Rebel Without a Crew
On my trip I read Robert Rodriguez's excellent Rebel Without a Crew. Totally inspirational story of how he made El Mariachi on $7000 in 3 weeks, acting as Director, DP, sound guy and any other crew work that needed doing. He brought it to Hollywood and got an agent and contract in a couple of weeks - nuts.
Many interesting ideas. The main one is to just go ahead and start shooting. Don't wait for someone to give you money - shoot on whatever you have available and learn by doing. Practice shooting and editing. Make some "bad films" to warm up to your big project. The funny thing is he thought El Mariachi was a practice film. He keeps saying, "I would have taken more time if I knew people were going to see it."
So he's totally got me thinking about what it would take to shoot an indy feature. Andrew, my DP on Coffee, mentioned shooting a cheapy feature in Toronto over the course of a few weekends. With the availability of portable HD cameras, the main expenses would be renting equipment and feeding the crew. I was impressed with the lighting set-up on Sean Garrity's short in November - just set it up above and be done for the day. If I had a lot of outdoor shots, all the better. And need good microphones...
Rodriguez says and I agree: It's about story story story. If you have great stories, that trumps lighting, quality of video, etc.
His other main point was not to believe all the negativity about how it's impossible to Make It in This Business. Creative work will be appreciated by someone. I'm not convinced I want to work in Hollywood, but I definitely want to keep turning my stories into films. I'm really enjoying my SD300 (footage available on vlog soon). Wonder if I could shoot a short documentary on its highest quality setting? Also, have often thought of animation as a great way to eliminate the need for a crew...
Brain definitely buzzzzzing for the new year!
It's been fun to show people the near-finished version of the film. Good feedback. The funniest part is everyone has a different interpretation of the film. There's very little dialogue, so if they miss or disregard one line, a different storyline emerges. I don't mind this - I'm intrigued by it.
posted by Polly @ 8:03 a.m.
2 Comments:
go watch The Celebration by Thomas Vinterberg. it's a foreign film, the first dogme95 film. absolutely brilliant, gripping story, and it looks like shit. it's done on a super cheap handheld camera. truly an inspiration and basically proof of what rodriguez is talking about -- just wish rodriguez would take some of his own advice, he's been turning out a lot of crap lately.
i think a feature is something that should be seen as feasible and not as an unattainable thing you need millions of dollars to realize. however, i also think too many people make feature films. i think that you need a really compelling story and reason to make a feature instead of a short. most films should be shorter.
Yah, I've seen The Celebration - agree with your assessment - need to track down more dogme films. There are some great films in the 60s and 70s that have a similar "available resources" philosophy.
And you may well be right about the length of films, though my mind seems to think in feature length rather than short. We need to make short films part of the average person's movie-going experience!
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