Filmmakers Struggling to Make Their Short Film

1. Get Your Head Out of the Clouds

It’s okay to set lofty goals and have grand aspirations, but the worst thing that you can do is go into the process wide-eyed with high expectations. You need to be realistic. You need to stay grounded. The moment you begin to believe that your projects will get fully financed by approaching venture capitalists, local doctors or dentists (local rich people in general), investors, or through pre-sale distribution, is when you’ll soon realize that what you’ve read in a lot of independent filmmaking books is a myth.

2. Know the Responsibilities of Crowd Funding and Know It’s Likely a One Time Deal

The filmmakers that are successful in crowd funding know that it is a full-time, pride swallowing pit of a desperation and despair.

You need to be overly and ridiculously active on Facebook, Twitter, and any other social media outlet that I’m too old to know. It’s 30-40 some days of endless Facebook posts, Tweets, and emails — all of which have you begging not just strangers, but mostly friends, family, and relatives — for money. You will be overtaking their social media feed with countless requests for money from them and from everyone they know and you can’t let up for one single day or night until you’ve met or surpassed your dollar amount goal because remember, if you don’t raise the full amount, you don’t get one single penny and all of your work is for naught.

3. Audition, Audition, Audition

You don’t need people to just say the lines — you need actors.

It’s one thing to use your friends and family (i.e. free labor) as grips and PAs. It’s a whole different thing to utilize them as your cast. Bad acting will kill a short film the moment it shows up on the screen and audiences can smell a bad and self-aware actor a mile away.

Your casting, especially for your lead(s), will be everything in the end — for you can shoot an amazing performance on a simple stage and still make it compelling. A great actor will draw an audience in with their performance.

So go to your local universities and theater companies. Find the nearest talent agencies that handle booking models and actors for local commercials and print. Put ads online and in the paper. The actors will come. They’ll come from near and far if you play your cards right. They’ll come for the chance to act out their passions and they’ll come for the opportunities to add to their resume and reel.

4. Create a Compelling Cinematic Experience

The lighting, lenses, and camera work is so utterly important with short films. If you can create something that looks feature worthy, you’ll be doing yourself and your actors a grand favor. And yes, while some screenwriters will hate this fact, in short films the visuals are sometimes more important than the depth of story. So many great short scripts have been so utterly undersold by pour production value and lackluster visuals.

So find the most visually enticing locations you can. Hire or partner with some talented lighting technicians and an amazing cinematographer —and hope that they have some great equipment. And if they don’t, put a good amount of your budget into finding some through local companies, news stations, or universities. And if you have special effects to deliver in your story, make sure you can truly deliver on them visually.

5. Avoid Cliches and Give Us an Engaging Story 

You as a filmmaker need to stand out amongst the rest, thus your short films need to do the same. There are a belly of short film cliches that haunt each and every film festival, causing the instant eye roll from judges —  but none more than the talking head cliche.

Avoid the talking head short films where characters sit around a table or location and just banter back and forth. It’s a tempting cliche for filmmakers because it’s easy to shoot and usually requires limited locations, however, it gets boring for audiences. And it gets boring fast.

6. Keep the Running Time Short

Short films can be as long as 45 minutes — but please, don’t do that. Not for your first few couples of short films at least. 45 minutes — or even 30 minutes — is a huge commitment for short film audiences and nine times out of ten it’s less about more story and moreso an example of overwriting and over-directing.

You can make a much bigger impact with a shorter running time. And, of course, a shorter running time means that there’s less to film. And when there’s less to film, you can put more focus on those vital story and character moments during production.

7. Feed Your Cast and Crew Well 

A well fed cast and crew is a happy cast and crew. Chances are these people are working for free and they’re setting aside days upon days of shooting, away from their friends, family, jobs, etc. They’re waiting on you to set up shots. They’re doing take after take.

Be sure to put forth a good chunk of your budget for craft services and noteworthy meals. Have a craft service table throughout each shooting day stocked with water, soda, coffee, snacks, and treats — and get a Costco membership to save you tons of money for bulk purchases. If you’re shooting for a full day, be sure to have a substantial lunch break with either a catered hot meal or an excellent sandwich spread, complete with sides and beverages. If you’re on a micro-budget and shooting into the night, there’s nothing better than pizza at the end of a long shooting day, but also mix it up with a fast food run or home-cooked potluck spread.

For more you can check 2D Video Pricing