The Schrug

I’ve decided I want to make movies. I can’t remember what the germ of this idea was or what pushed it from crazy pipedream to something I’m willing to spend time and money on, but I’m at that point now. I’m not about to start making feature films, but I think that a couple sketches and maybe a ten-minute short within the next year or so is realistic.

I’m going to call my new venture Figmond Entertaiment. “Entertainment” because it gives me more latitude than “Films” or “Productions,” and “Figmond” because that was my nickname in elementary school and I’m fairly confident that no other production company is already called that.

Once I’d decided I wanted to make movies I considered getting started by taking classes at places like Emerson or CDIA. But I decided I wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment. So I put my Googling skills to work to find resources for teaching myself. It didn’t take too long to find a gold mine: MicroFilmmaker Magazine. I’ve really just started exploring the contents of that site. One of the first places I went to were the reviews. Based on their strong recommendation, I went to Amazon and bought $30 Film School. While shopping, I also picked up The Power Filmmaking Kit: Make Your Professional Movie on a Next-to-Nothing Budget and Digital Filmmaking.

I looked through the first two books to see what kinds of things I would need to buy in order to produce something that I and other people might actually want to see. (I knew I could theoretically make “a movie” using my digital point-and-shoot camera and Windows Live Movie Maker, but I also knew that no matter how good the content of a movie made that way, it would look and sound so bad that I’d get frustrated and disheartened.) I concluded that the minimum outfit included the following:

• A camera that could record HD video in a variety of formats, including 24 frames per second
• A good microphone
• A decent non-linear editing software package
• A tripod

And that’s pretty much it. I’ll probably soon decide that I’ll also need some lights, but these should get me started.

After reading some reviews, at first I was tempted to go with a pretty high-end camera, like the Panasonic Pro AG-HVX200A or the Sony PMW-EX3 . But while I was looking at some HD camcorder demonstrations on YouTube I saw a lot of people talking about something that looked a lot more appropriate for a newbie: the Canon EOS 7D. It costs thousands less than the full-size camcorders but the image quality looks spectacular. The only serious drawbacks in terms of video recording seem to be a 12-minute-per-shot limit and the inability to steady it on a shoulder while shooting. Neither of those were deal-breakers for me, so I ordered it.

Based on a review of the EOS 7D on YouTube (unfortunately, I can’t find the clip again right now), I also ordered a good quality audio recorder, the Zoom H4n. This should allow me to capture much cleaner dialogue than I’d be able to get from the camera’s built-in microphone alone.

I haven’t settled on my software package yet. I downloaded a trial of Adobe Creative Suite 4 Production Premium, but it was far too complicated to get started with. I’m trialing the scaled-down Adobe Premiere Elements 8, but I’ve seen a number of complaints about sluggish performance. I’ve ordered an upgraded video card for my computer, so I’ll have to see how well Premiere Elements 8 does once that’s installed. Another option is Pinnacle Studio, but its reviews are also less than stellar.

Total investment so far: about $3,000.00. I’ll continue to log my adventures as a movie mogul after the stuff arrives in the mail.