Do you think it's possible to shoot an AMAZING feature for under $10,000?

Do you think it's possible to shoot an AMAZING feature for under $10,000?

  • Total voters
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Billy Pilgrim said:
As per the discussion of acting in a micro budget feature, I think Christopher Nolan's Following is a great example. It's cast with all amateur actors who give excellent performances, shot with a budget of about $6,500. According to the commentary, they rehearsed for 6 months because they couldn't afford to shoot much film. But all that aside, I think Nolan utilized his resources brilliantly. Instead of having a larger cast with maybe a few good actors and a bunch of mediocre actors, he used just the three best actors he had access to. And look at Clerks, by contrast. I love Clerks, but all the smaller roles are pretty poorly-acted. The two leads, Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson playing Dante and Randall, are both really excellent in their parts, and they carry the movie well. But the scenes with the girlfriend, and all the random bit parts are less watchable. But I could watch all the strictly Dante and Randall scenes over and over, because the script and their performances combined are very funny and entertaining.
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I have to agree on"Following". It is one of the best micro-budget features I have seen.
 
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Home depot work lights are pretty expensive... they sell the same ones on eBay for a lot less... will those work?
 
What happened to mr_goodbomb is what happens on budgets like 10K. All you guys who have never made a feature film but are determined to make your first amazing movie on this budget should take a lesson from him. This happens all the time, to very talented people. A lot of them are stuck with a large bill and no movie at the end of the day.

Something to keep in mind.
 
Giriki said:
Ever heard of loans?

Or you could just save money from your day job. Or have a fundraiser. You know, the stuff that people usually do to fund their first efforts in filmmaking.
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Yeah, I know all about taking loans to make movies.

Since I'm paying off the one I took to make the film I made, you wanna find financing for my next in the meantime?
 
I personally feel that anyone over the age of 28 should have at least 20K of investment income (or combined investment income if they're married) at the end of each year. If you don't, you're probably spending too much or saving too much. Additionally, the average indie feature should take about 2 years from start to finish. That's four times the budget we're talking about here.

I think where things get challenging for the independent is when they use that 20K of annual investment income to take out hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans. That's where the "never ever fund your own film" mantra comes from. The average person having 20K in investment income will have a terribly difficult time paying off 300K in time to fund another 300K feature.

I think a good rule of thumb is to finance however long it will take you to actually premier the film. Everyone's finances are different, but taking the above parameters as an example, if your film is going to take 3 years, your self-financing should not exceed 60K. If it's going to take 4 years your self-financing shouldn't exceed 80K, etc.

I think it's potentially economically viable to say that the film took 2 years to produce and another year to market, hence putting your total budget at 60K. But in the end, regardless of whether or not you sold the film, there shouldn't be much of any real "debt" sans the interest; but it also means that until you're out of the current "fiscal engagement", you won't be able to fund another film.

IMO the easiest way to go for the indie is to fund 50K and raise 50K. 100K isn't a fabulous budget, but done this way it could potentially only leave you in the hole for 2 years. 2-3 years of hard off-hours work and monthly payments is a small price to pay for a finished film.
 
Giriki said:
a) if Marianne is as good as the trailer, I don't think you'll have any trouble financing your next project and/or b) if your next script is good enough, I don't think you'll have any trouble financing it. So you don't really need me.

The point I was trying to make was that even if your film project somehow goes wrong and you end up losing money, you just have to pick yourself up, go find more money and make another one. And then another. That's why I'd advice people to keep their budgets low on their first few efforts, whether they are shorts or features. If you lose 10k, you can still bounce back.
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Agreed. It's pointless to go out and try to raise 500K for your first feature. You'll either A) Never raise it, or B) Never be able to pay it back if you do raise it.

Think about it this way, if your disposable income is $200 for the week, should you go play in a poker tournament that has a 20K pool or should you wait 10 weeks and save up to play in a tournament with a 2K buy-in that has a 200K prize pool?

If I'm a novice (and I must be if I only have 200 bucks a week for tourneys), then I should be playing in *more* tournaments with smaller prize pools. The lure of the big money is great, but if you're only competing once every 10 weeks, while your chances of hitting a big pay day dramatically improves, your overall odds drop considerably -- and more important, you've now limited your experience to something that happens pretty infrequently.

Micro budgets = More experience, less risk.

The paydays in film are such a long shot in the first place (the odds in any given poker tournament are much better as 10%-20% of the field cash in on their investment). Why not get your money's worth in experience at the very least? There's something to be said for being prolific.

I'll point to that young writer Amanda Hocking again who's sold something like 1 million copies of her self-published books on Amazon for 99 cents a piece. Doesn't quite fit the point here, but certainly speaks to the importance of being prolific. She's making hundreds of thousands of dollars for what amount to pretty weak products sold at dirt cheap prices. But since she has lots of her dirt cheap product, she's doing quite well for herself.
 
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Giriki said:
The point I was trying to make was that even if your film project somehow goes wrong and you end up losing money
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HUH? This statement makes it seem like losing money with an ultra-low budget film is the exception, not the rule. I'd love to hear from people here who have made a "profit" from their ultra-low budget films, how long it took, etc. For sake of simplicity we'll assume your time is worth nothing so you don't have to pay yourself for sweat equity before you can call income a profit.

