You get a flashlight, I'll get a blanket...
Let's Make a Movie!

by Bill Johns

The revolution in video technology has truly given rise to a plethora of would-be filmmakers. However many, like most of Hollywood, are only in it for the money and are saturating the market with a ton of… crap; to put it nicely. Most of the remainder are casual pieces that fail to entertain and thereby fail to be seen at all.

As a Cameraman/ Producer/ Director/ Writer/ Editor, (none of which I’m wildly successful at by the way) I have had opportunity to work with many different cameras, editing systems and people and I still believe story and acting are supreme. If you have a great story and quality actors to pull it off, you only need to somehow capture it and get it to a form where people can see it. Obviously many things can detract from the power of your story, but even a poorly shot video of a stage play can be very entertaining if the play is really good. That said, I’m not averse to shooting entire feature films on miniDV, but there are some major drawbacks you should consider.

First of all, you will have to use Cinelook on the final video so that it has the look of film. This is necessary because we have been programmed to expect a Motion Picture to look like film and Home Videos and Pornos to look like video. This process can run anywhere from $3-10k for a feature length project.

Secondly, unless your video has some off-the-wall hook like The Blair Witch Project it will not make it into theatrical release. Every day, 35mm features with major stars and great stories are ending up going straight to video, so don’t be naïve in thinking your low budget video will somehow make the jump to the big screen. Blair Witch is the only exception in Hollywood history of a video making it to theaters and most of that success was due to an amazing marketing scheme that fully utilized the power of Internet suggestion. Even if you shot on film, but resorted to 16mm instead of 35mm, you’ll find the same brick wall. El Mariachi is the only 16mm film I know of that made it to theaters and even it had a very limited release. Its hook? The entire film was done for the cost of film and processing. Bravo, Robert Rodriguez.

Now with those two major drawbacks aside; SO WHAT, if your movie only goes to video? SO WHAT if you only sell a few copies per store to Blockbuster and Hollywood Video? SO WHAT if you sell limited viewings on HBO or Cinemax? You still make a couple million dollars, and on a film that should only cost you thousands to make, millions ain’t bad!

In future articles, I’d like to share some of my experiences shooting 35mm, 16mm, and MiniDV films, but for now I want to emphasize one last time… Story and Acting. No matter how many films flood the shelves and crowd the multiplexes, distributors will always be looking for GOOD product. Some have seen so much garbage on DV however, that they refuse to even watch anymore, but if you make a good film it will definitely have a chance at success.

Bill Johns is a seasoned veteran cameraman, filmmaker and digital video commentator. Send him a note with your comments, or take a look at his Web site.