An award-winning independent filmmaker explains how to create high-quality, inexpensive films with digital video, offering up-to-date information on equipment and software, filmmaking techniques, new experimental effects, and more. Original.
For years, award-winning independent filmmaker Rick Schmidt has been teaching aspiring directors how to make “no-budget” films, both in workshops and in his classic guide Feature Filmmaking at Used-Car Prices. Now Schmidt shows them how it is easier—and cheaper—than ever to make an innovative, high quality work, thanks to digital video. Filled with the latest information on equipment and software, ideas for experimenting with new moviemaking techniques, and advice based on Schmidt’s own experiences, Extreme DV at Used-Car Prices offers a step-by-step guided tour through the making of a feature-length movie using the newest and ever-changing DV technology. Schmidt shows how to: • Take a DV project from idea to script (written or improvised), contract to pre-production and into the shoot • Work with—and rally—the cast and crew • Select affordable digital equipment to make a cutting-edge DV feature • Edit a DV movie electronically with Final Cut Pro • Promote one’s work guerilla-style • Live (and budget) creatively as a moviemaker • Look ahead to what’s on the DV horizon Instructive and inspiring, this one-of-a-kind book is essential reading for filmmakers with lots of ideas but little money.
COLD, THE 1918-19 SIBERIAN ESCAPE OF CAPTAIN EWALD LOEFFLER, a novel by Rick Schmidt, follows a young German soldier, Ewald Loeffler, as he struggles to traverse 5000 km of frozen and barren land across Siberia, to finally reach Germany and his family home. After he'd been in a Siberian prison camp for four years, the guards suddenly deserted their posts to join the Russian Revolution in Moscow, leaving the prisoners to fend for themselves. Loeffler, in the minority of those who survived such extreme cold and other human dangers, tells a harrowing tale of just keeping alive, one day at a time. Later, after many years in America - Loeffler taught anthropology at a midwestern university - he manages to write his Siberian memoir of those early days. In the form of a daily log he recounts his fight against sub-zero weather, wolves and unknown enemies, both Russian and German. He also recalls his most intimate thoughts at the time, including interactions with a native woman, Nanra-naw, who saved him, loved him, and aided him physically, emotionally, psychically and spiritually before he restarts his journey home. Memories of violent combat continue to haunt Loeffler, both from past battlefields and from the ongoing, seemingly-unending trek across Siberia. He is also deeply affected by psychological wounds he received in youth, abuse from a distant, uncaring father, and his reticent mother, though specks of rare 'happier times' do occasionally surface. His day-to-day survival in the cold is mostly a mind game, dependent on him keeping his spirits up against all the ghosts of war and remembrance. Schmidt's novel ('Captain Loeffler's memoir'), is loosely based on the 1918 real-life Siberian escape of his own father, Erich F. Schmidt ("Persepolis I, II, III"), who somehow survived his two year/5000 km walk back to Germany at the end of WWI.
In this unique guide, award-winning filmmaker and producer Rick Schmidt shows video camera buffs how to make their hobby pay off. Schmidt not only guides the filmmaker through the taping process, but gives tips on marketing and selling professional-looking do-it-yourself videos. 25 photos.
SECRETS OF MEN AND WOMEN is the perfect read for night watchmen, parking lot attendants, long haul truck drivers, or anyone else who must stay awake at night. The stories kind of creep up on you and bite you on the ass. A few with a kind of happy ending just to keep the reader from jumping off the nearest roof. The brilliant Charlie Simonds erotic drawings, included between these modern folktales, remind us that desire can ease the uncertainties of our ever-present lunacy.A great book for fans of Raymond Carver or Stephen King." --William Farley, writer/director, PLASTIC MAN, I WANTED TO BE A MAN WITH A GUN: THREE AMERICAN SOLDIERS IN WWII. "Everyone has secrets," so they say, and in Rick Schmidt's latest book he takes this old saying to a new level. While many of the 28 stories feel like they're right out of the newspaper, or from some trash mag like The National Inquirer, many touch upon seeking solutions, however strange, to 'modern' society's ills. The book covers the spectrum of human emotions throughout its pages, celebrating all of our (secret) foibles. With some funny stories, some sad, some downright ironic, maybe upsetting, often baffling, SECRETS is a treasure trove of page-turning glimpses into the heart of American life. For instance, Schmidt's teenager protagonist in the story SMALL POTATOES figures out a way to bring about at least a temporary halt to drug trafficking in the lower East Side of New York City, by disposing of much of the illegal substances. How's that possible? You'll just have to read to believe. In another, LIFE'S WORK, there's a woman artist in Oakland, California, who attempts to suspend gang warfare by painting a huge-and-realistic mural of local members, pictured under a freeway underpass . Here's a chance to enjoy how ART can possibly affect needed change.
