Indie Feature Film Budget Question

J

JoeButch

Active member
I see these number of 50k+ being thrown around as no budget.

Can someone please allocate that money?

Assuming locations are free, actors are free, and equipment/crew is free (my situation) where would I spend 50k? It seems like features can be done for literally no budget + food in these situations?
 
If you have 50K to shoot and post a feature film then you're paying actors, for equipment, crew etc.

Why would you not pay for things with that much money?
 
The last time I put a budget together to shoot my low budget feature film it was $700,000.00, but I could not raise the capital so I did not produce the film. In my mind it would have been folly to continue with a project that would been sub standard.
 
If you don't have any idea of how to allocate $50K then take a break and work as a production manager or line producer on three or four projects. Then take a fresh look at your question.
 
I guess I didn't phrase my question correctly. If I have equipment, crew, actors, and location. There is no reason for a budget over a few grand was my point
 
I'm at a loss as to why it's even a question then? If you already know then what were you asking? Haha. I guess I'm slow.
 
JoeButch said:
I see these number of 50k+ being thrown around as no budget.

Can someone please allocate that money?

Assuming locations are free, actors are free, and equipment/crew is free (my situation) where would I spend 50k? It seems like features can be done for literally no budget + food in these situations?
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I believe the thinking would be the actors and crew you could get to commit 14 to 20, 30, 60, whatever days of their life to a feature for no compensation have a high probability of not knowing what the hell they are doing. Even if they do and would work for free you have to feed them, you have to buy expendables, you need to have insurance, you probably need to rent some gear. Do you have every prop... do you have every article of wardrobe... are you not going to use a make up artist... is he/she not gonna want to get paid for the supplies they use?

I just spent almost $4K on a 3 day shoot. $2800 of that was salaries, and I'm talking $50/day for a bit player, $100/Day for my lead actors, $100/Day for my DP slave wages here. Two guys sitting on their couch talking for 90 minutes... sure you can do that no sweat, but anything more ambitious than that gets very very dicey even at $50K.
 
gonzo_entertainment said:
I believe the thinking would be the actors and crew you could get to commit 14 to 20, 30, 60, whatever days of their life to a feature for no compensation have a high probability of not knowing what the hell they are doing. Even if they do and would work for free you have to feed them, you have to buy expendables, you need to have insurance, you probably need to rent some gear. Do you have every prop... do you have every article of wardrobe... are you not going to use a make up artist... is he/she not gonna want to get paid for the supplies they use?

I just spent almost $4K on a 3 day shoot. $2800 of that was salaries, and I'm talking $50/day for a bit player, $100/Day for my lead actors, $100/Day for my DP slave wages here. Two guys sitting on their couch talking for 90 minutes... sure you can do that no sweat, but anything more ambitious than that gets very very dicey even at $50K.
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This makes sense to me. Thanks.
 
We did an indie horror film on 50k, and we allocated money mostly on gear and food. Food was HUGE. If you're not going to pay, you need to treat people well and make sure they are fed and happy. Make sure you have your dailys for viewing...or have an assembly editor on set so they can rough cut scenes while you shoot so you can show people after your main meal so they can keep motivated and see what they are doing.

PLEASE save money for post production and deliverables. Post and deliverables are the most tedious and brain numbing things, and take 10x longer to work through than the fun of shooting. Shooting is the easy bit! Deliverables usually takes around 8-10k, if you pull in every single favour you can get your hands on. a 5.1 mix will usually set you back anywhere from 25-70k. You may be able to get away withg a faux 5.1 depending on your sales agent (if you're lucky enough to snag one)...even if you're going to do festivals, a lot of them want beta cam copies or some form of HD cam....and they can run into a few hundred bucks. Submit to 10 festivals, that's 3-5k right there just on one part of the submission.

I would allocate 1/4 of your budget to post and deliverables/festival requirements.

As for the rest of the film, see if you can get sponsorship for your film (depending on where you aim it) from some food places. I know we had a weeks worth of food from a BBQ chicken place and they gave us a heap of chickens every night, drinks, rice, salad. Some got sick of chicken, but it was free and a balanced diet is vitally important when you are shooting 12-14 hour days. Fast food won't cut it.

If you have any goals for this film such as sales, you might want to look at a name actor you can sell the film off. With a name attached, a lot more people will be keen to help out. It will cost some cash, but a name will make a sale much easier and people will want to ride the success wave and be a part of something that has a better chance of going somewhere.

