Have you ever wondered what it takes to make a feature-length film on a shoestring budget utilizing good old-fashioned elbow grease, community resources and pure determination? Well we are all about to find out.

 

This blog chronicles the production of a feature film called Saltwater. This isn’t your average film-making blog and Saltwater isn’t your typical film production. This project is collaboration between director, teacher and San Francisco based filmmaker Lise Swenson and her production team, San Francisco City College Cinema Department and the Bay Area filmmaking community at large.

 

Over the course of the next few months YOU, our dear readers, will have a front row seat to the in’s and out’s of Saltwater’s pre-production from our perspective, the staff interns from the CCSF Cinema Department. We invite you to learn with us what it takes to make a top-notch feature-length film on an ultra low budget utilizing community resources. You know the saying that it takes a village to raise a child… well the same is true in low budget, independent film production. We are so fortunate to live in a city with such an active and vibrant film-making community and we intend to use that to our advantage in order to bring you all the making of Saltwater.

 

This collaboration has created a unique environment where we have the opportunity to earn credit as staff interns for Saltwater. Over the course of this production we will participate in all aspects of feature film-making, gaining extensive experience working as a part of a professional film team that is being headed up by veterans. This semester marks the beginning of this collaboration, and it will last through the post-production of the film, which we expected to wrap up in Fall 2013. In addition to the hands on internship program, the project will also generate an archive of the film’s paper trail, from the shooting script, to production scheduling, to the editing notes for students to access and teachers to use as teaching aids.

 

Right now we are in the very beginning stages of pre-production. Teams are being formed and grants are being written. Just this week our group was lucky enough to be given an official tour of the Foundation Center in San Francisco, what an amazing resource! We are planning a lecture series for April and May and thinking about other ways to share this process and information with the rest of the CCSF student body.
Once again this blog, which will post once a week, will act as a chronicle and living and lasting archive from pre-production through getting Saltwater out into the world. We are proud to be forging a new collaborative model that emphasizes educational opportunity while we create a low budget, high production value film.

 

Please take a moment to check out our website and Facebook pages to get to know us all and find out more about our ongoing collaboration and the production of Saltwater. We look forward to getting to know you!

 

Here we go!