Kim Adelman, Author/Filmmaker/Instructor: You're super famous and it would help my
career to be working with you but you also have a ton of money. I'm meeting you in your
mansion and you're asking me and my little Toyota to come and work for you for free, no.
Film Courage: Can you make a short film for no money?
Kim: You can totally make a short film with no money. In this new world of you have an iPhone
in your pocket but also and I don't think the camera is the most important thing whatsoever but
you have a phone in your pocket you can use. Also I guarantee you know somebody who has a
more expensive camera that they are not using that weekend and will lend it to you. Bartering
is the best thing in the world. If you have editing skills, you know somebody who wants
to make a film. Say that I will gladly edit your film for free if you come and shoot my film when
I'm ready to make my short film. If you you know bring your camera I will then do yours
so barter your skills with other people that's one of the things we have to offer that we don't need
to be paid we really can our time has value and we can offer that our skills have value
but if you wake up film for no money you have to realize the kind of film you can make and know
with no money you're not going to be able to make something that is a knockoff of a big studio film
you know however if your day job is doing special effects for a big Studio film and you have access
to all that equipment and you can use it for free on the weekend or whatever maybe you can make
something that's crazy impressive because you have access to this equipment that other people who had
to have to pay you know hundreds per hour to get somebody to do it wouldn't be able to do so then
have sort of a like-minded network of people where you can switch off and do different tasks for each
other and and be open to working on other people's films too I can't tell you how many filmmakers
want to make a short film and have never worked on anyone else's film especially amongst students
and it's like go on somebody else's set help them out and then learn what they're doing wrong shorts
are learning experience for everybody see and then you say oh I'm never going to do that or you know
you go on and work on a set and you realize ah this is a big waste of time or they had too many
people I I never forget I met a filmmaker who made his film at school he had 50 cast members
50 crew members on his film and we were like 50. what is that it's ridiculous it's like we
were at school everyone was willing to help it's like well I would never use 50 people on my film
but you know in his case it made sense for him and it worked for him and he was happy with it so
who's people have unique situations that they have advantages and disadvantages of so you
should use the things that you have advantages of if you want to make something with no money
and if someone's not in film school where can they sort of find other filmmakers to just volunteer to
get their feet wet that's why I think if you work on other people's film s then you meet
people a right so even if you PA on a film you're looking and clocking around saying who's going
to be friendly with and say hey by the way I'm gonna be making a short film soon would you be
willing to come and do that also there is you know Craigslist or mandy.com there's places to also
you know like UCLA Extension has a website where their students can list that they're available to
work on films there's film organizations in Los Angeles and again I keep on speaking about Los
Angeles because I'm from Los Angeles but I'm sure in whatever City you're in there's a film society
or film organization the other big tip that I love is like if you have a film festival in
your city volunteer to work at that film festival because you're meeting other people who love film
and want to be involved in film so not only might you meet people who come into the film festival
but you'll meet other volunteers who I guarantee you'd be happy to work on your film because they
too have the same sensibility you have they want to be making these films they love films so that's
like the number one tip that I love is like work at a volunteer at a film festival in your local
hometown or film society and meet people who have similar interests and get them to work
on your phone how often do you hear of a short film costing let's say 70 million dollars well
animation Pixar makes these short films I don't think they're 70 million dollars
but they're done properly through Pixar you know where nobody's working for free on those
so I don't know what the budgets are for those Pixar shorts but they're not done for five cents
those are expensive short films also when you see the films that are nominated for Academy
Award for best live action it's very rarely us filmmakers it's usually filmmakers from other
countries because their countries actually support their filmmakers and give them money so they can
make high quality films that feel like big old feature films that just happen to be 12 minutes
long through also the academy loves a short film that's long but you know like a 25 minute
long film that feels super expensive and like a feature film is totally and is big and important
and dramatic that's totally Academy catnip and it's usually made by a country a filmmaker in
a country where that country gives them money to make the film so it might not be Millions but it's
