What is the cheapest movie ever made?

Yeah, I saw that...but both IMDB and Wikipedia listed it at a budget of $130 000, so I'd go with that.

$500 000 might include films print costs, transfers, or even marketing that the distributor paid for after acquiring the title. If the info is correct, $2.5 million isn't a bad sales price for something that cost you about 5% of that to make.
 
I keep reminding people who bring up El Mariachi not to forget Primer. $7000 and IMHO a much better movie.

and the post for el mariachi was around $300,000, or at least a lot less than $1m

edit: Sry Kennedy, missed ur post
 
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Cheesesailor77 said:
I keep reminding people who bring up El Mariachi not to forget Primer. $7000 and IMHO a much better movie.

and the post for el mariachi was around $300,000, or at least a lot less than $1m

edit: Sry Kennedy, missed ur post
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What post for el Mariachi was $300,000?!? Like others had posted I had always heard it had a $7,000 budget, and most of that was for Telecine and film. Oh ok I am reading something now that clears it up, they spent $7,000 on the film then the studio spent much more on fixing the sound and getting it ready for theaters.
 
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he developed the film, but only paid for VHS copies of the footage, and then he edited it on video by himself. He never made a film print. So when Columbia bought it, they had to go back, print the negative and essentially edit the whole thing over again since he didn't remember what takes he used or where a certain sound effect went.

Lab fees
Editors, assistants
Sound people
Edit bays, mixing rooms
color timing
35mm blow up

$300,000
 
Champion Road. A 90 minute action film made for 200 bucks and distributed on DVD worldwide through Maverick Entertainment Distributors.
 
mjjason said:
I wonder what the breakout is for that because I can't think of anything that would make it cost 25,000.
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I havent googled anything yet ....but the editing might be one...Id imagine they did lots of scenes....and tried to make a coherent mess of it all...still scared the **** out of me. PA ...hated it.The girl was annoying:)
 
Luis Caffesse said:
People always pick on the 'Mariachi wasn't really made for $7000' thing.

At the end of the day, regardless of what we saw in the theater, regardless of what was released on DVD, the movie HE made cost him $7000 - and it is THAT movie that got him attention, it's THAT movie that got sold, and it's THAT movie that launched his career.

So I've never seen the big deal in the studio putting more money into the movie to clean it up.

This happens all the time - I remember 'Tarnation' was being marketed as being made for a few hundred dollars (which it was)...but then the studio put hundreds of thousands into it to clean up audio, get rights to stuff, etc etc. It's not at all uncommon when it comes to indie movies for the studio to put alot of money into a movie to get it up to snuff.

The thing to remember is that none of those movies were bought because of their technical merit, they were all bought because of the story being told and the style in which it was told (ie. Mariachi, Clerks, Slacker, Tarnation, Open Water, etc etc).
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I agree with you; however, if the question is about how much a distributed movie cost to make, then the money the studio put in to get it up to snuff in order to distribute it does figure in.
 
maranfilms said:
I think blair witch could have been made for a six pack and a cheeseburger, on any sunday afternoon.
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Then the bigger question becomes -- why didn't you do it?

It's easy to armchair-quarterback everything. Quite a bit different to be the guy on the field actually doing the thing. Haxan's business plan called for raising $300k. They claim to have raised and spent $60k on it. I have no reason to doubt that. Perhaps they actually paid for the film stock, the developing, paid their actors, paid their editor, and all that?

I think it was a horrible film, but they caught lightning in a bottle and pocketed at least $12m out of the deal, so ... give 'em their props.
 
Barry_Green said:
Then the bigger question becomes -- why didn't you do it?

It's easy to armchair-quarterback everything. Quite a bit different to be the guy on the field actually doing the thing. Haxan's business plan called for raising $300k. They claim to have raised and spent $60k on it. I have no reason to doubt that. Perhaps they actually paid for the film stock, the developing, paid their actors, paid their editor, and all that?

I think it was a horrible film, but they caught lightning in a bottle and pocketed at least $12m out of the deal, so ... give 'em their props.
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That film sure did divide audiences, and I think that's great. Personally, I loved the film and thought it hit every mark it needed to. I also love the absurd cultural effect it had. In fact, love it or hate it, I think it's one of most important films of all time because of the aesthetic and economic doors it opened. This is the first film I saw that made me think, "I can do this too".
 
I was intrigued when BW came out. I loved the mystique of the website, found footage, as if it were a true story and these kids died during it all.

It was a good idea in its day and delivered as promised. Wasn't great but wasn't bad either. It had its moments.
Bottom line, they pulled it off and got much more than they put into it. Good for them. Opened a few eyes, that's for sure.
 
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