Chapter 23: Shooting schedule
There were some things that those who were in the situation might not see more clearly than those outside.
Back home, Murphy carefully considered Carla Faith's words, which was indeed very reasonable, if he bets on throwing all his money on the shooting and production of a movie, in case it fails, he will definitely face a very painful situation.
That troubled life after his release from prison had already given Murphy palpitations, and now that he had just escaped from the poverty line, he didn't want to go back to that state again.
Murphy does have some confidence in himself, but knows that it's not without the possibility of failure.
He has analyzed a lot of films is right, but also as a film school students, self-pay study is also very serious, just also participated in the production of a documentary, more or less is considered to have some experience, but filming and these are two different things, analysis of the future success of the film will be able to successfully produce the film?
Anyone with a normal brain knows that there is no way to equate the two.
As a sensible person, Murphy understands that he has to leave a way out for himself, and that he has to limit his investment to less than 300,000 dollars.
Who can not guarantee that the future will still have the same luck as the Bill Road incident, the remaining tens of thousands of dollars, can let him fail to have a chance to turn around.
From beginning to end, Murphy's mind is very clear, he has more insight than others, is a favorable condition, but can not guarantee that he will be successful.
Everyone wants to be successful, especially in a place as competitive as Hollywood.
But Hollywood because of ambition and vanity led to the movie Waterloo case don't too much, there are let the company lose money to the closure of the company; there are let the director, producer or big studio CEO retired to the second line or even lose their jobs; there are let a generation of superstars to go on the road of overstaying their welcome and farther and farther away from ...
There are far more flops than successes in the movie industry in all countries and regions of the world, literally countless, and how many of them were the dream works of geniuses? Where have these geniuses been subsequently buried?
More than any other art form with near-zero investment, film, the latecomer, has never shown any sympathy for its followers, and the film industry is recognized as a high-risk industry.
The entire industry is governed by irrational rules, no one can be sure of the secret of making a successful movie, and many a time some directors who claim to make a big hit turn out to be a flop.
Also, once Murphy, in the network above saw countless analysis of successful or failed movies, many people think that summarized these, will be able to do better or even to avoid failure, but there is a fact they overlooked, these summaries are typical of the horse's mouth type of analysis, whether or not it is correct also can never be verified.
Hollywood competition is exceptionally fierce, to Murphy's own situation now, once the plan to flop, the consequences are bound to be quite brutal.
Puff the street this kind of thing, naturally, no one wants, but spread to, but also can only admit it.
Murphy definitely didn't want to be one of them.
From the day after meeting with Carla Faith, he completely gave up his previous work and focused on preparing his movie plans.
Making a movie must be viewed as a rigorous project, even street stalls selling things don't succeed casually, let alone an industry as unpredictable as movies.
The original studio had been turned into his project planning office after Murphy replaced it with a desk that facilitated typing and writing.
To plan a project, one had to determine what the project would be.
Come to this world, Murphy ate a year in jail, plus injured a director, resulting in Hollywood no one is willing to use him, the previous two months to make ends meet and start-up capital busy, in the blink of an eye has passed more than a year, counting now to 2000 in August, but in addition to causing a lot of trouble, but he also has nothing to accomplish.
After experiencing so many things, encountered so many difficulties, Murphy also knew that the previous script submitted to Hollywood is very small possibility of being launched, basically gave up this aspect of the idea, and turn all the energy to the new project will soon open above.
He only had about $300,000 to invest in the funds, which limited the size and content of the film, the need for frequent changes in the scene, the use of a large number of actors, the use of numerous equipment, behind the scenes, such as cumbersome characteristics of the film do not meet the requirements.
The relatively successful small productions were Murphy's first choice.
Instantly, there are countless movie names appeared in Murphy's mind, in the previous years there is the atypical success of "Blair Witch", the future there is "Saw" to small and big.
A movie like "Blair Witch" is completely out of Murphy's consideration, and it's only been a few years since "Blair Witch" was released? Even if such a movie is made, he may not be able to sell it. As for engaging in another viral marketing campaign, not to mention whether the audience who has experienced it will buy it, where will the large sum of money invested come from?
Many people always think that "Blair Witch" easily earns hundreds of millions of dollars at the North American box office, but never pay attention to the fact that its North American publicity and marketing costs alone exceeded twenty million dollars!
Would Murphy even consider a movie like Blair Witch if he had $20 million to spend?
