if you head west on Interstate 80 from Iowa after a couple days you will end up in California which is essentially what Midwest people did years ago on the first transcontinetal highway looking for new opportunities (and before that looking for gold). Which is why the street names in Napa include, Iowa St., Illinois St., Omaha Ct. and Kansas Ave.
I won’t get into Coppola being born in Michigan because there’s too much room to cover already. Toward the end of part 1 of this post I mentioned Coppola using video on The Outsiders back in 1982.But before that film he also used video according to ASC cinematographer Russ Alsobrook:
“In 1982 Francis Ford Coppola directed One from the Heart from inside his 28-foot Airstream trailer designed as a complete “Image and Sound Control Center” complete with editing suite, kitchen and Jacuzzi. Aside from the Jacuzzi, the most unusual new piece of equipment that found its way into virtually every aspect of production on One from the Heart was the computer. From word processors in the script phase to budgeting, scheduling, storyboarding, sophisticated video tapes with playback and instant editing, the newest in silicon technology was being integrated into the Hollywood system.”
Coppola and those working with him 25 years ago showed where the technology was heading and helped pave the way. Earlier this year his first film in ten years, Youth Without Youth was released. It was shot on with a high end HD video camera and edited on Final Cut Pro. With five Oscars behind him I’m pulling for Coppola himself to do some of his best work ever in this new cinema.
I’m pulling for you too which is why this is a monster length post, even after being broken up into two parts. It’s important for you to grasp where all the technology is heading.
What happened between Coppola’s Airstream video center in 1982 and today that makes it an exciting time to be a screenwriter and filmmaker?
Let’s start with 1997. That was the year that digital video arrived on the scene with the Sony VX1000. It was a leap in image quality, portability, and cost and independent filmmakers jumped on board. Lars von Trier’s was one of the first to shoot a feature with the Sony VX1000. He did the camera work as well as direct The Idiots, which was in competition at Cannes in 1998.
In 2000 Van Trier released Dancer in the Dark which was also shot on video, but in one scene he used 100 DV cameras. Let it be stated that the critics have be far apart on judging his films. Rodger Ebert wrote, “It smashes down the walls of habit that surround so many movies. It returns to the wellsprings. It is a bold, reckless gesture.” Another reviewer called it “A 2 ½ hour demo of auteurist self-importance that’s artistically bankrupt on almost every level.” (Derek Elly, Variety) But another reviewer said of the same film, “An exhilarating and original work of cinema. A triumph of form, content, and artistic integrity. Astonishing!” (Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly)
Dancer in the Dark went on to win the top award at the Cannes film festival.
In 2000, Spike Lee chose to shoot most of his $10 million dollar film Bamboozled with the Sony VX1000. In that same year Academy-award winning director Michael Figgis released a DV feature Timecode.
Another film first happened in 2002 with Aleksandr Sokurov’s Russian Ark that was shot digitally in one take. Impossible to do with film due to limitations of film loads. (Though Hitchcock did his best to make Rope look like one take.) Russian Ark was shot not with a DV camera but a Sony HD camera. That same year Academy –award winning director Steven Soderbergh shot a DV feature Full Frontal.
Jerry Seinfeld was executive producer and featured performer for the DV documentary Comedian (2002) that covered his return to stand-up comedy after his successful run on the TV hit Seinfeld. It was made with a small crew, is raw in production values, but offers a unique behind the scene look at the work of a comedian.
In 1999 a company called InDigEnt was formed by director/producer Gary Winick, John Sloss, Jonathan Sehring, and Caroline Kaplan.
“I got inspired by the Dogme 95 movement because I felt they were starting to tell the types of stories and tell stories in a different way, and I was hoping at InDigEnt we would do that.” Gary Winick
Winick directed Tadpole, shot with a Sony PD-150 DV camera, and won the Best Director Award at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival.
InDigEnt also made my personal favorite DV feature Pieces of April in 2003. It won many awards at film festivals and actress Patricia Clarkson was nominated for an Oscar. It written and directed by Peter Hedges (who also wrote What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?)
In an Interview with Indie Wire Winick told Matthew Ross:
“I could have shot Tadpole on 35mm, and would it have been a better film? I don’t know. Would I have gotten that cast? I don’t know. Part of the reasons for the cast wanting to be in the film, besides the material, was that they were all interested in working in DV, which I presented it to them as this hybrid between the theater and film. And also, I only need you for two weeks and not two months.”
Ross: I’ve never heard DV described as a hybrid of theater and film.
Winick: Actually it was Sigourney Weaver who inspired me to phrase it that way. But I think it’s well-put for a couple of reasons. One is that you can let the scene keep rolling; you can let the scene unfold like you would in theater. The actors can just perform…Digital cameras can be portable enough that if you suddenly come up with a new approach, you can just back up and redo your scene….Charlie Chaplin used to make films that way… These days, studios just aren’t going to give directors permission to play around that way in 35mm — on DV, you can.