Every day, in varied fields such as music, theatre, feature films and Youtube videos, the word IMPROV is being heard as the 'NEXT BIG THING.' But up until now, though, there has been NO BOOK that aptly describes the actual day-to-day IMPROV FILMMAKING process, where a writer/director must rely on actors to move a story ahead through the minefield of an improv production. THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CAKE - PRODUCTION SECRETS OF A $15,000 IMPROV SUNDANCE FEATURE explains this REAL-LIFE approach, as writer/director Rick Schmidt recounts each of his nine shooting days for his festival hit, MORGAN'S CAKE. With 'PRODUCTION SECRETS' you will gain trust in yourself and in the improv system, helping you take the necessary risks of creation. You will learn how to direct IMPROV PERFORMANCES, and even how to adjust for when friends drop in (incorporating them as 'extras' - real girlfriend, real best friends - to make the movie more interesting. Using SPONTANEOUS LOCATIONS will also become second-nature. You'll learn how to construct multi-idea, multi-level sequences in the very-tight ONE-TO-ONE SHOOTING RATIO, where the strict shooting ratio will actually HELP your creativity. You'll discover how to adapt the moviemaking process so it FOLLOWS A SPONTANEOUS THEME. Rick's book will give a dose of confidence that things will work out - (keep shooting! Keep editing!). You'll be discovering ways of designing cuts as part of your free-flowing process - calling 'freeze' and changing camera angles - while you consider what direction the words/ideas should take when you call 'action' again. Todays moviemaker has all the tools of production in hand, literally (iPhone!), and it only takes the INTENT OF PURPOSE to make her IMPROV moviemaking dreams finally come true. Schmidt's MORGAN'S CAKE is a deadpan, unpretentious delight. One of the most promising films of the New Directors/New Films series." - JANET MASLIN, The New York Times. https: //vimeo.com/ondemand/morganscake
No-budget feature filmmaker Rick Schmidt has written a fascinating memoir, TWELVE DEAD FROGS AND OTHER STORIES, which, he hopes, will "fill in the blanks" on how he learned the tools of the trade and shared them in his seminal how-to, Feature Filmmaking at Used-Car Prices (Viking Penguin, 1988, 1995, 2000). Schmidt's outside the box approach has resulted in the launch of countless moviemaking careers, for those who put his ideas into practice. Some notables include writer/director and action-star Vin Diesel (THE FAST AND FURIOUS, PITCH BLACK, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY), Edward Sanchez (THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT), Tom DeCillo (LIVING IN OBLIVION). Academy Award(tm) winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond declared, "I wish I could have had this book thirty-five years ago, before I made my first low-budget features." And writer/director Kevin Smith (CLERKS, CHASING AMY, DOGMA), presented Schmidt with a Lifetime Achievement Award at Rome international film Festival, which should help explain the book's and Schmidt's wide appeal: https://vimeo.com/161243386 But Schmidt's path to filmmaking was anything but easy or smooth. After his first marriage fails, his artworks, like the large cast aluminum and painted kinetic piece, "I Can't Get it Up For You," reflect his personal life and helps kick-start his 'real-life' narratives. The final transition occurs in 1970 when California author ("Ghosts") and videographer Phillip Makanna, invites him, along with Schmidt's future roommate/collaborator Wayne Wang (JOY LUCK CLUB, SMOKE), writer/director William Farley (OF MEN AND ANGELS), actor/producer Willie Boy Walker (THE FIFTH WALL) others, to take his video class. Using the new Sony Porta-Pac camera, Schmidt does work that immediately gains attention. Don't miss chapters on Schmidt's eight-day cross-country hitchhike trip, Joe's Sandwiches, plus his three-year struggle to produce SHOWBOAT 1988-THE REMAKE. Ironies abound, in this touching and informative indie page-turner.
BLACKMALE, a companion piece to Schmidt's first two novels - BLACK PRESIDENT and KENNEDY'S TWINS - offers the final installment of this trilogy about JFK's secret twin black sons who occupy the White House, 2012-2020. In the Little Administration, the world heads toward the brink of nuclear war, as increased Islamic immigration threatens European native identity, and GMO products overrun US farmlands. The Little twins are anti-corporation, anti-Military Industrial Complex, anti-GMO and committed to revamping the entire US foreign policy. As CIA regime-change crimes go unpunished, from complicity in the deaths of Chile's Salvador Allende to Vietnam's Ngo Dinh Diem, it's no surprise that Dr. Henry Kissinger, the 'louse of Laos, ' retains dubious ownership of his Nobel Peace Prize. When Imposter-President John Little, a survivor of his brother's assassination, meets Kissinger at the annual Bilderberg retreat, it's only by virtue of the Dr's need to avoid incarceration for war crimes - reclaim an honorable place in history - that prompts him to align himself with Little and rat out his billionaire bosses. The Little-Kissinger alliance against the Military Industrial Complex, other corporate crimes, uncovers information that could topple the New World Order. But who is playing whom?
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