With the number of re-makes coming out these days, you’d think every original idea for writing a script for film had been used a dozen times. Not to say that it hasn’t (the black-white “buddy cop” film has practically become its own genre. Examples here, here, here, here and here).

The reason Hollywood films are often pushed toward cliché storylines is that it’s a big risk for a production house to release something that’s never been done before. That’s how screenplays end up being so formulaic; since millions of dollars go into producing these films, and the majority of actors are paid regardless of how well or poorly a film does at the box office, no producer wants to put something out that he doesn’t think has at least a small chance of being successful.

Why It’s Good To Be Indie

Some indie filmmakers shoot movies because it’s something fun to do with friends; I know I do. As an independent, realize that while you don’t have a big budget to spend on jaw-dropping CGI effects or big name talent, you have something that’s much more valuable: creative control.

This is the point at which you and Hollywood diverge. With a low-budget or no-budget film, the majority of your investment is your time. You can use weird camera angles and experiment with different effects, so long as you have the means to do so, and you don’t have to worry about whether 8 million people will be willing to spend $12 apiece to go out to a theatre and watch it.

Directors are often under a lot of pressure from their producers and film studios to stay on schedule and
within their budgetary constraints, while simultaneously making a movie that appeals to a specific target audience. The big studios need someone to sell to, because if every movie was Fun For The Whole Family™ the scope and subject matter of new films would become severely limited in scope.

So be glad, because as an indie filmmaker with no financial sponsors, you have the freedom to work at your own pace, make films about whatever topic you choose (within legal standards, of course), and spend as little or as much time and money as you want in making your ideas into a finished piece of filmmaking.

How Movie Scripts Work

Scripts, like the films that are made from them, have to have several things to be successful. In writing a script it’s the combination of useful formatting and camera/actor direction, good dialogue and description, and a captivating scenario or plot.

I can’t pretend that I know how to teach you about writing a script you can sell to a major movie studio, but for the purposes of your own filmmaking endeavors you can make it easier on your actors, crewmen, and even yourself, by creating a script that’s both fun to read and easy to understand.

Script Format

In order to be taken seriously by an agent or producer, movie scripts are formatted in a very specific fashion. It’s the same reason all of our traffic lights are red, yellow, and green from top to bottom – things are often easier to use when they’re organized in a standard, recognizable way.

Some basic specs for a film script: the entire script should be in 10 or 12 point Times or Courier. Your cover page should contain only your film’s title in bold, followed by several line breaks, the words “Written by”, one more line break, and then the name(s) of the author(s), each on its own separate line if there is more than one writer.

There are some minor variations in what’s acceptable, but script formatting usually goes something like this:

Script pages, starting with the cover page, are numbered in the upper right-hand corner from 1 to the end. Each scene number is surrounded by [square brackets] and bolded. The scene location is indented and also bold, all caps, and on the same line as the scene number. In the example above, it is EXT. FIELD – DAY. Use EXT. for an outdoor scene and INT. for an indoor scene.

The line that contains the scene number, location and time is followed by a description of what we see when the scene opens. This can be as general or as detailed as you want, depending on how much freedom the director is meant to have at the time of the shoot. Not all directors will go with exactly what’s scripted, anyway, but this at least should get the writer’s ideas across. The first time a character’s name is used in the description of each scene it should be in all caps. Our two “characters” in this scene are the WARRIOR and his RABBLE.

Dialogue is indented further and centered within this area; the speaking character’s name is in caps on its own line above the line or lines of dialogue. Any cues such as verbal tone or action are placed in parentheses below this line. In this case, we have added (Cheering, waving their weapons) below RABBLE because this is what they should be doing as they deliver their line. Other examples of cues could be (Sitting down in the chair) or (Smirking, shakes his head). You can also include minor camera direction and other specific instructions here if you would like.

Character Voice in Scripts

Ye Olde Character above has a medieval-ish way of speaking, because he’s supposed to be the commander of a (modest) force of soldiers. When you get around to writing your script, you might be tempted to use certain catch phrases or terms because they sound good to you. But remember that every fictional character needs to have his own voice in order to be believable.

