[Editor's Note: No Film School asked Adrijana Lazarevic to collect these 99 templates because of her expertise working with filmmakers at Filestage.io.]
No one really feels like doing paperwork, but let’s be honest: no good film comes without organization and planning.
That’s where templates can help you out. I work at a startup that creates software for filmmakers, and we see how busy you are every day, so we collected the most helpful templates, guides, and checklists out there to make your life a little easier.
They really help save time for what matters most: letting your creativity flow and producing breathtaking movies that won’t be forgotten. We've also covered the topic of free filmmaker documents before, as well as how you can use free templates for production reports.
The categories covered in this list are: Script Prep/Pre-production, Storyboard/Mood Board Templates, Shot List Templates, Script Breakdown Sheets, Budgeting, Accounting, Personnel/Cast Forms, Insurance Forms, Equipment Documents, Production/Shooting, and Music Releases.
Much of your planning happens well before production, including trying to get investors on board and starting to determine who your audience will be. Here are some templates for early steps, including a form for "optioning" a story that you want to produce, and a director's worksheet that lays out what you'd like to see happen in each scene.
Storyboarding is a cornerstone of the filmmaking process. A storyboard is a sequence of drawings that paint a picture of the your storyline, showing the structure of, and vision for, key scenes. We've also included a moodboard sheet for establishing the visual style of your film.
Organization is the key to a successful shoot. With the help of a shot list, you can easily arrange single shots within any given scene. You can determine, for example, the number of shots necessary to capture a particular action most effectively. Give it a try with one of these practical templates.
Here you can find helpful templates providing detailed descriptions of scenes, and the equipment and personnel assigned to each one. This way, you never lose sight, and can make sure everything is going according to plan.
While making a film, you or your producer have to keep a lot of things in mind and, before you know it, you can easily go over budget. This compilation of templates will help make sure that you don't lose sight of your financial statements. Some of them additionally provide examples of budgeting.
Once you have a budget, you have to actually do the accounting. Maintaining an overview of your finances and money flow is crucial. Check your financial resources by making notes of their movement. These forms will help you keep track.
From general contracts and agreements to crew templates, many of these forms are necessary to lay out a foundation for the business behind your film and get a good team on board.
Cast & Crew Lists
34. Crew Contact List - Filmsourcing
35. Cast and Crew List - Studiobinder
36. Cast List - Film Contracts
So you found the most suitable locations to portray your vision. Now, as with everything else, you need to do the paperwork and take care of business These templates have you covered. But also don't forget to read our primer on locations in the first place!
Keep in mind that life doesn’t always have a bright side. Especially when it comes to accidents or health problems. Therefore, always insure your crew, yourself and the equipment. These templates will get you started.
A movie is usually not made by a smartphone in one hand and a music player in the other. You need a whole bunch of stuff, plus, you have to deal with it. Cameras, recorders, lights, a whole set, and so on; all this has its price and needs to be paid attention to. These forms can help.
You've got your cast & crew, locations, and equipment and now you're onto the shoot: the time when staying organized is most crucial. To avoid slip-ups, interruptions or any other negative factors that make your life as director harder than it should be, use these forms. This list includes call sheets, your essential tool for communicating requirements with everyone on set.
Imagine movies without any music—unthinkable! Music is an essential part of a film experience. But, just as films have their patents and rights of use and enjoyment, sounds and music do too. And the legal use of music can be complicated. Here are some of the papers that help you do things right.
Filestage is a web app for filmmakers to share, review and approve videos efficiently. Clients and co-workers comment directly in your videos and design-frames accurately. All visual projects can be managed at ease.
From Your Site Articles
We chat with writer-director Stuart Ortiz about his Fantastic Fest 2024 select.
Sep 19, 2024When exactly was it that the true crime genre really took off, huh? Documentaries like Paradise Lost and The Thin Blue Line have existed for decades, but it seems within the last recent decade our darkest interests have piqued and popularized it ad naseum.
