Me and some of my friends plan to make a documentary. It will be a serious styled one, but it will be completely ridiculous in almost every sense. The documentary is on the Slender Man. So I was wondering, is there any tips for an amatuer filmmaker? What's the right and wrong thing to do? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
Get a good tripod, a good camera (The Sony XD cam is a good one) and of course, a good host for the documentary. I don't do much filmmaking, but I do photography so that's all the advise I can give. Hope it helps.
Maybe if you sold your kidney, you can buy one of those. Ooooooh, bad Friday joke. I think there're low budget camcorders out there so you might wanna do your homework. If you really want quality and at the same time light on your wallet, try picking up a DSLR. They record videos in HD too. Or if you sell your house, you could afford the michael bay style movie cameras like the Canon C300 (It's either C300 or C3000).
Maybe. I have another, after all. I'll have to look into cheaper equipment. I'm not an sub-average millionaire.
If you're willing to spend above $1000, DSLRs are the better option. I used to borrow a Canon 5D Mark II from my dad to record me mixing in HD. But if you're really, really short on cash, get Canon's range of camcorders.
Since this is a "fake" documentary, treat it as a film done in a documentary style, not a documentary. Write your script, rehearse, and go through draft after draft until you've got something you're happy with. Don't just adlib.
Make sure one of you guys are good at narrating, or hire one. Make sure to research and find good pictures.
Well first tip, is go watch a documentary and take notes on what they are doing and the style they use. The best learning is through observation, and there is a lot of good documentaries out there that you can watch and learn from. Instead of paying attention to the subject matter, watch how they are filming. Also watch for camera angles, close ups, etc. Also, if your making a comedy documentary, find that specific genre and look at that. When you first out, you should imitate what they do. Once you know what you are doing, you can improvise and come up with your own style. If you think you can come up with your own style out of the box, you will be sadly mistaken. This is like anything else. Get good at the basics, then spread your wings and fly. It's not as easy as point the camera and film. Saying all of this is not even getting into appropriate lighting and sound.
if this is supposed to be humoerous as you say, make sure it is humerous and not just a bunch of teenagers acting stupid or an inside joke that your friends get but no one else does
Never thought of it that way. I'll try that. It's not. I'm writing the script, and it's not a bunch of monkey/fart jokes.
Who's your target audience? If it's meant to be people outside the Marble Hornets fandom, keep that in mind in your writing.
Just ask yourself 'What would Sky-Lynx do?' and you won't go far wrong. How about a spoof documentary about making a spoof documentary? Film yourselves filming yourselves. Or would that be like dividing by zero? Get Peter Cullen to do that and it won't fail.
Interesting idea, but I don't think we'll do that. I believe the answer is Morgan Freeman and it won't fail.
Not to offend anyone, but was there plenty of smoke in that documentary? Progress: 5%. Script is beginning.