I’ve noticed a lack of differentiation between characters even in major motion pictures; you know, when more than one character uses a word or phrase in exactly the same way. This is sometimes overlooked when the same person is writing dialogue for multiple characters.

For example, let’s suppose that you think it sounds really funny when your villain verbally abuses his minions, saying “You imbeciles!” Then later on in the screenplay, one of your minor characters is talking about somebody she knows and says “That guy is such an imbecile…”

Really. Would two characters who have nothing in common and nothing to do with each other really use that same word to describe someone they dislike? Sure, it could happen. But there are plenty of other words you could use to provide your audience with a sense that these are two different people, with two different lives and from two unrelated backgrounds.

Of course, the opposite could be true and the use of a word or phrase might work as a subtle foreshadowing where two characters are connected in a way that’s unknown to the audience for part of the film. Otherwise, giving each character their own unique voice includes not only word choice, but their phrasing, tone of voice, and sentence structure. It’s everything about the way they speak and act, and you have the ability to convey all of those things with your script. Now get writing!

Once you’ve set out to create a low-budget film, you may soon start finding out that many of the things you want to include seem to be beyond the reach allowed by your budgetary constraints. Knowing how much you can and should spend and put into your indie film budget depends on several factors, which I’ll cover here in as much detail as I can.

Equipment

Your first major concern in filmmaking is making sure you have the necessary gear to get the job done. You can get a used camcorder for a few hundred bucks, or borrow one from a friend or relative, but if you want a new camera don’t mess around with anything under about $350-400.

There are some tempting options on the market because they’re less expensive than that, but most of these cameras will leave you wanting in the quality department once the novelty of owning a camera wears off. Best to start out with something you know is decent and work your way up from there.

With the obstacle of obtaining a camcorder out of the way, you can pretty much go from there as far as gear is concerned. If you buy no other gear beyond the camera, you can use a few clip-on desk lamps you already have lying around as lighting and the on-camera microphone to capture sound. With simple improvised tools like this, figuring out how to configure your equipment in the way that best does the job will still take some practice.

A set of three shop lights from a hardware store will run you under $10 each and can create plenty of good lighting, and you can get a decent shotgun mic for picking up sound for under $50.

On-Camera Talent

Let’s be realistic – why pay actors when you can grab your friends, right? Well, because you might not have twelve close friends whom you can call any day or night to come out and spend a few hours of their time helping you make your film.

So to entice acquaintances or other people you know to help you, offer to buy them lunch or treat them to dinner after they help you. That’s usually a better tactic than telling someone you’ll pay them $10 for three hours of work.

Just as a general piece of information for your benefit, the average working actor commands a wide range of salaries, but in order to hire one you can expect to pay somewhere between $800-2000 for a day’s work.

Writing/Crew

Behind-the-scenes people are just as important as the ones in front of the camera. If you’re interested in doing a series or comedy film and you need to hire outside script writers or joke writers to bring in fresh material, you might pay by the joke or on a per-word basis, among other forms of reimbursement.

It’s quite possible that you’d be able to get some great story or script material written for anywhere from dozens to only a couple of hundred dollars this way.

Props and Costumes

Need prop guns, swords, armor, torn clothing, makeup, high-tech gadgets, or other devices to add to your film’s believability. The first places you should check for items like these are thrift stores and toy shops, if you don’t already have a stockpile of them hidden away somewhere.

Clothes that can easily be stained, mangled, ripped, cut up, or otherwise modified can be found for almost nothing at the thrift store. And you’d be surprised what a little spray paint and some fiddling can do to make a toy into a realistic looking item. Ask your mom, girlfriend, or questionably oriented male friend for access to their makeup kit for some instant flesh paint.

Locations

Far be it from me to suggest that you pay for use of a location if you can help it, but in certain circumstances it may be necessary. If nothing else, you should at least write up a contract if you use a privately owned indoor location like a warehouse, restaurant, or place of business. To download a free sample contract, check out the Filming Locations page.

Totals

While I’m sure you’re aware that it is quite possible to spend hundreds of millions of dollars within a single film budget – and even an indie filmmaker can spend thousands – hopefully some of the tips here will help you save most of your money and still find ways of making great films.

