We have the answers!!! From conception to completion, and looking beyond the gloss!

A film from scratch..

Making a film that is festival friendly can be very tough. Here is our guide to getting the best out of the obvious limitations.

Preparation..
First of all find your locations, they need to be free to use or cheap to hire. If it's a short try and visualise shots, do the old cliche of finger and thumb framing, it really works! Once you know your shell it'll be easy to fill it with narrative. It sounds mental preparing in this fashion but if you have no idea what story you'd like to create, a great starting point is finding locations that interest you, and that are intriguing to the eye -- an uncles farm, a friends loft apartment or even a siblings office etc.. We all have these places in our lives, so find them!"

The story
Your life is crammed with stories. Yarn's, that when looked on, conjure up lots of emotion, happy or otherwise. They could be anything from something that happened to you or a friend and that changed a situation in someway. Film narrative can be observed in the 3rd person or experienced in the 1st, try it out with different versions of your opening, watch films that take these different angles. Fight Club is first person told from the lead characters perspective, where as Star Wars isn't.

At a micro budget level it's best to keep things simple. Human emotion is simple because we all have relationships, and we understand the feelings and the steaks when these unions are tested. A great film we received last year called 'Letting Go' had virtually no dialogue, it just followed an elderly man as he prepared for dinner at his home, when it came to sitting down to eat, he picked his phone up and called his house number, a lady came on to the answer machine. He sat there listening to her voice echoing through the kitchen. He repeated the call over and over so he could hear her, he subsequently starts to break down and the film ends. The atmosphere in the theatre, at the festival this year, when it ended could have been cut with a knife! Letting Go was simple but excellent, and well deserved it's official selection. It was two locations, a supermarket and what looked like it was the directors grandmothers kitchen - minimal lighting and one actor - total budget £100.

Making a film that is festival friendly can be made easier so long as it is simplified, honest and real.

Sourcing equipment.
Use FilmCrew Pro, it's an online directory of film professionals that you can post jobs onto. They're thousands of techies including camera operators, editors, sound recordists all with their own equipment including cameras!! Some are on the site to gain experience and more often than not are willing to give you their time for expenses (never more than £15 per head), and a film credit on IMDB - something you will get automatically when you submit to the London Lift-Off Film Festival 2012!!

Shoot days.
Keep these to a minimum and make sandwiches for your cast and crew.

When shooting draw up a list of the vital shots. Bits you need to get 'into the can' before you start to do other fancy things like pickups or interesting angles. Make sure you shoot the whole script in simple shot by shot order before you play around with trying to capture a lens flare or zoom in on your lead flushing the toilet..(see opening few scenes of Shaun of the Dead)..

Try to utilise your time on set. It is pointless returning to a shot you had already set up before lunchtime, ensure you get everything you need. Draw up a storyboard, nothing fancy, and keep track of what you have, and what you have left to-do!

Post-production.
Learn how to edit. If you have an ounce of computer skills and you love film and you can organise yourself rather well then you can edit. Again at micro budget level it makes sense to do everything, the more YOU do the cheaper everything will be. Free editing software exists, that doesn't have to be fancy, or you may edit using a powerful program during it's 30 day trail. So long as you have a fairly modern computer and access to YouTube you can learn to edit a short film within a week! Do not be afraid of messing up from time to time, that's all part of the learning process. YouTube is packed with guides, tricks, hints and tips that will take your film off of the camera and into the submissions section at London Lift-Off. :p

A location should be interesting, relevant and never a logistical nightmare!

Submitting.
Choose your festival well! Look at festivals that are up and coming, unless you've made your film with public money or a massive budget from film-school it will be difficult to get your work seen at the big ones. Snobbery has started to engulf the festival circuit, talk like "did you shoot on a Red?" - "we only edit on final cut pro" etc, these are things to ignore. So long as your film scales up well to 1080 resolution and the sound is audible then you're good to go. Our advice is source a local festival first, that screens at a fantastic cinema (like ours), and get your submission in early. Many festivals have to pay for their venues in advance and submission fees are needed to cater for the good venues and to market your films. The early bird deadline is currently $30 with London Lift-Off that's around £21. Like all festivals we operate an airline pricing system where it goes up the closer it gets to the festival opening.

Part of the submissions this year is a feedback option where we source feedback for each submission that opts for it. Honest and unbiased our feedback is vital to any filmmaker who is serious about their craft. Once paid for the filmmaker will receive grades on all aspect of the film, comments on every section and a step by step guide on how to fix certain issues and take things forward. The feedback option also automatically adds your film into the 2nd submission round for official selection.

The motto of our festival is to "look beyond the gloss".. We love film, and love the experience of going to the cinema and observing the fundamentals of human interaction. If you make a film this year and it has the qualities of any of the above and you'd love to see it on the big screen as part of an exciting program then send it in to us, we are accepting shorts and features in either documentaries, drama or animation form.

You'll be in the mix of thousands of pounds worth of cool prizes aimed at enhancing your film making career.
Click here to submit to the fastest growing most unbiased festival on the circuit!!

The London Lift-Off Film Festival is scheduled for screening in November 2012 at the prestigious Tricycle Cinema in North West London...

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Take a look at 2011's mega guide!!