The Poor Filmmaker's Guide to Special Effects, Sound, and Making a Great Movie

There's a lot of young people today who want to make movies. There always have been, but in the digital era it's now possible for these amateur filmmakers to get their hands on the equipment to make that possible (see "The Digital Video Revolution"). Unfortunately, having the equipment does not mean these aspiring filmmakers know how to use them. An increasing number of diploma mills and even good college film programs focus too much on the technological aspects, without introducing proper film theory, technique, and history-all integral parts of learning how to be a good filmmaker. Making a movie is a team effort and involves a crew of writers, producers, grips, cameramen, makeup artists and cinematographers. If you're an aspiring filmmaker or just interested in how they get made, this article is a quick-and-dirty guide to the basics you need to know, whether you're planning on going to Hollywood or just want to make school projects that don't look like some 12 year olds did it.

Video
The picture itself is one-half of the equation. First off, you're going to need to spend some coin on a good camera-but probably not as much as you'd think. For people who want to make good movies, you're looking for a "prosumer" camera; these occupy the midrange between all-automatic starter cameras and the expensive professional equipment you probably can't afford. The good cameras will shoot full-resolution high-definition video (1080p) at true 24 frames per second (24p). Beware cameras that shoot at 30 or 60 frames (often 60i) and perform tricks to output a 24 fps look. You want the 1080 lines of resolution and 24 fps because this is the closest video format to the look of film, which (as it's the look Hollywood uses) you want. Midrange cameras that have some or all of these features are around $899-1099.

Another important thing to look for in a camera is what type of manual controls it offers. Ideally, you want to be able to control focus, shutter speed and aperture. The focus is self-explanatory; it will allow you much greater flexibility in what subjects you focus on and how crisp the image is. Shutter speed and aperture control how long the shutter is open and how wide the hole allowing light into the lens is, respectively; together, these control your exposure (your video's darkness and brightness.) While many cameras have exposure controls, being able to control them separately is very important. The amount of light you use in your shots is crucial; you can always reduce the exposure when there's lots of light, but if you shot your footage too dark, there's no way to get back the information lost in the black. Getting a camera with a zebra striping option will allow you to make sure your image is as bright as possible without blowing out highlights.

Finally, you want to invest in a tripod. Tripods give you a steady platform to compose your shots. The cheap ones you can buy are good for that, and not much else. If you want to be able to pan and tilt your camera smoothly, you'll need a tripod that probably costs $100 or more. Make sure it has bubble levels on it so you can make sure you aren't dutching the camera. If you're looking for a freehand look, smooth out the motion by combining auto-stabilization on your camera with a steadicam or stabilizer. These rigs, if bought, cost hundreds of dollars, but you can make your own for far cheaper. A tutorial for a $14 steadicam can be found here, while this site shows you how to make your own stabilizers, adapters, lights, and monitors for far less than retail (they do, however, charge for the tutorial, so seeing what you want to do here and then looking elsewhere for free tutorials might be a good idea.)

While accessories are often cheap, don't skimp on your base equipment. You can get good equipment for good prices, but buying something like a camcorder should be thought out. Depending on how you plan to use it, different models will work better for you; there's no "magic" camera that fits everyone's styles. CamcorderInfo is my go-to solution for exhaustive camera reviews that discuss image quality, camera modes, peripheral options and storage mediums. You can also often buy a refurbished or last year's model for $100-200 less than the current edition; if there's not much of a difference in quality, it can be worth it to save the money.

Sound
Even more than the picture, what will instantly scream "I'm an amateur" is bad sound in your video. The first rule of good filmmaking is to ditch the on-board camera microphone. It's always going to have lots of noise, and you'll never be close enough to the subject to get loud or consistent levels from shot to shot.

There are lots of different microphones out there, but for the average filmmaker what you're looking for is a shotgun mike-these long tubes record a fairly narrow range, allowing you to get your dialogue and cut out the background sounds. What most people don't realize is that most sound in modern films is added after the fact; sometimes, especially if outdoors, sound will be worthless. By recording people in sound booths, you can dub over what they are saying and rescue your image from poor audio issues. Getting a decent microphone will probably set you back $100-200, but perhaps more important than the microphone itself is knowing what it can do. Make sure you do sound tests and figure out its strengths, limitations, and range before you go on a shoot. (Also, what input your microphone uses will probably factor in on your camera; getting an XLR connection is better than a 1/2" jack, which in turn is better than the 1/4" minijack.)

