The knowledge of film making is not enough to create a good movie producer. This quality might be good if you are a studio executive, or in any other job out of film making production. To be a good producer you need to develop certain skills, for you to become an independent film maker.

The first and most important skill is organization. You may already have this skill, and frankly it is not an easy skill to teach or learn, but you can learn to become more organized. If you have trouble remembering where you put your wallet or the last time you had the oil changed in the car, you will need some help in this area. Buy a book on how to get organized or take a class in organization. Do what you think best, but get organized.

The second skill is the ability to make quick decisions. No matter how well your plans have been laid, there are a lot of gray areas and changes that can come up during filming. You will run into decisions that need to be made right now. You can develop this skill by realizing from the start that you are in charge, and you will be making all of the decisions, any mistakes that are made, you will be making. If the decisions are wrong you will know it soon enough. As the film maker you must act decisively, accepting blame when necessary, the members of your cast and crew will go along with what you say.

The third skill is the ability to be a good negotiator. You will find that you will be making decisions about everything on the set. Everything will usually need to be negotiated. When rates are negotiated, know the top price you can pay for any one item according to your budget. Try to lower that by 20 or 30 percent by negotiation, you really need to keep yourself in the know. One thing to remember, if you don’t negotiate the right price you can decline the item and look elsewhere for it.

The fourth skill is one of diplomacy. Film makers need to keep a close reign on gossip and rumors. You may have to step in the middle of feuds and conflicts. The trick is to remedy the situation without taking sides. You need to practice diplomacy every working day.

To be a great film maker, you will need to have plenty of energy. Caffeine may help you wake up in the morning, but you will need real energy if you are going to make it through the duration of the film. You need to eat well and make sure you take vitamins to keep yourself from breaking down with the long working days.

When you have mastered these five basics of a film making producer, you will be able to use your knowledge of the film making process and produce a great independent film.

Without the camera there is no film, no movie to make. If you start making film on a regular basis you will learn to capture image with a number of different cameras. You will have your favorite but there will be many different ones that you have to hold. At a certain point using film became all but obsolete and digital took over. The introduction of the digital camera made capturing image infinitely easier.

Film cameras are good to work with in the beginning because they teach you how to use a lens. You learn about depth of field and how so push and pull focus plus a variety of other things that you will use when directing the camera. I like to think of using actual film as more organic. The image is a bit hazy and lacks that artificial crispness that a digital image can have. However there is no denying that digital is immediately gratifying.

In the beginning digital was no match for film, but the technicians tweaked it until they developed cameras that are amazing. Film has been relegated to high art and now we have no second thoughts about shooting in digital over film. The costs of processing are totally absent when you use digital to shoot. Getting your film developed was so expensive that in many cases it was prohibitive, but now there are completely acceptable digital cameras in a variety of cost ranges.

Find a digital video camera and a tripod to work with. You will need a tripod with fairly thick legs for sturdiness and a good fluid head for panning. Also before you buy your tripod, make sure that the camera releases from the tripod easily and quickly. You will want a camera that has a good battery system for remote shooting.

There are, any number of great digital cameras out there. You should be able to find a decent camera to shoot action between $500-$800. If you can manage to scrape together $1,000 a good camera is the Samsung VP X220L camcorder with wired external lens. This camera has a neat compact body and it is very durable. A testament to this fact is that this camera was used in the Jack Ass show.

Do some product research, buy your camera and start shooting. Handle your camera so you know just how to pan and focus with the equipment you will be using. Play it back and see how it handles different lighting levels and shutter speeds. Check out how it focuses automatically and practice a bit of manual focusing.

I suggest that you start carrying a camera and building an image bank. An image bank will give you basic generic images that you will need to use as cutaways and various other functions in your film. Learn to look at things through the lens. Direct and build different scenes in the frame and shoot them in still photography first. Before you start production of the actual film, practice shooting with your new camera. You can shoot your crew and the talent. Shoot anything that moves until you get it down.

One thing I have learned from friends who have made independent films is that you have to start promoting your film the minute it is complete… as a matter of fact, don’t wait, as soon as you have a title run with it. This is your baby, your little brain-child so get out there and promote. Large studios have their own publicity departments but the little guy or gal has nothing but their reputation by word of mouth. In order to build that rep you have to work at it and there are various tools that you have available to you.

Previously there were only billboards or newspapers, and later on there was the television to get the word out there about your film. These were actually fairly costly and only the studios could truly afford these avenues. The rise of Internet has impacted marketing of independent film and the entire film industry as whole. There are so many different promotional tools that it offers you, it is hard to choose. The best thing to do is hit them all because you will need them.

