Steve Nelson, to tell you the truth, can you please show us how to be prepared to combine both CGI and camera? like in many fantasies such as J.R.R. Toliken's "The Lord of The Rings" , C. S. Lewis' "The Chronicles of Narnia", and J. K Rowling's "Harry Potter".

I didn't shoot the camera man but I did shoot the camera. Because I didn't check the airsoft gun before filming. R.I.P. little camera :,(

Batterys? Wahahhahahahahaha I have a 16mm Wind-up-cam. No need for dumb things like batterys. ; )

Thanx for the idea about have some food on the set. I actually didn't think of that....

jared should defo have his own show. great work guys keep it up

(I'm sorry for the previous comment, I wasn't ready yet...) - - - - - - When I went to shoot the first part of my film, I could borrow an (expensive) camera from someone. He would come with his car, and he would take the camera with him. But, the battery of the car appeared to be empty, and he could not come with another car or stuff and we could'nt shoot.

Toen ik het eerste deel van een film ging opnemen, mocht ik de (dure) camera van iemand lenen, die zou met de auto komen en de camera meenemen. De accu van de auto bleek leeg te zijn, en we konden niet filmen :-( When I went to shoot the first part of my film, I could borrow an (expensive) camera from someone. He would come with his car, and he would take the camera with him. But, the battery of the car appeared to be empty, and he could not come with another car of stuff and we could'nt shoot.

When I was doing my first shoot, we had a very hard time finding actors. As the shoot date approached I placed ads on every actor website that I could find and we ended up hiring two guys from craigslist. (they were the only ones that actually showed up to auditions!) Always be vigilant when shooting. Make sure that you are following procedures and check your equipment! We messed up the end of the film because the mic wasn't on. We had to fake the ending with ADR from one of the actors. Also, having friends that are artists can help. My friend's roommate did some awesome special effects in the movie.

When i was shooting my first short film, the actress had a little fight with someone from the crew, we had all the pro equpment installed and ready for the scene and we ended up using the sound designer (who had a pretty and soft long hair) covered up with blankets on a bed. Do not use hot chicks on your films, they might cause you troubles (or just wait till the shooting is over to hit on her)

i hate when your director of photography gets murdered. its always a bummer.

in my second video, me and my coproducer forgot to get all our actors untill the day of the shoot. so me and him were calling like everyone in our contact list trying to scrounge up enough people to shoot with like an hour before.

My first movie, 3 of my actors dropped out. Luckily my producer had 2 extra on standby just in case because I had told him that two of them weren't all that reliable cause I knew them from past projects, then we had to hold auditions for the last part. But it all worked out and we ended up being ahead of schedule!

Jared should have his own show called: "Life Lessons with Jared"

For my senior project i had to do something career driven so I chose movie director. Me and my friends didn't know what the hell we were doing. We just decided go out to the set we chose, which was too far away but perfect for the scene, and shoot the scenes we needed. The problem with that is we had school and so we didn't have much daylight to work with. There was no lightning equipment to even pass it off for daylight and we didn't have a personal studio for visual effects or green screens. We would drive out there for maybe twenty-five minutes and by the time we got to the set it would already be night time. Our movie called for fight scenes and we didn't even plan those out, we just went with whatever we had as we went along. That's why I'm not calling it a movie, but an experimentation.

Great episode! I've had a lot of instances when my battery wasn't fully charged, or I didn't have an extra, and it really messes things up. Also, MAKE A SHOT LIST! The most time I waste on set involves trying to figure out the shots and angles if they havn't been planned ahead of time.

We had actually a situation on our set just the other day. We were shooting at a carbage plant, when one of our actor just fell, and hitted some sharp glass on the ground. His arm where torned up and he could'nt shoot for a whole week! Now see thats an accident which should never happen!

i got a chalange for you guies to use all your previous buils in one 20 min movie.

okay i gotta say, this episode just saved me cuz these are like the typical things i would like mess up! THANKS ^^ you guys fkn rock =P

We once shot outdors and it was the end of the shooting session. Of course our batteries were nearly empty and we had to hurry up. Just then a bulldozer started to work in the area. We had no time left so the scene was shot with an awful buldozer sound in the background (or: it was so loud that it was in the foreground).

I remember once being on location, perfectly sunny day, and there wasn't supposed to be a chance for rain. We had to haul our equipment a quarter mile to a river in the middle of a nature preserve. Got all set up for the first shot, and it started to pour. We scrambled to finish. We ended up making rain gear for our cameras out of ziplock bags and rubber bands...not the best image, but it worked. All we lost was a microphone thank goodness.

I remember once that once i had a cheap digital camera that had shots for a film i made and it got stolen at a movie theatre

I'd do the rubber band battery thing if I new which cord it was to charge, I have so many. I should really label those. Thanks for the tips. My house is always a buffet, even if we aren't recording. That's a plus for any cast members or friends.

I entered this 48 hour contest and had all the props and locations we wanted, we knew what we wanted to do, although when I got there, I bought a big industrial lamp for extra light. When we started setting everything up, I noticed that the lamp wasnt asspembled. I needed a screw driver to instal the light. So we scrapped the extra light and just changed the camera angles so that light wouldnt be affected. I then learnt that always bring extra of ANYTHING

We has a shoot for a Film Fest that involved filming on top of a dam. My producer had rung the relevent people, who had all assured us that we didn't need permission, we just had to film around the tourists. We get there on the day - it was the only day we could shoot - and was getting set up when a security guard showed up and started inquiring what we were doing. A quick expliantion later, and he was all enthussed. He said he had to quickly check with home base, but no worries. He came back ten minutes later to tell us that we had to shut down production and leave the dam, becasue whoever gave us permission to film didn't have permission to give us permission. The film still hasn't been shot.

