How i made a short film for under £10.

If you’re just starting out like me or you’re a serious hustler. Hiring high end camera gear, talented actors or locations is not necessary at all! All Smart and successful film producers utilise the equipment and talent at their disposal!

From filming short cut-away videos to producing a short film with near-professional actors I feel like I’ve come far in storytelling my short films.

For this year’s FMP (Final Major Project), we were assigned to create a short film or TV pilot that showcased the theme of hope. On top of that we were assigned to include a protected characteristic such as mental health, disability, people of colour or LGBTQ. The first thing which popped into my head was domestic violence.

The title of the film was Dan’s Escape which is about an emotionally abused teenager seeking help from his incident and waking up in hospital from overdosing on alcohol. The nurse is unaware her patient is being abused at home, however after speaking with him everything becomes clear to her.

Everything was shot on campus. When conducting a location recee, I was mindful of the main prop I needed i.e the hospital bed and also additional props i could further utilise such as tables and chairs. On shooting day, I spent around 3.5 hours rearranging the whole classroom shifting furniture to get the ideal hospital room look. For this production I held three positions: camera operator, director, production designer, screenwriter and producer. Luckily I got a crew member from level 3 downstairs to be the boom operator. The actors were sourced from Star Now who were willing to do it free of charge. All of the equipment I used was sourced from the media technician at my college, again incurring no cost at all. Anyway I used the following,a: canon 1300D camera, zoom recorder, XLR cables, boom pole and tripod.

The Hospital Jug and tray from Amazon was around £6 and a bottle of SmartWater (80p) were the only pieces of expenditure I incurred, everything else as mentioned above was completely free.

The point I want to emphasise is that creativity and ingenuity are traits which you need to have in order to become successful filmmakers. My film Dan’s Escape got entered into the college’s film festival and received an honorary recognition for cinematography and editing. Honestly, simplicity is the way forward.