Advice For My Upcoming Short Film
 

So on the 25th of January I will be shooting my first short film of note. It will be about an entity called Mr. Empty and how he comes to claim certain people on the verge of committing suicide. It will be shot in the day for optimum lighting and the cast will include a whopping 5 people. I will be using a DSLR camera for the majority of the shots and a hd camcorder for secondary footage. So now that you know the bones of my project do you guys have any advice I should take to heart during my production?

No advice, but I send you lots of good wishes!

I really appreciate it :) It has always been my dream to work on horror films. I will definitely put everything I got into this short.

What camcorder will you be using?

For moving shots I will be using a Cannon Vixia HF21. But for set shots I will be using a Cannon EOS 60D with a EFS 18-135MM lense. I know its not the best stuff in the world, but I'm a pretty poor guy and I refuse too have my hand out. If I can't afford it then I haven't earned it.

My only advice is to make sure you're shooting with consistent settings (re: frame rate, interlace/progressive, etc) between the cameras to make your post workflow less stressful. The 60D and HF21 are fine cameras and you'll get a fine image out of them both. Looking forward to seeing it when you're done.

Do almost all of the work in preproduction. When I came onto set of my feature, Solitude, I wouldn't even need to think about what to do next because I had a shot list and scheduled everything out to a T.

Do you have a crew? It is not difficult to find people who will help out on things like this for free, much of my crew was unpaid, but it is a necessity to have decent food on set for the cast and crew. It shows you care and appreciate them working for free and they will want to work with you again. I've been on sets where they bring the cast and crew Burger King, it's pretty bad sometimes. This can honestly motivate a cast and crew a lot.

Thanks for the advice. I was planning on shooting the film in 720p at 60fps for nice smooth movement. I know that is not standard movie fps, but I like how higher frame rate looks. When it is done I'll definitely post it here :)