The Unofficial Short Film Production Guide

For those that have dreams of making films!

Moderator: Erik

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Dear readers,

In all secrecy, I have been working on a little helpfull project. I am writing some sort of book on producing short films. With that I mean my vision on them. I hope that people will be able to produce short films in an easy way by using this guide. It will cover all steps from the will of producing a short film to the release. However, I feel like this can be a lot better with your help.

So, here is what we're gonna do:
I write a chapter of the guide every once in a while and post them in this topic. Afterwards, the chapter is open for discussion and you can add points which you think are valuble to the chapter. Also if you think I am wrong, you can discuss that. After a while, I will rewrite the chapter based on your feedback. This way, the production guide will be of the best possible quality.

After all chapters are written and rewritten, I will combine them into some sort of e-book which will be released under a creative commons licence (non-commercial, share alike) so every aspiring filmmaker can use the guide to produce his/her own short films. Everyone who contributes to a chapter will get credit, however you will never get paid for it. The book will be free for download. No money made, no money shared.

This topic will grow and chapters will be shattered between the pages, so I will make a list below with a link to every chapter. Could everyone, by the way, also add spelling corrections if needed? English is, after all, my second language.

The Unofficial Short Film Production Guide:
Chapter 1: Starting up
Chapter 2: The script

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Chapter 1: Starting up
So you want to make a short film? Great idea to spend some spare time! This chapter will be a short description on how to go from the idea of producing a short film to pre-production of the film.

Making a short film, starts with a reason. Why do you want to make a short film? There are many reasons to make a film and the reason itself does not really matter. Wetter it is because you’re trying to get accepted at a film school, impress your father in law, sending it to film festivals, practice or just for the sake of it. The thing that does matter is that you must know this reason and keep it close to you. This is your goal. Your audience will be very depending on this goal. A lot of short films get produced because its makers think it’s a good movie, but they haven’t really thought about their audience.

If you have your goal all set, there are two possible situations: You either have a screenplay ready, or you have not. We will take a closer look at screenwriting and all its complexity in chapter 2.

Either way, one of the most important things you have to do is assemble the core crew. The core is formed around the three most important jobs in the filmmaking: director, writer and producer. You have to make sure that these three jobs are fulfilled. It does not really matter how much people are doing these three jobs, as long as they’re all secured. It can be just you, you and a friend or 10 different people.

You have your core crew and your goal. If you have your script already, you can skip to chapter 3, but I would recommend reading chapter 2 anyway.

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Chapter 2: The Script
Some people underestimate the power of a good script. Especially when you’re making your own low-/ no-budget short film, it is pretty necessary that you know what you’re doing. With a script, you make it very clear to every crew and cast member what film you’re making.

Screenwriting is one of the most complex tasks in the making of a film and not everyone is capable of doing it. By writing this chapter, I hope I will be able to give you some insight into screenwriting and it definitely helps. However, every script is (or at least should be) original and must be approached in its own way. The fact that your script or way of screenwriting does not match this approach, does not mean it's not good. On the same base, if you follow this way, it is still possible for the screenplay to be pretty bad.

But let's start now.

2.1 Inspiration
You can find inspiration for a short film everywhere, but it is often hard to find. One of the things that helps me with getting inspiration is simply not looking for it. I personally find the best inspiration in moments that I can’t predict. I was once at a bus station, looking at the electronic time schedule for the busses and noticed that (almost) every bus was delayed. It gave me inspiration for an opening scene for a new movie.

I never really got more than that opening scene, because the following story of that scene was pretty bad and I abandoned the idea, but it was good inspiration none the less.

Let’s say you have some inspiration for a short film, right now. What are you going to do? Well, there are actually two things you can do: start writing your short film right away, or just take some notes of the idea. I can’t tell you what to do here, because everyone works in different ways. You just have to find out for yourself.

I personally do not start writing right away. I like it more when I just leave the concept or inspiration in my head and let it grow over a period of some days, weeks or maybe even months. In such case as this, I actually don’t take much notes. I believe in the fact that I will remember the inspiration or concept and if I do forget, the idea was not good enough anyway. However, it makes me take the risk of actually losing very good ideas. I’d recommend taking notes if you don’t want that to happen.

