miercuri, 29 ianuarie 2014

I am a 15 year old who made a feature film alone over the past 6 months.


So my name is Achim Scarlat(as you may have noticed) and I am an obsessed teenager trying to make a feature film ever since 2009. During this time, I ended up writing about 20 books, out of which 5 were ever published, made a video game, started a few small businesses(though none of them made me any money), about a dozen blogs(only one remained consistent) and made several short films-all by myself. However, I could never complete a feature film.

 I had a bunch load of half-done projects and others that I barely started working on. Why? Because of my long-lasting problem of losing interest in everything I did. I like to think that I have overcome that over the past 6 months.

 I started by writing 2 page screenplays that were downright retarded and exaggeratedly expensive, eventually getting to make an actual, watchable movie called 'I Know Your Browser History'. My next goal is to promote it using an ARG that I designed http://imgur.com/tY3Ys7Q.There's obviously a lot more to learn, but you name one guy who has written, directed, produced, filmed, edited and starred in his own film, then went on to promote and release it by himself. In fact, I'll even show you how I did it.

 Can you move a camera while acting at the same time? No, you can't. It's magic.



 _________________________



 At some point in 2012 I was trying to sell my t-shirt design on a website called Cafe Press(or something like that). While my new models were uploading, I went on to take a look at the 'meme' section.



 And there it was. A t-shirt that read I Know Your Browser History. There and then an entire

fabulous movie flashed before my eyes.

 I immediately dropped my current project at the time and went on to write. I promised myself
this was the last idea I ever gave up on.

 Did I keep my promise? Nope, but I kept the title, writing several screenplays of different genres with it.

 And then...

 Eventually, it was summer 2013 and I was struggling with a black and white detective
movie. And as much as I loved the title, I loved the other idea that was on my mind. But this
time, I came up with a plan.

 Yes, I gave up on that version of IKYBH in order to complete the other version of
IKYBH. The only way for me to do this was to keep it as simple as possible.

 I had to face it. I had no friends and nobody to hold the camera, so the script had to be as cheap and as simple as possible. This meant no video effects, no complicated shots or locations and as little characters as possible. I was also going to avoid a lot of props, filming indoors and at night, etc. So far, this seems like a pretty bad movie, right? Not if it's done on purpose.

 You can find the longer story here. I'll try and sum it up for you.

 I worked on this project from September 2013 to December 2013, finishing a day before New Years. Though I haven't promoted it to the fullest yet(which is my goal right now- getting 50.000 interested people), I can still tell you how the entire production of I Know Your Browser History went.

 The Script

 I wrote this one in the final week of August, solemnly swearing to write at least ten pages a day. After seven days, I had run out of story and had a 63 page script. Surprisingly, I also managed to stick to it.


 Being consistent

 Like I said before, I have trouble focusing on things and lose interest quickly. This was a major setback that I needed to overcome, and the only way for me to do this was by convincing myself that what I was doing was actually important.

 This is why I made an official website(that I changed later on) filled with crap about the movie, an IMDb, a blog and YouTube channel I updated daily, as well as accounts on every social media website that I could think of. A lot of these links were unrelated to the movie and were later removed from anything that had to do with IKYBH.

 Filming

 There is a whole load of crap that happened during filming. Maybe I'll tell you later.

 In theory, I discovered a method to move the camera while acting at the same time. It requires a rope and a tripod, making it too simple for me to explain.
*Just have the tripod hanging on the rope, which should be tied to something at both ends.

 Sometimes with the help of my dad, I filmed it from October to December. I deleted and re-made tens of scenes and in the end I had to re-make the entire audio track(but that's another long story).

 Editing

 I edited IKYBH in a shitty software called Cyberlink Powerdirector 9. I can't blame it for crashing since it wasn't meant for producing full high definition feature films. Either way, I made several backups of the project and it eventually worked. I also have to thank Kevin MacLeod of incompetech.com for the music.

 Budgeting 

 Actually, my budget was $0. I did it with things I had around the house just so I could prove a point.

 Marketing

 I am still struggling with this part, but what I can tell you so far is that I have designed a series of web puzzles called The Zog Liquid in order to promote it. 

 Actually, my plan here is a bit larger, but I'm not sharing it with you. Maybe later.


 I will come up with a series of videos describing every other thing that went wrong in the making of this movie and how it ended up good.


 


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