How to shoot the live action segments of your animated web series cheap.

All the live action for "Deeds Of Yore" was shot in two days on a super ultra mega LOW budget. When you add up props, costumes, Mini DV tapes, construction supplies, gas, and food, it comes to under $500. I wanted to recreate the 80's as well as I could given the limited resources. This was made possible first by luck, and second by a pooling of the team's resources. Here's a list of the team and what they brought to the table...

Actors - Dani and Max (Tiffany and Mitch), brought their talented selves, and fantastic attitudes. They were a real pleasure to work with. Dani even brought some of her own wardrobe (stuff I forgot), and did her own makeup.

Willey - Provided us with the location. He let us disrupt his weekend, build a set in his garage, and then bought us food and beer to top it off. He also fixed up an awesome big time prop that you will not see until later in the series.

Dominic - He did all of the music for Deeds, but you may not know that he was also the sound engineer for the live shoot. Dom brought an awesome mic with a computer interface to his mac laptop that captured the dialog and room tone.

Cameron - Besides playing David and writing the script, he also used his technical knowledge to direct and do cinematography. He also brought his Canon XL 1 that we used to shoot with. So to wrap it up brought all the film making knowledge.

Me - I got together all the props, wardrobe, did all the art direction, built the Electrotainment set, did all the organizing, calling, and scheduling, and loaded all the crap we needed into my VW Rabbit to take to the location. I also did some light direction.

So the team brought all that stuff, but I did have to get the 80's props and wardrobe items. Where did I get that stuff you may ask? ...

Props - I already own a lot of 80's junk, like the computer, games, and even the portable pac-man, and Radio Shack robot. I was able to get magazines, posters, labels and shrink wrap bags (for the games at the store) all off of Ebay. The cool flip clock I found at the Goodwill. The awesome beige 80's telephone I found at St. Vincent De Paul.

Wardrobe - I got most of it at The Salvation Army, but I found one cool item at the Goodwill.

Lighting was provided by either The Sun, or indoors we used Home Depot clip lights with gels.

As for the interior of Electrotainment, I already blogged about that, but I got all the supplies from Home Depot.

All in all it was a lot of fun, and I'm happy with the results. Everyone put in 500%. If you think you can't get a creative project off the ground because you don't have money, think again... if you are creative and find other people who are creative too a lot more is possible than you might have imagined.