So you think it might be fun to make a film? Did you walk out of the latest lacklustre blockbuster at the multiplex, or arthouse snoozefest at the Nova, and think to yourself: shit, I could do better than that? Maybe you can, kid. Maybe you can.

Once upon a time filmmaking was hard work – and expensive. You needed bulky cameras, expensive editing equipment, and reams of film. The digital revolution has changed all that; now anyone can pick up a half-decent digital camera for a cool half-grand, shoot some footage, edit it at home on their MacBook and upload the result to YouTube.

Making a film has never been easier. As documentary filmmaker Tim Hunter puts it, “Fifteen years ago everyone was in a garage rock band. Now days everyone’s a filmmaker.”

But things may not be quite as straightforward as all that. It may be easier to make a film than ever before – but that doesn’t mean it’s easy…

A RECIPE FOR SUCCESS

“It’s all about the script,” says Kylie Eddy, director of numerous shorts and the feature-length lesbian comedy/drama, This Kiss. “If you don’t have a fantastic script to start with, you’re already setting yourself up for a lot of work, for no good outcome.”

Horror director Stuart Simpson – whose self-funded feature Demonsamongus recently found a world-wide release with cult distributor Troma Entertainment – agrees: “Make sure you’ve got a good script to begin with,” he says. “You can’t fix it in post as much you’d like to think you can.”

A good script not only saves you from trouble down the road, it can also help galvanise the cast and crew that will be essential to your project. Special effects make-up is central to a horror feature like Demonsamongus, and effects artist Nick Kocsis cites the originality and quality of the script as the key reason he signed on to the project.

“I just had so many young directors coming to me with scripts, saying do you want to do this for no money, no budget, and I just turned them all down,” Kocsis says. “Stu was the first person I met where I actually read the script and thought, yeah, this is totally worth doing.”

START SMALL

Most filmmakers will tell you it’s a good idea to cut your teeth on a smaller, more manageable project before you try to take on a full-length feature film. It makes sense – filmmaking is an expensive business, and it can take years to finish a feature, so it’s probably good to dip your toes in the water before you dive in head first.

Still, Nick Verso, director of the shorts Hollow Bones and Hugo, doesn’t entirely agree.

“There’s sort of a notion that if you want to make feature films you’ve got to start with shorts, and there is a lot of merit to that,” says Verso. “But it’s like assuming that if you write full length novels you can also write kid’s picture story books – they’re actually two very different things. I didn’t see the logic of why I should make short films if I wanted to make features.”

Verso had made only a few music videos and an experimental short when he embarked on his first fictional work, the feature-length MAX: A Cautionary Tale.

“I didn’t really have any ideas for short films,” says Verso. “It was pretty foolish, but also good that I just did it.”

LAY THE GROUNDWORK

Okay, so you’ve got your script. You’ve workshopped it and redrafted it, and it’s all looking pretty good. You’ve given some brief thought to who might actually watch the film once it’s made. Time to grab a camera and some actors and shout action, right? Not so fast, bub. There’s a little thing you need to contend with called pre-production.

Pre-production is the planning and logistics stage of the project – scouting for locations, making a shooting schedule, creating that vital budget, and storyboarding (that is, making a visual representation of the script so that you know what to shoot on the day).

This is probably the least enjoyable part of making a film, but any director will tell you that the time spent here is indispensable.

“It’s all in the planning – once it gets going it’s like a runaway train, you just have to go with it!” says Kylie Eddy. And if you haven’t laid the tracks right you might be headed for one hell of a train wreck.

REALITY BITES

Even if you’re making a documentary, work at this early stage will save you a lot of headaches down the road. Tim Hunter, director of Packed Lunch – a short doco about the history of that particularly Aussie article of swimwear, the Speedo – says that being well prepared made his shooting a breeze. “I’d been working on it for probably about three or four months beforehand. I had a fair running order, an idea of the shape that I wanted it to take... I started filming in mid-September, and finished filming all the footage by around mid-November, and then we started editing. It was pretty quick, and I think it was because I knew what I wanted.”

Such forward planning can help you avoid a trap particular to the modern documentary filmmaker: too much freedom. As Hunter says: “I’ve spoken to other documentary filmmakers who have just gone out and got hundreds of hours of footage, and then they don’t know what to do with it.”

