I told you there were too many.

So here is the big question – what are all these crazy DiY devices for?

I might be damning myself here. Homemade versions of jibs and cranes have long been a defining characteristic of the DiY film movement. How many of us as kids made something cool to put the camera on and constructed a story with the sole purpose of getting to put a cool shot in there.

I’ve seen plenty of DiY films chock full of cool looking crane shots, but no real story. Sometimes (but not all of the time) it feels like DiY is all about the cool stuff or the cool shots you can get, but not about what the end product is and how that affects an audience.

I’m going to propose a rule to live by for planning and shooting your next DiY production:

Act like you don’t care what equipment you use, and how it works.

Why? People aren’t going to want to see your movie to see the cool shot you got with the DiY crane you spent 2 weekends making. They are looking for a great story. If it looks professional and has some great shots – awesome, bonus! – but that’s not what puts butts in the seats.

Almost there!

As a DiY filmmaker, you are the person telling the story through your lens, so start your production out with a desire to tell that story. Your camera, the microphone, the tapes – those are the tools that you will use to tell your story. They don’t exist as a reason to tell it, they exist as the means to tell it. That is why DiY filmmaking is so great – the tools to tell that story are easy to get a hold of and use. The crowd who want to tell a story aren’t limited to the chosen few with mulit-million dollar budgets.

I’m not suggesting that all shots be boring and no one should ever build a DiY jib. They are great tools for filmmaking, but let the story dictate whether you need them. If you can really make a scene spectacular and communicate to the audience with a DiY steadicam, by all means, build one.

I think every person interested in films needs to ask themselves at some point whether they truly are a storyteller. Many people get into DiY filmmaking because they are enticed by the process of filmmaking and the equipment, but they aren’t storytellers. If you’re one of those people – there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Productions don’t happen with just one person with a vision, they need people who are passionate about how the film looks, and how it gets made. If you aren’t a storyteller, why not find someone who is and be a part of another project instead of heading a project where you aren’t really concerned about telling the story? It may be more fun and more fulfilling.

Whether or not you are a storyteller is a big question only you can really answer, but it is really important to the DiY community that it is a question that gets answered, or else there is going to be too many DiY steadicams floating around out there, and not enough great films.

Pictured: Movie making magic.

One post caught my eye that focuses on the DiY filmmaking “identity crisis”:

We’re not even DIY. God bless ya boys but we can’t relate. We immediately gloss over any blog posts involving money and/or budgets. Even the no-budget companies have budgets! Suggestions like “hire a cheap grip crew” or “barter with a catering company” fly straight out the window. You know our strategy? Ask a teenager from Mike’s landscaping crew if he wants to be a “sound engineer” and throw a couple bags of Doritos in the groceries for the week.

I agree with the sentiment. The term “DiY” is thrown around a lot in circles where a $6,000+ short is considered do-it-yourself, which is really misleading. $6,000 would cause Scrooge McDuck style money-swimming for most DiY filmmakers I know.

But what really defines do-it-yourself filmmaking? There has to be some sort of factor that we can zero in on.

I don’t think budget itself does it. Yes, it is impressive to create something with literally no money, but I’ve made shorts for $500 that I still think are do-it-yourself productions. You get a pizza for everyone, you buy a prop – you’re still doing it yourself.

But Vanish makes an important point – hiring a cheap grip crew is far for DiY, and bartering with a catering company is even further away. You’re in the realm of independent filmmaking at that point, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

A lot of people talk about how the technology is much more accessible and that is fueling the do-it-yourself movement. I really disagree. I think that the core of DiY filmmaking is taking the knowledge that is behind good filmmaking and bringing it to the community. If I wanted to embrace an internet cliche (which I will), the knowledge behind do-it-yourself is open sourced.

For instance, you’re making a short. You could hire a sound recordist, and you know your short will sound great. Obviously, a budget production would consider this – it’s a good investment, and you pay for the expertise and craftsmanship of that sound recordist.

If you are a DiY filmmaker, you turn to the community. If you’re lucky, you have a brain trust of like-minded people to draw on for your project. In my case, I am lucky to have a very talented brother who knows how to work a boom with the best of them. In other areas, I may have other people I can call on.

If you aren’t so lucky, you have a vast community online to turn to. You are always a few clicks away from tutorials, videos, and advice on things from how to record sound to how to blow up a condom taped to your chest. Maybe you record it yourself, but if you need to get a teenager from a landscaping crew, you’ll be able to give him a great run-down on how to stand with the boom and come out with a good result.

There are hundreds of jobs on a film from pre-production to post, and I think the difference is that when you are a DiY filmmaker, you can go down the list of those jobs and go through the same process of turning to the community to figure out how to get it done and get it done for as little as possible.

In other words, a well-funded filmmaker hires the expertise, and the do-it-yourself filmmaker turns to the community to gain that expertise and use it. That’s my take on the matter.

There are a lot of other elements I’m probably missing, but I think that gets to the heart of it. That’s a big reason we’re starting this blog, although it’s in its infancy – spreading the knowledge around for other DiY filmmakers looking for it.