How can I learn how to make a movie?

Make a short film first. You will learn from that.

Do I need to rent the kind of video camera that produces video that looks more like film? Any suggestions? My town has a "not-for-profit, artist-run media art centre that fosters the growth and development of artists through access to equipment, training, mentorship, and programming". It apparently has workshops and rental equipment and stuff. Do you know if you have similar local resources?

I don't know anything about making films, but i recently had to read an article in my sound production class about how to think about sound for film. It's written by Walter Murch, who did sound for Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, among others and is basically a sound production god. http://transom.org/2005/walter-murch-part-1/. It's pretty cool, hope you enjoy it.

More than any particular piece of equipment, it takes a lot of people to make a movie. Rather than trying to find the ideal camera, the ideal boom mic, etc. you should start by -- at bare minimum -- finding a cinematographer, a sound mixer, and an editor. If they're worth anything, they will not only know what equipment to use, they will already own it or have a lead on renting it. It's also probably a smart idea to figure out a few things before you get into the technical stuff. So you're writing this movie. Do you also want to direct it? If so, you need to find a close collaborator to be your producer. If you don't want to direct it, you will most likely be the producer and will need to find a close collaborator who will direct. Don't try to be the director and the sole producer. That way lies madness. In addition to finding people who can do the stuff you don't know how to do (sound, makeup, special effects), you also need to solid partner who can be a sounding board and help you get some of the bigger picture stuff squared away. Also, if you are really intent on making a feature, I hope you have a lot of money. Like, at minimum, $100K.

What are your plans for this project? Is it more or less a home movie you're showing to family and friends? Are you posting it online? Do you want to submit to festivals, or attain distribution? How much time and money and resources are you willing to invest? The answers to these questions will determine how to move forward. Like what is the minimal video camera that will make a movie look reasonably watchable? "Watchable" is a relative term. Your iPad certainly passes the minimum for watchability. From there you could buy better and better cameras, and lighting, and lenses, until you hit your standard of quality. It would help if you could post an example of what you'd want your movie to look like; just be aware that almost anything you've ever seen on television cost at least a half million dollars. Also, a good camera is useless without a good understanding of cinematography. It's not a matter of buying the right thing, it takes time and expertise to make a movie look good. You can do it yourself if that's what you want, but you should be okay with it looking like novice work. This is not to discourage you, but before you start you should have a very clear outline of your expectations. The scope of your project will be the basis for all of your decisions.

Make a short first. Take some filmmaking classes. I've been a filmmaker for 22 years and am a film professor. If you want to make something watchable you need to practice and learn, and short films are the place to learn. Make something with one or two scenes in one or two locations in your home. Use the camera you have, with your friends. This is practice. Edit it together. Discover what you did wrong. It'll be terrible, let's be honest. Do it again, learn from your mistakes. Make something slightly less terrible. Take a few classes. Find people in your area making films. Volunteer to be a production assistant for them. Learning to be a filmmaker is like learning a musical instrument. Your first films will be like that kid down the street learning the violin. Nobody needs that inflicted on them. But the more you do it, the better the work will be. Just keep at it. Don't focus on the gear. People get caught up with gear. You can get a $1000 Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera and a $1000 lens and shoot amazing quality pictures. Learn how to be a visual storyteller first. It's not about the gear, it's about knowing what to do with it. After learning all the things you don't know and getting better, then start to think about a feature. But don't start with that. It'll take years, amazing amounts of money and you'll make mistakes you can't recover from if you start with a feature. At the point Robert Rodriguez made El Mariachi, he'd made something like 30 short films. Don't start with a feature. Remember this quote from Ira Glass: “Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” Good luck.

There are a ton of resources online for people just like you. The http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=guide%20to%20filmmaking&sprefix=guide+to+fil%2Cstripbooks looks good, as do the other books in this category. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00MFLUFHK/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/ guide to filmmaking looks like just what you're looking for (and it is free if you have an amazon unlimited account, $2.99 otherwise). Good luck!

