Why do filmmakers insist on claiming no budget?

The term no budget in relation to filmmaking wasn't originally about literally spending zero, but about a budget that was so low that it was metaphorically consumate with nothing.

Terminology references in the last ten years have been butchered up so much that its almost pointless.

But then, getting people to even understand the difference between there, they're and their, let alone use them correctly makes the original moon landing look like a simplistic yawner by comparison.
 
Ryan Paige said:
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Why do people who shoot using digital equipment insist on calling themselves "filmmakers"?
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IMHO, "film" or "cinema" is the art of telling a story through sound and moving images. It's the structure of the presentation of the story, not related to the physical medium that is being used to store it. Consider, if you are in a theatre watching a 35mm print on film of a story originally shot with a video camera or at home watching a DVD of a story that was originally shot for theatrical release on 70mm film, what are you watching - is it a "film" or a "video"? And if either is broadcast on cable television, what does it become?
 
Yeah it's become a generic term for a movie, as opposed to a TV show, commercial or whatever. It does specifically mention a medium (film) but in practice it's the same end product so the term, however accurate or not, still communicates the right thing.

A similar thing happened in music when the CD replaced the LP. People inside the industry continued to describe the product as a "record" or "album", but many outside got antsy about it and would correct themselves, calling them "tracks" or "CDs". It's the same end product in either case (recorded music), so there's really no need to rebadge the darn things...

Of course, 'record' and 'album' aren't as media-specific as 'film', but otherwise...
 
for me, "no budget" means I don't write a budget:) ... because if my wife sees my budget she won't let me make the movie.LOL

no budget is like you make it by the skin of your teeth.

as for digital, well, it's impulses recorded on magnetic tape or hard drive. So it's like magnetic film, instead of celluloid.

Like it was stated, the art form is the main thing, not what it's recorded on.

The only thing we should keep in mind is that 35mm film is very valuable and must not be discarded altogether. Whoever can afford to preserve their movies on 35mm film will be protecting them for generations to come.
 
This thread reminds me of the lines from a studio executive character in Mike Figgis' "Timecode":

"It's called a budget because you don't budge from it!"
 
Whoever can afford to preserve their movies on 35mm film will be protecting them for generations to come.
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Yeah, after the generations to come dig them up and spend a few "no budget" budgets cleaning them up to make them watchable again =)
 
Generations to come?! LOL, yeah that's hilarious. 35mm is an absolutely terrible -- the worst -- way to preserve a film for generations to come. Digital has ZERO degradation of quality, because it's not a physical media, while film absolutely falls apart. When Star Wars was only 20 years old, it cost millions to restore the film properly and it was nearly lost forever. It took a ton of experts to clean that print off and make it really nice again, and it was just 20 years old.

This is 2009, I really thought we'd be over the film purists and their looney bin mentalities, but I guess not. Maybe it will take until 2015. I'm sure there will always be people who prefer to ride trains over planes, even though they're more dangerous, slower, and basically suck compared to planes. I guess you have to account for the nostalgia factor in people enjoying inferior technologies despite the facts.
 
that was not the point.
we were saying the main thing is the art form not what it was recorded on.
digital cameras do the job, just as 35mm film cameras do.
no-budget is easier to do on digital -- if it's going to DVD, etc.
it's much harder to do no-budget on 35mm -- if the movie isn't going to theatrical release.
-- I will refine my definition of what my no-budget means: whatever I can afford to do on my own financing.

so I wasn't debating digital vs. film
 
This is 2009, I really thought we'd be over the film purists and their looney bin mentalities, but I guess not.
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Jonathan, you've got to stop. You're making unknowing, outlandish, ridiculing statements with no regard for the truth. Please stop it.

35mm film is the ONLY archival medium that's been shown to last for any substantial length of time. Film can last over 100 years.

Digital will not change, but the media it's stored on will. Film doesn't change over time. If you want to archive your digital production, you're going to be constantly copying and migrating it from one degrading media to another to another. If you wanted to actually preserve it without thinking about it, you know what you'd have to archive it to? Yep -- film.

JonathanLB said:
When Star Wars was only 20 years old, it cost millions to restore the film properly and it was nearly lost forever. It took a ton of experts to clean that print off and make it really nice again, and it was just 20 years old.
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Yes but put that in context. Star Wars was composited and glued together, dozens of layers! THAT is what degraded. The original release print is as pristine today as it was 30 years ago.

They weren't just re-releasing Star Wars, they were going back to the original intermediate cuts to add or build on it.


I guess you have to account for the nostalgia factor in people enjoying inferior technologies despite the facts.
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Well, it seems like what we really have to account for is abrasive people spouting off without KNOWING the facts.

Let's not have any more of that, okay?
 
Barry_Green said:
35mm film is the ONLY archival medium that's been shown to last for any substantial length of time. Film can last over 100 years.
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I thought that was common knowledge as of like 10 years ago. I've got negatives from the 60's that I can print off of no problem. I'd hate to see what's left of files on some old SyQuest discs I still have or even Zip discs from the 90's.

.
 
NASA has warehouses full of 9-track tapes of telemetry and image data from the Apollo program and various unmanned lunar and planetary exploration missions in the 60's, 70's, and 80's that have never been looked at and now are essentially irretrievable because only a relative handful of 9-track tape transports remain functional and no one is making replacements or spare parts.
 
Steve House said:
NASA has warehouses full of 9-track tapes of telemetry and image data from the Apollo program and various unmanned lunar and planetary exploration missions in the 60's, 70's, and 80's that have never been looked at and now are essentially irretrievable because only a relative handful of 9-track tape transports remain functional and no one is making replacements or spare parts.
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Yes, the preservation of electronic media is a SERIOUS problem around the world. There is much that is in grave danger and may end up being lost forever because of the demise of certain technologies, and/or time or staffing to handle it all. We have been blissfully thinking that everything recorded is going to last forever, but I believe that historians in the not-too-distant future are going to be discovering big gaps in primary source material when they are doing their research.
 
People were so busy focusing on the durability and longevity of the media, nobody bothered to take into account the devices which playback that media.
 
Optical drives seem to have solved that issue. My new BluRay burner still burns/reads CDs, DVDs and BluRay discs. So as long as optical drive manufacturers continue to support CDs (which I don't see it going away any time soon, despite the popularity of mp3s) we should be all right.

http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/media/longevity.htm

As long as we use decent media (I EXCLUSIVELY use Taiyo Yuden CD-R and DVD-Rs discs) and burn at low-medium speeds (I write no higher than 16x for CD-R and 4x for DVD Video, 6 or 8x for data) we should be all right. Cheap recordable media be damned for longetivity.
 
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