Something I try to emphasize time and time again is that you can make a great film without computer-generated effects and big name actors. Work on your camera technique, your directing skills, and your storytelling abilities and you’ll be more than halfway toward being a great filmmaker on a meager indie film budget! The rest of this site has some fantastic information on how to do all those things and more.

When you start out making your first video or movie, it’s easy to get ahead of yourself. You want to grab a camera, point it at something, and hit record. Part of knowing how to make a video, however, is the planning phase. Don’t skip steps in your storyboarding and planning phase if you can avoid it, because even if you don’t follow all the fancy technical procedures you can still save yourself some headaches by just sitting down and thinking about everything you need to plan.

Just getting up and making a spur-of-the-moment project can work out perfectly fine, and you can capture some great moments flying by the seat of your pants. But even the most experienced Hollywood directors use a technique called storyboarding to plan their films from start to finish.

Storyboarding

A storyboard is not a book about your video. It can be as simple or as detailed as you want; some storyboards are simple sketches of how a shot should be framed with arrows showing camera movement. Others depict the length of each shot, lighting schemes, a description of the scene and notes on character placement.

Starting out with a good storyboarding session can give you a better idea of how a scene is going to flow from beginning to end. Drawing a sketch of every shot might not be your style, but maybe instead you’d find it useful to map out a top-down view of your location and select camera angles and action paths.

Often if you’re the writer, producer, and director of your film it won’t be necessary to do any of this. But if you have one or more cameramen who will be setting up and operating the lenses (if you happen to be a character in your film, for instance) you might find that providing rough storyboards can reduce the time it takes to get the cameras in place.

Scripts vs. Storyboards

Working with a good script will give a filmmaker the general overview of a scene; what the location is like; what the characters look like and how they act; and the visual scope of the camera(s).

For example, a scene description in a script might say “Fade up from black to see a lone MAN walking down a dirt road in the forest. His pace is quick, his steps determined. The man’s face is expressionless as his strides quickly cover the ground between him and his destination.”

A storyboard goes one step further on the technical end to provide a list of shots. A storyboarding layout for the segment above might begin with a wide shot of the path in the woods, with the man walking down it. The second sentence describes his footsteps and his pace, so the second storyboard frame might show a close-up shot of the man’s legs, tracking alongside them as he walks determinedly. The third frame could be a close-up of his face, expressionless as he walks.

How Detail-Oriented Are You?

I’ve made short films without either a script or a storyboard. Mostly this was because I had come up with the concept and storyline for the film and knew exactly how I wanted it to look visually. I would be directing and doing camera work as well, so when it came to both technical direction and dialogue, I’d be in the driver’s seat.

Even in these situations, that didn’t mean I didn’t have to sit down and plan things out. You always have to plan. Just make sure you write it down if that’s how you remember it best; make an audio or video journal if you like it that way; or bounce your ideas off of friends and crewpeople, if for no other reason than that you can ask them later and it helps you remember.

You might find that it’s easier to work this way in some cases, and it mainly depends on your level of detail-orientedness. At the end of the day, it’s more about what makes you most comfortable as a filmmaker; I can offer suggestions all day long, and tell you the way they do things in the film industry, but when you have no budget and no constraints you’re going to make films the way you want to make them.

So use storyboarding to give visual instruction to your crew. Plan because it’s good practice. And script dialogue out to keep you from having to remember everyone’s lines and recall them at any given moment while you’re doing twelve other things on set.

Everything that goes on the screen or into the audio of a film affect how the viewer perceives it, so I think it’s important to talk about how genre is affected by stylistic choices, both technically and otherwise.

From the first frame of a film all the way to the end, the filmmaker has the rare opportunity to capture an
audience’s attention in a unique way. Once that interest has been piqued and that attention has been grabbed, the filmmaker can take the viewer down any number of paths he chooses.

You want to be good at indie filmmaking, right? What do you want to do with your audience once you have their attention?

Filmic Objectives

Every film has some kind of goal in mind – whether it’s to tell a story, to depict a situation, or to confuse
the blue blazes out of anyone trying to make sense of it. We can classify our goals somewhat by focusing on
genre.

