Why do most 'indie'/low budget films fall down?

I'm actually going to take the OP's post at face value. Yeah, there's a lot of suckage going on, welcome to our struggle. Maybe you should join it.

To me, the simple answer to your question is that what we're tying to do is really fucking difficult. You would know that, if you had ever tried it.

Recently, Aronofsky's first films could be found online. It gave me hope, because just as I had suspected, even great directors have humble beginnings.
 
Cracker Funk said:
welcome to our struggle. Maybe you should join it.

To me, the simple answer to your question is that what we're tying to do is really fucking difficult. You would know that, if you had ever tried it.
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Ha ha! A lot of truth to this comment. :clap:

I doubt any one of us set out to make a dud. The problem for indie filmmakers is that many armchair critics compare 50 million dollar movies to our self funded, made in our spare time efforts and wonder "what's wrong" with them. Well, with money, you can hire experienced people in many positions. There are large crews on those fancy looking productions and they do the work that can't be matched by one, two or three indie guys in multiple roles.

The only solution for lack of money (aside from being born with amazing talent) is to persevere and leverage a tremendous amount of experience, either from "doing it a lot" or somehow surrounding yourself with people who know the craft. Again, the latter is hard to do, as those people need to be available for the duration of the shoot. That's when time becomes your enemy, so you might have to shoot a feature in 5 days, like Vince Rocca did. Or, you can do it without the crew and take more time.

I read one of Sonnyboo's blogs that said Robert Rodriquez made 200 shorts before the "accidental" success of EL MARIACHI. That was no accident. Yet, I'm sure a lot of people think that EL MARIACHI looks like crap, but the more you take the budget into account, the better it looks!


Along those lines of Big versus Small, I would say that all the big budget gloss is killing the allure of things we loved as children, that might not succeed as well today - Kirk fighting the lizard man, Lou Ferrigno running around as the Hulk, Steve Austin running in slow motion, etc. I've alway like the low budget charm kind of like movies like LASER BLAST, BASKET CASE, etc. Those kind of productions gave me motivation to eventually try filmmaking for myself. I thought I could do better, right out of the gate, but there's more to it than that.
 
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Yeah, making a film is hard work and it's even harder if you're trying to do it all with no money.

I agree with Alcove's point about patience, but I'll also add that a lot of it comes from people trying to do everything themselves. I've never been on a set with less than a certain amount of people, but I know there are those who make movies with simply themselves as crew, or them and one or two other people.

I feel like it could easily become a big juggling act - you can't make a great movie by yourself simply because you're stretching yourself too much. You can hardly worry about the audio and where the boom is placed when you're focussing on getting the performance and framing right, and trying to remember the exposure triangle, and trying to find the ISO button on your new camera...

Or, let's say you do get a few people doing jobs around your set, but you can't find anyone too experienced unless you pay them. Do you spend 4 hours tweaking the lighting until it's just right, or do you simply shoot the shots you need so that you've got them and can actually get the thing finished?

It takes a long time to shoot a film, even with an experienced crew. I'd struggle to get 20 setups in a 10-hour day, but we do as much as we can, and I know that I (if I'm DPing, otherwise the DP if I'm ACing) have sat down with the 1st AD and discussed the schedule, worked it out and made sure we don't have too much scheduled for any day, and that the schedule works and is accomplishable (is that a word?). I can imagine on micro budget sets where you don't even have an AD how any semblance of schedule could quite easily fall apart and that you could end up taking way too long on anything, and end up havign to just get what you can because x actor isn't available for the next xx days, or has work on for the next 4 weeks or whatever.

When you're paying people, they've made a commitment to your set, and you know you can schedule a full 35 days without issue to get the film shot.

This is why I strongly recommend getting a Producer and 1st AD. Let someone else take care of it and work it all out. Let someone else sort out the schedule. As the Director, you want to be focussing on the story and performance on set, you don't want to be worrying that you've only got two hours and 7 shots to do.
 
londonfilmmaker said:
First thing that jumps out at me from 99% of what is posted in the 'Screening Room' section is the poor quality image and the lack of a 'filmic' look. Your GH2 or your T2i might produce a decent image - but it's not a filmic image unless you have access to ridiculously expensive primes/cinema lenses which cost 10x the cost of the body.
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It's the user, not the tool.

Ask yourself: is it really the quality from the camera that makes a poor image, or do the bad lighting and bad sound cause more damage? I've seen some pretty impressive stuff shot on DSLR cameras, but those productions took the time to deal with both visuals and sound. And you don't have to have expensive primes to make something that can connect with an audience.

Poor sound will kill an image much faster than slightly-soft focus or slightly-off exposure. The audience will forgive flaws in what they see before they'll forgive crappy sound. So, there's that. But what makes all these web-posted indie productions bad? (In no particular order...)

- Bad sound (both production and post, or lack thereof)
- Bad lighting
- Bad directing
- Bad acting
- Bad editing
- Bad scripts

Any one of those can kill a production on its own, but often there are a few of them working together.

But making bad indie films and really analyzing what makes them bad (pick from the list above) really will help you learn... as long as you not only identify what killed the project but also research and learn how not to make that mistake again.
 
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Okay, let's say you are an unmitigated genius - Ford, Fleming, Hitchcock, Coppola and Spielberg all rolled into one. It's not going to do you one damned bit of good unless you practice incredible amounts of patience. I'm sure that not one of those directors ever said, "Oh, forget about it, that's good enough." For someone like that it is NEVER good enough. But one of the major reasons that they never have to settle is that they preproduce the living hell out of everything that they do.
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Though it does depend on your directors style too. From everything I've read about Spielberg, the last thing that most people would call him is patient. Unless it's a key shot, he rarely has a second take. He doesn't work to perfection, he works to his experience of whether the shot is good enough to for the desired reaction. Spielberg also likes to work with the same people over and over again so help increase his efficiency. Yes, Jaws went over time and budget by (if I remember right) 90 days / 7 mil so he does have the necessary discipline required to complete the job properly.

