In a previous article, we talked about how you can have a great movie night with the entire family. The movie industry has changed a lot these past few years, allowing the latest movies to be enjoyed through streaming services. You also have access to a bigger archive as well as new gadgets that will make enjoying movies a more immersive experience.

What’s also interesting is how accessible movie making is today. A lot of independent short movie makers are using DSLRs and mirrorless cameras – the same camera you use to shoot holiday videos – to make great movies for a relatively low budget. This is an activity worth getting into for a number of reasons.

Why make your own movie?

The movie is such a great form of media for telling stories. Even the simplest ideas can be turned into a compelling story through the use of audio and visual cues. That’s among the many powers of moviemaking and videography in general.

The best part about this new opportunity is that you are already a movie lover. Having watched so many great movies, it is not difficult to find ways to tell your story through audio and visual cues. You also have plenty of inspirational sources to draw from already.

Of course, your first short movie will not be your best one; in fact, it shouldn’t be. Develop a simple story, turn the moviemaking experience into something you can share with close friends or family members and simply enjoy being on the other side of the process.

Getting Started

To get started, there are two things you need. First, you need a video camera to shoot the movie. The DSLR you use whenever you’re on vacation or the camera you just bought not too long ago should have video capabilities and they are more than enough for making your first movie.

Next, you need a script. Work on an idea that will make a great short story and start writing down the details. Be sure to structure dialogs and scenes as best as you can. This is where you will start feeling the excitement of developing a movie; the same excitement that professional directors and writers feel when writing classics such as Split or Rogue One: A Star Wars Saga.

Once you have a script, you can start shooting. Again, the goal here is to have fun and enjoy the experience. Get your kids involved or turn it into a weekend project that you can finish in your spare time.

Distributing the Movie

There is no better time to make the jump from a movie lover to a movie maker than today. Video streaming services give you the perfect platform to reach millions of people. A lot of successful new directors also started with a short movie they uploaded on YouTube.

You can also rely on services such as Copycats bulk DVD creation to distribute your short movie. This way, you can share it with friends and relatives. You can even let everyone who was involved in the making of the short movie get a special copy.

Making a movie is an experience you really have to try, especially if you enjoy watching great movies. Being involved in the process and knowing the amount of effort needed to produce great movies will change your perspective about the industry completely. I can say this because I too tried to make a short movie and have been more in love with movies ever since.

Illustrating this theme were nine short films presented in the 30-minute program following a cocktail reception in 92YTribeca’s main room. Five of these were 2012 Sundance Film Festival Selections, including the extraordinary opening film, Jeremiah Zagar’s Heart Stop Beating, about the work of two doctors who managed to save a dying man by replacing his heart with a turbine engine of their own design. It was a bold choice to open the program with a film that features open heart surgery footage, but the mood was lightened by Jessica Yu’s Meet Mr. Toilet, a humorous look at the efforts of Jack “Mr. Toilet” Sim to bring proper sanitation to the large portions of the world still lacking it.

Following these first two films were a pair of world premieres: first, Nelson George’s All Hail the Beat, an all-too-brief look at the history of the Roland TR-808 drum machine, whose sounds are still in use today by artists from Kanye West to Daft Punk, despite the fact that it hasn’t actually been manufactured since 1984. Next came Katy Chevigny’s The Honor Code, the most emotionally moving film of the evening, and the only one that focuses on innovation in human thought, as opposed to technological invention. Honor Code uses stylish animation to illustrate the ideas of philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah and his efforts to end the deplorable practice of “honor killing.”

The other two world premieres were sandwiched between two more Sundance selections: Jessica Edwards and Gary Hustwit’s The Landfill, which documents a small New York landfill where trash is refined into electrical energy, and David W. Leitner’s Newtown Creek Digester Eggs: The Art of Human Waste, which examines the unusually beautiful Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The latter was the least satisfying film of the evening, mostly because it felt too rushed, with too much information crammed into its brief running time. On the other hand, the final film of the program, Phil Cox’s Hilary’s Straws, has a much more leisurely pace in its look at the innovative navigational tool that allowed a quadriplegic woman to sail across the world alone.

The final two world premieres were Steven Cantor’s The Bionic Eye, about research being done to artificially restore sight to patients suffering from degenerative blindness, and Michele Ohayon’s Solar Roadways, a very exciting look at the effort to produce solar-paneled roads and parking lots in order to cleanly and cheaply power nearby communities, as well as electric vehicles. Hopefully, the world premiere films will be available online soon; I would especially like to see The Honor Code and Solar Roadways again. In the meantime, the others are streaming on Focus Forward’s website, and if you have an idea that fits the theme, you can create your own film for the $200,000 Filmmaker Challenge, which you can read more about here.