I hate my neighbors. Film Making related!

[Dawg]

Did he just say "get permits"? Dj tried DESPERATELY to get filming permits for Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Anne Arundel County, and a few others i'm sure. You know what response we rc'vd from the Maryland Film Commission (who you would think would be willing to help low budget independent filmmakers!)? "Sorry, we only cater to films with at least a 10 million dollar budget" That was the bottom line of the conversation (correct me if i'm wrong Dj). So what did we do? That's right, we stole the shots we needed of the city. F*ck them. You're the state film commission and you won't even help the little guy? I guess you need to be Barry Levinson or John Waters to get a permit around here. *extends middle finger 'twards the film commission* Not to mention, the demands they had if you did get a permit were unreal. We would've needed a 10 mil budget to be able to pay the fire department, police, and structural engineers (we wanted to film in an abandoned firehouse/warehouse) that were REQUIRED to be on site by the film commission! How the f*ck do they expect a low budget operation like ours ($15,000) to be able to afford that? Oh yeah, they don't - and I think that was their whole point. Basically, when we filmed Deadlands, we were on our own. NO ONE would help, and the idea of 'scouting' a location was pretty much not possible. I mean, consider we used my house, my uncles house, a hall we rented, and the one street in Gaithersburg - which, I must admit, the people who run the city of Gaithersburg DID give us a permit and were VERY cool to us.... but that was one town out of the thousands in maryland - and NONE of which were cooperative no matter how much we tried to cater to them or how much we were willing to go out of our way to make it happen. Permits, on our level of filmmaking, you might as well consider them non-existent. At least around here where Dj and I live. LC That type of $hit is what really pisses me off. But you know, editing programs are the same, really. It is kind of hard for a low to no film budget to afford a $1000 edit software program, so why the f**k charge that much? Especially for a turd of a program that crashes every f**king time you try and use it. The program I am referring to? Adobe Premiere Pro. And once those f**kwads decided to fix the bugs in it (referring to the first release of Pro), they charged $150 for an upgrade! WTF?!! How did I afford it and why did I use it? I can't say and it was the only thing next to iMovie that I had at the time. iMovie pissed me off and lost a year's worth of timeline on my last movie and that resulted in me abandoning Apple and buying a Sony Viao instead. I hope to use Vegas soon, a new prog to learn, but it has been a year or so from using Adobe Pro and I can't remember much upon using it anyway. As for the permits? Stupid. F**k them, I'd film guerilla as well or film out in the country. I wanted to film Columbus Ohio's skyscaper skyline from this really old two-lane road that was closed years ago due to them making the freeway I guess, but someone has been using it to park their damn semi trailer(s). Oh well, maybe someday it will go and I can sneak it or film beside it like it is an abandoned semi sitting there? Dawg

[MinionZombie]

That tripod rule sounds proper gheay (lol, as in stupid, snarf!) ... an amateur can use a tripod as well, ha! What an odd rule...

[Danny]

yeah, so if it hold my camcorder im auamtuer, but if i put it on a tripod that cost me a quid off ebay im suddenly what?, independant filmmaker instead? -LAME.

[DjfunkmasterG]

Lou's right I went through hell dealing with Baltimore City. I wanted to use an abandon fire house for the film, it was a sequence in the original script when Deadlands was a year after the outbreak, anyway, in order to se that fire house for 8 hours I would have needed 5 police officers at a cost of $120 per hour per officer. 2 paramedics at $55 per hour, A fire truck at a rental cost of $6500 per day, plus a minimum of 3 fire fighters at $100 per hour per fire fighter. F*CK that. When I found out I called Lou and gave him the bad news and from there we just stole some shots in the city. The original intention was to get people in zombie make-up and take another trip around the city but we couldn't get that coordinated.

[coma]

That tripod rule sounds proper gheay (lol, as in stupid, snarf!) ... an amateur can use a tripod as well, ha! What an odd rule... Better that you have to get a permit for everything? A tripod means you are there all day and a handheld means "moving on quickly". Comsidering you have to get a permit 100% of the time in most places I think its OK. Not that I get permits anyway. F**k the police yeah, so if it hold my camcorder im auamtuer, but if i put it on a tripod that cost me a quid off ebay im suddenly what?, independant filmmaker instead? -LAME. Also, this is not some little burg. There are tons of people. If you block a sidewalk all day with a big ass set up you have to accomadate the pedestrians. I dont know whats the big deal.

[MinionZombie]

But not all tripods are massive deeleys, and if you're just getting a quick shot with a tripod, it's still a quick shot. Mind you, I was filming in the city t'other day and I just went handheld and used the landscape/my leg/the ground (with the tripod quick release place attached to the bottom of the camera) to steady my shots and it worked quite well just to get some quick shots. Didn't get in anyone's way ... yeah a tripod would take up more space, but not necessarily that much, if it's just a normal and fairly simple tripod like... Just depends ... although aren't the pavements in America pretty darn wide? I think ours here in the UK are like half the width ... but then again, our roads are half the width too! Ach, anyway...