Another way is to give the movie to a big company to distribute, let the big company pay for the distribution and publicity, and then participate in the share as the director. ...
If the executives of the major Hollywood distribution companies were in kindergarten, it's a real possibility.
One of the prerequisites for the viral marketing program for Blair Witch and several other typical small-budget films was that the producers of the film had completely sold the rights to the distribution company!
Shaking his head, Murphy threw those cheap, boring thoughts out the window and considered Saw.
This was also a typical example of a small budget for high box office, and would be a classic masterpiece of plasma horror in the future, and relatively speaking it didn't require particularly many scenes or actors.
But after considering it for a few minutes, Murphy gave up on Saw, not overestimating himself and knowing that he didn't have what it took to produce such a movie on a $300,000 shoot.
After vetoing a number of films, at the end of the day, Murphy still realized that what he had thought of before was probably the best fit.
Actors, the main actors are only two, although one of the underage female role is more demanding, but Murphy thought of an alternative, you can relax the requirements of acting, in the role of the appearance as well as the gore scale above.
The male actors are a bit better, it shouldn't be difficult to find some acting skills and cheap adult actors, after all, this is Los Angeles where Hollywood is located.
The sets are even better, with over ninety percent of the plot taking place in a house that can be rented out, and not many other small scenes that are so commonplace that they can be found for very little time and money.
Then there are the behind-the-scenes productions, which are far more tedious than finding actors and sets.
It's a normal modern play, isn't it possible for the actors to bring their own costumes? Or if that was not possible, some cheap stuff could be bought.
The cameraman could be his own part-time job, as could the assistant director, art director, and the stage manager, which would save enough salary, but the props master, lighting master, make-up master, and a host of other positions were still necessary, and without them, the difficulty of filming would be greatly increased.
Especially the lighting technician, which is directly related to the quality of the shot.
Makeup artist and props division is also very important, the former is responsible for the actor's make-up, no make-up actor in principle can not be shot on camera, high-resolution camera will infinitely amplify an insignificant defects; the latter's work is also a lot, especially envisioned that a lot of bloody scenes, these need the assistance of props.
Murphy couldn't afford to tinker with CG.
Thinking about this, Murphy realized that the $300,000 that he had felt somewhat generous earlier was really tight, and he had to consider saving money when he made his advance plans.
Indeed, Hollywood exists a lot of professionals in this area, think there must also be some mixed not as good, but mixed poor people are also the most need money to eat, if even the basic costs can not be paid, Murphy does not have to expect others are willing to work for him.
This is a very realistic society, others have paid for their labor, he, the hirer, has to give a certain amount of compensation, not nebulous ideals and promises.
"Ideals and promises?"
Repeating a sentence under his breath, Murphy couldn't help but slap himself on the head for a moment, thinking of where he could hire someone professional enough and very cheap.
There were quite a few colleges in the greater Los Angeles area that offered majors related to film and television production, and after the students inside graduated, the vast majority of them started from the most basic jobs, and even many of them could only work as interns on commercial crews, and those who were able to enter film crews were often the lucky ones.
Taking out his notebook, Murphy wrote "intern" on it, which should be able to reduce some behind-the-scenes career expenses.
In addition, he also needs to recruit a person to coordinate the miscellaneous work of the crew, even the smallest crew will produce a lot of chores and trivial matters, need to have a person in charge.
This position could also find an intern or someone who didn't require a high salary.
The whole day, Murphy was thinking about all this, no one dares to guarantee that a movie will be successful, but making adequate preparations will undoubtedly reduce the possibility of failure.
Shooting a movie is not something that can be shot immediately if you want to, even for a project with such a small investment, a lot of work needs to be done.
In the following two days, Murphy not only recorded all of the one item in his mind, but also wrote out a plan that was more than ten pages long, although there were still a lot of places to be modified, but the time was completely in time.
Preliminary to fix all this, and in the computer to make a backup, Murphy began to prepare the script, in a Hollywood movie composed of many elements, the script is relatively not much attention, but it is also the basis of a movie shooting and production.
And with the script, you can better carry out the subplot and shooting plan and other aspects of the development of work.
The first thing Murphy wrote was the outline of the script, all the contents of the movie can be simply summarized into one sentence - how a precocious little loli drowns a strange uncle who has a pedophile fetish. . pedophilic weird uncle!