How to Produce Short Films

Are you interested in making movies on your own? It is possible with short film. Creating a full length motion picture will require many people and lots of money. A short film is much cheaper to make. Here’s how to produce and direct short film.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Ability to dream
• Day job (technical or professional preferred)
• Digital video camera
• Medium or high end computer

1. Understand that there is no standard definition for a short film's length. Some definitions define it as 20 to 40 minutes while other descriptions say 1 to 15 minutes. What is certain is that producing a film over 40 minutes will take more time and money. If you do make a 40 minute film, you must be able to edit the movie in case you want to qualify your movie for a contest or film festival that requires a 15 minute motion picture work.

2. 

   Get any college degree or technical degree. The cost of making a movie depends on the effort you want to put in. A three minute film of yourself talking can cost nothing. A 15 minute movie with many actors, stunts, lots of actions, and special effects can make you broke. You will need income to support yourself and get all the equipment and tools you’ll need to make any movie. Being rich or being connected to someone rich will help but many people aren’t so fortunate.

3. 

   Live life to the fullest. If you are a poor moviemaker, working and having a life will allow you to pick up ideas and inspiration for making good stories: fiction or non-fiction.

4. Plan on your how you are going to make your movie, based on the script. Some program or project management skills will help because there are many parts to consider. Each part will require money. Ideas on major areas to consider are below.

5. 

   Write or get a good script. This is a huge starting point. Without a good story to convey in film, no one will be interested in watching your movie. A script format or template can be found in the internet. You can just write the story without any type of structure and put the tale in script format later.

6. 

   Rent or purchase digital video or movie camera equipment. You can buy or borrow a plain digital camera or camcorder that costs less than two hundred dollars or you can buy professional video or film equipment that can cost in the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.

7. 

   Get actors. Your family may be the best slave labor. Friends may require only beer and pizza. You may be lucky to find an amateur or professional actor to volunteer his service. Actors expect to be paid and the rates could be costly, even for voice actors.

8. Obtain a computer with a medium or high end processor for video editing. Video editing software works well on these machines. They will work extremely slow or not at all on cheap computers.

9. Purchase video editing software or film editing equipment. Windows Movie Maker comes free in Microsoft Windows versions released in 2000 and up. Other software can cost anywhere from twenty dollars to hundreds of dollars. Film editing equipment can run in the thousands.

10. 

    Create original music. Having a musical skill would come in very handy. It could be a hassle to legally get permission to use other music artist’s works in your film and share any profits. Even if you are making a film that you don’t intend to sell, using someone else’s music could get you in trouble.

11. Generate original sounds. Treat sounds as you would treat music. Believe it or not, if you use someone else’s sounds in your movie without permission, you could run into legal problems.

12. Uploading film to websites like youtube or revver is easy and free. To sell DVDs in quantities going into the hundreds of copies or more, burning DVDs is time consuming even for a few disks. You will need blank DVDs, DVD cases, a DVD duplicator, printing of DVD case covers, and a machine to put labels on the DVDs and these items will cost a lot of money when you add them together.

13. Determine the locations. Using a home or a backyard from you or someone you know will save you money. If you are going to film in public areas, you may have to get a permit.

14. (Optional) Build the set and get costumes. If you are going to create props and background material, you will need capital. The same goes for costumes.

15. 

    Decide on how to promote or advertise your movie. Word of mouth is cheap but if you want to get the word out to the masses, you’ll have to pay dearly for any type of advertisement. Even if you create a website yourself to promote your film, it will still take time to learn and make a good website. Having good computer or information technology skills will be helpful in this respect.

16. If you use withoutabox to distribute and promote your film, you will have to spend time packaging and shipping to film festivals in the U.S. or around the world. It costs money to ship and enter your film to a festival for screening. If your movie doesn’t get screened, you will not get your money back.

17. Develop a storyboard. You will need to draw the story out to visually plan how each scene will be filmed. This will give you ideas on how to direct the camera to operate (pan, tilt, zoom, etc.) and direct the actors to act.

18. 

    Start shooting. More film is better. If you have multiple angles and extra footage, you may have more options of scenes to incorporate for editing. You don't have to film scenes in order.

19. Put it all together. This can be time consuming. With video editing software, putting different scenes in the order you like can be like making a puzzle. With editing, less is better. If there are parts of the movie that do not add value to the story, you have to cut it out. If the voice is not in synched with mouth movements for some reason, shifting the voice track around could lead to nightmares. Adding sound and special effects will add time.

20. Add music. If done last, putting a music track means that you are close to wrapping up the short film project. However, this task is also time consuming. If you use music loops, you will need to cut the sound to make it fit with a scene. The sound must fade in if cut in the front or fade out if cut at the end, otherwise the music will sound hacked.

21. Be prepared for greater things. Make short films for the love of the art, not for the money. If people become interested in your short subject films, someday people from the movie industry may want you to work on their next full length feature film.

Resources

• A very good resource on making movies
• Resource on producing short film

[southernemma]

on 11/24/2009 Great tips! Thanks for the info and inspiration! 5*

[koopalo]

on 11/20/2009 Nice article! Now I really miss my long lost video camera.

[Aristotleshand]

on 11/14/2009 Terrific article very helpful advice in producing a short film thanks, 5* and a recommendation.

[tundranut]

on 11/2/2009 Great article about How to Produce Short Films. I'm ready, thanks to you! 5*

[midcenturymaven]

on 9/18/2009 I don't have the equipment or manpower to make a short film, but I've always wanted to make a horror movie. I have a wonderfully squeaky bedroom door. It's quite musical and should be recorded for posterity, if nothing else. Thanks for the tips. Added to fav's.