You can make a movie too

Since so many people asked me details about the short movie “Ajab Kutchis Ki Ghazab Kahani” premiered at the Kojain Diwali Dhadaka 2010 on Nov 13, 2010, I thought I will pen down my experience so that other budding short film-makers who are sitting on the fence can make use of the information.

First some statistics:
1) Around 290 clips were shot. Not all were used of course.

2) There was a written script but we also made many on the spot additions.

3) The Camera used was a Sony Digital Camcorder which many of you will be having. It writes to the hard disk. Such a camcorder is useful since you can retrieve files real fast as compared to mini-DV based camcorder.

4) Editing was done on Pinnacle Studio Software ver 11. I bought the software last year during Thanksgiving Sale. Probably around 30-50$. Pinnacle was installed on a Windows 7 machine and I had lot of free space on hard disk.

5) Sound chopping of songs, etc was done on Sony Sound Forge Audio Studio 10.
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/soundforgesoftware
Its available for 30 day free trial and 65$ after that.

6) Youtube videos were downloaded using :
http://videodownloadx.com/

7) Often you may just want the audio from a youtube video. There are various convertors available that will convert from mp4 to avi mp4 to mp3.
I used FLV Crunch on Mac to do the conversion

8 ) For Sounds (like fight sounds, punch sounds, glass breaking sound) I used:
http://soundbible.com/
http://www.prankcallsunlimited.com/freesound2.htm
http://funny-stuff.audio4fun.com/

9) While creating movie for upload, used “MP4” format with “High Definition” option. MP4 produces a smaller file for upload. However since it compresses the data, it takes some time for the file to get written.

10) Sound Dubbing was done using Pinnacle Software also.

Things to be aware of while shooting a scene:
1) Think of all props that you will need before starting the shoot. Since its a movie be creative and use plenty of outdoor locations.
2) Think of the transition between scenes. How you want the scene to end and the next scene to begin. If you think correctly it will be less pain during editing.
3) If the scene is outdoors, you will have to do sound dubbing later on since the wind noise gets captured.
4) If the scene is indoors, you can try to get away with no dubbing and using the actual words spoken by the actors.
5) Think of the camera angle also.
6) Light can be very important indoors. If less light then try to use lamps, etc to shed some light.
7) While doing sound dubbing you can act out the scene also. That will capture some subtle sounds like sounds of your feet, direction of sound etc which will provide realistic effect.
8 ) Be prepared to spend lot of time on editing. Editing takes up a chunk of time in preparing the short movie.

In the end, making a short movie is not that difficult. Its fun and if you have been thinking about it, then take the plunge.