How to Direct Your First Indie Film

If you're finally ready to turn your dream into reality, ready to take the risk, here are a few things to keep in mind after you rent your equipment...

Money Doesn't Make the Movie

If you rent the equipment instead of buying it, you're already saving money. The idea is that, after you've rented out the equipment, you want to try not to spend any money at all. Just spending a little, it gets the ball rolling towards spending more and more money. Try not to spend anything at all. Hollywood solves problems with money, you need to solve the same problems with creativity, because you just don't have the money.

Write What You Have

In novels, you write what you know. For film, you write what you have. When you sign a seven figure contract, you can come up with all the crazy stuff you want, but for now, don't write anything into your script unless you know how you'll film it. This doesn't mean that you can't write a space opera, just that you'd better be ready to build a space station out of macaroni, silver spray paint and super glue. Of course, with cheap consumer grade CGI software, anyone can create Hollywood grade visuals.

Keep Your Cast Small

You'll find soon enough that building sets and getting props and setting up special effects is the easy part. In fact, with consumer grade CGI programs, you can create a big budget film entirely from your laptop... Unless you want to put some characters in the story. Getting actors is the hardest part of making a low or no-budget movie. Even getting your friends to help out can be impossible. The only people you can really rely on are the people who want to make the movie just as bad as you do, someone who helped you write the script or raise the funds to rent the stuff to make the movie with. If all else fails, get some fake mustaches and wigs and play all the characters yourself.

Don't Expect To Make a Mint

Most people don't make much money on their first feature. In fact, most debut features done at the dirt cheap indie level don't turn over a dime. So don't do it for the money. Know that if you stick to it, if you make one movie and then another and then another, you probably will, eventually, earn some fame as a skilled director, but don't do it for that. Do it because you love movies and wanted to make one of your own, do it so you can have, at the very least, a cool DVD on your shelf to commemorate your best-spent-summer ever.

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The film industry has changed throughout the years. Film equipment hire may be easier to get into than you may believe it is.http://www.independentgrip.co.uk/

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