What Kind of Digital Film Should You Make?

Every project, no matter what it is, will have its own unique set of challenges. That’s part of the thrill of filmmaking. Every film is a different learning experience, with a different set of variables. No matter how experienced you are, you have an opportunity to learn something new from every project.
If you are reading this blog and trying to figure out what type of project you should start, here are some of your options:
Video shorts for the Web: Thanks to Web sites like YouTube, everyone has the opportunity to create and distribute short videos for potentially millions of viewers. And there are many other Web sites that seek more specialized content: travel videos, sketch comedy, music performances, to name only a few. Even the big studios create shorts for the Web, in the form of trailers and film clips, to promote their high-budget feature films. On some level, every filmmaker who reads this book will find he or she needs to create at least one video short for the Web related to their project, whether that’s a trailer, a promotional clip, segments broken down into “webisodes,” or the whole thing. For that reason, we’ve added an expanded section in Chapter 18, “Finishing,” to walk you through the process of getting your video on the Web.
Short films: For many, a short film is the ideal first film project. It has all the elements of a full-length feature film, but on a much smaller scale. You’ll learn about every stage of the process, from screenwriting to shooting to editing and finishing, but the task won’t be quite so overwhelming, and it definitely won’t be as time-consuming and expensive. If you’ve never made a scripted film of any kind before, this is the way to start. But do your homework first. There is an audience for short films in festivals, on the Web, and occasionally on cable TV networks or as a package of shorts on Blu-ray or DVD. Typically, short films are under 30 minutes in length, but many believe they are best when they range from 5–10 minutes. After all, the average half-hour sitcom only has about 20 minutes of actual content, so if your “short” is longer than that, it starts to not feel like a “short.” Making a great short film is like writing a great short story, it’s a different animal than full-length movies and creating a great short has its own unique challenges.
Scripted feature films. Whether you agree with it or not, or like it or not, at the time of this writing, scripted feature films are still the top of the pyramid in the entertainment industry. Frankly, they may not hold that status for long, but at least for the time being, the feature film is still king. What does that mean for you? It means that if you are a director and you have directed a live action feature film, you are now eligible to direct any project lower on the Hollywood pyramid, which is everything else. (We didn’t say you had to like this or agree with it!) And the same goes for writers, cinematographers, actors, editors, composers, graphic designers, visual effects artists, the list goes on. Having that feature film credit will open doors, guaranteed. After that, it’s your talent that will keep your career going. So that’s one big reason to do a feature film. But there are others. The scripted feature film is the filmmaking equivalent of the novel. If that long format of storytelling is your true love, then the feature film is the way to go. Making a feature will require great resources, especially if you are going to do it independently. But there’s no question that it will be a rewarding experience.
Corporate and industrial projects: These types of projects may not be what you dreamed of when you decided to become a filmmaker, but let’s face it, they are plentiful and they almost always involve receiving a paycheck for your work—something that sadly you can’t count on with the other types of projects listed here. What’s more, they’ll require the same skill set and problem-solving challenges of any of the other personal filmmaking projects you may be working on. Corporate videos are driven by an agenda that is usually given to you by your boss(es). They have a narrative, but it’s usually about a product or a business or an event, rather than a character. Every chapter of this book is relevant to corporate and industrial videos
Webisodes. This is the newest item on the list, and it’s one that is definitely still evolving. Webisodes:  They are usually an ongoing story that unfolds in segments that are under 10 minutes in length. Sometimes, these segments add up to a longer story, such as “Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog,” and sometime they are more like a sitcom, such as “The Guild.” As of this writing, there many “webisodic” video projects out there, but the form has yet to be truly defined. This is an exciting opportunity for new filmmakers. Every time a new type of storytelling evolves, the door opens to create a new crop of success stories. There are no real rules yet, but writing, shooting, and finishing webisodes involves all of the elements discussed in this blog.
Television pilots: In a perfect world, all television pilots would be pitched, ordered in advance, and paid for by a network. But that’s not always the case, especially for innovative or non-scripted TV series. Instead, producers (that’s TV-speak for “director”) take a gamble and shoot their own pilot episode. Then they present that material in the form of a pitch reelor a finished cut of the first episode of the series, aka the pilot.It’s called a pilot because it flies out ahead and leads the series—unless it crashes and burns. If you consider the range of shows on TV—from daytime talk shows to reality TV shows to sitcoms to hour-long dramas—and that’s just the tip of the iceberg—then you know that the choices and options are almost limitless. When TV production differs greatly from film production, this book tries to address those differences.
Documentaries:  The filmmaking equivalent of “non-fiction” or “journalistic” writing, documentaries today have a strong and growing audience. If you think of some of the most exciting and controversial films of the last decade, they are often documentaries. Films like Fahrenheit 9/11,Supersize Me, and An Inconvenient Truthhave had a demonstrable effect on our perception of the world around us. This is the power of documentary filmmaking. Documentaries are shot in a way that is very different from scripted films, but they share many of the creative challenges—structuring a story, crafting a style in terms of how the film is shot, refining the structure in the editing room, designing the sound, intensifying emotions with music, and enhancing the film with graphics. All of these things are as necessary for documentaries as they are for scripted films. Like a good biography, just because it’s “real” doesn’t mean it’s not art. In this edition, we’ve added some special sections for documentariansdocumentarians.