One of the trials of being an aspiring filmmaker is the small amount of people you have available to work with. We watch movies with casts that seem to rival the population of a small country and sigh. These big productions can put more people in the line behind a main character waiting to buy a box of Tic-Tacs than we have in our entire cast and crew combined!

Maybe our budget doesn’t allow for more people, or we simply can’t find anyone willing to help out. But however it comes about, we find ourselves faced with a dilemma. How can we make the best out of a bad situation?

The trick we’re most fond of here at Phantom Moose is not the most professional, or best alternative, but it works. We reuse people at any opportunity. If you’re ever filming with us, don’t ask for a stunt double because we will probably ask you to be the stunt double. (Except for the time when Stelen stood in for Malfhok, but that’s another story.)

And now, for a practical demonstration of our doubling efficiency, let me refer to the “Cauldron number” scene. Anybody notice that Marelac and Stelen are in there twice? Once as themselves and once as Norse guys. We worked the shots and angles so they would never show Marelac with Marelac Norse, or Stelen with Stelen Norse. It’s easier than blue-screening anyone in and out of the scene.

And, as I’ve mentioned before, Alyah and the Badgal are played by the same actress. Didn’t notice? Blessings upon you. You’ve just encouraged some filmmakers.

The important thing to keep in mind is the realism. Think to yourself, “How would I convince myself that these are two separate characters and two separate actors?” Use establishing shots, good fakery, some slick special effects—whatever you can pull off well—and go with it.

Have you ever been slammed that way? The perfect costume design has to be thrown out because it would cost too much to make. The detailed beadwork that you absolutely loved goes away or becomes fabric paint. The ornate helmet has to be scratched and replaced with a hat. A felt one. With a bright red feather. Situations like this are depressing, annoying, and even downright ugly.

Here are a few things you can do to help bring your ideas to reality.

First: You can design with your budget in mind. I know it’s not fun, unless you enjoy the challenge, but I’m not talking about having a dollar amount looming over you all the time. A basic concept of cost will do. If you only have a little money to work with, don’t plan on using thirty yards of velvet! Look to see what you might already have that you could work with. Anything look promising? If you changed one color, would it save you twenty dollars? Or how about swapping kinds of fabric. Remember the thirty yards of velvet? Swap it out for an old bedsheet or curtain. Be flexible. You don’t have to throw out a good idea; just try to make it better.

Second: Time is money. If you have one week until filming starts, and a hundred costumes to make, don’t plan on hand-embroidering trim on all of the pieces. Find a trim at the craft store that has the same look you want. If price becomes an issue, keep in mind these little questions: “How much time will this save me?” “Is there something else that will work just as well?” and, more importantly, “Will I get in trouble with the other producers if I spend the money?” If the answer to the last question is “Yes,” walk away now. Budget is somthing to be respected by all members of the cast and crew.

Third: If you are lucky enough to actually have money to put through the budget, save the big bucks for a few costumes. The knock-your-socks-off ones. Although, keep in mind that you don’t want to end up with two fabulous costumes and ton of slapped together, bathrobe and towel costumes. Unless you have a really good bathrobe, that is. Which brings us to . . .

Fourth: Modify clothing. You might find an old dress in a garage sale or thrift store that, which a few alterations, would make a good cloak and hood. Or a shirt that can become a jacket. All this approach takes is a little imagination! (And some scissors, of course.) We did this for the Norse, and I hope we can do more of it for the next movie. We’ve received lots of old clothing donations in the last couple years.

Fifth: Don’t be afraid to reuse things! Particularly on extras and sub-characters. This is a really quick way to come up with a costume. The work is already done. Lydia’s costume is Somindeo’s robe from the first movie. All we did was add a rope belt and a scarf. If you have something laying around, use it. Put last movie’s hero’s puffy shirt under a coat for the herald. Make a cloak into a skirt. If you want to modify them a bit so they won’t be as recognizable, remove distinctive trims, or change colors. Just keep an eye on the fine line between minimal work and not disguising the piece enough. If the audience catches on, your realism is toast.

So get out there with your designer sketches! Scrounge, sew, tape, glue, modify, and substitute your way into a great bunch of costumes. Let the idea become reality.

