A DIY-guide to how we designed, built and lit our film set

Ekblom

Ekblom

Hello!

We released our film (Love Between Storeys) for a week on Valentine's. Along with the film we're uploading a 12-part series covering how we designed, built and lit our elevator set. You can start checking out the guide here.

We wrote this guide for newbies and amateurs on the DIY filmmaking scene as an attempt to give something back to the community.

Love Between Storeys is a half hour romantic comedy about a boy and a girl who get stuck in an office lift. We produced it with 2200 €, and it was shot with a Canon 550D/T2i for six days in Helsinki, Finland and one day in London.

Here's the first updates:


An Introduction to Making Love Between Storeys









Comments, questions and suggestions are more than welcome on our website or in this thread. I'll be popping in to update the thread as we release new stuff.

The full movie is watchable here till the 21st. You can also see the trailer here.

Hope you found this useful!
 
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A new batch of updates went up on the blog!

In these we talk about what affected our design decisions, how to make a tiny space interesting for the eye and which light sources we wanted (and why) in the elevator.

The last part should be most useful for newbies interested in lighting for film.

Concept: What Should the Elevator Look Like?

What Should the Elevator Look Like: How to Make the Space Visually Stimulating

What Should the Elevator Look Like: Light Sources

Oh yeah, the full movie is still up on YouTube till the 21st.

Enjoy!
 
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That's why my budgets have gone up. I have pretty much exhausted most of the freebies I could wrangle and the guilt of pressuring people to work for free finally started to get to me. It costs me roughly $600 per day of filming just to pay a skeleton crew. Add in basic gear rental and craft services and I have a hard time shooting anything for less than $1000 a day.
 
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Gonzo_Entertainment said:
That's why my budgets have gone up. I have pretty much exhausted most of the freebies I could wrangle and the guilt of pressuring people to work for free finally started to get to me. It costs me roughly $600 per day of filming just to pay a skeleton crew. Add in basic gear rental and craft services and I have a hard time shooting anything for less than $1000 a day.
Click to expand...

We're heading to the same place where you are now.
 
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Gonzo_Entertainment said:
That's why my budgets have gone up. I have pretty much exhausted most of the freebies I could wrangle and the guilt of pressuring people to work for free finally started to get to me. It costs me roughly $600 per day of filming just to pay a skeleton crew. Add in basic gear rental and craft services and I have a hard time shooting anything for less than $1000 a day.
Click to expand...

If you are going to be filming for the years to come there is no reason to rent... which is a waste of money. Just buy the gear and you'll break even in no time, especially if you are spending $1,000 a day to film... A 20 day shoot would be $20,000 which would buy you some pretty nifty gear!! :D Then you'd actually own it, get more time with it, and be able to master it. My opinion :D


Back to the OP - good work! Keep it up!!
 
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DeJager said:
If you are going to be filming for the years to come there is no reason to rent... which is a waste of money. Just buy the gear and you'll break even in no time, especially if you are spending $1,000 a day to film... A 20 day shoot would be $20,000 which would buy you some pretty nifty gear!! :D Then you'd actually own it, get more time with it, and be able to master it. My opinion :D


Back to the OP - good work! Keep it up!!
Click to expand...

I agree in theory, BUT a nice Arri kit costs about $2500. I could rent that $2500 Arri kit for a weekend for $100, take the other $2400 and make a short film, or I could buy the Arri kit and look at it sitting in the corner.
 
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Two new parts are up!

The first post is about where to build a set when you have no money for a studio. In the second we discuss how we divided the work before we started building the set.

Concept: Where should the elevator be built?

Concept: Who does what?

The parts up until now have been mostly introduction before we get to the real meat of the guide. I still suggest reading these if you're a newbie on the filmscene.

And just a note: the full movie is up on YouTube till tomorrow 5 PM GMT. If you wanna catch it, do it now.
 
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New parts are up!

LBS-MASTER-film-grain-w-o-glitches-0-11-00-141.jpg


We're still in the woodwork phase of making the elevator set. This time we have a look at how we built the ceiling, and how we made the doors look like they did. We also cover how we made the elevator doors move in the film, with an important lesson of how you can easily overcomplicate things.

Woodwork: Ceiling

Woodwork: The Doors

The Doors: Moving Doors

Have a good read, and enjoy your weekend ;)
 
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Three new articles are up! This is the last batch where we talk about set dressing and logo design.

In the third article we make a point of that you shouldn't shy away from quick and easy solutions when designing your set as everything in film is make-believe.

The-Prism-designs.jpg


Article 1: Details and Logos: The Prism Logo

Article 2: Details and Logos: No Smoking Sign

Article 3: Details and Logos: Tape is Your Friend – Unorthodox (But Practical) Solutions

After these we will get to the real meat of the guide as we go through lighting plans and what different contraptions we built to make the elevator believable.

PS. If you like these posts and would like us to continue you can show your support by following/liking our facebook page.
 
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Zensteve said:
Diggin' this thread... though resizing some images might be good, too. :cool:
Click to expand...

I agree... I'm linking the images straight from the website due to a couple hazzle related reasons. I figured huge images is better than no images,
so I just went and linked them even though I knew most of them will come out and break the threads layout.

Is there a way to insert a string of code with the posts that would resize the images perhaps? I shall investigate.

Oh yeah - I'm glad you like the info. We generally update Monday - Wednesday and Friday. So more stuff comes out soon.
 
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LIGHTING-banner.jpg


Now it's time to talk about how we handled lighting our film set. The first article is a brief intro to the Lighting section of our guide, including a list of gear we had and where we got it from.
We also make a point of that we got most of the gear free, either because we were blessed by a natural disaster, or because we just dared to ask.

The second article details how we built our soft and powerful toplight. I recommend that article to all Amateurs on the DIY scene,
as everybody can get their hands on bulbs and graden plant cover.

Article 1: The Elevator Set: Lighting

Article 2: Lighting: Making a Soft and Powerful Top Light

Hope you liked this new update, and as I said in my previous post - if you like these articles and would like us to continue please follow/like our facebook page.
 
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