Planning Your Shoot

How do you plan your shoot?

So, you’ve got your script.  You’ve structured your short story around items that are easily available.  Now’s the time to jump into planning your shoot or pre-production.  Pre-production is planning the execution of your movie and how you’re going make it happen.  You may be doing a short film or a full-length feature and most likely you’re on a limited budget.  The only way that you’re going to be able FINISH it and not spend more money than you wanted to and that is to have done your diligence in pre-production.  It’s very easy to go over budget and run out of time if you’ve over looked something in pre-production.  It’s easier to throw money at it to fix it when you’re in the heat of filming than to take the time to find a creative way to fix it (time that you’re most likely not going to have). 

See Jungle Full Line of Software

Start with the four major things:

Who:  What people are going to be involved, both cast and crew?

What:  What are you shooting?  Do you have a script?

When:  How many days are you going to shoot?  When are you going to shoot?  Does your script call for a specific season or seasonal setting?

Where:  What are your locations?  How many are there and what will you need to your whole company (all people involved) to these locations.

The more detailed your planning before you shoot, the smoothly your shoot will actually go!

See the full line of props at the The Maverick Store.

Scriptwriting Basics

A script is basically a blueprint for your movie. In today's segment we go over the over the mechanics of writing a script.

Four Basic Items

1. Who your characters are...
2. What they do...
3. Where they go...
4. What they say...

-DON'T let the fact that you might not be comfortable with script writing stop you from getting out there and shooting the idea in your head.

STORY IS STILL KING!  Don't let anyone ever tell you different!  Dito Montiel wrote the script for “A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints” on a Steno Pad (he did all of his rewrites from scratch on the same Steno Pad).



Here are some options on scriptwriting software & homework "Save the Cat":


      


Click here to download the Screenplay Template.

And make sure you copyright your work!

Scriptwriting- Finding Ideas

The easiest movies to make are the ones where you don't have to go very far to shoot.  When looking for inspiration, look around you...literally "look around you".  There is something right now, that could be used in your movie.  Build your script or outline around things that are easily accessible to you.  For example, if you want to shoot an action movie, but don't have access to any guns, you can go out and buy some plastic ones (or Airsoft, they look real enough to pass on camera), but ask yourself a question, "Do my characters have to use guns?"

Get creative, think outside the box and you can come up with a great story that will really blow people away and look like you spent a fortune.  That's call "production value" and the more production value that you can squeeze out of every frame in your movie the better it will be received by your audience.

Go to "The Maverick Store" and see our props, including Air Soft Guns.

Check out "Scriptwriting- Basic" for more on scriptwriting.