How to Make Your First Short Film: A Crash Course

going to give you a full crash course on how to make your first short film even if the only thing you've ever shot before is funny videos of your cat i'm going to do it in only 5. so we better get started fast a little bit about me been making films since i was 11. i've probably made like 50 short films for a while i was doing one every month on my youtube channel i've made a couple of no budget features about a couple of things go viral so i definitely know how to get my hands dirty get a film made and help you make yours so let's begin writing this may sound a little counter-intuitive but rather than originality when you're writing your short film i want you to focus on entertaining yourself or a really close friend of yours make your audience really specific so that you can make your film more specific if you try to be everything to everyone you're gonna end up with something that's really boring and flat and probably really cliched maybe you already have an idea for your short film but if you don't try to reverse engineer your story idea based on things that you already have access to let's say your uncle has a barn maybe you can do a cool horror film out there maybe you have a friend or a family member that has a really big personality that would be great in a movie and you convince them to be in it very important point make your film simple and small you want this thing to be five minutes or less do not make your film longer than five minutes if you've never made a movie it's probably not going to be good enough to justify being longer than five minutes also every aspect of making this movie is gonna be so much easier when you keep the runtime low as a beginner the smaller the scale of your film the better it's gonna end up being think about it would you feel more comfortable making a short film about storming omaha beach on d-day or a short film about a guy who accidentally super glues himself to his own toilet seat one of them is going to be a lot easier to pull off that's all i'm saying go ahead and write out the beginning the middle and the end just a few simple sentences it'll basically just be your whole story in a paragraph and if it's not an interesting paragraph then you might want to go back to the drawing board here's an example for a short film that i wrote and never ended up actually making a little girl is crying because her dad isn't home on her birthday her mom plays a vhs tape that he made him apologizing and wishing her the best birthday he has a bad cough in the video but he's goofy and heartwarming and by the end of the tape the girl is happy again the mom puts the tape away but she starts crying herself we then see that the stack of tapes is other birthday tapes labeled up to age 18 and realized that the dad has actually already died and he made these tapes in advance for his daughter so you got a beginning that's setting up things you got a middle that's obstacles and the journey towards the ending and that ending is going to be something that's a little surprising but definitely satisfying and definitely makes me feel good about having just watched the other four minutes of your short film so now you got this paragraph time to write it out just expand it don't worry about proper script format yet just write out what happens where it happens and who says what in a format that makes sense to you if you do want to learn proper script format it'll probably only add an extra hour to your life and then you can go the link in the description for some free screenwriting websites and use that to make your script take that written out story and you're gonna read it through in your head visualizing it as you do try to do it in real time as much as possible as if you were watching the final film you're gonna run a stop watch while you do that and make sure that you end up around four minutes i say four not five because inevitably the final film is gonna end up being longer than what you picture in your head if possible take the story and get some feedback from some friends some people that you trust collaboration is so key with film two or three or four heads is always going to be better than one and you're going to have a lot of blind spots especially when you're first starting out as to what you think is interesting or how a certain thing is going to read to another person versus how it actually comes off congratulations you're out of writing and you're into pre-production you're going to go to the calendar you're going to find a day that makes sense and you're going to mark that day that's going to be your shooting day from now on when you tell people you're making your movie you're saying i'm shooting it on this day go find the bare minimum number of people that you can to actually make this movie and you're going to tell them hey we're shooting on this day can you do it it's going to be really fun i'm going to give you some free food bare minimum number of people on the set you don't want other people just hanging around it's going to distract you you need to stay focused on the film get your props your wardrobe any other special things that you need to actually make your movie you're going to take your script print it out start making handwritten notes all over it about how you envision the scene how the actors might perform it what the pacing is going to be like what the energy of the scene is going to be like specific shots that you're thinking of anything that comes to mind just mark that script up if you know how to draw that's great i highly recommend making storyboards they don't have to be fancy or cool just use stick figures if you can't even do stick figures then just do little shot descriptions but it's important to be organized and prepared for your shoot day especially when you're starting out now take all the shots figure out what the most logical order to shoot them in is if it's possible definitely try to shoot them in order chronologically according to the script but if that's not possible a lot of people like to shoot the wider shots first and then shoot all the shots pointing in one direction and then shoot all the shots pointing in another direction that way any lighting changes or whatever your shots