I wonder if there's anyone out there in the indie world who actually doesn't know who Lloyd Kaufman is? I seriously doubt it, so I'm not going to go into his whole biography. Suffice it to say, he's the head man at Troma and has made countless cameo appearances in independent films.

A while back, Lloyd wrote a book called, Make Your Own Damn Movie!. He then followed that up with more books in the series and a trio of DVD releases to go along with them. The three releases are Make Your Own Damn Movie!, Direct Your Own Damn Movie!, and Produce Your Own Damn Movie!. I never received the other two, and this one is the third release in the series. I'm guessing the other two are similar in style and content.

So what is it? Well mostly it's a look behind the scenes at various independent film productions. You get to see what goes on and listen to the people involved share their knowledge, advice and experiences with regards to film production. While it lacks a formal structure and is presented in a series of segments that go from one production to the next, this release is actually a fascinating behind the scenes look at what's involved in the production of independent films and advice from those involved in the various productions.

So what can you take away from this release if you're a film maker? Quite a lot actually. Unfortunately, there's a lot of filler in between the good bits of advice you'll receive, so if you're going to pick up this release, I would strongly recommed picking up the Produce Your Own Damn Movie! book first and then use the DVD release as a companion to it. The book will be far more structured in format and definintely more instructional, while the DVD offers some really good tips and personal experiences for the budding film maker to take into their own film.

There's really too much included with this release to go through everything, but one thing our readers might be particularly interested in is a documentary on Herschell Gordon Lewis. There's also great info on raising money, maximizing production values, location scouting, different production models, developing a business plan and pre-selling your movie.

If you're going to learn film production, and especially film production on a tight budget, then you can't go wrong learning it from people like Lloyd and the others included in this release who've been down in the trenches for years creating art on minimal budgets and making their dreams a reality. So if you're an aspiring film maker, this series from Lloyd Kaufman will give you tons of great tips on getting started.

This DVD is available from Amazon here, as well as the other usual outlets.