Pre-Production

I'm pretty sure this is the part a lot of novice filmmakers underestimate. There's a lot of planning that goes into a film or TV project if you want to do it properly. You need to hire your cast & crew (or get them to volunteer), rent equipment, secure locations, and schedule every little detail so that everyone knows what's happening and when.

Luckily our casting was taken care of save the one character that we cast easily out of the Lyric School of Acting, where most of us had taken classes. Originally I was to play that part and direct as well. The best decision I ever made was to NOT try and do both. Everyone wants to be on screen, but the first few times it's hard enough to do one job well. Usually in order to cast a show you have to go through a painful audition process and your chances of finding the people you want with no budget are damn near nil. I'm not even going to get into it; I don't have the experience to offer you anything useful here because we didn't have to do it.

Crewing up was a matter of contacting EVERYONE we knew that might be willing to help. We made a list of the crucial positions and made a lot of phone calls to get them filled. Click here for details on what each crew member does and what you're sacrificing if you don't have them. There is also a printable form that you can use as a contact list for your production. Once you and your crew have decided on a window of opportunity for shoot dates, you'll need to lock down equipment and locations as soon as possible to get them when you want them.

Equipment rental can be the most expensive part of filming. In the resource links to the left I list the vendors we used to make our movie. This list is pretty thorough for Vancouver; I'll add links for other areas when I get to know them. Some vendors will lend equipment for no-budget projects, but you have to know the right people or be really lucky. Also, some vendors require production insurance before they'll give you any gear. We used the Independent Film Centre (IFC) in Vancouver. Again, I'll list more when I know more.

We lucked out on locations because our story takes place in a 3-bedroom apartment, which my girlfriend lived in at the time. Securing locations can be extremely difficult and expensive. You may need to pay rental fees, permit fees, hire support staff and deal with the proper authorities depending on the type of location you're using. Permits are usually required from your city hall to shoot anywhere near traffic or on public property such as a sidewalk or park. The best thing to do is to pare down the number of locations in your script and try to use only privately owned properties where you know the owner well.

Design your shooting schedule around your locations. Getting everyone and all the gear to the right place at the right time is the most formidable part of the shoot. "Company moves" as they are called, are time-consuming and thus expensive. Put them at the very beginning or end of a shoot day, wherever possible. For scheduling, there is an enormous amount of paperwork that is created to keep everyone on the same page. Click here for examples of a Call Sheet and a One Liner in pdf format. These are the two most important pieces of paperwork, in my opinion. You can't use these examples as forms because the tables will be different sizes depending on the shoot; but you can use them as templates to create your own.

The director has a bunch of pre-production work to do as well. Almost all of the creative decisions such as the look of the set, the choice of location, how a scene is to be shot, and etc. must be approved by the director. Storyboarding is a common tool used in pre-production. I didn't use it so I won't talk about it, except that I wish I had done it. The more planning and organization is done before you shoot the more smoothly the shoot will go. Not that problems won't occur, but you'll be better equipped to deal with them when they do.

Now's a good time to schedule and acquire your post-production facilities as well (more about that later). On to shoot day...

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