A good friend of mine (another movie-maker, and she’s made some really great stuff) recommended these books to me, and I want to share them with you. They’re great for learning the basics on modifying clothing into costumes.

Costuming Made Easy by Barb Rogers

Instant Period Costumes by Barb Rogers

“Sure, a sea-faring adventure movie is great, but if all you have is two plastic ships and a bathtub, you might want to reconsider.”

“Crashing through a window? Nice touch for an action sequence, but if it’s done wrong it looks really cheesy.” (iSundae anybody?)

“Spaceships whooshing past the camera would look cool, but not if the animation is poorly done, or the blue screen gets fuzzy.”

Does he sound familiar? The Voice that warns us when we’re getting in over our heads. Why is it so easy to block him out? We stuff him in a can and stick it in a dark corner somewhere and rush on ahead. How come we don’t listen? Well, I can’t answer for every person, but for me, I get stuck thinking, “Just enough hot-glue, cardboard, and effort will fix it.” Yeah right. Our imaginations can come up with way more than we can do well. Let me give you an example.

For iSundae we wanted a long, dramatic cave sequence. The original script called for some enormous interior cave shots, an arrow trap, an avalanche trap, a lava lake, a chasm spanned by a narrow board, a wall with swords and inscription, a monster fight, a collapsing tunnel, a giant rolling boulder, and the cave exploding. Pictured in our minds, it was the coolest sequence ever.

When it came down to the nitty gritty details like HOW we were going to film this in three weeks and WHERE we were going to get a cave, we ignored the Voice. “Sure we don’t have a cave,” we told ourselves, “but we’ll use someone’s garage and lots of props. It’ll look great!” Ha. Ha. (Keep in mind, we were going for high-quality, realistic sets.) As you can tell from the movie we had to cut several sections and change the existing ones just to get it filmed, let alone filmed well. What got done looks anything but believable. The cave is a really dark garage, the monster is a giant puppet, the green screen is fuzzy. Are we proud of it? Not really. Granted, it was our first attempt, and it didn’t turn out all that bad, but we still look at it and wonder, “Why didn’t we think that out ahead of time?”

Now. Lesson learned. When we set out to make a movie, we need to decide if what we have created on paper is do-able. This involves keeping in mind how much time you have to spend on filming and effects, what effects you can do well, and what materials you have to work with. Maybe you have a really great scene in your script that calls for a duel on a collapsing bridge. Cool! The Voice speaks: “You don’t have a bridge.” Okay, you can either find a bridge or move the scene to another location. Found a bridge? Great! Hark! I hear the Voice again: “It’s a public bridge. You can’t have it collapse.” Alrighty, recalculating.

You could change the scene so the bridge doesn’t collapse, use a different situation to create tension (like having one character nearly push the other off the bridge) or just cut the duel entirely. What I wouldn’t recommend is trying to use camera angles, movement, and spare bridge parts to make it look like it’s falling unless you have tested it and are happy with the result. Sure, you can film the duel and tweak and edit it to your heart’s content, but the chances of your making something you’ll be happy with are rather slim. Consider carefully, especially if you’re a beginner. One well-done, believable scene is better than an hour and a half of bad special effects. Listen for the Voice!

“The script calls for this character to have a dramatic scene, but Jack does comedy better than drama. . . maybe we should re-write or re-cast.”

“That window is going to be in the way. Should we cover it or change locations?”

“The storyboards show a giant hall, but we only have an average size one. How should we re-work that?”

“If you build it, they will come.” (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

There is no better way to keep boringness and stress from setting in than planning ahead. Storyboarding is the easiest way I have found to plan. It’s quite simple. Prior to filming (Or even before the whole filming schedule commences) you take a section of the script. Say. . .

EXT Sci-Fi Port (Badguy) NIGHT
Bob and Clyde have just escaped from the badguy headquarters, taking with them the secret plans for a fighter plane. The badguys have discovered them and are chasing them. Bob and Clyde have just reached their broken plane and are waiting for their mechanic to fix it.

BOB
Look out! They’re right behind us!

