Not long ago I nearly died. I spent a year in the hospital, three months in a hyperbaric chamber, and another year learning to walk again. But I was able to turn this ordeal into one of the greatest creative victories of my life.
I’m a creative person, and when I’m not creating, I become restless and unhappy.
All that time unable to work felt like it was killing me as much as my illness. I needed to do something creative to keep me going and get my mind off all the scary things I was facing.
I’m a novelist, visual artist, and filmmaker, but my brain was too foggy to do anything long-form, so I got a subscription to a stock film site and started cutting together music videos.
This was enough to help keep my mind off the machines, the needles, the pain, and the worry that I might never get better. Two different doctors thought amputating my leg might give me a better chance of surviving.
I refused.
I wasn’t ready to give up on myself.
- YouTubewww.youtube.com
How I Did It
While I was working on the music videos, I realized that some of the stock footage had groups of shots with a narrative theme. I started using them to cut together scenes like a car chase or a bank robbery. Before long, I had 10 scenes, equaling about a third of a feature film (The average length of a scene is three minutes. If you have thirty of those, you have a 90-minute film). It was a crazy thing to contemplate, but I had lots of time to think about it.
I began working on a plot to bring the scenes together. Against all odds, in a couple of months I had a workable idea and a lot of the pieces to make it happen. My health turned a corner, and I began to feel hopeful. I had worked in film for years but had never directed my own feature film. Nearly dying made me realize just how fleeting and precious time is. I decided to push all my chips to the middle of the table and finish the film.
One of the most important elements of this project was coming up with a story that had the flexibility to incorporate all the elements I had to work with. I settled on Science Fiction as the genre because the scenes I’d created lent themselves to it. I gave the main character an implanted AI, which allowed for communicating some of the main plot points through internal dialogue. I used other plot devices that gave me a lot of storytelling flexibility. Story and plot are the easiest things to change, and being open to new ideas and directions is a necessity in low-budget filmmaking.
The footage for the film primarily came from two sites: Artlist and Envato. Each has different offerings, so I could not have made the film using only one of these sites. Both companies have an extensive collection of assets. Artlist has a feature where videos are organized by theme within each creator’s offerings, which makes it easier to identify footage that is closely related. This helped me determine if there was enough similar footage to create a complete scene. Envato has more clips overall, but it takes more work to find the ones that go together.
'Ephemera' Credit: Bil Richardson
How This All Sounds
Another important part of making a film, of course, is the sound design. Both sites have sound effects, but Envato is far superior in this regard. It has many more options, and its search is a bit better for finding the right elements.
For the soundtrack, I used the same two sites, plus Pixabay. Most people think of Pixabay as just a place to find images, but they have a vast inventory of music, sound effects, and footage. Envato has more music geared toward creating atmosphere and is best for film scoring; however, Envato’s license only covers non-broadcast rights. If you want to use their music for something other than YouTube, you have to purchase broadcast rights separately on their sister site, Audio Jungle. Thankfully, the costs there are fairly affordable, but a feature can use 30-40 pieces of music, so this can add up fast. As a result, I start looking for music on Pixabay and Artlist first because all Pixabay songs can be used for broadcast, and if you have an active subscription, Artlist includes broadcast rights at no additional cost. If I can't find the right piece of music on these two sites, then I search Envato or other sites.
How Much and How Long?
Few people are going to create an entire film from stock assets, but they do provide an option to create the scenes you need at a low cost.
In many films, 80% of the budget goes to 20% of the movie. The cost of large-crowd shots, action scenes, and effects adds up quickly and can be too expensive for a low budget. But if you identify suitable stock assets during the planning stages, you can incorporate them into your film and significantly increase your production values. Regardless of what kind of film you’re making, using stock sound effects and music is a great way to reduce costs.
I was able to create my science-fiction adventure film, Ephemera, in about 18 months.
That may sound like a long time, but going from idea to final cut in a year and a half is pretty fast for a feature-length film.
Bil Richarson Credit: This Film May Have Saved My Life
How It's Going
After learning how Ephemera was created, you are probably thinking the film must be a hot mess, but it actually holds together really well, and most who see the film, without knowing its origin, never guess how it was made. One thing is undeniable. This is a very unique film.
Usually, when you create a movie, you start with an idea and then build the component parts to tell that story. But in this case, I started with the parts first and then created a story to make them work together. I liken this to taking a handful of puzzle pieces from a hundred different puzzle boxes and assembling them into a new seamless image. Think about what an amazing creative challenge that was.
Making Ephemera got me through the hardest time of my life, and now I have a feature film that is being distributed all around the world. Hopefully, the strategies I've outlined here can help you reach your filmmaking goals as well. The most important thing is to be creative, be flexible, and don’t let anything stop you. All of the good things in life are hard, and the people who succeed are the ones who push through the obstacles and get to the finish line.