When you are at the beginning stages of making your film start a blog. Once you have that going and you are making regular entries turn your attention to making a logo and then a website. The logo will carry though to many other things but for the moment it will help in making your website come together visually. There are services out there that will make a logo for you but, as in all things, it is always better if you do it yourself. The website can be made by you as well. There any number of sites out there that offer domains and website building tools.

Once you have built yourself a website then you can submit it to a search engine. Make T-shirts and hats with your film logo on them. A friend put her logo on panties and sold them. More girls bought those panties. These items made enough money to help her get through post-production. So, after you have made the regular website go to Myspace and build a Myspace page for your film. After the Myspace page is done, put something up on YouTube. These are all free for the most part so take advantage of them. Music artists have used Myspace to promote their music and it has worked really well so why not use it for the purposes of promoting film.

One of the more simple things you can do is to find someplace small that shows your type of film and will be willing to let you show your film. Make some eye-catching fliers and post them at the local college. There is usually an area for student public postings and fliers are all over these boards. College students love to see new and different material so if you can draw them in to view your film, that is a very effective way to build a following (dare I say cult film) especially if your film is quirky.

This about exhausts all the free or ultra cheap methods of promotion. Once you have your film to the point where you can do a premiere showing, you can consider preparing Media Kits to distribute to the local TV and radio stations. If you have gotten this big with your movie then you might even need a publicist. Now things are on a roll. Next stop, distribution

Many people don’t realize that a movie review is just one person’s opinion, on one particular day, and ascribe a larger value to the reviews. They think that somehow, the critic writing (or speaking/filming) the review has an insider perspective on whether a film is inherently “good” or “bad”.

What they don’t think about are all the factors which can lead a critic or reviewer to value a certain aspect of one movie over that of another, or the fact that there could be any number of things going on to influence the critic’s opinion of the piece.

In an ideal world, a professional critic is someone who can separate their own personal prejudices and tastes from the inherent value of a film, and evaluate a cinematic work on its own merits and based on its own intentions. This is one of the things that separates professional movie reviews from amateur hobbyists, who ply their opinions both on- and off-line and are often not able to make judgments of a) what the film they’ve watched is trying to communicate and b) whether it was successful based on that initial desire to communicate an idea. (more…)

In the years following the rise of the various social revolutions that took place in this country and abroad, the making of film changed vastly from the old world of film studio dominance to the exciting world of independent film. In the 50’s, 60’s and even 70’s, independent film was synonymous with Underground film, art film, and foreign film.
Simply defined, a film that is independent is a film made outside of the umbrella of the studio without the funding or distribution options offered.

Producing a film independently has become quite popular, and this is due to the public no longer being satisfied with the Hollywood formula. The audiences of today have become much more sophisticated and expect something different and new every time they sit down to watch a film. The old Hollywood formula just doesn’t cut it anymore for entertainment. It has been too predictable for film buffs. We look for cutting edge, quirky and groundbreaking films.

However, the most important aspect of independent film is that anyone with a song in their heart and the burning desire to make a film can now do so. We have the new technologies to thank for this as well as the public’s yearning for raw footage with a gritty storyline. So this means you can achieve your dream of making a film, and you don’t have to be a big film studio to get it made. It also means that you have the joys of the financial headaches and creative challenges.

There are three main phases of making a film: pre-production, production, and post-production. There might also be a 4th phase: distribution (if you’re lucky). The longest phase of making a film is pre-production. This is also the most important part of the production, because it is what makes the film. Without good planning it will be difficult to get anything off the ground.

While you don’t really need one, it is good to have a script. So in the beginning you have to have a story, a concept, or an idea. Once you have one, you can move on to all other modes of production planning. Of course, there are several ways you can tell your story, but in filmmaking there are two main classes of film. These would be the short film and the feature length film. It is usually better to start off with a short film rather than a feature length film, and if you are a film student, you rarely have time to produce feature length films.

A professional screenplay is typically scripted for a run time of 90 minutes in three acts. Each act is approximately 30 pages long, and each page is the screen equivalent of one minute. This is a timing consideration that is more typical of the American film industry than it is of the rest of the world film making community. European films have less restrictions concerning film length. Rather, they have the tendency to let the film unfold and tell itself, allowing however much time it takes to tell the story.

Once you have written your screenplay, if you have no immediate plans for production it is best to write a treatment, which best describes the film in a nice neat three-page write-up. These three pages represent one act of your screenplay in a treatment, and is the format commonly acceptable to shop your screenplay. Very often, this is all that gets read, and can make or break your screenplay’s acceptance. However, for the independent filmmaker, all you need is a working script and you are on your way!