5 Things: 2) Make Your Movie With What You Have

 5 Things I Learned Making a $4,500 Movie

2) Make your movie with what you have

This is the logistics flipside to lesson one on the financial side.  I waited 25 years to make a feature length project mainly because I couldn’t afford the equipment necessary to create images to be projected large in theaters.  This didn’t stop me from making films and videos, I just worked in short formats.  You should always do what you can with what you have.

In my mid-twenties I was complaining to my mentor about not having the computer equipment I wanted to complete a video piece.  He told me I should be able to make art out of two sticks and a rock.  His approach to the video and performance work he did was very low-tech.  I embraced that approach, moving from still photography into video, digital, and film long form projects in the 1980’s.  At that time, video was not a viable format for high-quality theater projection.

But 1980’s video improvements did have an impact on feature filmmaking, especially with low-budget production.  Anything I’ve ever shot on 16mm or super16mm since the mid-1980’s was transferred to video.  My days hunched over a Steenbeck with a chopping block and glue ended when I left college.  But I still couldn’t afford to pay for the film and processing costs to make a feature.

Robert Rodriguez, however, was able to put together $7,000 (in late-80’s dollars), just enough to make, El Mariachi.  Almost all that $7,000 went to film stock, processing, and transfer costs.  He used video to edit a version of the project that got him a distribution deal.  Another $1,000,000 was spent on the film for its 1992 studio release. 

By the late 90’s video was good enough for The Blair Witch Project to be shot almost entirely on that format and survive theatrical projection once transferred to film.  The project’s original budget of $25,000 (in late 90’s dollars) was then augmented with another $750,000 in studio post-production costs and $25,000,000 in marketing for release.  But you still needed access to very expensive editing equipment because magnetic tape was still being used and those player/recorders were pricey and high-maintenance.  My only access to such equipment was through employment by universities.  And the “video found footage” genre bloomed, but still could not be projected at high quality without expensive post-production.

Now, in 2018, things are very different.  My feature, Holiday, will not generate the revenues of those two features, but it does stand at an important moment in filmmaking history: I shot a feature for $4,500 with my phone—and projected it theatrically.  I had additional post-production costs, primarily for the score, totaling $25,000.