DIY – Make your own First Film

Making your own films is simple to do, effective, fun, and guaranteed to improve your acting. Here’s where we offer a simple guide to getting started and making your own short film.

The story

The most important element of a film is a story because a good story will always make a good movie.

Because it’s a short movie the story can be really simple, just 3 scenes in fact. And you might be surprised how easy it is to write a simple story!

Just follow this pattern:

1. A character has a goal they need to reach but there’s a problem in the way
2. They try to overcome that problem but just make the situation worse
3. They find a solution (or maybe head in a different, better, direction) or get their comeuppance

For example

1. Joel is in love with Mary, but Mary doesn’t even know he exists
2. Joel tries to give Mary a box of chocolates but when he sees her with another man, he gets distracted and nearly walks into busy traffic
3. Emma saves him just in time; their eyes meet, and Joel gives her the chocolates…

or

1. Karl is late for a job interview and can’t find anywhere to park
2. He sees a parking space but Glykeria is about to park there – Karl pushes in!
3. Karl goes into the interview only to find that the person interviewing him… is Glykeria.

Keep it simple. As simple as possible. And you’ll be fine.

But whatever you do, add problems. No one wants to see a movie where everything is perfect – we want to see tension and difficulties!

And to be honest, since no one will see these first efforts it doesn’t really matter if the story isn’t that good for now!

The team

You need at least 3 people to make a film. If you find two other actors that’s brilliant because you can all take turns in front of and behind the camera. Don’t worry if none of you have done this before, it’s all about learning here so as long as you go in with enthusiasm and an open mind you’ll be fine.

The equipment

All you need is a smartphone. The cameras on them are more than enough for this project and let’s face it, you’re not going for an Golden Bear here, you’re doing it for practice.

A microphone? If you can afford one, fine, if not, the phone mic is good enough. Or if you’re clever, who needs dialogue in a movie anyway? The two stories above can be told without a single word being spoken!

A tripod? If you can. But we’re not after perfection here, just experience.

The production itself

Take a weekend to shoot your movie. Take more than enough footage; the more the better. Take each scene a bunch of times – it’s all practice, after all. Play each scene in different ways – again, it’s all about practice and experience.

If you’re in front of the camera you’ll get good experience acting. And if you’re behind the camera you’ll realise that actors need to behave in a certain way to make a good movie.

If you can edit on a computer then fine otherwise you can even edit straight off your phone. The interesting thing here is that simply by editing you will learn a lot, even if you use a really basic program. 

(Although there are plenty of free editors online or already installed on your phone, if you’re interested in taking your editing further, one of the best programs you can use is Da Vinci Resolve which is 100% free to use and professional level software. You can download it here.)

And then upload to YouTube or Vimeo.

The result

It won’t be pretty. It won’t win any awards. And you may even want to hide it away so it’ll never be seen.

But that isn’t important!

No, the important thing is that you made a film and you acted in a film.

It’ll go on your CV and now you can say that yes, you have experience and you are an actor!

And then?

And then you make another film which will be a little bit better. And then another which will be a little bit better, too. And before long you have made dozen short movies and – most importantly of all – you will have learned a huge amount about acting!

1. Being behind the camera will teach you how to act in front of the camera
2. Editing will teach you continuity and what not to do when you’re acting

And perhaps most importantly, the more acting you do, the more confidence you will get, and the more relaxed you’ll look on camera. Then when you get called for a bigger production you’ll be able to walk onto the set with confidence and be nice and relaxed when the famous director calls, Action!