CLYDE
(into walkie-talkie)
Ground 20, have you got the ship working yet?

BOB
(looking at approaching badguys)
We can’t wait that long.

CLYDE
Do you see another way?

Alright. There you have it. (No, that is not part of our next movie.) Now, how do you get this from script to storyboard? Well, there are a number of ways. First, you could draw thumbnail sketches of what you think it should look like. (“You” being the director or official storyboarder) Think about the feel of the scene. What you want to camera angles to look like. What you want to them to show and in what order. Here is how I visualized this section and drew it.

As you can see, I am no drawing master. Stick figures work very well for me. Particularly when I give them some special characteristics to define person from person.

If you don’t want to draw you can write it down.

Wide Shot: Bob and Clyde rush up to side of the ship.
Close up Bob: Bob’s first line
Wide Shot of badguys charging.
Close up Clyde: Clyde’s first line.
Two shot with Bob and Clyde: Bob’s next line.
Close up Clyde: Clyde’s second line.

Now, this way is very handy because it makes converting the storyboards to a filming schedule easier. Do you see the repeat? Clyde has two close ups. On your filming schedule you can put: “Close up on Clyde: both lines” and film it all at once without having to move the camera around and shoot everything in order.

(I’m a little fuzzy on the whole “filming schedule” thing. It didn’t dawn on me until this last movie that such a thing would make it a ton easier. Trust me, next movie I’ll have one.)

How do the storyboards compare with the final film? For us, this varies by scene. Here’s a comparison of a scene from our movie iSundae.

iSundae Storyboard Comparison from Phantom Moose Films on Vimeo.

You can also watch it on YouTube.

So that’s how you do storyboards. I highly recommend them unless you are one of those directors/camera men who can see the whole thing in their heads and mentally check off the angles. That would be so handy. . . I wonder if I can teach myself to think that way. . . But anyway, try a couple storyboards. They can make things run a whole lot smoother.

First: Check, check, and re-check

Never assume that you have all the props and equipment loaded into the car. Once during the filming of iSundae we got all the way to the park and started setting up when we discovered that Somindeo’s wig was still at home. It took twenty minutes for my grandma and me to drive home, find the wig, and bring it back. During that time the others had to film whatever they could.

Second: Know what you’ll be filming

I can not tell you how much time we lost by not knowing what angles we wanted to film. We would check the storyboards, film one angle, then everything would come to a halt while we looked to see what we needed to film next at what angle with which camera and with which actors. Repeat a dozen times and you can see what I mean. I’m estimating that we probably lost ten to twenty minutes out of each hour of filming time by not knowing what we were going to do next.

The easiest way to prevent this is to make a written list of shots divided by angle. It looks like something like this—

—Close shot Anthony:
“But what do we do?”
“Could we try the door?”
“Are you crazy? We’d be creamed!”
—Wide shot Anthony, Miranda, Charles (Zoe in the background):
Run through whole scene.
—Two shot Miranda and Charles:
Dialogue from Charles’ “Do you think we should try it?” through Miranda’s “Even a mouse would think twice.”

You get the idea. Experiment to see what works best for you. We’re still in the baby stages of this.

Third: Bring a repair kit

Things will always break. Whenever possible they’ll wait until it’ll be the most inconvenience to you. I put together a basic kit that always comes with us on a filming expedition.

• A needle and neutral thread colors
• Safety pins
• Tape of various kinds (Gaffer’s, Scotch, etc.)
• Hot glue gun and glue sticks, if you’ll have an outlet handy
• Scissors

You might also want to bring Kleenex, glasses cases if your actors aren’t supposed to wear their glasses during filming, band-aids, and yarn for tying things.

Fourth: Remember that you’re filming out of doors

Plan accordingly. Camp chairs for members of the cast to use when not in front of the camera, sunglasses, bug repellant (I never thought of that, but I wish I had), bottled water, snacks, umbrellas, and a quick getaway plan if it starts to rain.

We were filming a section of iSundae under the threat of rain, so we kept a kid’s wagon ready and gave everyone instructions. Ruth and Jordan would grab the equipment and run for the cars, while the rest of us would pile any loose props on the wagon and follow. The moms were in charge of the folding chairs.

