Reflections of the Mirror: The $200 movie Jason Denzel wanted to make a movie and tell his story. With some patience and planning, Denzel made the movie as a school project in his last semester at Chico State University and only spent around $200 doing so. The movie, Reflections of the Mirror, was shot on digital video and involved computer animated characters and other special effects that have to be done on the computer. These effects are typically expensive. "Despite the fact that we were 'just students,' some of the things we did would cost a lot of money in the real world," Denzel said. "We did this thing for about $200 when it could have cost triple that. Or more." Denzel kept the costs down by using resources available through the school and friends. He borrowed a camera from a friend, lighting kits from the communication design department, and sound equipment from the music department. The editing was done on Denzel's computer, and another friend created the animated character. "Ishmael would cost an arm and a leg for the work Addison did on him," Denzel said. Addison Eisenbarth-DeBolt was responsible for the character Ishmael, who existed only on the computer. He spent several months working on the character in exchange for academic credit.  "The work on Ishmael would have cost roughly between $5,000 and $10,000, easy," Eisenbarth-DeBolt said about usual costs for an animated character like the one in the movie. "Maybe even more." Denzel is confident that anyone could make a film like this. "If you have a story you want to tell, and the desire to see it done, then it will happen," Denzel said. "Learning where to put the camera and what order to do things is easy."  "The tools are getting cheaper and better all the time, which is fantastic," Denzel said. "The most important thing to do is be prepared. We succeeded because we prepared." Denzel's movie isn't online yet, although he is in the process of submitting it to iFilm. More on how they did it...	Interested in making your own movie but unsure how to do it?      The amount of information on the Web is frightening at times. Here's a guide to some decent resources.     Home