On my last movie shoot my sister locked her keys in her car... along with ALL MY PROPS AND COSTUMES!!! What's more we were paying money for our location, so we had limited time AND it was for a 48 hour competition so we had even more limited time! I swear I nearly died... Came close to smashing my sister's window but thankfully my freidn ran back to my house and brought the spare key YAY!!!!

Great episode. Once again, fantastic tips for making a really good movie. Thanks.

I remenber my first film and I planned everything out and set it all up only to find out the main actor was not availible at any of the shooting times I had planned and he wasn't availible at any other times I thought of.

We were shooting indoors and about halfway through, some actors that didn't had anything to do, had to go to the toilet. Later in editing, all our good shots were ruined by toilets flushing in the background.

whats happend to your face stefe you have a red ???? on your face

I don't know how many times i've seen a production fall through because it wasn't planned. The best thing I found is to always have it storyboarded. Having it all drawn out will cut down the amount of time it takes to shoot the scene while at the same time giving a nice visual for your camera op. to work with. PLAN!!! PLAN!!! PLAN!!

Hi, Happy Birthday Indymogul, now with that out o the way, my little tale takes place in Tijuana Mexico, we were shooting a high speed chase inside the place called Tijuana River Canal, we had police escort for most of the time we where there, but they had to leave because of the shift change, problem happen when these 2 idiots did not let the next shift we where there, we had prop guns, from pistols to automatic rifles and the chase end it in an arrest of the bad guys, but as we were shooting the actual arrest we got sworm by someting close to 30 patrol cars because they thought a kidnaping was taken place, it was hell to get everything straighten out, we got out of it OK and we are still doing what we love to do, by the way, notice some subscriber ask for how to make gun fire without shoting blanks, I got an easy cheap why if anybody is interested, have some samples on youtube.com/piscisdragon76, again, congrats on your aniversary and as we say around here "PURO PARA ADELANTE" ask some latin guy to traslate that one, bye

On my last movie we didn't do any pre-production other than site location, the entire movie took place in an old mansion build at the end 1800's. It was disastrous and took way more time than it needed because we didn't have shot lists or even know what scenes were going to get shot until we got there. Furthermore, to make this worse we shot with High School kids which couldn't be on-set to past 10:00pm, the entire script took place at night. It didn't get dark until 8:00 so you can imagine.... You can bet your bottom dollar we are storyboarding and having a shot-list.

i was shooting a music video for my brothers band, and when we were just starting to film there was a fight between two of the guys and so the bass player left.... and a few weeks later quit the band.

ONCE AGAIN, THERE ARE NO COMMENTS BELOW.

Planing is really important. In the first movie I made there was a part when there was supposed to be leaking gas from a card that left a trail. Well the effect worked, but in the background you could see a big red gas can! I went out with no lists or anything, so I always prepare ahead of time now.

We once got accused of being possible terrorists for shooting one of our actors pretending to use an ATM in a shopping mall. That's not really a lack of preparation thing, more of an interesting anecdote, but we did get permission for shooting in one of the stores in the mall ahead of time, that's a preparation thing, but the mic we were using failed so I guess that's a lack of preparation thing.

Your iTunes feed appears to be screwed: "There was a problem adding "Preparing for a Shoot: 4 minute Film School" to iTunes. The file might be corrupted, or a file type that iTunes cannot play."

Nice. Simple things to remember are the most effective sometimes.

This was a great episode! Very helpful!

this was very useful. i'm planning on using my long weekend to shoot a movie, so this came just in time. The last movie we had about 2 hours worht of setbacks. We used the old-age make-up which took way longer than we thought it would, took us an hor to do, makeup,hair, and costume. Then we hada problem with the gun shooting thing, our manual air pump didnt work so we had to borrow a neighbors electrical one. and then the storyboards weren't completly finsihed which was the worst mistake. this weekend hopefully will go smoothly, i've got cast and crew and props,equipment, and storyboards are ready to go.!!

The advice with the rubber band on the batteries was good. I always mix my charged and "Not Charged/Used" batteries together.

Several of my films have been cancelled because the actors were too high, or hung over to film (college actors) Also, actors sometimes flake out at the last second unless your forceful, or you give an incentive.

I once had a director who failed to story board out the scene in advance. Despite my constant reminders that he do so. When it came time for the shoot we spent hours trying to figure out what to do. Eventually it came down to the DP and I collaborating on what shots to do. (And I was only the sound engineer on set!) People don' t realize that story boards can be as simple as stick figures. So long as the director knows what the images mean, and can convey that to the crew, it's all good.

Checking your equipment is the most important thing, i went out on a shoot the other day and the microphone didn't work it was lucky we checked before we went out other wise it would have been a waste of an hours journey.

Nice episode. I particularly liked the "rubber banded batteries". :D Check your audio equipment! Once I had a lav mic that was all freaked up, but I didn't know it until it was time for the shoot and instead of getting nice, crisp audio - I got hellish, demonic static and feedback.....and no other lav mic to be found. Yea, not so good.

Great episode. I remember spending a whole summer preparing to make a film. When we were finally ready for production, I realized I hadn't spent any time preparing for the actual shoots. I ended up wasting a summer of my childhood because of that.

did anyone see steve or a guy that looked like steve in a car comercial were he jumps of a cliff with a parachute? the guy is , or looks just like him

What happened to your face, Steve?

Dude are you seriously gonna have obama girl? that is WAY better than obama guy!!

Awesome! Great show. I always plan. Cuz' im leik prO :P

cool