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How to Make a Feature Film with 750 Dollars - Part 1

Including the pain and struggle that go with it.

By Adrian A. Pedrin V.Published 7 years ago 3 min read
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How to make a feature film with 750 Dollars Part 1

I’m a loner, introvert, anti-social, lone wolf, whatever you want to call it, I don’t like the system and that's why I didn’t even play by Hollywood rules.

Hi, my name is Adrian Pedrin V. and I used to live in Hollywood, work at various post production places freelancing until I got sick of it and left, but before I left I wrote a script that is now known as “The Garden’s Keeper” and since that is the first thing you have to do to actually be able to make a film then that's where I will start this “how to make a feature film” posts.

Ah, the script, so many questions like, “how do you write a script?” or “where can you get ideas for a story?” It’s easy. There's tons of software to write a script and I won’t go into that because you can just google it. Instead, I'll go with how I wrote the script and what I will never do again when writing a script, so here goes.

My intention was to write a low-budget b-movie in one month. That didn’t happen specially because it was my first feature film script, and I quickly realized when I got to the second month in that I wasn’t going to finish anytime soon, so I had to come up with a solution to my problem. I went medieval on my problem. My solution? Sit down and don’t get up from my desk until I finish writing the first draft, and so I did. I sat down at 8pm one night and went to bed at 6 am. If you are wondering how much of the script I wrote in that time, the answer is half of it (45 pages), and in the coming days I just revised it about three more times making minor adjustments to dialogue and scenes.

My process for writing the script was pretty much put on headphones with some inspiring music, and to tell the truth, the scenes came out naturally. The music inspired me, and the dialogue just started flowing when I started getting in to each characters head and since all of them had a bit of me in them then it was just amplifying that part of me in the character.

After I finished the script, I started thinking about the 100,000 dollars I needed to film it, and I started my crowdfunding adventure without any knowledge about crowdfunding, just the notion that I have seen people raising money for their films in a successful way, but I'll cover that in another post, for now I'm going to tell you what not to do on your script and what to focus on.

Drama, lots of drama and suspense. Doesn’t matter what genre it is you need to have something happening. My script, the original one was a fun script and it built to something. What we ended up shooting is just a flat script that tells a story that kinda doesn’t go anywhere, no big finish or anything. It does have a reveal at the end but a lot of people didn’t get it, so if you are writing your first script focus on drama, on things happening, on obstacles for your protagonist and don’t just write out scenes for the heck of it, there's always a reason for everything that happens.

If you want to check out the film, it's currently on Amazon to buy or rent and even amazon prime or free with ads, heck it's even on pirate bay (uploaded by myself) or on youtube.

My next post will talk about my experience with crowdfunding and ill talk about all that I have learned after I finished the movie about crowdfunding a second one, but if you want to know anything specific feel free to contact me at [email protected] and i will write do my best to write about it and answer you, thank you for your time and I hope to see your film someday.

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About the Creator

Adrian A. Pedrin V.

B Movie Film Director | Writer | Geek | Avid video game player | lover of pizza and Science Fiction | Currently Filming a Docu Series about the food of Baja California.

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