Doubleshot Films

where "blogs" rule

Indie film academy double shot style

Tomzilla - the place to get your rental lighting cheap. Ask for leftover gels and half rolls of gaffer tape and sometimes they'll give it to you free. Be cool.

Wooden Nickel - good dolly prices (not the kind you dress) You can buy insurance on site and they don't rip you off.

BandH Photo- Don't rent a camera package - buy a refurbished camera on a credit card with no interest and sell it a year later. This tactic gave us access to a 10K camera for over a year for less than 1k.

Rent a quality lav microphone - it would be great to have more, but one quality wireless microphone can do the heavy lifting in all of your single shots. Wide shots can suck it.

Rent an RV and use it for transportation of everything. People, equipment, food, all fit inside and it doubles as a place to sleep and a portable generator. You're not always going to get home at night. If you rent off-season (November- February) it's 2K for a month and there's always a place to dress and cook. 3000 miles included at cruiseamerica.com and motorhomebooksers.com offers the best luxury deals. At fetchrvrental.com I found a 25 foot RV for 1200 dollars a month in November! That's cheaper than renting a van for the month.

Use Mandy to get local crew and gather key talent behind the camera and in sound.

Don't be afraid to post on Craigslist. There are talented people out there who are waiting for projects - even free ones. Be ready to show them how organized and generally awesome you are going to be to work with. Make sure that first contact is made by someone who's good on the phone or British.

Lay down the rules that nobody is getting paid, early and often. Do not open the door to a conversation on comparitive worth. Read Nickel and Dimed and learn about the mindset of the underemployed through the eyes of a Reed College grad.

Treat the schedule like it has been tatooed to your body and cannot be changed by anything less than laser treatement. Missing a day of shooting is like cancelling the entire project. Use Excel spreadsheets to color code times and dates of participation. We have templates upon request.

If you have artistic talent, draw your storyboards, if not use a program like storyboard quick. Make a bound book of these and put page and scene numbers on them before you start shooting. Any time there is a "discussion" about what needs to be shot, you'll have an immediate answer in the pages of the book. Have the DP sign off on it - use it as a means to collaborate.

Talk to small chain stores about using their damaged goods. Every major retailer has a place where they store their "broken" returns and damaged in transit items. A good relationship with the manager (send your most charming producer) can get them to lend these items to a production. You can pretty much furnish an entire set with the discards of a small company like Cost Plus World Market. You have to give them back at the end of the production, but you didn't want broken furniture (a good carpenter can make it look flawless to the camera).

We did not do this, but think of getting arial shots by combining a micro HD camera with a large RC helicopter. They're amazingly steady and it would be a great way to fly over multiple exterior scenes and match footage on the ground. If you buy, then sell on Ebay it will cost around 100 dollars for the entire package. If you crash it, it's 300 dollars down.

Use nowcasting to get the word out for actors or search by gender, ethnicity age - you name it. It's free and easy.

Backstage is the premiere print magazine for casting. Put in an ad and headshots will rain down upon you like, well, rain.

It might be good to look over some of the basics of shooting. Hand this book to your AD and it will help him understand what the director is doing.

Food will be a problem. It always is. Get a costco membership and buy everything in bulk. If a grocery store delivers in your area use that instead. Every minute someone is on a run for food is one shot that's not being set up.

Get somebody's mother to cook for the crew one day. It will be the only respite from hotpockets and corn dogs. Everyone will thank you and her.

Have a digital still camera ready at all times for continuity and just for documentation of the shoot. It's great to have things to look back on. Usually the second feature looks completely different. It's great to see the change and it reminds people of the goal of producing two different looks and two different characters.

Contact your parks and recreations department for community rooms, outdoor venues where you can shoot and just to say hi. If you're not in LA or NY, they're probably nice people. If you're in Oregon, try this one.

Examples of some of the documents used in production can be found here.

Here are some candid moments from The Best Sex to prove that we did have some fun too.

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DS introduction by Bob

Tuesday/July/2009 07:17 PM

Let’s start this off with an introduction. I’m Bob. I was a production assistant for both of the features. I’ve been with DS films since they started in 2007 and I can say without fear of contradiction from the director or producer that I am the most important person in the organization. I am awesome. Talking to the actors, making the schedules, “hiring” the people who played a huge role in the fine product that we’re submitting to film festivals right now(summer 2009) was not the job that I expected, but it is the one that I realized it was necessary to fill. Every production needs a Bob. This blog will help filmmakers understand the steps they can take to make their productions more - well, productive. We at Doubleshot are great advocates for local films - we just want to see people squeeze every last drop out of their time and effort and have it show up on screen. It is our goal to take our model of production and export it to all indie filmmakers who have the ideas for the films of the future, but have the tools of a guy or gal working in a video store in Wyoming. I’m going to be blogging about each step of the production. I’ll start with preproduction and show everyone the behind-the-scenes view of how two feature films were made for less than 10 thousand dollars in the middle of the priciest place to make films in the world (maybe London is more expensive, but let’s keep this national).

Let me know if I’m not giving enough information, or giving too much - the settings for FCP import can be fascinating, but I’ll understand if they only fascinate me. Mainly, this blog is here to create a community of people who want to make films the best way they can in LA or in their own backyard.