People often ask me how we got started with this. For us, it all started with our first crummy movie, _Dumping Jenny_. Actually, it’s pretty entertaining, if I do say so myself. I directed it while I was in college, finishing up a degree in Journalism. I had just returned from an internship at Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando, where I met lots of folks who were involved in film or TV production in some degree. One person named Rob Micai asked me what I wanted to do exactly, and I said, “I want to direct movies.” “Well, have you directed any movies?” he asked. “Uh, nope, not yet,” I replied.

In that instant, I realized that I needed to stop talking about what I wanted to do and start doing it. So I enrolled in the TV Production course the following semester and learned the basics of video production and editing. After brainstorming a story idea with my family, I wrote a few scenes and a short treatment and sent them to my high school buddy, Dakota Russell, who I remembered was a pretty good writer. He was on, and on just a few weeks of chain smoking and heavy drinking (he’s since quit smoking) churned out the masterpiece that was the Dumping Jenny script.

He’d probably dispute that.

Anyway, as it looked like it was all coming together, I started rounding up friends and guaging interest for a shoot in the summer. We did a read-through at my house and everybody loved the script. I started mentally casting then and there.

But how to get the equipment?

Hmm. First, I borrowed a broadcast-quality video camera, mic and mic cable, and fluid-head tripod from the university’s TV department. After shooting some test footage with my ragtag crew, I realized what an undertaking this was going to be. And if we were going to devote a month’s worth of evenings of our valuable summer to this, we’d better do it right.

So, credit card in hand, I marched to a store that had a generous return policy and bought a Panasonic digital camera for $500. In retrospect, I’m *so* glad we shot it digital. We shot every evening, after work, for about three weeks. After the shoot, I returned the camera to the store and got another one for editing.

I edited on iMovie (the original) after hours in the university PR office, where I worked. After some people complained that I was up all night in the office, I finished up in the office of another friend who also worked at the university.

As for music, the extremely talented rock musician “John Thomas Griffith(Griff’s personal website)”:http://www.johnthomasgriffith.net agreed to score our movie for free. I sent him timecode-printed videotapes, and he composed the score on Acid Pro while they were on the road touring. He sent me back CDRs with the tracks, instructions on where to line them up, and we kept in contact primarily through email, with the occasional phone call now and then.

For the tunes, I contacted an alumni of my fraternity, the drummer of “Silent Page(Silent Page website)”:http://www.silentpage.com, a terrific band in St. Louis. They graciously donated a few of their tunes for the film, which fit in marvelously. “Cowboy Mouth(Cowboy Mouth website)”:http://www.cowboymouth.com also allowed us to use “How Do You Tell Someone?” and “Leisure McCorkle(amazon.com)”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000077SZQ/ref=olp_product_details/002-6190660-5076014?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance (a musician produced by JTG) donated the song for the end credits.

We premiered _Dumping Jenny_ on the “Truman State University(story about me)”:http://www.truman.edu/userfiles/Alumni/TrumanReview/summer00/default.asp?page=profiles.html campus to a packed house of more than 500 people in November 2000. “Phi Mu Alpha(link to Upsilon Phi)”:http://sinfonia.truman.edu/ (my fraternity) sponsored the event, so we got the venue for free. The response was overwhelming. We were amazed that everyone laughed in all the right spots. My family and friends drove in from all over the country to support us. Silent Page came down from St. Louis and played at our open wrap party in a local bar, which allowed us to use their newly-remodeled backroom for free, as long as we brought in a lot of people. And there were a lot of people that night, as we invited everyone at the premiere. The band was great.

So there’s the crux of the story behind Dumping Jenny, our freshman effort. Because we worked our network, used whatever resources we could get our hands on, and had lots of extremely generous friends, the whole thing cost about $100 tops.

And it shows…

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So if real is good, why does Hollywood insist on building elaborate sets, designed to mimic what is already down the street? Because they can. They have the money, and moviemaking in Hollywood is a paid job. The crew of a studio production comprises unionized tradesmen with dozens of specialties and families to feed, and building sets is what somebody does for a living. Whoever is bankrolling the picture has the money, so they will pay to have a set built for the convenience.

Because, after all, having a set *is* convenient. Shooting on location means you have to make do with whatever you have, which is often less than ideal both practically and creatively. If it’s a public place, then there are crowds to deal with. Outdoors? Then you have to wait for the good days, or spend a fortune in rain machines to turn a good day bad. You have to deal with the changing color temperatures of the sun. It’s no better indoors, where available lighting will need to be changed or supplemented, often requiring extra power to be brought in. And where do you put all the camera, crew and equipment?

But if you’re on a micro-budget with no money to get exactly what you want, shooting on location does have major advantages. As Lloyd Kaufmann writes in “Make Your Own Damn Movie(amazon.com)”:http://www.amazon.com//exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0312288646/qid=1103035215/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/002-6190660-5076014?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

??With a great location, you can get a set that looks better and more natural than the highest-paid art director in Hollywood could ever hope to build…Any real location, whether it’s a bar or a bakery or a public bath house will have accrued years of details that no set designer can replicate. The right location can give your movie a very high production value for little or no money.??

That was the first thing on my mind when I moved to Japan. I shot _Rock Paper Scissors_ because I would’ve been stupid not to take advantage of the rich landscape and cultural treasures that were right downtown. And shooting in Japan was a dream, because nobody needed any location permits or special clearance. We shot right there in the open.

Lloyd knows what he’d talking about. Before he co-founded “Troma Studios(Troma’s Homepage)”:http://www.troma.com with Michael Hertz, he was a location scout for several major Hollywood productions, including “The Karate Kid(imdb)”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087538/ and “Saturday Night Fever(imdb)”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076666/. Mike Figgis also talks about jumping out of the back of a van and shooting parts of “Leaving Las Vegas(imdb)”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113627/ right on the street, with no permits or prior setup.

And shooting on the fly, in places you didn’t design or build to your specifications, forces a filmmaker to be *creative*. Sets are great because you can move walls or carve holes in the floor to get the angles you originally planned.

!/images/20.jpg (Citizen Kane: The shot of the ceiling)! !/images/21.jpg (Orson Welles & cinematographer Gregg Toland)!

When you have to “make do,” your creativity will sometimes surprise you. In my experience, compromises often turn out better than my original plans. And depending on how you shoot it, you can make anything look like something else entirely. Jean-Luc Godard makes the dark, empty streets Paris look eerily futuristic in “Alphaville(imdb)”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058898/. A “shopping mall(Logan’s Run Locations)”:http://www.snowcrest.net/fox/logan/location/ becomes a futuristic city in “Logan’s Run(imdb)”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074812/. They even shot the Water Gardens in a Fort Worth park.

!/images/22.jpg (Scene from Logan’s Run)! !/images/23.jpg (Water Gardens in Fort Worth, TX)!

So there you go. Open your eyes to what’s around you! Stop raising money for the ideal and start shooting with what you have now.

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