It’s all about making your film excel equally in all aspects.

If you quickly throw together a script and shoot the movie beautifully, people will say, “This movie has beautiful cinematography.”

If you write the most dynamic and intelligent storyline ever, then get your shy friends to play-act it all amateurishly, people will say, “This movie has an interesting plot…”

But if you write a strong script, cast it well, shoot it beautifully and edit it professionally, then people will say, “This is a great movie.”

So here are some useful (and not always obvious) resources I highly recommend for making each aspect of your production better:

Writing/Planning/Pre-production

• http://www.script-o-rama.com – Some dude named Drew keeps a database of free movie and tv scripts it has been around for many years and it is vast. Chances are you can find and download any script you’re looking for there. What’s great is that some scripts are early drafts, showing how different the story was. A great way to study writing.
• The Screenwriter’s Bible by David Trottier – (available on Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/yjynnrq). This unfortunately named book is widely used in film schools to help students grasp the rules of American movie script writing so that they can later break them. For this reason, it’s updated and republished regularly. It’s very insightful, easy to understand and covers everything from summoning your creative muse, to story structuring, to how many spaces the character’s name is indented in the dialogue block.
• http://www.ebay.com – Find shot lists, shooting schedules and call sheets from movies and TV shows that you like. Some former AD’s and PA’s are always selling them there. These are copies of actual documents used to make the final product. Study them, track how they organized and scheduled their massive productions, feel puny by comparison.

Production

• The Working Director by Charles Wilkinson – (available on Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/ylanobu). This is one of the best books on directing I’ve ever read. No glamour, no hyperbole, just really practical advice by a veteran director successfully working in the trenches his entire career.
• http://wwww.google.com/docs – Don’t waste your money on fancy, specialized production software, at least until after you try Google Docs. The combination of Spreadsheets, Calendar and Tasks are a great solution for call sheets, scheduling and shot lists. Learn the features inside-out and use them. The best part: all your stuff is available when you inevitably lose your notebook in the chaos of a running set.

Post-Production

• http://www.videocopilot.net – If you deal with any kind of visual effects or graphics in your films, you have no doubt visited this site already. Andrew Kramer and team supply the internets with a wealth of incredibly useful tutorials for doing stuff in Adobe After Effects and other popular motion graphics software. They also sell unique and affordable plugins and stock material (effects elements, sound design and music). Plus you can’t beat Kramer’s hokey, absurdist humor.
• http://www.istockphoto.com – The most inexpensive stock photo and video site around, great for finding establishing shots and graphics elements in a variety of formats. If you have accumulated useful footage of your own which you think others might need, you can also submit it there and possibly earn some cash from downloads. Win-win (win).

Well, that should be plenty. Like an ancient Kung Fu master, I’m not going to reveal all my secrets in the hope that my pupil never surpasses me. Go forth and use these resources in your creative work, then upload it to FilmNet and show us!