Mycho Entertainment

NIGHT SHOOTING : FILMING ON LOCATION AT NIGHT

5/24/2016

Shooting at night is probably one of the toughest things you can attempt as a low budget filmmaker. This is because, no matter what you are shooting on, your camera needs a decent amount of light to capture a good quality image. Shooting at night reduces your light sources drastically. If you are shooting in urban areas, if you are shooting in the woods, the middle of country side or even somewhere that isn't usually accessed after dark it becomes even trickier business to get that light onto your cameras sensor.

One work around is to shoot 'Day for Night', which involves shooting the scene in sunlight (works best shooting on cloudy/overcast day) and then grading in post to make the image look a little like twilight. I tried this early on when I started making films and really hated the results, I've always found it better to shoot in darkness and bring in whatever light I can. The result is always a far better image.

Having a budget usually solves this problem by hiring huge spotlights and generators to help make up for the lack of good light, but this is expensive and something that is usually saved for large budget productions. If you, like us, are usually make stuff on spit and buttons, then you'll need to come up with more creative solutions to work around your lack of light.

Here are 3 tips to help you get the most out of shooting at night and how to take that into account when you are looking for your location.

1. pick your location wisely

The easiest way you can start to combat shooting at night is by picking your location wisely. A few years ago, when we were working on preproduction for Creepsville, I would wonder around at night looking for the best lit streets, alleys, carparks, you name it and once there I would look at how much light is already there from street lamps, security lights. Then I would look at what other extraneous light sources there were like shops signs, obviously the more light the better. This means less light I have to bring along with me, which in turns means less disturbing people and less drawing attention to yourself.

On Legacy of Thorn, when it came time to shoot the infamous 'bridge scene', I spent months looking for a bridge that we could shoot on without being disturbed that would also give us enough light to cover the action. The first one we tried, we scoped during the day, took note that it had street lights above it and figured it would give us enough light. On returning in the evening, not only did we find that most of the street lights were broken, but it was also a well known hangout for crackheads who made themselves a problem very quickly.

We eventually found something closer to home that fit perfectly and although it had some street lighting, we still had to make up the difference with our own portable flood lights.

Legacy of Thorn (2014) aka Thorn

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2. portable led lights

Chances are, if you are out shooting in the woods, on the street or in an abandoned factory at night, you're not going to have access to power. This always something I try to avoid, simply to make life easier for us and give us more freedom in lighting. However, if its not possible, we bring out the portable, rechargeable LED'S. These are bright flood lights that charge on the mains and give around 3 Hours + of continuous use and weigh next to nothing. They are fairly harsh, but used correctly (with gels or diffusion) are a great way to light dim sets when there is no good natural light. They cost around £45 each when I bought them in 2013, there are now better cheaper options out there too.

On shooting Cleaver : Rise of The Killer Clown, we were shooting a scene in a car, in the middle of the night, in a residential area. The last thing we wanted to do was pull a generator out there, or we certainly want to run cables across the road. The street lamps gave us some coverage, but nowhere near enough once our actress was in the vehicle. In stead we matched the street light colour on LED's with gels and just used whoever was free as light stands. It matched the natural light, but it gave us the extra light we needed to make the scene more visible.

These lights are great in place of having to drag a noisy generator down and even then it takes an expensive generator to run even our low wattage work lights, never mind our red heads or spotlights. Using these also means that should we need to, we can use a smaller generator to run other low power things like charging stations and smoke machines.

P.S. Before I could afford my own portable LED'S I made some for about £5/$7 each, find out how HERE.

CLEAVER : RISE OF THE KILLER CLOWN (2016)

3. fast lenses

One the best weapons to combat low light situations is using a fast lens on your camera. This is something that wasn't even really a choice when I started out filmmaking, if your camera's fixed lens sucked in low light (which they all did) then that was that. Now even the most inexpensive DSLR'S can capture great low light images with the right lens attached, If you're shooting on an interchange lens system camera, you should try and have at least one fast lens that opens to at least f/1.8. This will help you get more light into your camera and make picking up a usable image just that little bit easier. Its best not rely on this, but it can give you that extra boost once you've done the above. There are also cameras like the Sony A7S/A7S2/A6300 that can shoot in incredibly low light with out damaging your image, but I still advise taking location and lighting into account even with miracle cameras like that available.

When shooting the infamous 'Bridge Scene' on Legacy of Thorn, even with choosing the best location for light and having the portables there, I still ended up shooting almost every shot on my Canon 50mm f/1.8 to get a better image. The downside of this is that the depth of the image was very shallow, but the upside was that I got a better image and because we were shooting in a wide open space it meant that the close focal length didn't impact what I wanted to get too much.

