| | | | Don't Miss Don't Read This On A Plane
I've been officially teaching no-budget filmmaking for over 15 years, but I'm not an academic. I don't have a degree in teaching, nor have I ever been hired by a university to teach a course, (though I've lectured at universities countless times). But if you want to know what a no-budget film made by an actual academic looks like, check out Dr. Stuart McBratney's new micro-budget feature Don't Read This On A Plane, which recently world premiered at Dances With Films, winning the Audience Award, and is now available On Demand via Gravitas Ventures. Stuart has a PHD and current teaches Media Production at the University of Newcastle's School of Creative Industries in Australia. He clearly knows what he's teaching--his $80,000 feature is one of the most impressive I've seen as far as production value goes. Here's a taste of it... |
| | So, if you watched that and said, "there's no way that was made for $80k!", then you're like me, because that's exactly what I told Stuart. I've seen a lot of impressive-looking films shot for little or no money, (my recent No Budget Confidential film Cosmos comes to mind), but usually I can figure out after watching them how they pulled off the trick. For Don't Read This On A Plane, I was somewhat stumped. Sure, you can go around Europe shooting on the streets with a tiny, nearly invisible crew and get good enough looking shots, but how do you get so many great looking, lit, controlled, shots in the lobbies of hotels and other locations, without having to rent those locations and shut them down for your shoot? Well, Stuart was kind enough to fill me in. And like one of his classes, his story has a series of lessons:
LESSON #1 - PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT
Something I've been repeating over and over if you've been joining me for my No Budget Confidential shows is the idea that you can't expect to make a great (or even competent) no-budget feature right out of the box. It takes practice. You need to make stuff. You need to try and fail. And try and succeed. Short work that doesn't really cost you much. This work not only teaches you the craft of filmmaking, it helps you develop your voice as a filmmaker, and crucially, it gives you the confidence to tackle something as difficult as making a feature with no real money. For one, to make a film where you don't pay for the normal things that normal productions have, you're going to be breaking a lot of rules. You have to feel confident you can pull this off, because often the people around you won't trust that you can.
Stuart cut his teeth shooting commercials--over 500 of them--after getting out of film school at 23 and spending several years shooting shorts and one feature. He worked at a local TV station in a small town where they produced 30 second spots for local businesses with $300 budgets. He started out as a one-man band, doing everything on these shoots, but eventually stepped up his game, adding crew members and raising the budgets, and working for bigger clients like McDonalds, (you can see his work on his personal website). With this experience he developed a commercial eye, learning how to create high-dollar looks with little money or resources. He also shot a second feature, the $37,000 Pop Up, which was his PHD project and was released in 2016. (His thesis was on micro-budget filmmaking, writing about Pi, Clerks, Slacker, and El Mariachi). |
| | | The stunning Art Nouveau Bookstore Livraria Lello in Porto, Portugal |
| LESSON #2 - THE SMALLER YOU ARE, THE MORE PLACES YOU CAN GO
I should say at this point that Don't Read This On A Plane is a subtle comedy/drama, with a wistful tone reminiscent of a film like Lost In Translation. It's the story of an author who goes on tour plugging her new novel, only to find that her publisher has gone bankrupt at the beginning of the tour, and isn't able to cover her accommodations or any other expenses, other than the prepaid airfare. The film is a kind of travelogue--a tour of beautiful bookstores throughout Europe--and watching it during the shutdown was a pleasure. We follow Jovana as she travels to Venice, Porto, Burgundy, Berlin, Budapest, Santorini, Maastricht, and Oradea.
The first secret to pulling off this film was that it was shot in a modular fashion, utilizing three distinct shooting periods: The Travel Shoot, The Interiors Shoot, and PIckups. The travel shoot was a month on the road in May 2018, flying to all the locations with a tiny 4-man crew, which included the lead actress, Sophie Desmarais. It's surprisingly cheap to fly people around Europe, around $100 per person, so about $400-$500 per location total. This crew was made up of Stuart (who directed and ran the sound recorder), a DP, and a boom operator. Pretty much all the exteriors and the bookstore interiors were shot in this portion. They shot most of the movie on a Red Epic-W in 8K, (he edited an HD proxy and finished in 4K). When they had to go super-low profile, like in busses, airplanes and airports, they shot in 4K with a tiny Panasonic GH-5 with a 20mm pancake lens.
