Making a Short Film - An Alternative to Short Film Funding

It's never been a better time to create digital media. With an abundance of online distribution channels and the proliferation of digital cameras and editing tools, making short films has never been easier.

While the cost of many production technologies has dropped dramatically, there are still many hard costs involved in making narrative short films. Assuming actors and crew work for free, you still have to consider locations, catering, equipment rentals, and other hard costs that can't be avoided - script printing costs, digital video tape or film stock, lighting equipment rental and more.

There is however one major workaround for covering all the costs - the "issue-oriented" short. This is a short film that deals with a social issue at it's core. Teen pregnancy, racism, poverty and homelessness are just a few examples.

The reason for shooting a story that has a social issue at its central theme is that it's much easier to get products and services donated for a short film production that has an important social issue than any other type of production. In fact, it makes for a great opening line when cold calling to get donations in exchange for credit.

In the mid 90's I produced a 35mm short film with virtually no budget. In fact the largest expense (for a car camera mount) only occurred because I ran out of time and couldn't make enough calls to find one for free.

For film stock, we got donated short ends*. For catering, several local restaurants donated pizzas and we even got gift certificates from a few supermarket chains to cover craft service. Even the expensive post-production process was covered through various connections and a LOT of cold-calling. Combined with the generous donations of time and energy from cast and crew, our nine minute film was virtually free.

Before You Choose This Approach to Making a Short Film...

...a few words of caution.

This process of getting a short film produced can be very time-consuming. It requires making a lot of phone calls which can sap production energy and is only possible if you treat it as a matter of odds - make enough calls and you'll get what you need. (Treat it as a game -- the more you call, the closer you get to shooting.) This procedure is likely also easier in major production zones like Los Angeles, New York or Vancouver, but the same logic can be applied elsewhere.

One great advantage to the digital age is that you can guarantee that your film will have an audience, as there are now dozens of sites to broadcast your content. That's great for companies that can reap some promotion rewards from your film -- make sure to sell the point of an exchange of credit. Generous donations can even get full color logos in the credits. If you have an accompanying website to go along with your film, then offer them a featured link to their website as a thank you for donating. Great marketing for a small donation on their part.

I would love to wrap up this "how to" with a link to view the short film I mentioned earlier, but its not online for a few reasons. Mainly it's because I don't feel like the quality of the direction was at the same level as the production wizardry. I have no one to blame but myself.

It's an example of wearing too many hats, so I strongly suggest that if you want to take this donation approach, have a distinct producer just for this role. One thing that occurs when you're getting everything donated is that you have to work on their schedule. This can throw production scheduling into chaos as you have to quickly adapt to the donator's whims. In my case that meant spending too much time scrambling to arrange complicated schedules and less time for directing actors and shot sequences. But having a distinct producer for this role can solve this problem.

The point of this essay is to instill the concept that you really can get a lot for free if you have a strong, socially relevant theme and the tenacity to make enough calls! So best of luck on your project! When it's finished, please come back and post a link to it, ok?

*Final note about short ends. Its great for getting free stock, but can cause some complications with color matching later on. Digital video is easier to work with in the long run anyway (thanks to the abundance of non-linear editing systems). But if you have to shoot on film to get the feeling you want, make sure to get enough stock and separate it out well (i.e. using certain stocks for flashbacks, dream sequences, etc). Otherwise you could end up with some color correction headaches in post-production.