How to Make Movies from Home

You don’t have to live in Hollywood to make your own movies. With today’s technology is easy as pie to make movies from home… mmm pie…. Anyway, all you’ll need is some good ideas and some starter money. So let’s get started:

PRE-PRODUCTION
If you want to have a story to your movie it will help to write a script. There is a great script writing program online you can download for free at: www.celtx.com It formats your script properly for you, it works like a charm and it’s really easy to learn how to use.

Also, if you make a story board before you shoot it will make production run a lot smoother. All you’ll need for this is a paper and a pen. A story board is pretty much a bunch of boxes with pictures in them of how you want to set up your shots. Here’s an example:

PRODUCTION
Production is the actual shooting of the movie. First thing you’ll need is a camera. You can find a decent video camera at Best Buy or Walmart for around $200-$300 these days.

Another very helpful tool during production will be a tripod. You can also find this at Best Buys and Walmart’s and it’ll cost between $30-$40. The tripod will give you the ability to have a steady shot without they shakyness caused from holding the camera.

If you want to get more professional, using heavy lights and external microphones will come in handy, but I wouldn’t worry about that if you’re just starting out.

POST-PRODUCTION
After you shoot your movie, you’ll need to upload it your computer and piece the clips together as you see fit. To connect your camera to the computer you’ll need a USB cable or Firewire cable. Firewire is ideal, it will upload the data faster, but you’ll need to make sure your computer has as a Firewire port. Best Buys sells firewire cables for around $40, but you can find them online for about half that price.

You will also need a video editing program. Most computers you buy these days come with one. If you have Windows its Windows Movie Maker, and for Mac its iMovie. Both of these programs work fine, but if you get really serious about movie making you’ll want to upgrade to either Adobe Premiere (Windows) or Final Cut Pro (Mac). Final Cut Pro is the industry standard. These programs aren’t cheap; if you buy them, they cost around $1,000.

After you’re done editing your video you export it and upload it to the location of your choosing (Youtube, Facebook). It’s not as complicated as it sounds, and its fun as hell. I hope this information was useful; stayed tuned later this week, I’ll be posting my favorite independent Youtube filmmakers.

Shane Barbera