I am really enthusiastic to make my own film, but unfortunately, budget cuts in.
Just wondering if any body thinks that it is even feasible to make a film with what I have. I'm hoping it would be about an hour long, and we would produce it over the next 2 summers. It would be a drama, with a few action scenes, somewhat like a combination of The Manchurian Candidate and Munich... Kind of that feel, not anything like the story.
Current Materials:
-A Sony DCR DVD 405 Camcorder
-About $3000 spending between 5 of us.
-Adobe Primere Pro 2
-Adobe After Effects Pro
Any suggestions on which equipment we should purchase?
And one more thing, over half of our scenes will be night scenes, just for your information.
?hah?
?hah?
A DVD camcorder isn't the best thing to use. The video image is highly compressed making editing difficult. It's much better to shoot onto tape than DVD.
Don't forget sound. You will need to get the microphone in close to the actors in order to not get a lot of ambient noise - the farther away the mic is, the more extra noise you will get.
Then there's lighting. Especially shooting at night, lighting is very important. There are some great threads here on the boards about both sound (microphones and boom poles) and inexpensive lighting. You should check them out.
=============================================
The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.
Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)
=============================================
The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.
Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)
if you have camera support and lighting covered you could pull it off.
Would you guys suggest that I get a new camera, or spend my money on other equiptment?
Any suggestions on city night shots?
?hah?
?hah?
In my opinion a MiniDV camcorder would be your first priority. Next would be getting a decent boom mic. I've often heard that an audience will forgive a bad picture, but not bad sound ? and I believe it?s true.
Under the best circumstances, your camcorder probably won?t shoot very well at night (lots of noise). You should consider shooting ?day for night.? You would shoot during the day and then change it to look like night in post-production. Here?s a brief tutorial for doing the effect on a still image and most of the steps can be easily applied in After Effects:
http://www.effectlab.com/tutfullmoon.php
Hope this helps.
Dan Rahmel
Author: "Nuts and Bolts Filmmaking"
Free scripts, templates, film glossary, and know-how,
check out: http://www.cvisual.com
Defianately upgrade camera first so you are shooting onto DV, if you can afford it in your budget. And then you will probably need a tripod at minimum for camera support and some decent mics. Then you should be set.