Smallpox has it. You're asking about equipment, but you must start much earlier in the process. First and foremost you must ask yourself, what it is that you plan on doing with this feature film. Is this just a film that you and your friends will watch on a big screen TV? Or do you want to watch it in a theater that you rent for your friends? Is this a commercial venture? Do you intend to sell this film to a distributor? Do you want to go to festivals? Which ones? Do you intend this as a calling card of some kind with a view to a future career in film? The answer to each question will determine everything else: budget, production, time commitment. Any film that you intend to sell to a distributor will have to have legal paperwork in order and deliverables. That can cost a ton - A TON - of money. What I mean by that, is that everything you do even during production will have increased costs associated with it, just because you want the film to be distributed. And those costs will start long before you shoot a single frame of film. You will have to start with establishing a company for your film - this is for the purpose of legal liability, commercial exploitation, and rights management. You can either hire a lawyer for this, or do it yourself (involves research), and doing it yourself will be cheaper, but you must be sure you can trust your acumen in this. You will have to have releases for everything and everyone: all your actors of course and crew, location releases, shooting permits (btw., in Los Angeles, even if you shoot in your own apartment you must have a shooting permit!) and associated insurance. You must have legal clearance for both your script and (later) your film - getting this costs many thousands, and without this you will not get distribution. When shooting, you must make sure that you are not infringing - even if shooting in your apartment, are you sure you are not showing a single thing that might cause a legal problem? What about the artwork on the walls - do you have the rights to show them? Did you know that if, for example, you have a piece of furniture that can be identified as designed by someone of note, you have to get the rights to show it? What about showing coke cans? Computers by Dell or Apple or X? Unique design elements of a thousand things you don't give a second thought to, but which litter your apartment - do you have it all covered? These are just the legal things. Then there are deliverables - a ton of money and production work needs to go into this, otherwise the distributor will not take your product and a theater cannot show your stuff and you're dead in the water. Everything you do will have consequences. You say f.ex. "groups of people talking" - are those your friends, or are they actors? Even if they are your friends, you still must get releases from them, otherwise a distributor won't touch your product. And if they are actors, are they SAG/Aftra? Are any of your crew union? Mixing union and non-union can be very complicated for both crew and actors (due to guild rules). If anyone is union, a whole can of worms opens up, and you'll need to choose the union agreement under which you'll do your project (there are several options) which will have huge impact on your distribution options down the road, and more immediately will determine your budget payments and even the necessity of having the money at certain points of time (having to pay salaries ahead of time, kept in escrow etc.), union minimums, working hours, insurance and conditionals. Be aware, that all these things will cost you a ton of money and not show up on the screen at all. And after you've done all of this, your odds of selling this film are close to zero. Getting distribution is a whole other game - if you just want to say "I have distribution", even if it means absolutely nothing, that's one thing - you can find any number of one-man-band-distributors, basically some guy somewhere who may or may not be in business by next spring, who will pay you absolutely nothing, but you'll get a piece of paper to say "being distributed", though no one will see it anywhere. Remember, your odds of getting paid by a distributor even one dollar are pretty much zero, unless you have known actors, or your film has some huge notoriety, or won a festival, or some other lottery-odds type situation. You will make absolutely nothing - and this is after you've spent all that cash just to have it even eligible for distribution. Think about that. Can you still make it with no known actors and on a micro budget and so on? By "make it", I mean not just get distribution, but earn its money back, make a profit, launch your movie-making career. Yes, but you are talking, literally, astronomical odds - there is literally a handful of examples where that worked over the span of decades - Blair Witch, Paranormal Activities a few more. Note, those are often strongly genre oriented - yours sounds like a drama... and your astronomical odds drop even further. You are better off taking all that money and spending it on lottery tickets - if you calculate the odds, you'll see this is not an exaggeration. Again, if you just want to say "got distribution", yes, it's easy - and utterly pointless, as it'll earn you not one penny, and do nothing for you. You're much better off doing self-distribution - that way you still don't make any profit, or launch a career, but at least you retain all your rights clean from the start. So you say, forget about distribution, I just want to show at festivals. First the bad news - for festivals, a lot of what I wrote above about distributors will still apply. For example, you can't have infringing material, you still must be able to cover yourself legally etc.. And then immediately the second question: what festivals? The second question can be answered once you answer this: what do you aim for with the festival? If you want to be in a festival so that a distributor will pick you up, or an agent or industry executive will take note of you and give you a chance to start a career, well, if that applies, then there are only about - count them - 5 festivals in the world that will do that for you - Sundance, Cannes, Toronto, Berlin, Venice. But two things: you'll have a hard time getting into those, you'll have to spend a lot more effort and money - and the odds are stacked against you... thousands upon thousands of films try and only a handful are admitted. And even if you get in - so what? Now you have to impress at the festival - win, get a prize, be noted, audience favorite or something of note, or you'll be like the vast majority of films at those festivals, they move on never to be heard from again. But if you forget about the big festivals, and just want to get your film seen at any old festival, then it's considerably easier, though again, make sure you're covered legally (though odds are, that nobody will come for you at some podunk festival). If you just want to upload your stuff to youtube for free, you're probably safe, because again, unless you're making money, most lawyers working for anyone or any company won't bother coming after you (though some still may, to protect their trademarks and the like). You can take a risk and not worry about the legal stuff and expenses, and odds are nothing bad will happen - that's the vast majority of films people release on social networks for free. Finally, if this is just for you and your friends to enjoy, you can forget about most of what I said above - although strictly legally you may still need to obtain shooting permits and the like, but odds are overwhelming that if you don't, nobody will find out anyway. A film you make for yourself and your friends is much, much easier. At that point you need to ask format questions which may somewhat affect your equipment costs and budget - if it's only meant for watching on a TV screen versus a theater you rent etc. Once you answered those questions, then the questions in your post will apply - and I'll be happy to answer at that point... for now, it's hard, because I don't know what your plans are and those affect my answers.

