Budgeted Fliming: Garage Studios

Even though I have a job, as a teen I can't be expected to afford much anything to help me produce a film. Especially not the studio itself. Thus many film on location. But it seems you can always work with what you've got, even out of your own garage, and Joey Shanks shows how. 

-Thrift shoppin. Yep. You can find a good amount of stuff you need at your local Salvation Army or Goodwill. Be sure to look for cables (preferably loose and right angled) and ankle weights so you can better hold down objects and set pieces. 

-Let there be light. And by light we mean color. (Sorry Kevin.) Get yourself a Philips HUE wireless bulb, and smash that sucker open. The end result gives you color control over your stage that will blend in with the lights. That way you can have cool, color oriented scenes, like the green tint in The Matrix, or that orange/brown in many westerns.

-Control your environment. You may not have a whole building to command, but you can still exert some amount of influence over your stage. First off, get unwanted light out of the picture and block whatever windows you need to. Weather can be a bit of a problem too, but if you have a big enough garage (and clean enough for that matter) you can always just move your project inside. 

I personally really enjoy learning all these life hacks of independent filming. I don't know if I'll ever reach that point in my studies, but if I do, at least there'll be some cool tricks I'll know to employ. 

While a lot of this stuff seems kind of obvious, I think many still forget about these ideas and can't think realistically when trying to film or set up a stage. When people get a project going, we often forget the big problems until we run into them. It's a good idea to address everything head on. 

So a garage can be a great idea, but what about a basement? Sure storage is the same, but are there even more tricks you can pull off in one comparatively?