just stay more consistent write it all down that's going to be your instructions for the day so no matter what comes at you on shooting day i can follow my instructions and i will get to the end of this film now let's get down to actual production if you have a camera great use it if you don't use your phone if you have a camera but you're not really comfortable with it use your phone the point is don't focus too much on cinematography for your first short film no matter how much attention and time you spend on it it's not going to be the revenant and it's not going to be what keeps people tuned into your film it's going to be the storytelling so focus on that more important than that cinematography you need to be worried about the audio bad audio is going to hurt your film so much more than bad cinematography for example how long would you watch this video if it all sounded like this get a friend to help out with a microphone off screen don't have a microphone these are great and just be strategic about it and be creative if you're getting a close-up like let's say i punched in like this your actors are holding their phones like this you're going to get really nice audio if the shot's too wide for your actor to hold the phone then just hide it in the scene i'm going to get great audio but you're not going to see it if none of those are options then what you're going to want to do is do the take and then go back maybe immediately after you did the take and record wild audio which is audio that's recorded after the actual shot to try to match what you just recorded so play back the video so your actor can try to match exactly the way that they set the line and get your phone or mic right up on them so you get some really clean audio and then you can match it up in editing and then you can match it up in editing and then you can match it up in editing do the same thing for sound effects remember movie sound effects are just a lot larger than life now follow your instructions go through each shot make sure that you have all the puzzle pieces you need to assemble this together later in editing finish that shoot day be very gracious to all the people that helped you out give them some food take your footage take your audio dump it on the computer make two copies put it on a hard drive put it somewhere else there's nothing more depressing than losing an entire day's footage or audio congratulations that was probably the hardest part you're already moving on to post production now if you don't know how to edit that's okay you spend about an hour on youtube watching tutorials you can get up to speed enough to start cutting your film just get the basics down how do you bring the clips in how do you cut them and you'll figure it out as you go i recommend imovie if you're on a mac it's free it's really intuitive and easy to learn if you don't have a mac i'd recommend davinci resolve it's free it's a little more complicated but it's a very powerful program number one principle you'll need to abide by is to cut out any dead moments it's not entertaining or engaging to the viewer get rid of it throw in those sound effects that you recorded on the day or if you don't have enough go to freesound.org there are links in the description you can get a bunch of free sound effects for your project or you can go make your own now you can use music from the youtube audio library i'll link to it my description it's all free tracks that you can use to score your film or if you want to have fun and you don't care about copyright just throw a bruce springsteen track in there and have a ball focus on that audio try to clean it up do a little cross dissolves between cuts and the audio just to get rid of any distracting changes in background noise now finish that rough cut get to a point where you feel like it's pretty good and then show a couple of friends that you trust watch them watch your film see where they're engaged see where they're bored and then get their feedback after see if they have any opinions about how you can improve it or things you could cut out or things that weren't clear didn't make sense don't take any of this stuff personally this is all really valuable information it's going to make your film so much better take that information adjust your edit accordingly if you need to do it and you're able to do it go out and do reshoots go back and pick up shots that are going to clarify your story or make something more emotional or just work better be prepared to kill some darlings some of your favorite parts of the film might just be the most indulgent parts of the movie and would actually be better left on the cutting room floor keep your movie short and sweet and leave people wanting a little bit more you kept it under five minutes right now export your movie put it on youtube send a link to everybody that helped you along with your sincere thanks pat yourself on the back congratulations you made your first short film now look objectively at this first short film there's going to be a lot of problems with it analyze it figure out what your real weaknesses were on the project and then do a bunch of research go to youtube i'm going to be uploading videos every week that'll help you i hope but there's also tons of other creators out there that'll have all kinds of advice for your specific weaknesses i know it can be scary and overwhelming to go out and make your first film even if you've been thinking about it for a long time i guarantee you that the feeling of satisfaction that you're going to get is going to make it all worthwhile i'm kent lane from standard story company tune in next week for more unsolicited filmmaking advice i'll go make a short film

Channel: Standard Story Company

Views: 517,344

Keywords: How to Make Your First Short Film, how to make a short film, how to make first film, filmmaking for beginners, how to make a movie, how to make first short film, beginner filmmaking course, basics of filmmaking, filmmaking 101, make a film no budget, how to make a short film for beginners, how to make your first feature film, how to make a film for beginners, filmmaking 101 a beginners guide

Id: 8QCK_qEp_PI

Length: 8min 34sec (514 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 15 2021