Fifth: The basics

Make sure you’re allowed to film in that location, know where the restrooms are, don’t say you’ll be there for one hour and stretch it into three. Keep the actors and crew happy, encourage as much as possible, and give peppermints freely. You might just have the most fun of your life.

Hide the Apple Watermark

I love Apple’s products a lot, but that doesn’t mean that I want them putting their logo on my DVD menu. To turn it off, just go to the iDVD menu and choose Preferences. Under General uncheck the box next to Show Apple logo watermark.

Show TV Safe Area

Even with HDTV, you still want to pay attention to the TV safe area. How do you know where it is? Go to the View menu and choose Show TV Safe Area. iDVD will draw a red box around the TV safe area, helping you make sure that your menu doesn’t get lost on an older TV. You may want to turn the TV safe area off before you test your DVD, though. For some reason iDVD leaves the red box on in preview mode.

Custom Scene Selection Tips

After I posted my custom DVD menu articles, I discovered a very interesting thing. When you create a scene selection menu from chapter markers, iDVD automatically uses the entire movie for every scene’s thumbnail image. This is not really a problem if your movie is small. But if you have a movie that is already pushing the limits of your DVD’s space, it can be a huge difficulty, because iDVD renders the movie once for every scene, resulting in a huge file.

Here’s how to fix it. Simply select a chapter marker button in iDVD, click the info button, and then check the box for a still frame. Now all you need to do is drag the slider to find a frame that you like. If iDVD’s automatically chosen frames don’t satisfy you, then you can just…

Use Custom Thumbnails

It’s simple, really. Find a frame from your movie, export a still of it, and then drag it into the box for a custom still frame in iDVD. That’s all you have to do.

Export to Disc Image

If you created your DVD with a non-self-contained movie, you will need to re-export every time that you change the movie. Besides that, when your movie is finished, it’s a good idea to throw away all of the render files to conserve space on your hard drive. If you did that and then wanted to burn another copy from iDVD, you would be faced with a lovely error.

In order to fix this, just head up to the File menu and choose Save as Disc Image. iDVD goes through the DVD creation process, but this method ends with a disc image instead of a DVD. Now use Apple’s Disc Utility (in /Applications/Utilities) to burn the disc image to a DVD.

So there you have five tips that make your life easier and customize your DVD menu.

iSundae II in “Final Tweak” Stage!

First, before we get into this article, I have to tell you the exciting news that iSundae II is almost ready to be released! As I mentioned in my introduction, we had a prescreening earlier this week, which brought to light several little things that needed to be tweaked before release. Luckily, most of these were minor and got finished up on Monday. There are just a few things left to do, and we hope to be done in early March.

Okay, you most likely have had enough of my excited ramblings. All the pre-screening of iSundae II has me stuck thinking about getting other people to give input on my movie, so that’s what I’ll write about for this week.

Collaborate on the Script

I can’t stress this one enough. Find a friend who likes to write, maybe somebody who writes better than you, and then let them at least read your script. Even better, write the script together. You may have to compromise at times, but the final script will be better than anything you could have done by yourself.

Now, when we at Phantom Moose write a script, we have a lot of shortcuts and silliness that ends up into the descriptions of events. Because of this, our scripts generally don’t make sense to “outsiders.” So if you write like us, the best thing to do is…

Storyboard for Better Understanding

A storyboard is basically a comic strip of your script. I’m hoping that our staff storyboard person (that’d be Rebekah) has a post on storyboarding in the works, because I don’t really do storyboards very well.

Anyway, once you have a storyboard, show it to somebody whose opinion you trust. Ask for their input, write down what they say, and then make changes accordingly. This is quite crucial, as you can catch confusing parts of your story at this point.

Do a Pre-Screening

Once you have the movie edited to the point that you think it’s done, get a trusted opinion person or two (or more, if you like) to watch the movie with a pad of paper. Make sure they see it on a TV screen, not your computer screen. Tell them to write down what strikes them as confusing, what effects could be improved, what dialog was too quiet, etc. You should be watching with your own pad of paper, noting things that you see, and also watching your pre-screeners’ reactions to the film.