The second round of shooting--another month in June 2018--was done in Oradia, Romania, with a much larger crew and a truck and gear. Almost all the interiors in the film were shot during this part--that's why they look so good, so controlled. So, how did he pull this off with no money? He partnered with a Romanian producer he met shooting Pop-Up, Laszlo Kun. Laszlo owns a production company that shoots high-end commercials and weddings. The camera and all the gear were owned by Laszlo, and the crew were already on salary, so neither added to the budget. Laszlo owns half the movie. |
| | LESSON #3 - LEARN AS MANY JOBS AS POSSIBLE
Having been a one-man band for so long, Stuart is accomplished at many film tasks. He wrote, produced, directed, shot (some), edited, and scored the film. After shooting the first two segments, he went to China, where he was teaching at the time, and edited for a year on a laptop using FCPX. He then shot a week of pickups in Romania in Summer 2019, and a day in Newcastle. He did most of the sound design himself on his laptop (in FCPX), and did all his final post, coincidentally, at Final Post in Newcastle. For his several VFX shots, he used Fiverr.com to find affordable VFX artists.
The film premiered at DWF in August. His foreign sales company Cardinal XD (who he worked with on Pop-Up), has sold the film in several territories, and Gravitas is handling the U.S.
LESSON #4 - BRICOLAGE, PRAGMATISM & THE POWER OF YES
As an academic, Stuart applied the age-old process of Bricolage to this production. As a philistine, I had to look up the word bricolage. I found several definitions, and with regard to no-budget filmmaking, it's now my new favorite word. The most common definition is: something constructed or created from a diverse range of available things. This perfectly expresses my Second Rule of No-budget Filmmaking, what I call "working within the framework of available resources." It is also described as "the process of improvisation in a human endeavor." I teach that actors aren't the only people improvising on a set; the Producer must be agile and open to alternative ideas, especially when things don't go as planned. Shooting with four people for a month all over Europe, you're going to be improvising constantly. You have to apply the psychology of faith that things will work out when you operate in this way, and that faith comes best from all that practice you did earlier.
Pragmatism was explained to me by Stuart as figuring out the essence of a big idea and then stripping it down to that essence. I like the definition I found on the internet (I warn you, do not look this word up on Wikipedia, unless you love to read philosophy, which as a philistine, I do not): considering what can realistically be done as opposed to the best theoretical course of action. I think this best corresponds to my First Rule of No-Budget Filmmaking: embracing your limitations. Stuart thought of Don't Read This On A Plane as an academic exercise--how far could he push the theories of bricolage and pragmatism. In my class, I say push them. Build your projects from these two ideas. And in that process, say yes to everything. Have a bias for action, and don't worry so much about perfection, which will stop you dead every time.
Check out Don't Read This On A Plane on any one of your favorite platforms. You can find links to all of them here. |
| | | | FILM FATALES FILMMAKING EVENTS
Film Fatales, the non-profit organization that advocates for women feature film and TV directors, has been hosting a number of online events during the COVID shutdown. Their next one is today, Friday, October 9 at 2pm PST. It's a panel discussion about the Director - Producer relationship on narrative feature films called Marriage Story. The panel features several established filmmakers discussing their experiences with short term and long term collaborators, what it takes to maintain a creative relationship, and what they would do in fictional hypothetical situations.
You can find links to upcoming Film Fatales' events, past events (available for free), and current releases from their members on their new Watch Film Fatales site. |
| | | NEW HEIGHTS PRESENTS ARTS VIRTUAL SYMPOSIUM
The FREE online Arts Symposium sessions for filmmakers, hosted by the City of Santa Clarita's New Heights Artist Development Series, continues tomorrow night with “Be Seen: Film Distribution Tips & Tricks.”
An esteemed panel shares their experience selling independent films with specific tips on how the distribution process and landscape is changing amidst a global pandemic. Panelists will discuss the creative sales and marketing strategies, new film markets, VOD/online distribution, film festivals, and successfully packaging a film for the marketplace as well as tips for independent filmmakers and building your specific audience. You’ve done the hard work of making a film, now make sure it gets seen!
Panelists include: Two-time Emmy Award Winner Cady McClain, Lisha Yakub (Producer at Calgrove Media, who formerly packaged films for distribution at Discover Management) and my friend Liz Manashil (formerly of Sundance’s Creative Distribution Initiative and Picture Motion), with moderator Jennifer Fischer (former founder/director of the Santa Clarita Valley Film Festival and producer and distributor with Think Ten Media Group).
This panel, presented by The City of Santa Clarita and The MAIN Theater, is tomorrow, Saturday, October 10 at 7:00pm PST. To watch for free, click here. |
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