Equipment for Indie Film Making

Series Summary

The development of film came alongside the rise of America as a world empire. The technology developed in the late 19th to early 20th century and quickly became a staple of modern culture and mass consumption. Many trace the beginning of film to a moment also considered the advent of the comic strip as we know it: Eadweard Muybridge's famous pictures of a horse's stride, which proved that in fact there is a moment when all four hooves are off the ground. This series of photos looked like a comic yet sparked a crazy idea in the minds of other artists: What if we took pictures like that and flashed them in sequence like in children’s flipbooks? The birth of celluloid film ten years later came in Louis Le Prince's "Roundhay Garden Scene."

In this free video series you will get professional advice on producing your own feature film. Indie films are cheaper and easier to make than ever, and the quality of technology out there for home computers and studios means better finished products! Film expert Kevin Lindenmuth will explain to you each phase of the process, from getting equipment to casting, scheduling, finding a crew, and editing. Kevin gives you the wealth of his experience, sharing tips for dealing with actors, getting your film distributed, and which tape formats work best. Watch these today!

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Kevin Lindenmuth. I'm talking about Independent Film Making for Expert Village. For independent film making, you're going to need a camera; a good camera. Pick some type of digital camera. You can get them fairly cheaply. Cameras range from five hundred bucks to; you can spend four thousand dollars if you were going to go do HD. But just make sure you have a good camera. It has a good image. It has enough controls on it and all that. And you want to keep it digital because everything nowadays is digital. So, you have that. If you can't afford a camera, find somebody who has one that's available. Audio's really important. Make sure your record as good sound as possible on your production. And sometimes you can use the camera mic, but I don’t' really recommend it. I guess its okay if your subjects a couple feet away from the camera. But, generally, it's kind of bad to do that. You want another type of mic. If there's a scene between actors and they're talking, you usually can't have a lot of the lyres on them like this because you can see the microphone. If you use them, you'll have to hide them underneath their close and stuff but then you're going to get rustling and all that stuff. Generally, the best thing to do on a production where you have a scene where actors are talking going back and forth, is you have like a boom microphone and what it is; is like a boom, like a pole and they have the microphone on the end of it and somebody is holding it over the actors and stuff and kind of following them around. So, you need somebody just to do that. So, if you're doing camera or not, you're going to need another person just to handle the audio and listen to make sure the audio is good; that there's no background noise. Because the last thing you want to do is when you're finished with your production and you're editing is trying to fix the audio and like re-dub and audio with people. It's a huge hassle. You just don't want to do that. And lights, you just want to make sure you have a couple lights; all of the scenes are brightly lit. A lot of times since our cameras are so good with low light nowadays, some scenes, you might not even have to light. If you're shooting outside, it's not even; you need no lights at all. But just make sure you have a couple lights handy and again you can get professional lights that range in price from a couple hundred dollars each or you can go to a hardware store and get halogen lights or even those scoop lights and just make sure that you're scene is lit well enough. And in addition to your equipment, you're going to need gapers tape or duck tape. You're going to need pens. You're going to need a notebook to keep track of things. So, there's lots of stuff you're just going to need extra. Make sure you have enough tape stock and just make sure you're prepared for anything you might need during the production."