Take their list to your collaborator and discuss it. Make changes accordingly, and then you can either call it done, or have another pre-screening, just to be extra sure.

Once you’ve done all of these steps and the movie is declared done, it’s time to celebrate. When you finish dancing and shouting, pop some popcorn, invite some friends, and have fun watching them watch your movie.

Tip Number One:

When building a heavy duty prop, start with something you already have and build onto/around/under/through/over it.
For example, we needed a throne with a very distinct look, and I didn’t want to use only cardboard because of safety problems. Trust me, you don’t want the actor falling through the prop in the middle of the first take! Our solution? A folding chair. I simply surrounded it with cardboard to change its shape, and voila! A safe, nice-looking Cone Throne.

Tip Number Two:

Get rid of pesky outlets and light switches by covering them.
This was a major problem for us, since we were filming a medieval movie. So we created squares of posterboard or paper with a little design on them and stuck the squares onto whatever we couldn’t hide behind props. You could use blank paper the color of the walls, sci-fi-looking wall units, fake plants, or whatever you want. Just be careful about sticking tape on wall paint, and watch out for falling camouflage. Every so often they’d let go and sail off in the middle of a shot.
Also, while this works well for wider shots, it might be obvious in a close-up.

Tip Number Three:

Work around irremovable parts of the room by disguising them.
This is a biggie. We couldn’t remove a modern-looking bannister from a stairway we were filming on, nor could we tear the fireplace out of the living room. Solution? Cardboard, of course! A little cutting, painting, hot glueing, and, hey presto! A medieval-looking fireplace and bannister. Another way to duck those annoying elements is to try not to show them, although this is sometimes impossible.

Windows! Windows can be awful. The wonderful, modern-looking, white bars criss-crossing the glass. Cardboard to the rescue once more. You see how you can work around these things? Of course, the blinds are a whole ‘nother story.
If your window has an air-conditioning unit in it, check the safety precautions before you try to cover it.

Tip Number Four:

Use things around the house to create “atmosphere.”
We had all the things for this set laying around the house. We just made it look nice and neat. Just keep in mind what time period you’re working with. Don’t put an alarm clock beside a medieval bed (unless it’s part of a joke).

If you want to do this on a much grander scale, check this set out. Only the two white walls existed there. We created two more walls out of bookcases, then filled them with things from around the house, along with a few props I made specifically for it. Now, granted, I did throw in a few joke items. But you see how you can create whole rooms with things from around the house?
It might not be time-saving (it took us all morning to get that set ready), but it’s inexpensive and the results are great.

So what am I talking about? Well, let’s take the very basic example of a character who is supposed to be happy. You really have only a couple of options.

Spelling it all out in the dialogue

Your character goes around saying, “I’m happy!” or another character tells him that he’s happy. Either way, you end up coming across as talking down to the audience, telling them exactly what’s going on when you could be…

Showing it

With this method, your character walks around showing his happiness. He smiles, he waves to people on his morning walk. He shrugs and laughs when his cup of coffee falls out the window on the bus. Obviously, this guy is so happy, he can’t contain it.

When you show the audience what the character is feeling, you let them figure it out. They get the point better because they aren’t thinking about how cheesy that last line was.

Now, the example of a happy character was extremely simple. This technique can (and should) be applied to almost everything. Say your character wants to sneak into a building. On one end we have…

“Hello! I’m sneaking!”

The character walks up to everybody he meets while sneaking and basically tells them to be quiet because he is sneaking into that building over there. Keep in mind that this is exactly what Elmer Fudd is doing every time he says, “Be vewy quiet. I’m hunting wabbits!” Of course, he’s supposed to be stupid, so it works. The complete opposite is…

“Real” sneaking

A much better approach is to do two things.

First, have your character actually sneak around, avoiding people, and generally giving the idea that he doesn’t want to be caught. Consider having him almost be caught, but then he gets away just in time. This will further cement the sneaking in the audience’s mind.

Second, shoot from sneaky-looking angles, and get lots of close-ups of both the sneaking character and the guards/villain. Make sure to throw in a couple longer shots, too. Then edit the scene by starting with longer shots, then cut quicker when the action is happening, and then return to longer cuts after the character escapes notice of the villain.