well funded and so it's very hard for a little you know us-based filmmaker where the government won't
give you any money where there's no grants there's no basically you know you're either kickstarting
to raise some money or you have wealthy relatives who are willing to give you money
or you're paying for it yourself you know there's always that rule for feature films
like never put your own money into it but I'm like in shorts you're putting your own time
and your own money and even if it's not your own money your own time if you calculated how much
time you're putting into this that you could be spending earning money for that hours it's like
that's thousands upon thousands of dollars that you've contributed and in some ways it might be
best to put your own money whether you're paying from your waiting tables job or whatever it is
because you're going to learn lessons faster and you can control it you know I the phase I always
use is you are the studio when you're making a short film you are like a studio and then you
get to decide what you want a green light and invest in and you have to take it all the way
from commissioning the script to releasing it out into the world so you know some studios can
get away with like they don't have any money and they're going to do it totally cheap but you know
like there's a lot of famous actors that make short films or like screenwriters those people
have money and so you can't expect people to work for free for it and people aren't expecting the
films that they make to be shot on an iPhone you know super Cheapo kind of thing when you see a
famous actor who's directed a short film those are properly funded and again they got money to burn
I'm sure they put their own money into it and they don't do it for you know two cents on the iPhone
and they shouldn't you know that's not what people are expecting from them and you know if
somebody famous were to ask me to work on their phone for free I'd be like no I mean I love it
I would obviously love to work with you you're super famous and it would help my career to be
working with you but you also have a ton of money I'm meeting you in your mouth mansion and you're
asking me and my little Toyota to come and work for you for free no that's actually a film idea
you're pulling up to the gate the car stalls movie starts yes great should a filmmaker expect
to make money from their short film so the thing about short films is there's really no money in
short films what you're investing in is you're launching yourself as a filmmaker and that film
will hopefully get you other will launch you as a filmmaker and hopefully get you other work so you
need to think of it as an investment in yourself and that's where the calling card kind of aspect
happens that like I've created this to show you this is what my talent is and therefore hopefully
you will hire me and pay me money to move on to do the next thing so even though they didn't give you
cash like here's 20 million dollars for your short film they actually gave you 20 million dollars to
write a feature or something of that sort you so you can make money that way it's it's by launching
yourself but actual shorts themselves sometimes do make money there are still a few places that will
pay for license a short film the problem is so it used to be called interstitial uh programming
where movie channels like used to have a feature that runs short and they need to put something
else on before the hour starts up again and that's the short films I made for Fox were for a cable
channel that used them that way you had 20 minutes you had to pad and so let's put some short films
in there and that way we patted the time HBO used to pay money for short films to use it in that
way but now people all they do is they do they'd rather make a little featurette about a TV show
to convince you to watch that TV show and fill up the time that way so domestically there there
isn't a market so much for it anymore but PBS still occasionally pays for short films caps and
when I say pay for they're licensing it they're licensing a short film to air in a certain way
in a certain market for a certain time they're not buying it out right there are some markets foreign
that also still pay for films sometimes to be used on TV interstitially sometimes to be used in other
ways Airlines sometimes sure films you know it used to be too like oh my short film is going to
be on iTunes or Amazon and people are going to pay me for that and there some are sorry the Academy
Award shorts by the way are their own category but those actually get put in movie theaters
and people pay money to see the Academy Award nominated show films which makes me so happy sorry
which makes me so happy and that's for features and they put the animated shorts out that way they
put the feature the the live action shorts out that way and the documentary and people pay money
to see them in theater and it's like it proves people are interested they want to see these films
that the academy has said are worthy and of value and those films do make money for the filmmakers
so there are case like weird ways that sometimes films do make money and make their money back
but oh that's a unicorn you know most times you just got to go in the understanding of sorry
the other way you can earn money is a festival sometimes there's money prizes at festivals so
I know of many filmmakers who've made one more as Festival prizes than they actually put into
