LA Shorts Fest 09: A Great Festival to Feature
Your Microbudget Short
by
Sheri Candler
Every year, thousands of independent filmmakers submit to multiple short film festivals in hopes of having their work exhibited and enjoyed by an audience. Most of these films have been produced using a variety of microbudget methods to achieve the quality of a studio feature, but in short form. LA Shorts Fest honors the excellence these filmmakers have achieved through ingenuity and hard work. A few of this year’s participants sat down to give their thoughts and advice on making a microbudget short film.
Type/genre of film: Animation/Comedy Director/Writer: Lucas Martell
Premise:"Pigeon: Impossible" is the tale of Walter, a rookie secret agent faced with a problem seldom covered in basic training: what to do when a curious pigeon gets trapped inside your multi-million dollar, government-issued nuclear briefcase.
Length: 6:12 Budget: $10,000
How did you accomplish your film given the budget constraints? Lucas Martell-“One of the main advantages to animation is that there are very few hard costs. Most of the budget is spent on labor and for Pigeon: Impossible, everyone looked at it more as a calling card piece so it was more like a student production where everyone pitched in when they had the time. That said, it was a tremendous amount of work spanning nearly 5 years and 10,000 man hours so it’s not a production methodology that can easily be replicated. It also requires one person to be really passionate and spearhead the efforts for as long as it takes to get the project finished.”
“As for things I'd do differently next time, I've actually started a podcast dedicated to the mistakes we made and the lessons we learned. It can be found at: www.pigeonimpossible.com/podcast.”
Key art for Pigeon:Impossible.
“Probably the biggest single lesson had to do with getting your story right. There were a lot of times we thought we had it nailed and started animating, only to realize later that there were still some story flaws that we just couldn't live with. That meant throwing away a lot of work, but I'm so glad we had a group of people who were committed to making the project the best it could be, not just getting it out the door. That said, I just finished the script for my next short and now that I've been through the process once, I'm much more confident about what works, what doesn't, and how to make sure we get the story working before jumping into production.”
“Another big issue was just the sheer complexity of producing 3D animation. Even the simplest things come with an incredible amount of technical challenges and since this was my first time animating, I didn't know some of the "rules of the road" when we started. For instance, most people know the live action budget killers: kids, animals, and water. Well in CG, the list is more like humans, cloth, hair, fire, crowds... all things that this movie had in abundance. We found ways to get everything onscreen, but a lot of the techniques we used were cheats. The average audience member will probably never notice, but it took a while for us to find a balance between technical perfection and getting the movie finished.”