Also from what I've read, Coppola is a perfection freak driving patience to new heights. He's ultra patient. He'll spend as much time as he's able to squeeze to get things perfect.

There's a difference between getting things right and getting things perfect. You need to have things right. You don't need perfection. You can imagine how happy the studio executives are when they hear "We're going to need another 30 days. I gotta get the closing scene just right". Oh, that's right, we're talking independents ;)

I don't think patience is the right attribute to value above all else. Leadership, knowledge, application, discipline, vision and the determination to get that vision is probably a better way to look at it. I think patience is important, but I don't think it's lack of patience that leads independents to create poor products. It's more going to be lack of leadership, knowledge, the application of that knowledge, discipline, lack of vision and lack of determination that hurts independents.
 
Kind of a tangent, but on the director style/patience thing.
I heard a story that, I believe it was Woody Allen, will sometimes write a scene in the script he has no intention of using. It will be scheduled as the first scene of the shoot. They will get all set up for the master and after Take 1, "Perfect, that's it, wrap and let's move on to scene 2".

The intent being to impress on the actors/crew that you better bring the A game to every take. We're not gonna run this thing 15 times for you to work it out with the camera rolling. Treat every take as if it may be your last shot at it.
 
Gonzo_Entertainment said:
Kind of a tangent, but on the director style/patience thing.
I heard a story that, I believe it was Woody Allen, will sometimes write a scene in the script he has no intention of using. It will be scheduled as the first scene of the shoot. They will get all set up for the master and after Take 1, "Perfect, that's it, wrap and let's move on to scene 2".

The intent being to impress on the actors/crew that you better bring the A game to every take. We're not gonna run this thing 15 times for you to work it out with the camera rolling. Treat every take as if it may be your last shot at it.
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Awesome!
 
The real issue is the blind leading the blind. The small filmmaker lacks the experience to get the proper help to make a great film and is all too often the victim of vultures who BS their way onto a production to rip off a small filmmaker with shotty work.
 
"Reel Talent" has the USC thesis films of a bunch of great directors... very uplifting. A couple of them REALLY suck :)
 
If you ever find yourself 100% totally and completely satisfied with anything that you've done, don't ever do that again because you can never improve.
 
Gonzo_Entertainment said:
I find that with time (a year or so) you can go back and actually see the good. Right after it's finished I only see the bad.
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Are you saying that you have ever done anything creatively that you look back on and can honestly say that, if you had it to do over again, would not change a single thing? If so, you are a far better creator than I.
 
For a lo/no budget filmmaker all you gotta do is NOT DO whatever I'm b!tching about in this thread: http://www.indietalk.com/showthread.php?t=44510

Largely, nubie filmmakers have no idea about how to write a story within their technical and artistic means.


Can you get a single image on disk (not much lo/no budget "film" these days) that looks good?
Just one d@mn image? A photograph.
Yeah?

Can you capture movement of a character or two having an interesting interaction?
Yeah?

Can you do that while collecting d@mn good audio?
Yeah?

There. Then that's all you need.
If you can do it once then you can do it twice, and three times, and four-hundred and three times.

So, you'd better have a d@mn interesting story to tell, otherwise distributors WON'T give a sh!t what you've shot with whatever super-duper or PoS camera and audio gear you have.


If you're ugly you had better be rich or funny.
 
rayw said:
So, you'd better have a d@mn interesting story to tell, otherwise distributors WON'T give a sh!t what you've shot with whatever super-duper or PoS camera and audio gear you have.
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Said it before, I'll say it again: Distributors don't give a shit about interesting stories. They care about films that are marketable. Your film can have the stupidest story ever told; if it's marketable, you'll get distribution. Simple as that.
 
HunterF said:
Do you have a link to those? would love to see them
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Sorry, I don't. I tried to find them, but they've been removed. Wise move. When I first saw them, I created a thread to share the one that was most ridiculous. It was basically just one really long fart joke, poorly-filmed, and not even slightly funny.

And I say all of this, obviously, as absolutely no slight against Aronofsky. I loved his last film, and he's definitely earned his place in Hollywood. I just think it's nice to know that great filmmakers aren't born great. There's some work involved, and humble beginnings shouldn't discourage anyone! :)
 
CF and Scoopic won the thread already. You can talk all you want from the sidelines, come play on the field and your conversation changes.

Until then, well keep talking while others keep doing. People may or may not purchase your finished picture, but nobody buys what doesn't exist to be sold.


On the topic of Blackmagic, sorry guys, but yeah it is several times better than any DSLR out and most prosumer cameras, fs100/700 included. However some of those cameras have more utility, so it's incredible image or great features like slow mo or built in NDs.

Speaking from experience, shooting with two Blackmagics today and have web usin it for a month or so now. Have shot with nearly very digital camera out there high and low low low end.
 
Kholi said:
On the topic of Blackmagic, sorry guys, but yeah it is several times better than any DSLR out and most prosumer cameras, fs100/700 included. However some of those cameras have more utility, so it's incredible image or great features like slow mo or built in NDs.

Speaking from experience, shooting with two Blackmagics today and have web usin it for a month or so now. Have shot with nearly very digital camera out there high and low low low end.
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Hi, Kholi. I love your reels and trailer. I've been following your posts on the BMCC with great interest. For the greenscreen and post FX I do, I like the color space and resolution. I can deal with the battery limitation and crop factor.
 
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