These days if we're shooting outdoors I try to plan my shots around the widest opening lenses that I have. Its not always possible, but its worth thinking about.

SLASHER HOUSE 2 (2017)

MJ

IF YOU FIND THIS BLOG USEFUL. PLEASE SHARE. You can keep up to date with our filming goings on at our FACEBOOK PAGE :)

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FINDING LOCATIONS : 3 Easy Ways to Find Your Next Film Set

5/10/2016

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As we've talked about before, finding the right location can make or break your movie. Shooting your film in the right place adds so much production in terms of style, look and value that to over look it is setting yourself off on the wrong foot.

In big budget movies, it not uncommon for sets to be built on a sound stage wherever possible, this is usually due to the amount of control the creative team needs over the set, i.e being able to remove walls, lighting, shooting around the clock. If you're shooting on a budget its unlikely (although not impossible) that you can build your 'Church Interior' or 'Canadian wilderness' from scratch as a set on a sound stage. This usually means that you have to find something the preexists in the world.

This is both a blessing and a curse. Finding a pre-existing location means that you have less control over things like weather, power, access, angles, food establishments and the list varies drastically from place to place, meaning a lot of prep and compromise most of the time. The upside however, is that you get something real, something that you can't build, something raw and lived in and that is really what adds the value to your films.

FINDING YOUR LOCATION

Following are 3 ways of sourcing locations when you are working on a limited budget, These 'suggestions' are by no means the best , or the only, ways of finding the right location for your film, but hopefully they'll help you think creatively about what you need and help you look at where you shoot in more productive way.

1. unique circumstances

Finding locations can be tough going. Especially if you need anything outside of student flat or family home, things start getting difficult pretty quickly. This is when you need to employ some of your unique circumstances to finding what you need. By 'Unique Circumstances' I mean this, Everyone has access to something unique that no body else has access to, in terms of locations.

This is basically looking at what you have access to personally. Can you make a film out that creepy looking shack your dad built at the bottom on the garden? Does your Aunt work at a High School after hours? Does your mate have the keys to the warehouse on a weekend? All these are great starting points to finding a great location to shoot in that isn't 'Mark's Studio Apartment' and also a brilliant way of getting the creative juices flowing. There a few things than coming up with a scene or even an entire film based around an amazing location.

I always 'try' to write locations based on something I know we have or can get access too, even if that means taking a pause from writing for a moment and throwing it out there to people I know with a "Does anyone have access to..." and usually I receive a "No, But I have access to...", sometimes this will dictate where the film is set and sometimes the direction a film will go. You have to be creative and compromise when it comes to low budget filmmaking.

For Example, I originally wrote Slasher House to take place in an old run down mansion, when we were offered an abandoned prison, it was too good to pass up and we adapted and it worked out for the better, both visually and thematically. It also meant we had to adapt one scene to be set in a 'Gallows' which was a pretty awesome, if not terrifying, experience and also added another dimension to the film

2. your network

After you've spent your first couple of movies exhausting and exhausted your family and friends locations, you should have begun to develop a 'network' of people to work with, to show your work to and who also make movies. This is your community and these are the people you can turn to for help.

Other filmmakers are a great conduit for resources, this is because, just like you, they spend their time making movies and, believe or not, have come up against most the same problems you have when it comes to getting locations and come out the other side. Its a great way to to find creative solutions to problems, by talking to people who have already solved those problems and getting their advice.

The biggest advantage of this, is that it gives you a new perspective and helps you think outside the box. One of the biggest mistakes I see people making in terms of locations is that they need something so they look for "INSERT LOCATION HERE" and that alone, when one of the key ways to solve the problem is finding something that can do the same job, but provides earlier access. Other filmmakers will have been through this and will be able to help advise you and what can substitute your needed set.

What I mean is, for example, on Legacy of Thorn we needed a hospital, but getting one that looked operational was tougher than we could have imagined. Instead we found a section of our old college that looked very similar to a hospital corridor (along with first aid room) and dressed it up to stand in for it. Throwing in some posters, a couple of extras in long white coats and nurses uniforms and we had a what we wanted but without the red tape of shooting a real hospital.

Sometimes its worth talking to other filmmakers about how they made it appear that they shot in a location.

3. just ask

Possibly the simplest approach to finding the right location is to find the location you are after and just ask. It seems like there might be more to it, but its really as easy as that. Sometimes if we need a specific location we just find the place we want and then ask. Sometimes we're successful and sometimes not, but no one has ever done anything worse than say 'No'. Usually people just want you to cover electric or a small charge to use it, sometimes they might even just let you have it for free as long as it doesn't conflict with business hours etc.

