Big Shiny Robot: Making your own independent film 

• Freepik

The return of the Sundance Film Festival is almost as powerful as the Oscars when it comes to inspiring folks to come out of their shells and make art using film—especially here in Utah. I know every time I go to a Sundance screening, I get dreams of diving deeper into the world of filmmaking, and making a movie of my own. In fact, I am about to go into production on another short film myself. That's really the spirit of Sundance, and half the point, right?

Well, if you were trying to get into that spirit yourself, how and where would you start?

For one, it's easier now than it's ever been to create a short film like the one you might see at Sundance. Unless you live under a rock or are a Luddite of some sort—not that Luddites were all that bad, when you actually learn more about them—you probably have a smart phone in your pocket. With it, you have more capability to make a short film than a crew of 20 did 100 years ago—or even 50. Start there. It's not unlike what folks do on video-focused social media. Enlist your friends and family; make them stars of your pocket-sized stories. Then, with apps like iMovie and even Adobe Premiere Rush, you can edit your little masterpiece on the same device, and upload it directly to YouTube without even transferring the footage to a computer. And the quality is amazing. Did you know Martin Scorsese has used insert shots in his movies shot on an iPhone, and no one even noticed?

Yes, we've come a long way. But what if you want to get into things a little bit more deeply, and a little bit more professionally? The first thing you want to do is write your short film. There's software to help with that; Final Draft is sort of the industry standard, but you can just as easily futz with the margins yourself in Google Docs if that's all you have access to. Write down what you want to see, and what you want actors to say. Then you're off to the races.

At that point, you're going to have to convince a bunch of people to be in your short film and help make it. You'll want to find that friend with a camera—maybe your friend who has their own podcast also has some microphones and a Zoom recorder (not the software Zoom, a little handheld audio recorder just about every podcaster seems to have) and they can handle audio.

Storyboard your script so you can pick which shots and angles you're going to need to capture. You can see how this works by watching any number of behind-the-scenes documentaries on all of those DVDs and Blu-rays you still kept (because physical media is king, and trusting big Hollywood studios to keep their content available is for the birds). The documentary on the disc for Taxi Driver is particularly good, and will show you just how bare-bones a storyboard can be—especially since Scorsese can't draw worth anything.

Pick your locations, and make sure you have all the right permission you need to shoot. Did you know that in Salt Lake City, you don't actually need a permit to shoot unless your cast and crew happens to be larger than 3? That's just enough for you, a camera and a couple of actors anywhere on public property.

Then you'll want to get to editing your short film. Adobe Premiere and Final Cut are the two industry standards there (though after Final Cut X, most people seemed to default over to Adobe). Just about any computer these days can run them, and they're actually quite simple to use. Anything you can think of that you want to do has a YouTube tutorial for it. Want to add camera shake? Film grain? Special effects? Just Google it, and some wizard of indie filmmaking will have a step-by-step process for you that's easy as pie to follow.

When your film is done, that's when you send it around to film festivals like Sundance. You probably won't get in ... but maybe you will.

It doesn't matter, though. You don't need a film festival to tell you that you had a great time telling stories and making your soul grow. That's a reward all on its own.