.
A few weeks ago we were hoping to shoot our newest short film: "UNDEADline". However, as things often go in this industry - especially in the low/no-budget arena - there were scheduling problems with the actors that prevented us from moving forward with the project.
The good news is that everyone is now on board and we've confirmed a shooting schedule! The Gods of Filmmaking are smiling on us again!
We thought it would be of interest to take you through the unique NeuralNet approach to guerrilla filmmaking and outline the process we go through to actually produce a film.
The film in this case is "UNDEADline"; a roughly 4 minute short involving a TV show and zombies (without giving too much away here)!
Since we're storytellers, we start with the script. Some people just charge in with an idea and start filming, like David Lynch (one of our favorite directors). Lynch has also said that he'll "...never do another film without a script." (yeah, right!)
If you're not familiar with scriptwriting, we can recommend a couple of books that we found to be highly informative and easy to digest: "The Foundations of Screenwriting" by Syd Field (a little old school, but a very productive process) and "Crafty Screenwriting" by Alex Epstein. And for proper script formatting and all that, we find it most efficient to do it manually in Microsoft Word as opposed to a 'scriptwriting program'. As for actually writing the screenplay... well, that's up to you now, isn't it!
Now that we have a script, we start to think in terms of crew and locations. Being a no-budget shoot this time around, our crew is minimal... basically the Director (doing double duty as cameraman), make-up and the actors. Since we're planning to do blood FX in post, we're not too worried about props at this point (although we may colour a head of cauliflower red to stand-in for a brain).
Our location needs for "UNDEADline" were simple: One vacant house, for both exteriors and interiors. And we were fortunate to have a friend with just such a house for our use.
It's taken us about 6 weeks to write the script, cast and set a confirmed shooting date. And 3 of those weeks were used to find a time when we could get the whole cast together at once (no-budget, remember)!
And now we're off to the scheduled PRODUCTION MEETING and SHOOT, which will be the subject of part 2 of this article. - Nik Poliwko
** For more on "UNDEADline" see "Zombie Summers" (June) and "The Gods of Filmmaking" (July) on this blog.
A few weeks ago we were hoping to shoot our newest short film: "UNDEADline". However, as things often go in this industry - especially in the low/no-budget arena - there were scheduling problems with the actors that prevented us from moving forward with the project.
The good news is that everyone is now on board and we've confirmed a shooting schedule! The Gods of Filmmaking are smiling on us again!
We thought it would be of interest to take you through the unique NeuralNet approach to guerrilla filmmaking and outline the process we go through to actually produce a film.
The film in this case is "UNDEADline"; a roughly 4 minute short involving a TV show and zombies (without giving too much away here)!
Since we're storytellers, we start with the script. Some people just charge in with an idea and start filming, like David Lynch (one of our favorite directors). Lynch has also said that he'll "...never do another film without a script." (yeah, right!)
If you're not familiar with scriptwriting, we can recommend a couple of books that we found to be highly informative and easy to digest: "The Foundations of Screenwriting" by Syd Field (a little old school, but a very productive process) and "Crafty Screenwriting" by Alex Epstein. And for proper script formatting and all that, we find it most efficient to do it manually in Microsoft Word as opposed to a 'scriptwriting program'. As for actually writing the screenplay... well, that's up to you now, isn't it!
Now that we have a script, we start to think in terms of crew and locations. Being a no-budget shoot this time around, our crew is minimal... basically the Director (doing double duty as cameraman), make-up and the actors. Since we're planning to do blood FX in post, we're not too worried about props at this point (although we may colour a head of cauliflower red to stand-in for a brain).
Our location needs for "UNDEADline" were simple: One vacant house, for both exteriors and interiors. And we were fortunate to have a friend with just such a house for our use.
It's taken us about 6 weeks to write the script, cast and set a confirmed shooting date. And 3 of those weeks were used to find a time when we could get the whole cast together at once (no-budget, remember)!
And now we're off to the scheduled PRODUCTION MEETING and SHOOT, which will be the subject of part 2 of this article. - Nik Poliwko
** For more on "UNDEADline" see "Zombie Summers" (June) and "The Gods of Filmmaking" (July) on this blog.
1 comment:
.......kewl.
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