how to make a short film
6. The things you need: Getting your equipment
Three ways: borrow, rent or buy. A standard DV camera for the home user is now more affordable and effective enough. You can even factor in the cost of purchasing a camera in your budget, especially if the cost is lower than renting the camera over a number of days, or if you’re already planning the next project, in which case the savings will roll over in the subsequent work.
At places like Objectifs Centre for Photography & Filmmaking, you’ll be able to rent a camera and tripod at attractive rates. Also, students at Objectifs receive a fair deal from The Film Equipment Gallery for their lighting and sound needs. In post-production, you’ll be able to rent Final Cut Express and DVD burning facilities at Objectifs for a good rate.
It’s a good idea to master your final cut on DVD, since that’s optimum quality to transfer to copies in any other format. While on the topic of storage media, decide early on what your shooting ratio will be. The shooting ratio is the difference between how much footage you’ll keep and how much footage you’ve acquired overall. Most films would use a ratio of 1:24, and videos would use a ratio of 1:48 or more (this means for every minute you have in final cut, you have 24 or 48 times that shot during production). The lower the ratio, the more efficient your production, and the cheaper your tape stock requirements (number of DV tapes). However, the trade-off is that you’ll have less flexibility in post-production.
A word about sound. Sound makes or breaks your picture. Without good sound, you don’t have a marketable product. You may decide to record dialog with the DV camera’s onboard mic, but you’ll find this would get you sub-standard sound. Best to get external mics. You’ll either route the signal to record in camera (on DV tape) if possible, or record separately using a DAT recorder (on Digital Audio Tape, DAT). This would also factor into your budget.
A standard low-budget short film set-up would include more or less the following items (depending on your budget and ingenuity).
- DV Camera, Tripod
- SLR Camera (for stills)
- DAT Recorder
- Mics (condenser on boom, or wireless mic x2)
- Audio Field Mixer (min 3 channels, depending on shot)
- Lighting Package (at least 3, max 2kW is sufficient for DV)
- Scrims and Gels
Where ingenuity is concerned, you may be able to plan shoots that use only daylight, thus removing your need for lights. But if you do have indoor or night shoots, be mindful of colour temperature and white balance. Be sure to get the right bulbs or gels.
Once you’ve written the story, planned the locations and the days of shooting, figured out how many bodies to fill your sights, you’ll be able to decide how to portion off your money.
