I’ve actually gotten this question a lot as of late. Any time I tell someone about the project, it inevitably comes up. Right after they ask if it’s a short film.

When you get all granular about it, filmmaking is an incredibly complex process, involving many steps that sometimes overlap each other, and many, many different people. However, you can easily boil it down to a few simple steps that, as proven by films like Primer, can be taken by a relatively small group of people:

1. Develop Your Script – Fact is, you can’t even start pre-production without a script.
2. Form The Production Team – Depending on how big or small a role your producers play, this step may be later in the process. For us, it was the first thing we did.
3. Finalize The Budget – Yep. You gotta decide how much this is going to cost. You can’t play this number by ear.
4. Create A Prospectus - This is your plan of attack and is vital to the project. Anyone who feels differently will be cursed to teensy tiny budgets and films that are seen only by a select few people; probably their friends and family.
5. Start A Buzz - Easy enough. Get people talking about your project.
6. Locate Funding – There are a number of sources to fund your film. For us, it’s a combination of grants, donors, investors, and trade.
7. Recruit Crew - Basically, hire or get volunteers to do the various jobs on your set.
8. Scout Locations – Where are you going to shoot this thing? Yeah, that’s pretty important.
9. Cast Your Cast – Actors are a finicky bunch. Get them locked in early.
10. Get Stuff – Equipment, props, costumes…there’s lots of stuff you’ll need, so you better start getting it.
11. Storyboard Your Film – If you’re shooting on film (and you should), or even if you aren’t (really, you should), you should plan out every shot and every shooting day to the last detail. Storyboarding is the way to go.
12. Shoot It – This is the fun part.
13. Edit It – Cut it all down, line it all up, and make something pretty out of all your footage.
14. Score It – Gotta have some music. All the good movies have it.
15. Get A Distributor – Sure you can self-distribute; but you’ll be lucky if you can break even this way. Any number of routes could score you distro: someone who knows someone who knows someone, film festivals, or just knocking on doors in Hollywood (I’m not kidding).

So there you have it. 15 Steps to making a movie. Now get out there and make your own! Or, help out on ours.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 16th, 2009 at 16:50 and is filed under Producer Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.