Special Effects
Many young filmmakers want to throw in a bunch of special effects into their movies (whether they need them or not). The good news is that many are easy; the downside is that many require expensive postproduction tools. However there are many basic effects you can do in-camera, saving you time and money and only requiring a decent editing program.

One of the easiest and most widely-used techniques is to reverse your footage. Say you want to have a shot of someone crashing their car into the protagonist's own vehicle. Start out by putting the cars together, then have one driver hit it in reverse, while your actor reacts backwards. If done right, when you reverse the footage in postproduction, it will appear that the car is driving forward. This may take several tries, so if you're not used to this method of reversing footage, do some tests before. The reverse effect is also good for faking anything from knife stabs (by reversing the footage you can get the required force of impact without actually hurting actors), punches, or extra-tall leaps (by having the actor jump down from a great height; just keep in mind that the farther than fall, the more they'll accelerate, meaning that the reverse effect won't make much sense.)

Many consumer and prosumer cameras are no good for night shots; the amount of grain is distracting, focus gets wonky and all detail is lost. A solution is to shoot in the day and then tweak it to look like night. As long as you don't shoot the sky (which would be a dead giveaway) and avoid the sun (the harsh glare is better diffused by clouds for a more realistic effect), you can adjust your aperture settings in-camera. If your camera has white-balance settings, you can shift it to an indoor (often called tungsten) mode that shifts the colors to the blue end of the spectrum. Then drop your exposure using iris controls; changing your shutter speed will create a rougher image.

Postproduction
Many people have the idea that they can "fix it in post", and while it's true postproduction often defines the look of the film and fixes many issues, the more stuff you can complete in-camera and on-set, the less time post will take and the better your images will look. Sound design comes into play here; it's best to add in things like ambient noise and music in postproduction, even if you're looking for a certain effect. Free programs like Apple's Garageband can add the reverb and echo needed to make someone sound like they're talking in a large room, without the bouncing noise of shooting on location, while you can distort sounds so that they appear like they are coming out of a small speaker on set. Music is also important, and a rookie mistake is making the levels too high, drowning out sound effects and dialogue. Listen to your sound on good-quality speakers (not headphones) when mixing, and try ducking out sound with variable levels so that it can add emphasis and clarity without constantly cranking the volume louder (keep things quieter!)

Editing and finishing tools are often expensive. On a Mac, you have lots of excellent (and free options), but unfortunately iMovie's capabilities were nerfed back in 2007 and it is no longer a capable film editor. The good news is that Final Cut Express has much of the abilities of its $1000 cousin for far less of a price ($199 for a full version, $99 for an upgrade, and $179 with student discount). The newest versions also support iMovie project imports, so you can put together a rough cut or sequence in iMovie then bring it into Final Cut for finishing and finesse touches. On Windows PCs, programs like Adobe Premiere and Avid are likely the best options; in general-purpose filmmaking you can probably get away with using either a Mac or Windows operating system, but you will find that creative professionals use Macs far more than the general populace. Best of all, Apple's Final Cut Studio, while pricey, gives you a start-to-finish production solution that's fully integrated.

If you're interested in going a step further with your effects, you'll need another program; even Final Cut isn't good for much beyond chroma keying (green/bluescreen). The standard on Mac or PC is Adobe's After Effects (only $349 with student pricing, far less than its $999 retail.) With it you can matte footage together and do virtually any effect. Other programs are listed here.

Once you've got your project done, you've got to share it with the world, right? Prepping video for Youtube or the web is fairly easy, but if you want a professional-looking DVD you're going to probably need a DVD authoring program. There are many options, from the Mac's free iDVD to the professional DVD Studio Pro and alternatives like Roxio's Toast. Ultimately it often comes down to how elaborate you want your menus to be and what your personal preference is regarding programs. Right now there are very few ways to burn Blu-Ray discs so that your high-definition video is shown to its fullest, but they are getting cheaper every year. Just make sure that no matter what you burn, you keep a high-quality digital copy of your film backed up somewhere in case your computer crashes or your discs are damaged; there's nothing worse than losing a movie you worked hard on!

More info and Resources
*You can see video tutorials of many similar effects that I've described done by the excellent folks at Film Riot. I recommend the show if you're interested in learning relatively cheap ways to do multiple effects. Best of all, they do shows based on viewer mail and suggestions, so if you want to know how to accomplish a certain effect, ask!
*For those interested in getting the most out of After Effects, Video Copilot and AE Tuts are my personal favorites, offering text and video tutorials to get you up to speed on accomplishing certain looks and effects.