The short film project

 

This film shows me talking to Michael Savva, short film producer, about how he managed his project to get his film, Still Waters Run Deep, to the Marbella Film Festival. For those of you who have problems with Flash, the transcript follows, or watch the film at Blip.TV.

Elizabeth Harrin: Hello, I’m Elizabeth Harrin from Gantthead’s The Money Files blog and I’m here today with Michael Savva, a finalist in a short film festival.

Michael Savva: Hi!

Elizabeth: And your film recently premiered at Marbella Film Festival.

Michael: Yeah, that’s correct. It premiered back in October and it was a great festival to be able to…it’s an international festival so it’s really great to be able to premiere a short film at such a big festival; and since we’ve been at three more in the States and hopefully next year, loads more to come, fingers crossed.

Elizabeth: Okay, well that sounds like quite a massive project to take on to do a film.

Michael: Yeah.

Elizabeth: So what I’m really interested in finding out a bit more about is how did you for the life of the project manage the finances around it? So did you start off with a budget?

Michael: I did, I definitely started off with the budget. I started with a budget of something like £1200.

Elizabeth: So you started off with the budget, does that mean that it didn’t quite end up that way?

Michael: It increased up to about £1500 which isn’t that bad but that’s only taking into account the production of the film and I didn’t really plan ahead as far as what the film would become and how big I’d want it to be or where I want to take it. That’s probably where the planning lacked.

So I definitely had that kind of in mind at the beginning and had the idea that’s how it’s going to end. And it’s quite on budget, the majority of the money went on equipment and a lot of staff were able to come along on favours and help out, the crew were able to help out, and the actors were people that were doing it in exchange for showreel material.

Elizabeth: Right.

Michael: So I paid for expenses only but wouldn’t pay for their time. But then in exchange they can use the film to add to their showreel. So a lot of it is definitely planned in mind to say that, let’s keep the budget down, yeah, so it was definitely…for the production, it came on value.

Elizabeth: Okay. So did you put aside some money for contingency?

Michael: Well as I said, I put aside about £300 for contingency on the production itself. What I didn’t account for was things like the festivals afterwards.

Elizabeth: Right.

Michael: I didn’t account for how much the festivals would charge.

Elizabeth: In terms of attending?

Michael: In terms of submitting the film and just how many I’d want to submit to generally. When I started submitting to a few, I started to get a general idea about how it works and what to do. And what you get is a sense of…I emailed a lot of the old entrants into the Marbella Film Festival after I found out that I was going to be in, and I said to them, how many festivals do you submit to, what’s Marbella like, just trying to get feedback from a lot of them. And the general consensus was we entered into about 100, 120 festivals and we only got in to about 20 or 40.

Elizabeth: Wow! How much does it cost to enter a festival?

Michael: It can be anything from generally, some of them are free but very rarely you find one or two that are free. But generally, you’re talking about between £20 up to about £60, £70, £80 and it depends on how soon you want to enter, how big the festival is. They decide on the cost. Sometimes, you have to be selective about which festivals you are choosing.

Elizabeth: Yeah, because that could be easily, going to 100 festivals, £60 a time, £600. That’s half your production cost value.

Michael: Yeah. Definitely, in this case, I’ve spent so much on festivals. The film got its own place out on the internet and got its place in the world and people are quite eager to know about that stuff. I’m trying to facilitate that as much as possible. But in the case of the whole project, I didn’t take into account the festival cost. But that’s something I definitely will take into account next time.

Elizabeth: The next time, yes. Were there any tips that you could pass on about how you track things as you go along? Did you suddenly get to a point and go: “Oh no, I’ve overspent”, or were you monitoring it as you go?

Michael: I was definitely monitoring it as I was going. You have to be very cautious. As I said, equipment is probably the biggest part of the cost.  About £700-800 of the £1200 I planned was for equipment. The rest was on expenses, I managed to get a space, a garage that we used for the film and managed to get that for free. We used my house for the opening and ending shots. You try and do as much as you can on what’s around you and then who’s around you and who’s willing to help and so many  people are willing to help which was really, really encouraging. But you do definitely have to track it. I really did not want to spend over £1500 for the actual film and I didn’t which to an extent, I’m proud of. Again, taking into account the festivals, you know.

Elizabeth: At the beginning when you set out, you had a target in mind and you wanted to go…

Michael: Oh, definitely for the production, you have to…

Elizabeth: To hit to that.

Michael: You definitely have to because otherwise, it can very easily…because what you have, you have people around you saying: “You need this. Oh no, no, no, you need this type of light as well. And you gonna need this as well.” And you have to go: Well, hold it. This light is £400. I can’t be paying £400 for a light. It’s crazy.

Or another thing, there’s music as well. I needed two bits of music in the film. And originally, I wanted some pretty big tracks that were registered, I can’t remember who it was, I think it was a Paul Simon song.

Elizabeth: Right.

Michael: And in the end, they wanted like £900 for four seconds of the song.

Elizabeth: Wow!

Michael: And it kind of hit me that I can’t go ahead and spend £900 on four seconds of a song but then not pay my actors. It just seems wrong and it kind of defeated what I wanted to do originally. Originally, it’s all about getting people together who are inexperienced and trying to get together whether you’re a soundman, a DOP, or a director, you’re all people out there.

So what I did is went to look for unsigned artists and listened to loads of music online and went to loads of bars and listened to loads of music and find some artists that are out there. And in a way, it’s worked out better. One of the bands, Camp David, have gone onto loads of stuff out there and they’re promoting us, we’re promoting them and it’s worked out a lot better.

Elizabeth: The music on film is really good and it’s very appropriate to what’s going on. What’s DOP?

Michael: Director of Photography.

Elizabeth: Alright, okay.

Michael: Yeah, the music was really important and it’s something that worked out better than I planned if I’d gone ahead and paid £900 for four seconds of a song.

Elizabeth: It’s astronomical.

Michael: It’s ridiculous. Yes, it really, really turned out better but something I didn’t account for as far as that much money. I couldn’t just spend that much money for four seconds.

Elizabeth: Yeah. What was your best bargain?

Michael: Best bargain? Well, the floor in the garage is a fake floor so I spent a couple of nights in a van going out and getting pallets, putting it together and then getting some bolts down and making a fake floor. That was really a good bargain in that it was functional. It did what it needed to do for the sense of the film and it’s pretty much free. That was probably definitely.  The actors as well. They were amazing because they were able to just turn up know the script  such hectic environment be able to just deliver. And at 4 in the morning, they’ve been tired. They’d been working for 12 hours. They were definitely a bargain, definitely.

Elizabeth: I’m sure they’ll thank you for saying so.

Michael: Oh, they know it already!

Elizabeth: Great, alright! Well, thank you very much. Where can people find out more about the film?

Michael: Well, the film, website is www.stillwatersfilm.com and you can go ahead and there’s trailers and clips and information about all the actors we used, all the music we used and the people that worked in the film, the DOP, director of photography or whoever else, anyone so that’s all on there and the production company is called New ECW and you can go to that site and you find out about what we’ve done and what else we’re doing hopefully next year.

Elizabeth: That’s great.

Michael: Thank you very much.

Elizabeth: Thanks!