no budget movie making site

[Cole McDonald]

I've just finished principal photography on a micro-budget feature length movie. I've posted the entire gamut of behind the scene photos link off our front page. I've also got my cameraside checklist and microbudget howto's up there for your reading pleasure...production diaries (they went woefully out of date as our schedule slid), some clips, cast and crew photos...lots of fun stuff.

This was a learning project, I took this on to learn to make movies, I feel that I have succeeded in that goal. Our photographer is new to his craft as well, so the shots improve temporaly, his next big step is turning off auto-focus :)

thanks for your time.

[Cole McDonald]

oh, yeah...let me know what you think off the stuff I've written there. I've gotten absolutely no feedback. contact me either here or through the contact link on my site.

[Walter J Walsh]

Cole,

I just watch the teaser for your movie. Looks very nice.

I haven't had a chance to read over your production diaries. But I am intrested in evetually doing my own movie and will definitely be back to read them to get some pointers.

[Cole McDonald]

Originally Posted by Walter J Walsh

Cole,
I just watch the teaser for your movie. Looks very nice.

Thank you very much, I do have a version that will be going up soon with music I have permission for :). I wanted to make a movie that had some commercial appeal and that my pre-teen kids could watch. So I forwent the usual Indie film topics and produced a romantic comedy with a twist at the end to keep it interesting. The hardest part I found was finding a way to get the story in my head to read well in camera. The relationship of a single shot to the whole of the story is painfully easy to lose track of on set. We ended up doing alot of rewrites to get the story to align with what was already on tape.

Originally Posted by Walter J Walsh

I haven't had a chance to read over your production diaries. But I am intrested in evetually doing my own movie and will definitely be back to read them to get some pointers.

It'll be there for you as will the people on the online forums. I visit three of them for answers, this is my technical answers and ideas forum. I also have one for production/story help and another for purely inspirational input. I'm a moderator on the other two :)

[Ainslie Davies]

Looks good especially for microbudget. I love your french flag taped to the camera! I would like to see a trailer soon as the teaser looks good. What mic is lurking under that wind cover?

Edit: Just saw that it was an ATR55, how is that mic standing up for film as it is in the lower end of the price range but looks interesting for projects/films like this.

[Rand Blair]

Cole, thanks for boing through the effort to put that together. I am teaching a few Ugandan recruits the art in addition to running Big Heart productions in East Africa and will gladly pass this on th them.

Rand




____________________________________________________________

failure can not contend with persistence

[Rand Blair]

Cole McDonald I've just finished principal photography on a micro-budget feature length movie.

Cole, thanks for going through the effort to put that together. I am teaching a few Ugandan recruits the art in addition to running Big Heart productions in East Africa and will gladly pass this on th them.

Rand




____________________________________________________________

failure can not contend with persistence

[Cole McDonald]

Originally Posted by Ainslie Davies

Looks good especially for microbudget. I love your french flag taped to the camera! I would like to see a trailer soon as the teaser looks good. What mic is lurking under that wind cover?

Edit: Just saw that it was an ATR55, how is that mic standing up for film as it is in the lower end of the price range but looks interesting for projects/films like this.

once I figured out how to connect it to my camera properly, I'm getting great sound out of it. I'm sure some would disagree, but I paid $25 open box at best buy for it, I'm not complaining. It's got enough of the gravelly bass and the crispy highs to make me happy about the quality. That wind cover (if you missed it) is two pieces of gutter screen wired together with costume fur to cover, the shock mount is made from 4 chopsticks and 4 rubber bands. The whole assembly cost me <$20 to make. I wired in the bottom half of a microphone mount that cam with the microphone and screwed it onto a 3/8" flare to 1/2" pipe adaptor to attach it to a 16' aluminum painters pole. I've got an Audio Technica wireless system I'm using to get the sound from the end of the pole to the camera...works like a champ:

http://www.yafiunderground.com/phpsl..../Images/blimp

The pole in those pix is just a mike boom stand...it's kinda heavy - I apologize to my boom operators.

Originally Posted by rand blair

Cole, thanks for going through the effort to put that together. I am teaching a few Ugandan recruits the art in addition to running Big Heart productions in East Africa and will gladly pass this on th them.

Awesome, I come from a long line of educators, it's good to know I'm helping expand knowledge for someone. I'm excited to see what you and your recruits come up with :)

[Cole McDonald]

I have a quick preview up of where I'm going with my Turnkey movie making pages:

http://www.yafiunderground.com/Turnkey/tkoutline.txt

My goal is 1 paragraph per topic and pictures to illustrate the point, one point at a time. No overwhelming amounts of info to sift through, just useful "do this" kind of information that I couldn't find online when I was learning this stuff...I had to wade through tons of technical/artistic theory crap to get to "point a light here, point the camera here".

I hope to put up the most complete and immediately useful tutorial on the web for complete beginners who just want to make a movie by themselves without having to wade through block diagrams of compression algorithms and optical algebra to be able to set their friend in front of the camera and have them deliver some lines.

Let me know what you think if you will, I'd love to have feedback from whomever chooses to give it. I take both positive and negative in stride, so fire away.