How did you become an Indie Filmmaker?

TruEsTaR

TruEsTaR

I'd like to hear all of your stories....

Did you go to USC, UCLA, or NYU?

Did you teach yourself like Herzog, Tarantino, or Spielberg?

Get you get a job working under an experienced film director like Cameron did with Roger Corman?

Have any of you joined the military and learned filmmaking there?

What got you started????



godspeed,
nino
 
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sikandtwisted films said:
I got started by shooting music video's for Sonic Records and helping out with their TV show, Then one day I decided to write a script and try to shoot a film. While casting for the film ,I met my buisness partner George and we started shooting short films. Now we have been talking and learning from folks here , now we are getting geared up to shoot a full length feature.
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Awesome bro, keep me updated and if you want send me the screenplay and i'll give you my feedback!
 
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ROC said:
Didn't go to college.

Graduated High-School a year early and came to L.A. when I was 17 years old to act, got a job at a top music studio and learned under some pro mixers how to record and mix albums.

Began working on feature films as a ADR Mixer. Now I mostly do Sound Design, Re-Recording mixing, and field recording professionally. I used to do Music recording/mixing as a job, but now it's a hobby.

Learned all I know via the internet and other working professionals and mistakes and living through those mistakes.

There are countless other threads named "Is film school necessary?" or some such name, and you can find those where I speak my mind on the matter.
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Very nice. I've heard that i'll learn more from my own failure then from any type of school.
 
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Scoopicman said:
I had been writing my own stories/comics since the first grade. Around 5th grade, my grandfather gave me a tape recorder and I started acting out the stories on tape. I knew I wanted to make movies and perform in them, so I saved up for a Super 8mm camera when I was 15. I kept making movies and never looked back.

I did study film theory and production in college (NAU and U of A). I made my first indie feature, within a year of graduating.
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very nice scoop. I saved up cash and bought a super 8mm when I was 12. The teachers at my catholic school confiscated it at a field trip when we visited the rock and roll hall of fame when I was 13 since two girls flashed us and they saw us taping it.

They wouldn't let me have my camera back or give it to my mother who went on the trip with us. They rewound it and found all of the stuff on the camera. (crazy short films, a lot of cussing, and two girls dancing in front of my buddy and I. My friend, the girls, and myself were all suspended and they never gave me my camera back. They also kicked us out of the church. That's also the last year I attended church.


Anyways, how did you go about getting funding for your first indie feature?
 
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henrykrinkle619 said:
So it's 2006 and...

Tarantino, Kubrick, PT anderson, coens bros and just really good mvoies in general is what got me hooked and so I started writing a screenplay.
I then tried to sell it via inktip.
that didn't work.
Wrote another one.
That didn't sell either.
So then I started pestering other indie filmmakers out there to direct one of my scripts.
All of them blew me off so that didn't work out.
So I finally got fed up, and said to myself "let me make my own fuckin movie".
Started researching cameras and fell in love with a new camera that wasn't even out yet called the Ikonoskop A-cam Dii
http://www.ikonoskop.com/dii/
So i waited for that.
And waited...
and waited...
and waited...
And 10 months later, I finally snapped and said to myself "quit stalling and grow some balls you coward. go out there and make your fuckin film already."
And so I did, and I bought a mac, stole final cut pro via the piratebay, and got a canon 7d and an indie filmmaker wss born.
And one year later, here i am with this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5Z3kBdBX1M
my very first feature film ready to submit to various film festivals.

THE END.
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Very inspiring. your trailer > 99.5% of everything in hollywood today in my opinion.
 
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bird said:
I actually started out wanting to be a fashion designer. My grandma taught me how to sew. My best friend and I started a little company at 14, well we named it anyways. lol. I fabricated my sister's whole wedding party, including her dress, and did a couple amateur fashion shows. During this period I was also interested in puppets. Created many, some of which I used in a few stop motion (pretty awful works) pieces I created with an old wind-up Bolex. I attended , Crawford School of Art in Cork City, Ireland, and University College, Cork in Ireland, where I studied Irish Art/History, and took studio courses in jewelry design, sculpture, and stained glass. Brought the same windup with me and a video cam, did nothing with the Bolex but managed to tape a number of local artists for a documentary (which never saw completion). I graduated with a BFA (painting/film), but just a couple classes and thesis away from a masters. Months after graduation I enrolled in a community college's media program where I studied film theory, production, graphic design, and screenwriting (with Martin Daniel, now at USC). I completed 1 1/2 years of the two year course. I then followed with a 2-year apprenticeship with a documentary maker. I taught myself to cel animate and the first thing I did was an MTV id clip. Being naive, I sent my *jewel* to the network. lol While I didn't sell it, I did get a personal call from the Director of Programming encouraging me to continue my endeavours (even though my sample displayed 'problems' lol). I continue to work on paintings, puppets, animations, stained glass and scripts.

So, to answer your question, I guess I've done all of the above with the exception of military service. From my experience, the thing which proved to be most rewarding is the one I researched and, essentially, taught myself: cel animation.
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what's your favorite animated film of all time, bird?
 
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TruEsTaR said:
how did you go about getting funding for your first indie feature?
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I convinced my uncle to co-sign (and put up stock as collateral) an 8k bank loan. My mom lent me a Visa gold card, which I racked up another 10k on, along with 1k more on my own card. Using credit and home equity has been a terrible habit of mine for 4 features. I advise against it. I've been lucky to get several sales, but getting into the profit margin has been very difficult.

The goal is to make my next feature with cash only. Self-financed, as usual.


Btw, thankyou for starting the thread and taking the time to ask eveyone these questions!
 
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Scoopicman said:
The goal is to make my next feature with cash only. Self-financed, as usual.
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After years of talking about making a movie, (since I was a kid) my wife finally got fed up with me and told me to just start shooting, we'll figure out what the movie is later. Took 3 years to do, shooting on weekends while everyone involved maintained jobs and families. Shot exteriors during summer months, and interiors during the winter. Movie was self-financed, cash only. Not about to go into debt either to credit card companies or some poor family friend duped into investing in my personal gamble. In total it probably didn't cost more than 5k. Shot mini-DV, edited on a FCP system we already owned. Professional scored by a student composer that did amazing work in exchange for IMDB credit.

I don't know what the age range of people on this group are but I had planned on being a filmmaker since I was in Jr.High. Studied film and animation in college but went into video games after college (back when video games were still in the arcade). I'm 38 now and finished my first feature just last year. We've had some modicum of success. Won an audience favorite award and just got our first review in the New York Post. This first movie though was definitely a film school for me. I would do a 1000 things differently on the next one.

The only advice I have at all for people who are still talking about the movie they will make some day is stop talking and start shooting. Write your story around the people, props and locations you already have access to. Keeps costs and delays down. The longer you wait the more elaborate your "fantasy" about the movie will become. That fantasy later makes it almost paralyzingly difficult to look through the viewfinder later when every shot isn't the genius you assumed it will be.
 
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Blade_Jones said:
Stop financing your own movies. Get someone else to pay for it. That's the only way.
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No, it's not. Though I only co-financed THE AWAKENING, I can tell you that none of these would exist, had I not paid for the projects:

moviecovers.jpg




Blade_Jones said:
I was duped into believing that there was money to be made making indie movies. There is not.
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Apparently, you've had some bad experiences - probably because of sheisty investors. Three of my last four projects have paid for themselves or made profit. Unless the budget is enough for a decent director salary, why would I want to give the project away????? I'm anal about controlling the script, the music and the movie rights, so I cover those. Investment is certainly a way, but not "the only way." I've tried the investor route, which usually produces these kinds of statements:

"You need to put lots of naked breasts in it."
"My cousin needs to be the star."
"You can shoot it in a weekend."


My problem is, I want to make a certain kind of movie - I like makeup, sets and fx. I've dealt with many millionaire and indie investors and we never saw eye to eye, because they wanted to do ridiculous things like shooting a feature in one weekend.

One deal (PROBE) was supposed to have Executive producer, Mike Elliot (THE DEVIL'S REJECTS) put in half the budget, but get all foreign sales. The producer/editor, the visual FX guy and I were supposed to put in $6,000 each and we would each get a 1/3rd take of domestic sales. Now, these guys were all out of state and not volunteering to crew up, while I was supposed to make the movie in Nevada - including the sets- spaceship, a lost city, etc.