Final notes

You might have noticed that I’m not really very good at explaining this. It’s just something that you have to see. With that in mind, I recommend that you find a copy of the cartoon short One Froggy Evening. The cartoon was directed by Chuck Jones, and you can find it on Looney Tunes - Golden Collection, Volume Two.

This short is a prime example of telling a story without words. There is no dialogue in the cartoon at all, in fact, the only words are in the songs. The story is told almost completely with body language and good editing. You’ll see what I mean when you watch it. Study that short and you’ll soon have a good idea of how to say things without words.

Transitions

If there is no transition specified, iDVD will simply jump to the menu or movie that you click on. While this works in a pinch, we can enhance the viewing experience by choosing a built in transition.

Get your project loaded in iDVD and select a button from your menu. Bring up the info window. At the bottom is an area for setting transitions. iDVD ‘08 comes with twelve transitions to pick from. Simply choose one from the top pop-up menu. My favorites are Dissolve, to go between two menus, and Fade Through Black, to go between a menu and a movie.

Once you’ve selected your transition, the bottom pop-up menu will display further options for customizing your transition. These controls allow you to change the direction of effects such as Flip, Push, and Wipe. The best way to choose one of these is to use iDVD’s test mode to try out different settings until you find something that you like.

Easter Eggs

Professional DVDs often contain hidden features, generally known as “Easter eggs.” For my latest movie, I couldn’t stand not being able to do them any more. So I set out to create an Easter egg on my DVD.

Drag your Easter egg movie into iDVD to add it to the project. You should do this on the menu that you want the egg to appear on. You may have to tweak the new button so that it matches the others. It’s pretty visible right now, isn’t it? Let’s fix that. Select the title of the egg by clicking it twice (pause between clicks or you’ll play the movie).

This next part requires that you have Apple’s great Character Palette application open. It’s kind of hidden, so I’ll tell you how to find it. Open System Preferences and get to the International preference pane. Click the tab labeled “Input Menu.” At the bottom of the preference pane is a little check box for enabling the input menu. After you click this, a little flag will show up in your menu bar. Now go back to the top of the preference pane and enable the check box for Character Palette.

With the Character Palette enabled, you can close System Preferences. Click the flag that appeared in your menu bar and select the Character Palette item. You now have a palette of all the characters that your computer is capable of producing. Just browse through them and find something that you like. Make sure your Easter egg’s name is still selected, then go back to Character Palette and click the “Insert” button. This types the character in the egg’s name. You might have to edit the font size to make your Easter egg large enough. We now have a cute little symbol for the Easter egg icon.

It’s looking good, but the egg is still visible. We want it to be hidden until somebody navigates to it. To hide the Easter egg, first move it to the place where you want it to be. Most professional DVDs hide their eggs in places off to the side of the menu items.

Click the button to bring up the info menu. First, uncheck the box that enables the button’s drop shadow. Next, click the color swatch to bring up the color picker. If you click the magnifying glass on the color picker, you will get a color select tool. Use this tool to pick the color of the background that your egg will go on. This sets the Easter egg’s text color to the background color, effectively hiding it. When someone navigates to it, however, iDVD will highlight it with a different color, which will show the Easter egg.

Other Little Tweaks

Speaking of highlight color, you can change that quite easily. Make sure nothing is selected, and then bring up the info menu. Under the “Buttons” section of the menu is a highlight color option. Set this color just like button color. I’d choose something bright, like yellow or orange. Note that this is global highlight color, so it’s the same for all buttons.

Depending on the theme, iDVD will either highlight the text, or add a bullet next to the highlighted button. If you’re like me, you probably want to change this. Just select a button (or all the buttons), and then click on “Buttons” at the bottom of the iDVD menu. This changes the side menu to display button editing options. Select “Bullets” from the pop-up menu at the top, bringing up a long list of bullet types to choose from. Choose one you like, or choose the “no” symbol to turn off bullets altogether. This only affects selected buttons.

And there you have it. There’s still plenty that you can tweak on your menu, but I’ll leave that up to you to find, or up to future articles.