Keep morale and enthusiasm up, and people will not mind working for free. Of course some people believe that if you pay one person, you have to pay the whole lot...and I believe that as well, but if you want a film to be successful you must do what's necessary so all people have the chance for greater successes in the end, and not just financial gain for the short term.
 
Seven8 Media said:
We did an indie horror film on 50k, and we allocated money mostly on gear and food. Food was HUGE. If you're not going to pay, you need to treat people well and make sure they are fed and happy. Make sure you have your dailys for viewing...or have an assembly editor on set so they can rough cut scenes while you shoot so you can show people after your main meal so they can keep motivated and see what they are doing.

PLEASE save money for post production and deliverables. Post and deliverables are the most tedious and brain numbing things, and take 10x longer to work through than the fun of shooting. Shooting is the easy bit! Deliverables usually takes around 8-10k, if you pull in every single favour you can get your hands on. a 5.1 mix will usually set you back anywhere from 25-70k. You may be able to get away withg a faux 5.1 depending on your sales agent (if you're lucky enough to snag one)...even if you're going to do festivals, a lot of them want beta cam copies or some form of HD cam....and they can run into a few hundred bucks. Submit to 10 festivals, that's 3-5k right there just on one part of the submission.

I would allocate 1/4 of your budget to post and deliverables/festival requirements.

As for the rest of the film, see if you can get sponsorship for your film (depending on where you aim it) from some food places. I know we had a weeks worth of food from a BBQ chicken place and they gave us a heap of chickens every night, drinks, rice, salad. Some got sick of chicken, but it was free and a balanced diet is vitally important when you are shooting 12-14 hour days. Fast food won't cut it.

If you have any goals for this film such as sales, you might want to look at a name actor you can sell the film off. With a name attached, a lot more people will be keen to help out. It will cost some cash, but a name will make a sale much easier and people will want to ride the success wave and be a part of something that has a better chance of going somewhere.

Keep morale and enthusiasm up, and people will not mind working for free. Of course some people believe that if you pay one person, you have to pay the whole lot...and I believe that as well, but if you want a film to be successful you must do what's necessary so all people have the chance for greater successes in the end, and not just financial gain for the short term.
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What budget would you think you'd need for a named actor?
 
Belief Pictures said:
What budget would you think you'd need for a named actor?
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Like everything else it all depends. No two projects are ever the same. Have you contacted the actor(s) you want and/or their representatives. An actor I was considering for one of my projects turned out to be represented by the same agency as the director I worked with on a recent project. People talk and that helped me get a toe in door all over the place.
 
Belief Pictures said:
What budget would you think you'd need for a named actor?
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I think actors that help sell films is an evolving topic. Some people are hot for a while and some not. The issue is not the cost alone, but the cost relative to the sales impact the actor makes. The filmspecific.com website is pretty much all about the distribution/business side of movies. There is no talk of equipment, etc. Just packaging deals, etc.

So I wouldn't spend money on a "name" if that name didn't earn me back my investment and then some. But I would spend money on a name, it just needs to make sense. And of course, I would consider the genre. But all that goes out the door if you just need to make the movie that you have been wanting to make all your life. I am talking more about the business aspect.
 
From what I have been reading, the old "Name actor equals pre-sale of domestic/foreign distribution rights equals collateral for loan to make the film" model is pretty much gone.

That being said, the right "name" actor certainly won't hurt the chances of getting financing or eventually distribution.
 
Belief Pictures said:
What budget would you think you'd need for a named actor?
Click to expand...

gonzo_entertainment said:
From what I have been reading, the old "Name actor equals pre-sale of domestic/foreign distribution rights equals collateral for loan to make the film" model is pretty much gone.

That being said, the right "name" actor certainly won't hurt the chances of getting financing or eventually distribution.
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I don't think it is as gone so much as actors don't secure that much money like they use to. So you really need to work hard to package such a movie using the "1M model" that is talked about a lot on filmspecific.com. There is sufficient evidence that actors lead to sales. Just can't plug in Christian Slater in action movie and assume it will sell for X - rinse and repeat.

At the levels that a lot of us play at, a name won't matter and we won't be able to secure pre-sales anyway. A movie has to be around 1M to be bondable, which is a requirement of presales.

