Filming horror...

Hi, thanks for your interest in my new film 'OUIJA BOARD'.

Making this film has been a four year adventure for me. There's been some great times, some bloody awful!!! Anyway, I've made the film now, so if you wana find out how I did it feel free to read on. If you are making your own low budget movie and want any advice you can get me at mail@thunderfilms.com.

Matt Stone, writer, director, producer, cinematographer, editor 'Ouija Board'

4 years??? You gotta be kidding right???? Why do it?

Good question!!! Truth is I didn't really have a choice. I always wanted to make a movie, did some courses, read the books, made some short films etc, but I always had a good excuse for not actually going out and doing the 'feature film' thing. Then one day I woke up and discovered I was in a relatively secure job, I had some credit cards and I had read enough film making books to be able to go and actually do it. Basically I had ran out of excuses! The time had come to make a decision...go make a film or just accept that it was just a dream that was never going to actually happen. I didn't like the sound of that last one so making a film it was, come what may!

It's gotta be f**king entertaining!!!

So many films just bore me, either pretentious dreariness or loads of action but no emotional connection. I wanted this film to be different, I wanted to find that mid-way point between art house and entertainment. A film that had a something to say, but was fun and engaging too.

How do you actually make a film?

I had to make it seem real for me. To take away the glamour and mystique from filmmaking. One of my old college flat mates had set up a company and produced a film with a budget of several hundred thousand pounds. I guessed that as I actually know someone that's done it then it cant just be a Hollywood thing can it??? I also went to see filmmakers giving talks at film festivals, I saw Steven Soderbergh, Brian De Palma, Roger Corman and Kevin Smith, hearing them talking gave feature filmmaking a sense of reality, but I was never going to raise the sort of money those guys have to make their films. So I tried to find DVDs of micro-budget films - to watch the interviews and commentaries and to find out how they did it. I also read loads of books with people that have made films, I tried to concentrate on how people made their first movie. It was interesting to discover that micro-budget filmmaking is nothing new, many big name directors over the years started out by making very low budget films, doing many of the crew and production jobs themselves. It seemed that what I was trying to do was actually a fairly common way into big budget filmmaking!

So, I'm going to need a script.

But I cant write! Well, I'd written some short films before but nothing that I felt was particularly well written. So I found a writer with some television credits that I thought could do a good job and I contact his agent and then spoke to the writer to discuss the project. I thought that he would do a good job but I still really felt like I wanted to have a shot at writing it myself, but I really wasn't sure how to go about it.

One of the UK Film Council funding schemes came up and I decided to write a short film script to submit for it. Although it wasn't commissioned it did get positively compared to the writing of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg which gave me the confidence to start work writing my first feature film - Ouija Board.

I came up with a rough outline of a film that I felt could be shot on a very low budget, mainly because I didn't want to spend years in development hell trying to get proper funding, I just wanted to go out and do it.

I started making notes of any ideas of things that could happen in the film, I kept adding to it then listed the ideas in the order that they would happen. I ended up with about 90 scenes (ideas) listed. This meant I could watch the whole film in my head before I'd even written any dialogue! This allowed me to check the pacing and flow of the film. It was very important to me that it kept moving and didn't become boring for people to watch.

I then wrote the screenplay, doing about 7 pages a day until it was finished.

Show me the money!

At this point I still wasn't sure I was going to be able to afford to make it. However, I sat down and worked out how much it would cost to make. I looked at kit rental, paying for locations, stock, insurance etc etc. I then looked at how much money I could get my hands on. I looked at my savings and credit card balances and tried to work out how to pay for everything within those limits. I was limited to just a few grand, so it wasn't going to be easy, but I was fairly sure I could do it. I worked out the budget, opened a business bank account and actually transferred the money off my credit cards and put it into the account. Maybe not the most sensible idea as it just meant paying extra interest but I wanted to make it all seem real to me, to be able to look at my 'Thunder Films' bank account and to see the money sitting there just waiting to be turned into a movie!

Pre-production

It was time for the real work to begin. I advertised for cast and crew on Shooting People, Talent Circle and Mandy.com. I found a holiday cottage to use as the main location and booked it. I ordered high-def tape stock, booked the kit, got contracts made up and arranged the insurance. There was a lot to do and I was so busy dealing with all this work that there was not much time to think creatively about the film. I was after all trying to fit this in in my spare time around a demanding full time job!

A couple of weeks before we were due to start filming my deal for lighting/sound/grip kit for the shoot fell through. I had no money left to get it from anywhere else so without that deal the shoot would HAVE to be called off...even though I'd all ready spent a shit load getting to that point! I was not happy! However, I worked my charm and managed to get the deal back on, big sigh of relief! 

Filming

You can get an idea what the filming was like from all the behind the scenes stuff on the dvd. It was mainly night shoots and everyone was totally knackered by the end of it. When most people think of making a film they think of being on location doing the filming, that however is the quickest part of the whole process, it's everything before and after which filmmaking is really about. I'm definitely looking forward to getting back on set directing again though. :-)

Finishing the film

I very naively thought that I could edit the film in a couple of weeks...HA!!!!!! It went on...and on...and on.....

Editing a film is misery. It's just work and work and work to get it right. I did enjoy it, but it's still misery though, if that makes any sense???

I'm going to do a more detailed account of the making of the film soon, however I'm going to have to undergo hypnotherapy to unblock all the parts that I've blanked out of my mind first! Filmmaking really aint for the faint hearted, but I bloody love it, and can't wait to make my next movie! :-)