The real issue with this approach is that it can become a numbers game and thats a lot of ground work, but if you're willing to put that work in, you'll almost certainly find the location that you're after. Just find the type of location you're looking for and make a list of suitable candidates, from here your kind of politely cold calling and explaining your project and what you want to do. Some people won't care, some will be interested, but won't be able to help you and you'll come across those who will do whatever they can to accommodate what you're doing. Its pretty much that simple.

For Slasher House 2, we needed a government facility (or something that could pass for one). We actually live in the town that has the government facility that solved the Enigma Code (now a tourist attraction), but they were a flat out 'NO' out of the gate. We decided that we would have to found something that could work instead of and figured a 'Lazer Quest' could work. We emailed every Lazer Quest in a 100 miles radius and out of 25 we got a response from 2, we met with one. It didn't work out due to the times we needed, but we had the location should we want it.

We eventually went in a different direction that worked out better for us, but I'll talk about that in a future blog.

I should point out, that its important to be honest and up front here, telling them you're shooting a family drama when really you're shooting a gore soaked torture porn is counter productive when you turn up on the day and start spraying the place down with food colouring and syrup and if they think they've been fooled, chances of them signing a release form are slim and even if they do and then find out they've been lied to they'll just flat out refuse the next filmmaker that come knocking and its your job to make sure that you pave the way for whoever comes next.

Just like any aspect of filmmaking, employing creative thinking is your friend and if you think about what you need in front of the camera creatively you might even surprise yourself in what you come up with what you think of outside the box or sometimes its as simple as just asking.

MJ

IF YOU FIND THIS BLOG USEFUL. PLEASE SHARE. You can keep up to date with our filming goings on at our FACEBOOK PAGE :)

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HOW TO COME UP WITH IDEAS FOR MOVIES

1/6/2014

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READ THIS : Before we go any further, Please bare in mind this is simply my approach and everyone has thier own way of going about this. This is personal to me, but as with anything in creative industries the trick comes being able to apply it back to yourself and your own approach. Also some of this may seem obvious to some of you, If so, good on you, you are more advanced than step one of filmmaking. Still its always nice to have a refresher.

I think its safe to say that if you want to make movies, you first of all have to have an idea of the movie you want to make. (This is not exclusive however, as I have seen films that have been finished and they still don't really know what they were about). That aside the key to successful film is a GOOD idea.

Good ideas are completely subjective of course, as everyone has an opinion. What tickles someones one metaphorical film boat won't necessarily grab someone else by the scrotum of cinema, All that matters is that you believe in your idea enough to bring it to fruition.

So people often ask how I come up with ideas for films, and to be honest it has and will continue to happen in a variety of different ways. Here are some of the most common.

1. COME UP WITH SOMETHING CONVENIENT

One of the best ways to come up with ideas for movies in look at what you have available. Creepsville was born of a title, but its substance was based on stuff we knew we had access to. I often joke that If you look out the back window of my old university building from the top floor you can see every location that we used in the film. That is absolutely true.

Even whilst casting we held an open auditions and had people come down and do their own prepared thing and adapted the script for the people we liked. We worked with what we knew we had and it really limited the amount of things that could go wrong*, because we knew our locations and props etc very well before we even started.

*Loads of stuff still went wrong.

2. COME UP WITH A CHARACTER
Sometimes I look around at characters I've designed, which is quite common as I do a fair amount of graphic design and comic book work. Every so often I look through these sketches and doodles and scribblings and find a character that grabs my attention. Usually something I've sketch from subconsuiness or boredom and I start to give them a story and then sometimes, that story becomes a movie, or at very least the idea for one.

Thorn and the feature Legacy Of Thorn came from using this approach. I had been sketching the skull faced brute for about a decade before I finally decided to try and flesh out a back story for him in 2007. Eventually I fleshed it out a bit more for Slasher House and then even more for his solo movie Legacy. The approach all came from designing a character and then telling his story.

Slasher House was born from creating Red, I knew I wanted to create a very specific kind of character that could exist in a world of Slasher Villains. I knew I wanted to do something interesting with the 'Final girl' archetype that appears in that kind of movie, after that It was coming up with a scenario to place her in. That scenario became Slasher House.

3. COME UP WITH A TITLE
This is quite common for me, I have an idea for a title, then I sit down and brainstorm what that film would be about. Creepsville started out as a title, then I sat down with another writer and came up with the story that I felt fit the title and tone that I wanted the film to have. 'Blood On Santa's Claws' was the same, an idea for a title that then left me with the difficult task of figuring out what that movie would be about.