And in 2004 the InDigEnt produced November starring Courteney Cox and shot with a $4,000. Panasonic DVX 100 DV camera by director of photography Nancy Schreiber who won best cinematography at the Sundance Film Festival.
That same year at Sundance Morgan Spurlock earned the Directing Award for Super Size Me and the documentary Born into Brothels won an audience award, both of which were shot on digital video cameras. Brothels beat Super at the Academy Awards.
So in less than a decade digital video made some incredible inroads winning international awards and finding audiences.
You can sit around and argue all day about how film is superior to digital video, but folks the train has left the station. And it’s going to get wilder. I really don’t think most audiences watching the above films or other DV features such as Trainspotting, Murderball, The Buena Vista Social Club, Inland Empire, and Grizzly Man really care what the film was shot on. They want to be entertained, engaged and get a glimpse into the world they live in. Dare I say films with meaning?
All of this means there are going to be more opportunities for films made and distributed outside the Hollywood system.People have been dreaming about this time since at least 1955 when Daily Variety’s headline read “Film is Dead” with the invention of the first Ampex video tape recording machine. That bold declaration, and those like it, have caused much laughter. Hollywood is slow to change.
It’s always fun to look back at past predictions and read things like, “The radio will never replace TV because people have to stop and sit down to watch TV” and that Manhattan would never have more than 1 million people living there because there wouldn’t be enough room for all the horses.”
I remember when a trailer for Silkwood came out in ’83 and Cher’s name appeared on screen. People in the theater laughed. Apparently they missed her excellent film acting debut performance in Robert Altman’s Welcome Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean that came out in 1982.
To the people laughing, Cher was only known as part of the kitchy TV program The Sonny and Cher Show that ran from 1976-1977. She had had a few hit songs, but no one (except Altman perhaps) took her as a serious actress. They weren’t laughing after they saw her performance in Silkwood or the next year for her roll in Peter Bogdanovich’s Mask, or her academy-award winning performance in Moonstruck.
But that’s the same laughter that I heard when my boyhood friends learned the motorcycle company Honda was going to make cars. It’s the same laughter that Ted Turner heard when he said he was going to start a 24 Hour News channel. When told by a reporter that he lost 10 million dollars in his first year of operation, in true maverick spirit he said, “And I plan on losing 10 million dollars every year until this works.”
No one’s laughing at CNN now and behind Tunrer’s wake are many channels dedicated to sports, weather, history, pets and home improvement. (Coppola’s Tucker: The Man and His Dreams touches on the spirit of the entrepreneur.) The entrepreneur and the artist often share a stubborn vision of what is possible.
Artists have always taken the tools at hand and created art; Be it an old Polaroid camera or a cheap Russian made Holga camera. For years filmmakers have been using a plastic video camera designed by Fisher-Price in the 1970’s for children called PixelVision. It originally shot onto cassettes but now is commonly adapted for DV use and there are now PixelVision film festivals as well.
Now that iTunes is selling short films from the Sundance Film Festival and Academy Award Nominated films it allows a revenue stream never seen before for short filmmakers. With a few clicks on your computer you can be watching The Last Farm shot in Iceland.
Most books on screenwriting are geared toward the traditional Hollywood feature film route and I’m indebted to those books for there I learned classic storytelling structure, but there are many alternative routes for you these days due to the increased bandwidth of the Internet.
Keep in mind that You Tube was just launched in 2005. And already it’s had success (Lonely Girl 15 and We Need Girlfriends) launching careers. The later now being developed by Sex in the City creator Darren Star, who is working on a CBS pilot with the original creators who made the videos in off hours from their day jobs.
And don’t forget the potential for screenwriting for videos games that have become more and more story orientated. Video game sales a couple years ago surpassed movie revenue. And every year more and more businesses will be using video on the Internet to tell their stories.
The digital genie is way out of the bottle. It may be digital but someone still has to write the screenplays. On the high end there will continue to be films shot digitally likeSin City and 300 that were shot on blue screens on sound stages, and this years’ $30 million Cloverfield which was shot mostly with the Panasonic HVX 200 digital camera that sells new for under $6,000. shooting onto digital P2 cards.
There will continually be upgrades to smaller high def DV cameras and films made from them, and there are films now being made being shot directly to hard drives and edited as they’re being shot, and even those older cameras like the Sony VX1000 will filter down to someone who decides its time to make a little film.
And let’s not forget those cell phone cameras I wrote about in New Cinema Screenwriting (Part 1).
This is filmmaking and screenwriting in the 21 century; A screen is any screen available. Embrace it. That’s new cinema screenwriting.
So pick up a bottle of Coppola wine today a give a toast to Mr. Francis Ford Coppola, prophet, pioneer, and godfather of new cinema.
“If your journey is anything like ours, at some point you’ll hit a wall. Festivals will reject your screenplay. Agencies will pass on representing you. Executives are going to tell you no. Then maybe one day, someone will say yes to your script.” —Screenwriters Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (“A Quiet Place”) From the forward […]
Screenwriting from Iowa 