My First Short Film - In Pre-Production
I'm working on my first short film. This is the story of how I got here.
The catalyst
My creative partner, Stacie Herrington, surprised me a couple of weeks ago with attendance to the Make Your Short Film class hosted by Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes.
It was a really cool class because Due and Barnes have lots of experience writing for creative projects. Stacie is a big fan of Due's books, and one of my favorite episodes of Jordan Peele's Twilight Zone. They've also made their own short films, from one with almost no budget to another that had a budget over $80,000.
During the three hour class, they shared some good advice about how to start making a short film, most of boiling down to "Just make one."
Even more interesting were the many different anecdotes they shared talking about their own mistakes and worries during their separate filmmaking journeys. Those were the most invaluable times during the class.
In the class, we also met the amazing, upbeat, personable author Angela Dalton. She wrote To Boldly Go: How Nichelle Nichols and Star Trek Helped Advance Civil Rights, so you KNOW she's cool. She's working on her first video production. We may get to work with her on some animation for her project. So cool.
Straight into development...
Stacie is never one to turn down the idea to do something new as long as it's amazing and creative. After the short film class, she's like, "Hey, let's make short horror film and submit it to Telluride Horror Show!"
I admire her. I mean, I really admire her. She's fearless.
The next day, we talked about what the short could be. And, technically, we'd entered development.
It took us about four hours to real nail down the main characters' arcs and the general plot for the short film. Over the next couple of days, we refined it to a place where Stacie felt she could start writing a script for it. She's got a great ear for dialogue and humor, so having her write the first draft seems like a good use of her time.
Just today Stacie came up with a good working (and maybe forever) title: Toil and Trouble.
I put it on our studio's Web site and wrote the log line.
After the rest of their coven disappear, a Salem-era witch and a Gen-Z magical apprentice have only two weeks until Halloween to fulfill their outstanding Etsy spell orders or end up losing all their magic.
The following table itemizes the deliverables for the development phase and the status of each one.
| Deliverable | Status |
|---|---|
| Locked screenplay | In progress |
| Budget estimate (top-level) | Done! As little as possible! |
| Logline and synopsis | Done! |
| Producer and key creative attachments | Done! Us and friends! |
...and pre-production
Remember when I wrote that Stacie said we should make a short film? She also said, "We can film it in October when we're in Colorado for Telluride!"
Gear selection
While Stacie's been working on the script, I've been working on one of the pre-production tasks, gear selection and acquisition. I'm going to be behind the camera on this production, so I have the privilege of figuring out what to use.
Since we're working on the "no budget" principle, I've been trying to find only the most necessary things. All told, we're about $400 in on new equipment, so far.
Here's the highlights of the equipment we'll be using.
- Switti LED Panel Lights (x4)
- I already owned these from doing videos for my clients, so we've got those. I got them off of Amazon. They're no longer available because Switti was a fly-by-night purveyor.
- Valera Creator 95 Professional Collapsible Green Screen
- We're going to have special effects. There're witches. There's magic. We're probably going to do some neat things. We'll find out when the script is done. 😆 I already owned this for the same reason that I owned the Switti lights. I really love this retractable screen. It is great.
- Insta360 Flow 2 Pro Gimbal
- I thought we needed a gimbal because we're shooting our film in a specific style that needs to have a hand-made feel, but not too hand-made, you know? Wirecutter rated this as the easiest-to-use gimbal for smartphones and, let me tell you, in my tests, it is really an A+ product.
- SanDisk Creator Phone SSD
- I want the filming to provide us the best opportunity in post-production. While we will be filming on iPhones, we will be using the iOS Final Cut Pro app which allows us to film in the ProRes RAW format which means we'll need an external drive that can plug into the iPhone.
- SYNCO G3 Pro Wireless Collar Microphone
- I am a geek for sound quality, and these seemed to be a good fit at a reasonable price point. However, the first set delivered just plain old didn't work. The next ones get delivered today. I hope they're okay. 🤞
- DaVinci Resolve
- I already use this free (as in beer[1]) software for podcast and video editing. I may upgrade to the Studio version.
- Moho
- I use this for all of my 2D animation. I really love this software package and have been using it for almost two decades, now, since back when it was named Anime Studio. So, I already own this, too.
So, that's what we'll be using. I know I'm missing stuff, but I'll follow up with more in later posts.
Casting
This was kind of easy. When you tell your friends, "Hey, we're making a short film and we think we have a part in it for you," no one turns that down. 😆 Stacie and my daughter will be playing the two protagonists. A witchy friend has agreed to play the Purgatory-bound witch. Stacie's tattoo artist has agreed to portray an online influencer unboxing a spell she ordered.
This is too much fun.
Location
We're just going to be filming where we can. Guerilla filming, you know? 🤫 Don't tell the municipalities!
What's next
Once Stacie is done with her first draft of the script, I'll do a second pass, then she'll do a third. Then, we'll lock it down.
After that, Stacie will work on gathering the props for the film, and her costumes and make-up. We'll make sure my daughter has stuff that she needs, too.
During that time, I'll be doing the script breakdown and shot listing. Then, I'll compile all of that into a good shooting schedule. It's going to be tough, like four pages per day for a bunch of amateurs. Tough. But, because of the way we plan on shooting this, hopefully we won't need that much coverage.
I'm not sure if I'll storyboard it. I use Wonder Unit's Storyboarder for animation projects. I may use it for this, too.
Hopefully, we should have a rough cut by the middle of November.
The worry of music licensing
Stacie is an accomplished musician and composer. However, there are some songs out there that we like that would be really cool to get into the film. But, oh my Goddess, clearing music to use in your film is hard. I mean like, HARD. You have to get more than one license from (usually) more than one rights holder. There's an entire industry built around this.
Since our budget is as close to $0 as we can get, we likely won't engage with a company that does the legwork of music licensing. We'll have to do it. It'll be a cool experience if nothing else.
And, the unrequited lawyer in me loves me some IP contracts.
"Free as in beer" refers to software that is free of charge (gratis), while "free as in speech" refers to software that grants users the freedom to use, modify, and share it (libre). This distinction highlights the difference between cost and the rights associated with the software. ↩︎