How To Make A Feature When You Are The Only Person Involved

Back in 2018, I had been lucky enough to secure funding from Funding Circle to start my own film company. It was a sizeable loan and had given me enough money to purchase a couple of DSLR’s, some lenses, a tripod, a powerful PC, adobe premiere, some lights and some sound equipment. Throw in a clapper board and some chalk, and I felt pretty confident about being able to make something. I had tried to make the company sustainable during this time (wedding videos, etc.) but sadly, nobody was interested. It was then that I realised that I had just about spent all my cash and was going to have to shut the company down without having actually made anything! So, I decided to do something crazy. I had the equipment. I’m a fairly ok writer. I’ve had acting training. No need to mess about with a short that I’ll struggle to sell. Why don’t I try and make a feature entirely on my own? 

Story

Golden rule when your feature budget is zero; use what you have, not what you want. I had a house, a car and the outdoors. So that was my film. After much bouncing around of ideas, I settled upon the comedic story of a guy seeking the perfect place to spread his father and son’s ashes, using a list left by his father. After all, tragedy breeds great comedy.  Now here’s where it gets tricky. I decided not to write a script (no need for re-writes, changes of location, learning of lines, etc), but to write a storyline that I could follow, with scenes set out and maybe a few lines of dialogue to inspire. For the rest of the story, I was going to improvise the script. Finally (to help spur on dialogue), I “borrowed” an idea from Cast Away and created two extra characters; my son (in his urn) and my dad (in his urn). Now I had co-stars, which meant zippier dialogue. Story in place, I sat down to plan my masterpiece… 

Locations

Outside of my house and my car (which made up at least half the film), the biggest problem was going to be permission to film. I had sourced the locations of around ten different public sites of beauty that were not registered under the various protective groups (NT, EH, etc), did my research into council filming permissions and finalised my boundary lines; 

• Shoot on your own. 
• Only shoot in public spaces and avoid shooting the general public. 
• DON’T BREAK ANYTHING. EVER. 
• Don’t obstruct or prevent anyone or anything. 

And it was October, which meant everybody was staying in anyway, so that helped!

The Shoot

I split the shoot into three stages; 

1. My house. Since it was the opening of the film, it gave me a good start in a comfortable space and I was able to get used to the equipment without pressure of keeping anyone waiting. It also allowed me to figure out issues, order any bits I needed, get used to charging times for batteries and shed any equipment I knew I could live without on the road. It also taught me self-framing, so that I could setup the shot, place myself where I needed to be and then double check my location with the monitor attached to the top of the camera, facing me. 
2. On the road. Since every location I wanted to shoot at was at least two hours away, I shot all my driving sequences travelling to and from the locations. I shot my scenes in the car using a window camera support for my DSLR. I kept the monitor beside me on the passenger seat and could check (when at a standstill) if I was in frame. The mic sat next to me on the passenger seat too. That was officially the best lesson in vehicle filming I have ever had (so far). 
3. At the main locations, I would arrive, shoot me leaving the car and returning to the car and then start my hike with tripod and kit. My kit bag doubled as the bag I carried the two urns in and that gave me an out with hauling kit. I would set the tripod up, walk in and out of shot, beautiful countryside in the background, then move further up the trail and do it again. Get some footage at the summit/peak/zenith and then walk back, same process again. Each location took a day to shoot and I shot at seven locations, before eventually deciding I had enough footage. 

Needless to say, I did a fair bit of sleeping in my car and living out of supermarkets, so glamour went right out the window in exchange for practicality. But by the end of two weeks, I had all my footage. 

The Edit

After working my way through the Premiere tutorials (and downloading the footage onto the hard drive), I was able to get started editing. The first couple of hours were exciting. The next couple of months DRAGGED. Regular breaks of a day or two off were essential, and when I finally managed to source some copyright free music, things started to spice up again. The music that I sourced online from freelance composers had two charges; festival charge and mainstream charge. I went for festival and that kept the costs down. So, by the time it had reached Xmas, I was fully happy that I had made something I could be proud of. 

I put together the all-important trailer; 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPiZwDQRSy0

Released it and then I showed off the final film to a couple of peers, who gave glowing reviews. Sitting back with a mince pie and a glass of sherry, I decided to tackle the big job in the new year. 

Festivals

So here is where it all went wrong (technically). I had a (very) limited budget for festivals, so instead of researching which ones would be great for my film, I chose some big hitters (Sundance, Raindance, New York, London) blew the last of my cash on them, then sent it off to some free little festivals that frankly wouldn’t have shown up at a village fete. Needless to say, up against big hitters, it didn’t get picked and the little ones weren’t even interested. So, I had learned my final and most valuable lesson with my hard-fought film. 

DO. YOUR. RESEARCH.

Summary

With hindsight, for the budget I had (all in, about 7K), I could have just shot the whole thing on my phone and wouldn’t have been far off what I did make. But I learned SO much, that it became invaluable. I have just paid off the loan and now I have the equipment and plans to shoot some 60 second shorts to meet some potential future collaborators…and then I’m going to do it all over again. 

Trust me. It’s worth it.    

Michael Brand

Michael Brand is an award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker based in Crewe in Cheshire. When he is not busy attending online acting troupes or script consulting for film festivals and Coverfly, he can be found running around the North West, making films. 

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