Piccolo, you do not know what you started. Because frankly, these past two days have been hell for me. Yeah, I know the ideaology of "Everything is a learning experience." I know. But I'm not looking for a goddamn learning experience. I'm looking for fifty thousand dollars to make my damn movie. That's not including post production costs.
So, I had a large meeting with most of the rich people in my neighborhood. People who could finance a low budget independent feature. Not a damn person showed up. A man named Scot Thiele was there, a professional Director of Photography, and he seemed to think of me merely as an amatuer, not a filmmaker. Because I haven't graduate film school. Well, neither did Kevin Smith or Quentin Tarantino. Hell, Tarantino didn't even go to film school. He just had a rich family that had influence. I, however, have taken Lloyd Kaufman's Master class, twice. Sure, it's guerilla film school, but it was a proven director teaching a weekend long class.
I'm trying to shoot this on 16mm. My damn film school keeps telling me "Film is the way of the past, DV is the future." And use that as an excuse for not teaching us how to edit film, and shoot with film cameras. It's okay, most indy film communities tell the same thing. Thus, I can't buy any. I can rent them from groups that will over charge me in membership fees. The only cameras I can find don't have a sound sync system. "Yeah, Robert Rodriguez used this type of camera to shoot El Mariachi." Yeah, but the one he used on El Mariachi had sound sync.
Everyone wants me to be less ambitious. This is, of course, making me more ambitious. I used to want a budget of 30,000. Now I want 50,000. With post costs that will put the movie almost 100,000. However, I can finance post production later.
I remember when I started this project. It was a bunch of angry film students who didn't like our school. We had decided to pool our resources and make a feature. Since it was my idea, I was sort of elected Director. We had a full crew back then. Then I told people they had to work. And they all quite. I hope they never get a film made in their lives. The only person who stayed with me was my Production Manager, who has never taken a film class. He's just ingenuitive and good with figures.
So I have no help from family or friends. Investors ignore me. My colleagues pretty much mock me without good reason, and I can't screenwrite worth a shit. But I had to because the other guy decided to quite.