I was in your same situation in high school. I went the attempt at a horror feature route. It was a wonderful learning experience but a major headache. If i had to do it again i would start with some shorts then later move to a feature. So start with doing some shorts. Ideally you want to do shorts that are similar to your feature or the genre your feature will be in.

As for the type of feature i would say start with horror. Not because it will be easy to make a solid and actually scary movie but because i think it is easier for the actors to do a horror then a drama. Drama is harder to pull off acting wise because if your actors arent good at drama it really shows through but if you do a horror and they are cheesy or not entirely dramatic enough thats ok cause well...its a horror and cheesy horrors are generally expected at the indie level, especially for indie filmmakers first movie. I think its easier, from a directors standpoint, to cover up the bad acting with scary shots and decent spfx then in a drama, since dramas tend to be dialogue driven which requires solid actors.

No you don't need more than one camera. It would help but is not needed. In order to get the different angles there are a couple ways to do this:
1)do the whole scene a couple times from different angles.
2)plan ahead and know exactly what lines you want from each shot and get that
3)same as #2 except be a little more easy going and just know "i want from roughly here to here from this shot"

"Anyone who has ever been privileged to direct a film also knows that, although it can be like trying to write 'War and Peace' in a bumper car in an amusement park, when you finally get it right, there are not many joys in life that can equal the feeling." - Stanley Kubrick

On the other hand, be aware that there's a huge glut of bad horror movies right now, so don't expect any kind of distribution unless you make a good one :).

Thanks rob and mark, this helps. You give great advice!

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If you killed the butler, who killed you?

I'd start with a day in the life of a highschool kid. Just shoot a lot of footage of you guys messing around and talking shit and whatever. Unscripted, probably most of it will be unusable, but you'll get used to being in front of and around a camera. You'll start to see what kind of camera work sucks and what works nicely. You'll learn how to edit. You may come up with gold like that movie 13 there are a lot of people interested in the sort of unglossed reality of kids that is hidden from parents a lot of the time.

You might even be able to come up with a monologue that stitches together the footage into some kind of story. Or you might just have a learning experience. The nice thing about video cameras is you can reuse the tape once you've downloaded it so cost is minimal.

Also if you and your friends do anything illegal and shooting it I'd reconsider.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

If you really want to hoot a movie with script and all I'd suggest a comedy along the lines of clerks. Verbal humor requires minimal budget.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA