7 Steps to Making A Low Budget Film: STEP TWO
Is it possible to make a film without funding? Well, I’ve been doing it for over 20 years so… absolutely you can!
But it’s not easy. In fact, the scale of the task is often so overwhelming it puts many of us off even starting.
So here are my 7 Steps to making a film without a budget…
Each step will be a separate post. Today, I’ll talk about how you should approach creating a story which lends itself to filming with a zero budget.
2. The Story
What’s the most important element in any film project? Does it go without saying? Well, let’s say it anyway.
All together now: “THE STORY”.
Almost every film made starts with a complete story in some form, but usually in a screenplay format. The screenplay is the blueprint from which you will create your masterpiece. But it is only a blueprint – the drama of your story in written form. In other words, a roadmap for your movie production.
Writing a screenplay for a zero budget film takes a different discipline to regular screenwriting. Well, in fact most professional screenwriters are aware of the cost of what they’re writing. But when you have no money to spend, the narrative you can achieve depends on what you have around you.
- Cast: Family, friends, actors who want experience and are prepared to work for deferred fees or expenses. If you know people who want to be in a movie, write your screenplay around them. If you know someone who has a certain presence on camera, make him or her the lead character. Try to use their inherent nature to feed into the story/character. In other words, don’t cast someone as a psychotherapist who is more of a psycho (I did this) – unless the therapist is a psychopath. Just because you want to make a gangster movie, don’t just write cliched gangsters unless you know the actors/friends who will be perfect for this role.
- Locations: what locations do you have access to? Houses, friends’ apartments, family homes, disused car parks, disused buildings, where you work, where your friends and family work – can you film there for free? Make a list of your options for locations. How about shooting guerilla style on a train, in a station, hospital or wherever? Can you get away with it? Once you know your possible free locations, these are the places you will set your screenplay. Bear in mind, the single location screenplay is a great way of cutting filmmaking costs.
- Equipment: what equipment do you already have? Smartphone cameras are awesome (well we would say that). To shoot my feature I bought a £600 camcorder. When people tell you that the cost of hiring a professional camera isn’t so much, remember that you need crew to operate it. Often, zero budget horror films involve the “found footage” theme. Guess why? No lights, now crew, no van hire to carry the lights, no extra catering costs for the crew, reduced need for cinematography expertise, and so on.
- Special Effects: every effect will cost you extra in time or money. I am as I write this suffering the painful consequences of deciding to shoot a short film which contains CGI in almost every shot. The film is now going to take me 5 time (or more) longer to finish in post production. In my zero budget feature, I needed makeup to make the main character look 30 years older. We spent a chunk of the budget on the make up and it failed. Then we had to reshoot. The guy who was originally cast as the lead pointed out that the bruise he get from a punch to face on page 40 meant every subsequent scene would need bruising makeup to be applied before shooting. This is something I hadn’t considered at the time of writing.
All these things need to be considered at the point of writing. Every scene you write, imagine how you will practically film it as you write it. The more experience you have as a filmmaker, the easier this job is. If you have already made some films, you will be more aware of what’s possible, as you will most likely have done it before.
Don’t make a zero budget version of a big budget film
Often, us filmmakers are inspired to make films by those world famous hit movies we saw as kids. These are the cinematic greats which led us to dream about making one ourselves, one day. So it’s only natural that we aspire to emulate them.
But the truth is, the makers of those blockbusters started out making small scale films with limited budgets.
Steven Spielberg made a film about one man fighting a demon truck, before he was allowed to make Jaws, Close Encounters and the rest. George Lucas made a low budget weird sci-fi and a film about a bunch of teenagers hanging out one night before he got to make Star Wars.
Obviously those films had decent budgets compared to our no budget situation. However, take Lucas’ THX 1138 – this was a feature film made for under $800k based on a short he’d made at film school. Star Wars, by contrast, had a budget of $11m.
Imagine if Lucas had tried to make Star Wars for $800k. We’d now be talking about some other space opera franchise, you can be sure.
Unfortunately, if you try to make a $150m film for $200k, you will only end up with a cheap-looking version of that movie. You have absolutely no chance of competing. You film will most likely end up a pale imitation. Well, basically a fan film.
While fan films might lead to something bigger, the chances are extremely small. And as filmmaking is a high risk venture, even without a budget, we need to be thinking of ways to maximise our chances of creating something which will succeed (unless you’re just doing this for fun and/or experience).
So, rather than try to emulate a blockbuster with no money, why not try to emulate the path the makers of those films took (as opposed to the films themselves). In other words, start with a cool simple idea which lends itself to limited funds.
This example is the perfect illustration. Before Gareth Edwards got to direct huge budget movies, he made very low budget sci-fi films. He spent years as a working CGI artist before, so he knew very well what he could achieve on a limited budget.
Being able to make a great film with a tiny budget is the the true test of a filmmaker. But making your $2000 version of Alien or whatever you are a fan of is a kind of fool’s gold, in my opinion.
So the point of today’s post is to help you create a script or story which will lend itself to your lack of funds. You don’t have money, but you do have resources. Once you have understood what you have available to you, you can write a script which can ride on those elements.
And I promise you this will make the next 5 steps to completing your film 100 times easier.
Tomorrow, I’ll talk about Step Three: The Method. There’s different strategies for shooting without a budget, which one will you choose?
If you don’t want to miss Step 3 make sure to subscribe to our weekly newsletter featuring inspiring stories, no-budget filmmaking tips and comprehensive equipment reviews to help you turn your film projects into reality!
Want to see some of the documents used during the production of a low budget film? Schedules, location plans, cast contracts and more can be found here: Low Budget Film Production Samples (Patrons Only)