Just to give you a sense of some of the numbers involved in VikingSword's rundown (all numbers are guesstimates, but very much based on reality): Creating a legit LLC production company yourself without a lawyer = $800 Insurance for one day of shooting = $500, bare minimum Location permit in Los Angeles* = $600, minimum Clearances = if you really really know what you're doing, this can be free, but if you fuck up, hello expensive lawsuit or a finished product that cannot be shown commercially. Unless you happen to have spent a few years working in narrative film or TV production, do not assume you know what you're doing. Licensed products are easy to "greek", but this will cost money in supplies and probably necessitate hiring someone to handle this if you're working on the scale of a feature** film. Union Contracts and cast and crew pay in general: Because you want to make a feature, you're not going to be able to get away with any of the fudging described in those Microbudget Filmmaking For Dummies books. For one thing, the contracts you will need to sign with the unions are much more stringent. Just talking about SAG (because I know more about that), if you're shooting a "new media" project (webseries, digital short, branded content, etc), you pretty much don't even have to pay your cast. If you're shooting a feature, you have to sign the Feature Film contract, and suddenly there's scale. And it's not cheap. In terms of crew, even if you manage to stay indie, good luck finding crew members who'll work for free for the amount of time it takes to shoot a feature. And even indie crew rates are not cheap. You'll pay $500/day for a cinematographer, for example. Multiply that times the 10-20 shooting days (minimum) you'll need to get your feature in the can and that really adds up. Also, if you decide to shoot a feature**, you're going to need to hire at bare minimum some kind of accountant, if only to handle payroll. Even if you pay everyone under the table (not super advisable for a feature film made under the auspices of a legit production company), just making sure you've agreed on everyone's rate and are paying everyone on time is a full time job. Frankly, just keeping the cash flowing for little everyday things is a full time job on a feature, and one you won't be able to take on if you're also directing. Bare minimum, you should budget $10-20K just for "production expenses" like LLC startup costs, insurance, permits, clearances, accounting, and the like. *That said, I disagree with Vikingsword on the necessity of said permits. You can totally get by without one shooting on private premises -- and even "steal" some exterior shots -- as long as you have a bare bones crew and a very small footprint. Add a few trucks, some kind of restroom setup, and a pop-up craft services tent, though, and yeah, you're going to need those permits. And probably a location manager, and some drivers for your trucks, and an equipment rental company, etc etc etc. **One thing to keep in mind is that because a feature is longer, your production will of necessity be bigger in scope. When you're shooting a three minute sketch, or a webisode, or even a very economical short, you can just assume you'll be handling all the little details yourself, like greeking out the Apple logos and making sure everyone gets paid. But a feature is going to have so many variables and go on for so long that it's just not realistic to assume you'll be able to do all this stuff yourself. For this reason, features tend to have much larger crews than most other types of projects. Even features shot entirely in your house with just actors talking to each other.