The main goal of a comedy is to make the audience laugh.

Thrillers and action movies put their viewers in suspense. They use different tactics to accomplish the same thing – thrillers tend to use mystery and intrigue, while action films employ death-defying stunts, high-speed chases, gunfire and big explosions.

Drama attempts to invoke an emotional reaction. This can be anything from sorrow to excitement to anger, depending on the story or idea presented in the film.

Horror films try to scare you.

Romance films tend to have those happily-ever-after endings that put you in a good mood.

Documentaries inform or educate the viewer.

Melding Them Together

You’ve probably heard terms like docu-drama, romantic comedy and action thriller used to describe movies. Many films like these blur the lines of genre, but all this does in essence is give these films multiple goals.

Often the perceived accomplishment of a film’s goal determines whether it becomes popular or does well at the box office and with home video sales. Take a comedy that isn’t funny, for example. While it might be an otherwise good movie with a solid storyline and good acting, if viewers gather in the theater expecting a laugh riot and they don’t get it, the film likely will not go over too well.

Your indie film probably doesn’t have to stand up to the pressure of being liked by millions of people, but if and when you do describe it to friends or family members, throw something out that’s easy for them to recognize. Don’t tell them it’s a gore slasher flick if they’re about to watch a romantic comedy. People like to know what to expect (at least in a general sense), because it gives them time to react to it more appropriately.

Accomplish Something

Do you have a specific idea to present? Some films are a simple portrait of a situation, without a solid, moving storyline or series of events. They depict a person or a group of people and how they interact with the world and/or with one another.

Do you have a story to tell? Do you want your viewers to feel something emotionally, or react in a certain way? Whatever your style and preferences are, you most likely want to create a film that lets you say something. You can always pull together a bunch of unorganized footage and make a collage, but if you know your goal it’ll be easier to make a film you’re proud of.

Whomever it was that said ‘what you can achieve is only limited by your imagination’ probably never tried to make a film with no budget. You can make a movie in your backyard, but it gets kind of unexciting when the seedy underground nightclub in your film bears an uncanny resemblance to your little sister’s bedroom with a crooked strobe light hanging from the wall.

So you need an old warehouse, an upscale home, a gigantic field, a back alley, or a quiet restaurant to film one of your scenes in, huh? Getting permission to use any of these locations that don’t happen to be owned by you is a tricky business, but don’t worry – it’s quite possible if you use the right tact and go through the proper formalities. Doing so can really improve the credibility of your results by making it look like you have a bigger budget than you actually do!

You should first contact the establishment, property owner, or place of business to set up a meeting by phone or in person with the owner, proprieter, or manager of the location. You should have prepared a simple document that outlines the terms for your use of the property and any provisions thereof. I’ve written up a sample agreement below.

When you first speak to the person in charge, be polite, cordial, and honest. Answer any questions you are asked without hesitation; let him or her know exactly the scope of your filming and what will be taking place in the scene. If you have a budget, make it clear. If you have no budget and are asking for free use of the premises, let it be known right away. An example of what you might say follows.

“Hi, my name is ______. I’m an independent filmmaker and I think your <insert location here> would be the perfect location for a scene in my film. I was wondering how you would feel about my film crew using a section of it. We <have a small budget/can’t pay you, but> we’ll give you credit, of course, and we would only need to use the place for about ____ hours. My crew is pretty flexible as far as days of the week and times of day.”

You might not be as flexible if it’s an outdoor location or if your film crew only gets together at certain times, but if that’s the case just make that clear to the owner. The worst thing he or she can do is say no. If you get a ‘yes’ you should be immediately ready with the next part of your offer.

“Great, thank you! I’m really looking forward to using this spot, it fits in so well with the <story/theme/feel> of our film. I have a short document that I’d like to <send/go over with you> that we can fill out when we finalize a time; it basically says if we were to break anything, we would be responsible for fixing it, and that you are held harmless of any mishaps that might occur.”

A sample contract agreement for use of a location is available for download:

Sample Property Use Contract