While not quite mockumentary, Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in Inland Empire finds way to tell an intricately fabricated, documentary-style true crime narrative in an interesting and engaging way. Strange Harvest follows detectives Joe Kirby (Peter Zizzo) and Lexi Taylor (Terri Apple) in pursuit of occultist serial killer, Mr. Shiny (no spoilers!). Crafted entirely with impressively shot news reels and crime scene footage, it took this guy (me) a second to realize it wasn't a real life true crime doc.
Strange Harvest premieres at revered genre festival Fantastic Fest September 22, so it'll be awhile before it will be available to the public. However, if you're in Austin, TX check it out! If not, enjoy this interview with writer-director Stuart Ortiz in the mean time to et your fictional true crime fix.
Editor's note: the following quotes from Stuart Ortiz are edited for length and clarity.
Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in Inland Empire
Courtesy of Pathogen Pictures
"I constructed [the mythology] myself. I knew going into it that I was going to need a mythology, and it was important to me to get all the world building aspects. So I worked out a whole mythology with internal logic of the movie that made sense for the killer's (Mr. Shiny) mind.
Mr. Shiny is a Frankenstein monster of a bunch of different [real life serial killers]. He has obvious similarities to Zodiac, who would write these cryptic letters to the police. That was very Zodiac inspired. I think if I were to relate him really to anyone, any real life guys, it would probably be like David Berkowitz, the son of Sam Killer. Or maybe this guy Herbert Mullen, who isn't super well-known, but he was a serial killer that was killing people because he believed he was telepathically talking to his dead father, and his dead father told him if he didn't kill people, earthquakes were going to destroy California.
So anyway, both these guys thought they were talking to a higher power and they had some higher purpose, and that's similar to Mr. Shiny."
"This project was very much conceived to be something that could be made super low budget.
I mean, the big problem for any indie filmmaker is you're trying to come up with that high concept, low budget idea. Everyone's searching for the next Blair Witch Project, or Paranormal Activity, or whatever it is. So this idea to me, it was like, we can shoot these interviews and then everything else, and if everything goes wrong during the main shoot, I could pretty much figure out [a solution]. That's the concept with this movie.
I encourage people to try to search for your own version of that idea. There's always an idea out there waiting to be done that doesn't necessarily take a ton of money or any money at all. You just have to look for it."
Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in Inland Empire
Courtesy of Pathogen Pictures
"It depends on the material.
Anytime that there's a newscaster directly talking about our story, we shot that deliberately and methodically. Sometimes on the schedule when we were shooting, it would be half the day for two seconds of a newscast or whatever. We went to great lengths to capture some [some scenes]—sometimes we would spend half a day just setting up in a studio to do news clips.
It's really important to [make that look legitimate]. Especially with news footage—everyone has seen news footage. We know what news footage looks like. It always still blows my mind when a hundred million dollar movie will have the junkiest, fakest looking news footage."
Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in Inland Empire
Courtesy of Pathogen Pictures
I worked with a really talented makeup artist, this guy named Josh Russell, who's really legit. He worked on The Ritual and the new Hellraiser and stuff, and we got lucky and he agreed to work with us for us for some reason. He came in with these incredibly disturbing, realistic dummies that we were able to put up.
The approach to Strange Harvest was so weird because, usually with a movie, you spend all this time setting up your scene, and then you spend all this time shooting your scene. We only did one of those parts. We did the first part, spending a lot of time setting up our scene, and then sometimes, I mean, literally it would be 10 minutes going around with a still camera, because that's all that we needed to get in that moment. Sometimes it was just photographs, basically.
So it was all about spending the time, but having the time, too. We planned that we would have hours to methodically [the camera] around, because we wanted to be able to have time to experiment and get different angles and make sure everything looked right."
Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in Inland Empire
Courtesy of Pathogen Pictures
"Those are all people that we knew.
There's a good mix that are friends of someone that was working on the movie. My sister is interviewed [at one point]. There's someone that's interviewed who is a genre legend in and of himself, an actor named John Philbin. He's in Point Break, Tombstone, Return of the Living Dead, and Children of the Corn. He's a little fun cameo that we have in there."