At these micro levels, it is story, genre and cost. Cost being the lower it is the better the chance you can recover or make a profit.
 
prexdealer said:
I don't think it is as gone so much as actors don't secure that much money like they use to. So you really need to work hard to package such a movie using the "1M model" that is talked about a lot on filmspecific.com. There is sufficient evidence that actors lead to sales. Just can't plug in Christian Slater in action movie and assume it will sell for X - rinse and repeat.

At the levels that a lot of us play at, a name won't matter and we won't be able to secure pre-sales anyway. A movie has to be around 1M to be bondable, which is a requirement of presales.

At these micro levels, it is story, genre and cost. Cost being the lower it is the better the chance you can recover or make a profit.
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Exactly, pre-sales are still done all the time.

They are however harder to get, names aren't enough, the whole package needs to work, first time directors won't do and first time producers won't do.
The whole team needs to have a proven track record in producing movies in the same budget range.
If that is all in place you'll still need a killer script and a strong cast, meaning if you are working with names in the Val Kilmer, Christian Slater caliber you need like 3-5 names in your movie.
Two is enough if the names are in the Seagal, Van Damme, Austin, Lundgren level.

The only way you will get pre-sales with one name only, is if that name is Jason Statham or Nicolas Cage or someone in that caliber, even then it's questionable.
For example they just announced a movie called Marble City wich not only stars Nicolas Cage but also Mickey Rourke and a bunch of other names too like Bill Pullman.

Also I have noticed that a lot of the sales agents who did pre-sales a year or two ago have started to produce their own movies and selling them themselves, so it's hard to try and get them to look at your project when they're busy producing their own.

The key is to keep an eye on the market, because it changes constantly.

To me it looks like they don't produce as many genre movies in the $1M-$1.M range as they did a year or two ago, it's clear that the average movie getting pre-sales now is in the $2M-$5M range, and the names you see are bigger, you see names like Ethan Hawke, Josh Duhamel, Even Bruce Willis etc.

A movie like 'Blood Out' starring Val Kilmer, 50 Cent, Vinnie Jones and others raked up pre-sales a couple of years ago like crazy, however you haven't seen a movie like that with names of that caliber after that, which tells you something. The names that movie had simply don't have the power they had two years ago.

I say that you can still make a genre picture in the $1M-$2M range, and you can get pre-sales, but the package needs to be really good, and the names need to be really good.

The good thing however is, that names like Val Kilmer can still get pre-sales if they're paired up with several other names, and they will work for fairly cheap these days.
The key thing is to hire these names for no more than one week each.
If you write your script to have a bunch of well written characters who are an integral part of the plot and not just cameos, and they can be filmed in like 3-6 days you are pretty well off, because you can fill those parts with names.

Actors don't like to do cameos anymore, so you won't be able to get anyone good for one day only, it needs to be at least a 3-5 day part and they'll be happy to do it.
 
JoeButch said:
I see these number of 50k+ being thrown around as no budget.

Can someone please allocate that money?

Assuming locations are free, actors are free, and equipment/crew is free (my situation) where would I spend 50k? It seems like features can be done for literally no budget + food in these situations?
Click to expand...

At the very least, setting up a corporation, buying insurance, is an item that may nolo budget filmmakers tend to either not know, forget, or ignore... While private locations may not require it, any 'public' location, and film permitting agency, will require proof, and ask for a rider to indemnify the state/city entity against any liabilities. At the other end of the pipe, a distributor may require errors&omissions insurance, should you have not crosssed all t's and dotted all i's...

Then there's the secretary to deal with all the paper work...

Now if you can get away with paying for nothing... plan a big end of production cast party... one that will be the talk of the town for years... and hire some paparazzi to get important people in suggestive and extortable positions...
 
The only discrepancy I have with things being said here, and the ONLY thing... is a killer script.

Sorry, but that's just misleading. A killer script is the likes of A-tier material, not the b and c level drek that gets produced starring Val Kilmer, Lundgren, etc. That's all crap, and never had an even "good" script to begin with.

And writing around names per week is purely a numbers game. THese are good projects being pushed through, they're money projects and at that level they're all slated to be horrible.
 
A lot of that money can be spent on your post production work and distribution work. Get a rad poster design by a professional, get someone who is a master a color grading, sound design (Because that is very important), etc.
 
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