bunch of questions

[Alex]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by ickle_jim:
well im no expert on law but ive read it from a few different sources, websites on writing, books on writing...
so i presume it would hold up

besides... think about it, you have a package that is recorded as being sent by the royal mail on the 1/1/2003 with your name credited as the author... 6 months later someone else is claiming they wrote it, yes thats gunna stand up as evidence that you are the lawful author.

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That's usually considered "Plan B", not the primary thing you do, but a back-up plan.

Writers guild registration is generally regarded as the way to go.

[Alex]

I think you should work on someone elses movie before making your own. You gain so much knowledge while helping others, and you might meet talented individuals who you want to hire/use on your movie.

I've entered several film festivals in the last month. It wasn't too difficult. They usually post an entry form on the internet.

Perhaps you encountered festivals that were "off-season".

[Wen_Diesel]

Even the major festivals such as cannes and sundance? I by no means am planning on entering anything that big just curious though. I'm in the military and where I am stationed at there are not alot of people interested in film. No film schools close by, no talent agencies, etc. So I have to do my own thing and just get friends to help out. Thanks for the replies though

[LAmind]

2. People will tell you to get an agent when you wanna start seriously sending scripts out..for legal ourposes. Obtaining addresses of the people you want is VERY easy. There special books you can buy in any book store with names and addresses for the film industry. They have thos for stuff like: distributers, production companys, etc, etc. As for signing with different agencies, i don't think you need to do that.

3. There are thousands.. no make that millions of festivals you can enter. Very indipendent. Buy some filmmaking magazine and they should have a film festival section. Look in the Exposure home page, they have a section for film festivals.

4. There are many lenses. Some are fast, refering to the aperature, some are slow. A wide-angle lense will capture more of the picture. A telephoto lense is used for shooting something far away, like a bird on a branch, or an airplane in the sky. A fisheye lense makes the image curve. The lense itself is like a bubble so the image gets stretched out towards the sides of the frame dependeing on how fisheyed, the fisheyed lense that you get is. For the peephole, you'd probably wanna get a fishhole lense, that'll give you the desired effect.

5. If you're not liking the sound you're getting your mic is probably trash. Recording diolouges in films, in my opinion is harder thn recording any other audio, so you need a very good mic. The mic they use for films are called "boom" mics or "shotgun" mics. Any which way, you need what they call a directional mic. I think i know thei "airy" effect you're talking about. I have a mic that did that, i just got a new one for 80 bucks and it sounds **** **** good. This was for music making though. But same goes for films, you need a good mic to get people talking. Try putting your mic closer to the person talking. That way you can lower the mic vol. so it'll have less background noise. Zoom in more if you need to get rid of the mic in the frame.

Syncing sound is pretty easy once you get the hang of it. A minidisk is an excelent machine to use to record sound. All you need is a clapboard. Or you can just use your hands as the clapboard. So when you have the video and audio on seprate tracks you can put the "clap" in the audio track directly over the video of the person who's clapping. This should get the tracks synced. You might have to adjust it multiple time until you're sure the tracks are perfectly alligned.

If you edit on computer you don't have to do anything to sync when you put it on a minidv tape. You'll already have your film on computer so that file will just get transfered to the tape.

A mixer will solve yourproblems. But are you sure you wouldn't just wanna buy a better mic. I think in the end, it'll be cheaper and a much better investment.


Good luck.

-Ivan