Its not an uncommon approach and I find that this is a great approach to forcing yourself to be creative, by limiting what you allow yourself to input, to a degree it allows you to be more creative with the small amount of information that you've given yourself. This is by far my favourite foundation to start with. I also sometime give myself extra limits or things that I force myself to include to spark my creativity just that little bit more.

My favourite title I ever came up with was a movie we have in pre production currently which was I'VE GOT BETTER THINGS TO DO TONIGHT THAN DIE (A line spoken in the Animated Transformers movie). That sent my brain crazy and within a few days I had an immensely complex plot for an extremely unique rape/revenge movie.

BONUS ROUND :
STUMBLE ACROSS THAT LUCK SYRUM FROM RED DWARF
I wanted to limit it to the 3 most common ways that I come with and begin to develop ideas. However, there is one other that I think is fair to mention.

On a clear night, when the moon is at its largest size, and the stars move into alignment with Jupiter and Uranus (lol) you may, from absolutely nowhere, come up with an idea so radical and fully formed that it will surprise even you. It will be instantly ready to go down on paper and you will for a brief moment trick yourself into the belief that you may actually be a screenwriting genius.

Don't worry this attack of ego will only last till you begin work on your next script and realise that you somehow managed to fluke an amazing story from thin air. Its rare as a Pie at a Sumo Wrestling contest, but it does happen.

I have come across this amazing occurance only once in my life in which the film simply fell from my brain onto paper, but that is is a story for another time. Its safe to say that the first 3 approaches work great and if you get stuck, just rip off some blockbuster thats coming out next year its works for our friends at the Asylum. You can check out thier latest release 'Android Cop' at http://the asylum.cc (I'm joking btw).

Coming up with ideas is the most exciting part of filmmaking for me. It's the part when you are at your most creative, but it's also the easy part. Bringing them into fully formed stories is something else and turning them into fully fledged scripts is another all together. But we'll talk about that next time.

MJ

IF YOU FIND THIS BLOG USEFUL. PLEASE SHARE. You can keep up to date with our filming goings on at our FACEBOOK PAGE :)

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PRE-PRODUCTION IN 2 EASY STEPS

8/24/2012

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Ok so Down to business I guess. It's hard for me to think of anything but sound design at this moment in time as that all I've been doing for the last month for my second feature Slasher House. But I figured it makes very little sense to jump to something about post so early on, So I used the last few days to reflect on what I was mixing sound for and realized that probably the first thing anyone want to know about how I make movies is how I start out, Here I'm going to break down Pre-Production into 2 very easy steps.

Once you have a script or story (I know there are some people who just like to make these things up on the spot) then there are two steps you need to take in order to be ready to film.

1. GET HOLD OF EVERYTHING YOU NEED BEHIND THE CAMERA.

2. GET HOLD OF EVERYTHING YOU NEED IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA.

Thats it.

Honestly thats all you need to do. Obviously there is a little more to it than that, But I find that looking at it like this makes what is quite a huge task, feel smaller and much more manageable.

Now at this point you should have a list of

1. People who need to be in front of the camera (actors)
2. Items that these people need to interact with (Props)
3. A place for these Items and people to be placed in (Location)

Then you should look at getting a couple of people behind the camera

1. Someone to Shoot it for you (You)
2. Someone to Direct the shoot (You)
3. Someone to Record sound (Sound guy)
4. Someone to help out (Sound guy)

I always tend to have a couple of people (P.A's) running around, but even then these are usually made up of people who don't have a job or anything better to do or my close friends and more often than not my girlfriend.

It's quite simple when you start looking at it like this and it makes the daunting task that is pre production a lot easier, just make a list of things you need and get it together.

Trust me, enjoy pre production, because quite honestly on a no budget production, Pre Production is the last chance you'll have to enjoy making your film until you're finished in the editing suite.

I know I've skimmed over a lot here, but it's good to figure out your own way of doing each thing, Of course I'll go into every step here in more detail of the coming weeks.

But so far this approach has worked on 3 short films, 2 features (albeit with a couple more specific crew) and countless music videos.

Of course it's hard, it's a challenge, but lets be honest, if you don't like challenge's, The last thing you want be doing is making no budget movies.

MJ

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NIGHT SHOOTING : FILMING ON LOCATION AT NIGHT

1. pick your location wisely

2. portable led lights

3. fast lenses

FINDING LOCATIONS : 3 Easy Ways to Find Your Next Film Set

1. unique circumstances

2. your network

3. just ask

HOW TO COME UP WITH IDEAS FOR MOVIES

PRE-PRODUCTION IN 2 EASY STEPS

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