My friends and I are planning on making our own movie, I wrote the script and everything, but how do we get the actors? Do we hold auditions after school for kids our age or what? How do we get the props? And how do we find the TIME???
This is what you're going to need more than anything else.
A producer. That is, one person who's job is to be in charge of all of the *physical* as opposed to the creative aspects of making the movie.
How is it going to be made. When is it going to be made. How much is it going to cost to make it. Who is physically going to be in charge of the money for making it? Where is that money going to be kept? Who is going to be in charge of it? Budget it? Write down that budget up front, so that you don't start out with five hundred dollars only the movie you're actually making costs three thousand dollars so you end up a sixth of the way through and run out of money.
The way you avoid that is to have a producer who sits down and figures it all out ahead of time.
Preproduction -- getting all the stuff you need -- props, actors, locations, crew, equipment, transportation -- and FOOD.
Production -- getting all of people and equipment and stuff where you need it and when you need it and moving it around as efficiently as possible and being prepared to move it to a different place if necessary if things screw up or break or don't show up or if the weather doesn't cooperate (real productions always try to schedule alternative "rain day" shooting days -- things they can shoot inside if they're rained out).
Post-production -- editing. Sound mixing. ADR -- that is, recording voices and sounds that you didn't get when you were shooting because planes were constantly flying overhead. Every. Minute. Of. The. Day.
And music. Titles. Effects, if any. And don't forget all that legal stuff, like making sure you got everybody to sign those release forms giving you permission to show their images.
Of course, if you're just goofing around, then you're just goofing around and the extent to which it's just some pals with a camera and a mike built in just sort of -- goofing around in the back yard turns into something more well -- that's up to you.
The world is full of home movies. And sometimes home movies consist of people pretending to act in front of the camera and it's sort of roughly cut together and it's just some folks just goofing around making a little amateur movie and ultimately that's what it is.
You don't have to have enormous ambitions. If you want to get some friends and make a little movie then you can just do it. There are lots of inexpensive editing programs on line. Most modern digital cameras even come with editing software and come with a not-very-good mike built in (much better, by the way, if you can borrow a better mike and if the camera comes with a mike input).
But if you're going to be spending real money (like thousands of bucks), then you need to tighten your belt a bit and start being a bit serious, because if you're spending real money you can really lose real money and end up with nothing.
And that would be bad.
NMS