Anyone?
 
Giriki said:
a) if Marianne is as good as the trailer, I don't think you'll have any trouble financing your next project and/or b) if your next script is good enough, I don't think you'll have any trouble financing it. So you don't really need me.

The point I was trying to make was that even if your film project somehow goes wrong and you end up losing money, you just have to pick yourself up, go find more money and make another one. And then another. That's why I'd advice people to keep their budgets low on their first few efforts, whether they are shorts or features. If you lose 10k, you can still bounce back.
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I'm not saying you should finance my films. I'm saying it's easy to offer up simple sollutions, but I've been through what you're talking about. I've talked to the banks and it's not as easy as you seem to think it is.

If you'd done it, you'd know, is what I'm saying.
 
Snazzy Flapper said:
HUH? This statement makes it seem like losing money with an ultra-low budget film is the exception, not the rule. I'd love to hear from people here who have made a "profit" from their ultra-low budget films, how long it took, etc. For sake of simplicity we'll assume your time is worth nothing so you don't have to pay yourself for sweat equity before you can call income a profit.

Anyone?
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Just got to the user films section. There are at least three people on these boards that have recouped their initial investment on a feature. Profit is a different story, to me it's more important to break even and get on to the next one.

Anything in excess of 75K without a list names, and a pretty good team, is too much to risk.
 
Out of how many user films that have been made? Also, how long did it take them? With Amazon self publishing it will take some people 5 or more years to ever break even on their film.

My point is that its not a given that if you make a minuscule budget feature you'll ever earn your money back on it. You're actually doing pretty well if you do, and even better if you make some money in the process.
 
Snazzy Flapper said:
Out of how many user films that have been made? Also, how long did it take them? With Amazon self publishing it will take some people 5 or more years to ever break even on their film.
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That statistic doesn't matter because it's not a consistent variable: not all productions are created equal, but by counting heads and disregarding detail then it's a game of numbers. Gambling.

The truth is that it's not gambling, some people are better at this than others. Some plan ahead and are targeting successful markets. Others just do to say they did. Neither is wrong, but they are not equal.

My point is that its not a given that if you make a minuscule budget feature you'll ever earn your money back on it. You're actually doing pretty well if you do, and even better if you make some money in the process.
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I don't disagree, but I don't think it's as gloom and doom as portrayed, either. Indeed, to break even is a great feat but not unlikely if youre making sound executive decisions.
 
Agreed Kholi. I think its all about planning and preparation. Success comes in development and pre-production in my opinion.

I just wanted to throw out the breaking-even argument because it seemed that there was an assumption that most features are money-making ventures, when exactly the opposite is true.
 
Snazzy Flapper said:
Agreed Kholi. I think its all about planning and preparation. Success comes in development and pre-production in my opinion.

I just wanted to throw out the breaking-even argument because it seemed that there was an assumption that most features are money-making ventures, when exactly the opposite is true.
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Yeah, that assumption will surely find you without 10K and favors burned.
 
It may be too simple a statement to say that if you can't recoup your money on a $10K film its crappy or you suck at hustling the product.

There are lots of these cheap features that are so personalized or rehashed remakes of things we've seen done by studios and now their done with lower production value with no names so nobody cares enough to buy it. The quality might be okay, but the subject matter doesn't entice anyone to spend.

A big part of the equation is making the RIGHT low budget feature that will have a following when its released and being able to market to them.
 
Snazzy Flapper said:
Out of how many user films that have been made? Also, how long did it take them? With Amazon self publishing it will take some people 5 or more years to ever break even on their film.

My point is that its not a given that if you make a minuscule budget feature you'll ever earn your money back on it. You're actually doing pretty well if you do, and even better if you make some money in the process.
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The problem with your argument is that we have no barometer by which to judge their marketing abilities. Steven Spielberg might be able to make a fantastic 10K feature, but if he's clueless about how to actually market and sell the thing (assuming he doesn't get corporate distro), then it doesn't matter what the film is made of.

I wouldn't be suprised to learn that most indies fail at self-distro because they're clueless when it comes to marketing.

Heck, everytime I've tried to have a marketing discussion here in various regards next to no one engages -- because most creative people aren't all that interested in business. To make it in the indie world today, with corporate distribution becoming less and less important, the indie filmmaker has to have a fierce grasp of marketing principles and has to put just as much (if not more) effort into marketing their films than they did into actually making them.

But how many popular forums on film MARKETING are there out there? For most of us it's about the creative process, the mechanics, the gear. Too many assume that the marketing of their films will just magically occure when, in fact, if you're self-distributing, your film's economic viability lives and dies by what you do day in and day out.

I'd like to see out of all the user film features how many of those people are making sure to get at least 100K in web impressions per day. Are they making sure that their fliers and promo lit is pasted, stacked and visible throughout their major city? I'm doing a fan film that's only *in production* and even I just ordered a couple thousands poster cards to be displayed in several comic book shops around Chicago. That's for something that I can't even earn a profit on. But it's going to help me be a better filmmaker and it's going to help me get better at marketing.

Making the film has next to nothing to do with profits. Marketing is profits.
 
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