This actually sounded like a good opportunity at first. Two of the other three guys had studio connections. I was supposed to write, direct and score. It was a chance to make my story, EXILE. As the project got going, someone said, "We need more gore and less acting." They knew we were working with a small budget and didn't want to rely on actors carrying the movie. They tossed EXILE and wanted to go with PROBE, instead. EXILE was mostly one set (the habitat), while PROBE needed a large ship and lost city. Not to mention, I found the story ridiculously shallow.

After a couple of months, I let the guys know that I did not want to be involved in the PROBE project. I talked it over with my wife and we produced EXILE, ourselves. It was actually less work than PROBE. As long as I was paying into it, either way, why not own it, outright?


The short of it: I can't stand investors, because most don't have the guts to get behind you and your ideas. I've had one exception - THE AWAKENING. It was cheap as hell, but it was worth it because they gave me creative leeway.





MichaelPaul said:
After years of talking about making a movie, (since I was a kid) my wife finally got fed up with me and told me to just start shooting.........The only advice I have at all for people who are still talking about the movie they will make some day is stop talking and start shooting.
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This is the right attitude! Don't be a talker - do it! You don't have to go into debt to make movies. Write according to resources.
 
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No, it's not. Though I only co-financed THE AWAKENING, I can tell you that none of these would exist, had I not paid for the projects:
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Yes finding investors is like finding a needle in a haystack. If just getting your movie made is the goal then putting up your own money is probably the only way to get it done. But if seeing a profit matters, the truth is that in the indie film business the odds are stacked way against you. There's too damn many films being made. The market is too saturated. For every filmmaker who stands up and says "Hey I made a profit" there's tons more who lost their shirt. People who are starting out need to know this before they remortgage their home.
 
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I agree with what you say. There is that danger of the aspiring feature filmmaker losing their shirt, because they thought it would pay off. Heck, my first movie did cost me for years.
 
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Scoopicman,
Have you made a profitable movie since the 2009 stock market collapse, as things have gotten much worse since then? If so what is your typical total production / post production budget? Do you have crew people doing favors, working on spec, etc? What "hats" do you wear when you make a film? Director? Editor? Box cover designer? How long does it take you to complete 1 film from shooting until it's mastered?
 
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Blade_Jones said:
Have you made a profitable movie since the 2009 stock market collapse, as things have gotten much worse since then?
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No, this has been a bad time. Unfortunately, I didn't finish EXILE until that year. We are still trying to recoup on that. (EXILE being the 4th, out of 3 out of 4.) We made a couple of small territory sales and got a couple of fabulous tax returns (about 24k total), but we are still behind on a project that cost 33k, not including some equipment I bought.

We paid everybody $100 per day, for a 19 day out of state shoot. Most of the money went to paying actors, sets, hotel, food and gas. Another 4k went to our makeup guy and visual fx guy.




Ken (DAWN OF THE DEAD) Foree and Trygve Lode watch EXILE at the American Film Market:

n30934821661_1141019_180.jpg






Now, THE AWAKENING was produced for just $5,900. We paid people for only 3 of the days and most of the budget went to marine/black ops uniforms, Lara's costume, food and props. On top of that, I paid for 2000 DVDs and a 3 day premiere. That brought the total closer to 10k, which we made back.


TERRARIUM (aka WAR OF THE PLANETS) was shot on 16mm film and had expensive lab/transfer costs. We also had an $8,500 red carpet premiere. Along with DVD production, I spent about 48k over 3 years. We brought in 52K and technically made a profit. (I say "technically" because it came in over a period of 3 or 4 years.)


I also made an instructional DVD that cost next to nothing, but netted about 11k in sales. This is the route I'm trying to go, for the next couple of projects. I'll hopefully use some of this income to fund the next movie.

Until the economy picks up, I'm going to be very spartan about production costs. The next feature will only be 2 - 3 grand to produce. I'm going to call in a few favors for that one, yet my plans are that it will look better than the movies prior to it.


Typically, I do the post-production, though the CGI FX on EXILE were 2K. I have a lot of music equipment, so I edit and score. The only other costs are hard drives and DVD replication. I buy some sound FX from sounddogs.com and I do have composite fx libraries - Action Essentials 2, Detonation films, NCcinema, Digital Juice, etc.






What "hats" do you wear when you make a film? Director? Editor? Box cover designer? How long does it take you to complete 1 film from shooting until it's mastered
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Typically, it takes a year or two from script to completion. I usually write, shoot, direct, edit, score, make the first box cover and DVD.
 
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