PEOPLE WHO NEED PEOPLE

No matter what kind of project you’re embarking on, it’s likely you’re going to need some help along the way. Filmmaking is – by and large – a collaborative exercise, and to be successful you’re going to need to pull off the difficult trick of getting talented and dedicated people to work long hours on your project for little or no money.

“A really important component of any kind of filmmaking, whether DIY or otherwise, is the team behind the director,” says Dean Francis, director of numerous shorts. “Generally what you need to do is inspire people. You need to have the force of personality to convince people that you’re going to make the project a big success.”

Nick Verso concurs. “You’ve got to find a good team of people around you. Film is such a collaborative medium, you can’t really do it on your own.”

However, when it comes to crew, quality is more important than quantity.

“The best thing is to keep the numbers as small as possible, so that you don’t have to rely on too many people,” Verso advises.

GETTING ANIMATED

Of course, if you’re more the solitary type with an artistic bent, you could try working with animation. After all, it worked for Melbourne resident Adam Elliot, whose short Harvie Krumpet won an Academy Award a few years back.

Belgian native Elka Kerkofs, creator of many animated shorts including the highly regarded Filled With Water, first turned to animation when she was living in the remote north of Australia.

“It wasn’t about wanting to do it all myself – I would have loved to work with people – but I was living in Darwin. It was very isolated, there was no film industry.” Another benefit of animation is that it is significantly cheaper to make than live-action films, although be warned – it can take far longer. “The only thing you rely on is your own stamina, your own drive,” says Kerkofs, “and that’s a challenge.”

THE SHOOT

Okay, so you’ve got your crew, you’ve prepped your sets, and it’s finally time to roll cameras. Or, more likely, camera. Assuming you’ve done all your prep and carefully selected the people you’re working with, it should all go pretty smoothly. There’s just a few things to watch out for.

“Don’t skimp on catering!” warns Kylie Eddy. You crew and actors are most probably working for free – you’d better keep them happy and well fed, or you might face morale loss and desertions.

Another danger you can face during shooting – especially if you haven’t prepped adequately – is the temptation to film as much footage as you can.

“The tendency [for inexperienced directors] is to keep shooting, so you find people working 15 hour days for nothing,” says Ben Chessell, director of several short films including a short feature, The Heartbreak Tour.

Remember, pushing your crew too hard is a good way to ensure they don’t come back for the next project.

POST PRODUCTION

You’ve got a pile of footage now, hopefully some of it good. It’s time to hit the MacBook and get editing. You also might want to spend some of the budget here on things like colour grading and getting a good sound mix. You did save some money for post-production, right?

“I pretty much only thought as far as the shoot in terms of budgeting, so once I shot it that was pretty much all the money!” says Nick Verso of shooting his feature MAX. “There was no colour grading and no audio mastering, which are things that I would definitely spend money on now. I think they’re worth their weight in gold.”

AND BEYOND. . .

So, assuming everything has gone more or less to plan, you should have completed your very own piece of cinema history. Congratulations – now you have some hard evidence to back up your claim to be a film director when you’re trying to pick up at parties. So what now?

Well, now the hard work really begins.

Presuming you want to actually get your film out into the public eye, rather than just using it to impress friends and potential bedmates, now you hit the film festival circuit. Which means a lot of filling out entry forms and posting off ‘screeners’ (copies of your film on DVD) to festivals all over the world. Oh, and it’s going to cost more money to enter festivals, to post screeners out, and to make a master of your film to be shown, should you be lucky enough to get into a festival. Whose idea was all this again?

Assuming your finished film is accepted into a few festivals, you can use these as springboards for getting your film distributed (although this generally applies more to features than shorts – so you shorts directors may be off the hook at this point). Says Kylie Eddy: “Once you’ve got your film in a festival, the work has just started.”
 
STILL HERE?

So, still keen to get out there and film your masterpiece? Good. That’s exactly the enthusiasm and doggedness you’re going to need to get the job done. In the words of Nick Verso: “Anyone can sit at Kent Street and talk about making a film, but it takes a certain force of will to actually go out and do it.”