32 Indie Filmmaking Tips: Pre-Production & Development

I have been lucky enough to have filmed all over the world, from Pinewood to Bollywood and from Montana to the Sahara. I’ve worked on some really wonderful productions and I’ve been on some really awful productions that if I could get in my TARDIS, travel back in time, and change that timeline — then I would.

But it’s the ‘fun’ that keeps us coming back time after time: The incredible sense of accomplishment that comes on completing the first draft of a screenplay: printing it out and holding it in your hands! Completing everything on the call sheet on a tough shoot and seeing it’s still ten minutes before WRAP! Watching an actor and crew nail a really complicated or emotional scene. Or that amazing feeling when you say CUT for the last time on a feature film! Even the worst shoots provide us with endless anecdotes, and how quickly we forget the bad days.

But the fun bits come from a lot of tedious and non-fun bits. Many filmmakers don’t want to do the boring bits, but understanding and doing these non-fun bits will increase the actual fun when you get to it: give you less stress, fewer nightmares, less stomach tightening phone calls from accountants and lawyers, and ultimately a better and more sellable movie.

Krista DeMille and I in Montana filming “Atomic Apocalypse”

I’ve made a lot of movies. I started off as a Runner and worked my way up. I worked on 13…