making their film so they made profit that way from the festival prizes so you know another
reason to do festivals is there is a category for short films and you can be a prize winner that way
so sometimes there are ways to make money the funny thing too is like later on if you become
famous you know we're very interested in famous people short films so they might be interested
in your film that way once you become famous or maybe really luck out and somebody starring
in your film it becomes famous later on and then there's interested in so but what would stop you
from making money from your short film is if you didn't do everything right if you didn't get all
the cast sign release forms giving you the rights to their performances if you didn't do deal memos
so that said they're afraid that some crew member will come back and sue you when all of a sudden
you're making money if you have music in it or not even music but artwork or clips of other films
that you don't have the rights to that at a time you're like ah what the hell it serves my artistic
vision and it makes it great but somebody's saying hey I can give you money but you have to have all
these things cleared you have to buy errors in admission insurance which stops people from
suing you it doesn't stop people from pursuing it protects people when they're being sued and
you have that costs money too so there's a lot of sometimes and then there's sag payments that
change when you actually sell your film so there's sometimes there's other reasons why you can't sell
your film even if somebody were to offer you for the money for the film but sometimes it's also
laughable it's like hey somebody in Poland wants to license your film for 13 it's like is it worth
everybody's headache to do all that paperwork to get your film license for thirteen dollars and
and is it also two let's say like Brands like if you yeah if you have like in the same way forever
again if you're trying to learn how to do it right for the feature film you should do all
that right for the short film so that you don't have issues but you know it's like if somebody in
your short film is drinking Coca-Cola but they're not like a murderer or something like that they're
just accidentally drinking Coca-Cola nobody's gonna stop your film being distributed being
like you didn't clear the rights for Coca-Cola it's not that big of a deal it would be more if
you know the Killer Clown kills everybody with a Coca-Cola can then there could be an issue
it's like Coca-Cola would not approve of that use of their can in that way what if it's you
have a scene where there's like a couple at the table and there's a replica of a Renoir in the
background right is that someone still needs to clear the rights for that yeah they do definitely
that's always kind of surprising another thing I'd heard about recently that I never even
thought about was tattoos that the tattoo artist has created original artwork so if it's the real
tattoo and you're using it in a very obvious way in the film it isn't just like they're walking and
they happen to have tattoos down their arms but there's a big part of the film that it focuses on
this tattoo you have to get that cleared from the tattoo artist who created that is original artwork
wow yes that that's new and sort of a new well you to me it was explained to me and
I was like I never thought about tattoos okay but that is original artwork too well you can
get temporary ones exactly yeah whoever designed that temperature to get them to
sign to say that they gave you permission to use their artwork for wow I know crazy isn't it wow
that's fascinating to know that again everybody you know is creating something artistically so
you know what I always say documentary there's a lot more lean way because they're capturing real
life but for narrative filmmakers the argument is you're creating a fictional World in which
you've touched everything in that and have decided everything's in there for a reason
so if you've chosen to have this Renoir in the background then there's a reason that you've
done that and then you should appropriately pay everybody if not take the Renoir out get a clear
door worker just go in the back and scribble it yourself and put something else in there because
you've chosen all of that sure sure yeah just a couple brush strokes and just pretend it's some
kind of moderate there you go it's done cooking is what they call it when you put like tape over
something so it looks different or changes it out something or you know we often say
because you often have crew members be your Cass and be your extras or whatever you just really
want to watch their clothes because often crew members are wearing like a Panna Vision t-shirt
I'm like could you turn your t-shirt inside out could you take oh Major League Baseball
or any kind of Major League major sports thing they all want money so you don't want somebody
with a Yankees cap or you don't want somebody with an NFL branded Dodgers whatever you know
all that is protected and you can't do and again I'm based in Los Angeles so I will of course say
Dodgers or whatever but the Hollywood sign is also something that's protected and so you have
to pay for the use to use the Hollywood sign and you can't just be like who's in the background
it's like we'll pick a different shot so it's not in the background but they want money they know
about it and they also actively screen to look for it if you've used it and they will come after you.