1) Sound is most important
Not to diminish a cinematographer's role in a film. But people will notice bad sound more than a bad shot, flat lighting, crappy coloring, etc.
Sound is always overlooked and it shouldn't be. Pay extra money to get a good on location sound engineer.
That way you can avoid doing ADR. Which consists of going into a studio (if you can afford it) and re-recording the sound.
This is done in 80% of major films. But on smaller budget films. It is always noticeable. It takes big money to make it not seem like the audio was re-recorded.
That being said. The sound in our first movie wasn't great. Do as we say, not as we do.
2) Work with students
But student films suck you say? True, they tend to. But not because of the production quality. Usually it's because of the script.
College students just don't have the life expereince it takes to write a good movie. Generally speaking. Or they try to be too artistic/ pretentious and forget that while film is an art form....its purpose is to entertain people.
The goal is to have a message and entertain, but entertaining is first and foremost. People go to movies to forget about their lives. To escape.
Students have access to equipment via their school. They have access to other students to help fill out your crew. And they are looking for experience. Something to put on their reel.
Plus students live cheap. So their price demand won't be that high.
3) Share your script
We talk about this in the Casting section as well. If you believe in your script, share it with people.
By this we mean posting a link to the script when sending out casting/crew notices. This will attract better people for your production.
More importantly it will attract like minded people. Can't emphasis enough how important it is to get people excited about your film from the get go.
Better to have too many people to choose from then scraping the barrel and having your production suffer as a result.
5) Helpful websites
In addition to posting on Craigs List you can post on Mandy.com and Production Hub.
4) Find out what crew you need
Use this wikipedia breakdown of film crew jobs. Get what's essential for you and your script. To make a low budget indie film people have to take on multiple jobs.