The fact that you're reading this guide, probably means that you already have some inspiration. Good, let's take it to the next step.

2.2 Story audience
So, let's say that you have found some inspiration! Now, let’s convert that inspiration into a story. I may be repeating myself, but an essential thing you need to do now is to look at the audience of your story. With this story audience, I am talking about people who will enjoy this story. People who watch your film and don't like it, are not part of the story audience.
You need to put the story audience next to the goal of chapter 1. Most of the time, these two are linked right away, but sometimes you have to do a little research.

For instance; say you have a story for a horror movie, then you can cross off all children at least under the age of 16 from your list of possible audience and people who don't like horror films. If your story happens to be fan fiction based upon the Saw franchise, you also cross off every person who didn't like the franchise.

From this point on, the story audience will shift with every decision you make. Remember that.

2.3 From inspiration to screenplay
You have your inspiration, you have your notes. It is now time to put all of that together and start the actual writing. Best thing to do before the start is writing an outline or treatment. The differences between a treatment and outline are actually minimal. A treatment is usually a little more detailed and may contain some direction, which is left out of an outline. For producing a short film, I don't see much difference between an outline or treatment.

However, it can be very helpful to write one of them. It will provide you the base of your story. It's structure. While writing the screenplay, you will form the body around that. Also, if you're working with other people (say you're not directing this yourself), this would be a very good point to let the others read what you've got so far. Maybe they have something to put in themselves.

After your treatment or outline is done, you can start writing the script. Always write the script in the right format. If you've never done that before, look online at how a screenplay looks like and just copy that lay-out.

As stated before, I can't tell you how to write your screenplay so it will be good. It all depends on your story and it's adaption. However, I can give you a little insight on originality.

Writing was invented over 5.000 years ago. From that point on people have been communicating, documenting and telling stories through writing. That means that every story idea you have, has been written before. No matter if you know the writings or not. However, the approach to the story, the way it was developed, that will be the originality. Just think of perhaps the oldest story around: boy meets girl. That story was the core for J.J. Abrams film "Super 8", but the way Abrams created the science-fiction story around it, was a new and original approach.

But before you start writing the screenplay, look at your inspiration, notes and / or treatment. Think about who is going to film your movie and with what kind of props? You are making a low-budget short film, right? That means you probably can't have explosions or heavy GCI effects. I hate to say this, but you are limited. Think about how you're going to film your scenes and avoid all impossible stunts and idea's. A crappy effect will pulls the quality of your film down, probably further down then what the scene actually means in your script.

And by that, I think there isn't much left to say, apart from a few screenwriting tips I'd like to give you.

• If you don't feel like writing, then don't. If you don't feel inspired, you probably won't write that good.
• If you do want to write, get yourself in the mood. To me that usually means listening to soundtracks while writing or watching an inspiring movie before I start.
• If you are not sure on how the dialogue will sound, try saying it out loud. It might look to other people if you're having a conversation with yourself, but it really works.

And that's my idea of screenwriting for your own short film. I just want to leave you with one more advise: talk about your writing, let other people read it. Let people read your outline or treatment and let them give their honest opinion and perhaps some suggestions. Write the script and get your readers on that again. With the opinion of those people, you can really determine wetter your screenplay or story is good or not. Perhaps it needs some work. Perhaps it's all crap, but maybe it actually is good.

Don't be afraid that your idea might get stolen, because in real life that does not happen that often. The readers that you'd like an opinion of, are mostly friends and/or other filmmakers like you. Your friends won't steal a story (they probably wouldn't know what to do with it) and neither will the other filmmakers. Most of the time, they are working on their own projects anyway. I myself for instance want to work on my own stories and idea's.

You got your inspiration, your outline and of course your screenplay. Next step ahead: pre-production!

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Posts: 1883
Joined: March 2009
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Hey guys,

Is this feedback so far helping any of you? Or, if it didn't, do you think it'll help others? When I started this, I wanted to get a discussion running about it. Helping eachother out to create this guide. However, I recieved one PM about this and that was it. Does anyone have any feedback on my writings here? Was it helpfull or not?

Thanks! :)

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