Reducing a script's required budget...(need help from screenwriters, producers, etc.)

[Matt W.]

I've written/directed/produced a couple zero budget shorts, with medium success and I've been considering calling in all my favors and directing a guerrilla ($20,000-$30,000) feature based on a script I wrote, with a full-time crew of just three or four. I have extensive technical knowledge behind the camera and in post and can work at a professional level in both capacities with unusual autonomy, so this will basically be a one-man band. But the script, a dark comedy, has a ton of characters and locations, including a crowd scene in a club and a few animal gags and a lot of practical effects. And I can't produce to save my life.

So I'd like to ask, since there are a bunch of indie filmmakers here, how do you determine how hard and expensive a scene is going to be to shoot and then weigh that against its narrative importance while in the script stage? I do plan to bring in a couple producers eventually, and I also don't plan to shoot for two years. Some stuff I can't lose, whereas some stuff would be no loss, so I'm trying to cut the fat and the budget all at once.

How many of you have had luck with promo trailers to get interest from talent and to raise money (I would want to pay for half of this myself, raise half the money from investors)? Spend a little money to help get some more? And what do you want to sell in a promo trailer? Just shoot it as through it were the trailer for the real movie? Pick out your favorite shots and then shoot those? Really go heavy on the concept and money shots?

Thanks!

 

[PatrickFaith]

Joe Camp's book has helped me out ... "who needs hollywood":

http://www.amazon.com/WHO-NEEDS-HOL..._B001HQ1GAY_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1349065068&sr=1-5

A lot of the cost is the sets, and trying to figure out how you can have the sets for "free" is mandatory for that cost range your talking about(i.e. use people's houses).

James Cameron discussed this a bit, can't remember where, but his advice came down to basically story boarding the crap out of it (he said take a year to storyboard i think) ... so you know exactly what your doing.

This at least is some of the advice I'm taking for "puddles of light", but that budget is closer to $100k (sub 30k for a feature is just almost impossible if you actually count how much you really spend ... i have heard people say sub 30k ... then i ask about details ... its always over 30k ... but it's a good illusion sometimes to forget how much your spending on it). below 30k, for casting, i think the critical thing is not having the actors act ... just be who they are(if they "try" and act, just comes off bad).

my two cents, i really wont know myself if my advaice is valid till i'm done. I've done tons of shorts and helped a lot of people doing low budget stuff, but doing a decent feature I'm finding is a quantum jump. After I do a lot of little pre-screenings ... and i see what people like ... sometimes people say "this is like a real movie" ... i know i'm on track with those type of comments ... other times people are just distracted by my low production quality. A huge thing of shooting on red is i often don't need to reshoot, since my raw footage is the best thing i have, but i find i am upgrading my production flow/value a lot (i.e. is a huge advantage for RAW, in that your camera is probably the best thing you have, which gives you at least some stakes to build the movie). It's not discussed much in this forum, but bad editing/compositing/sound is probably the main differentiator in my opinion on low budget production quality. Next major differentiator is having jibs/dolly's to create forced perspective ... or at least building some of that stuff yourself. Flipping to raw linear has really upped my production quality, but that costs at least $5k on workflow upgrades(trueth be told ... 15k).

 

[Paul Ellington]

Send me a PM I'll have a read.

 

[Marc Wielage]

So I'd like to ask, since there are a bunch of indie filmmakers here, how do you determine how hard and expensive a scene is going to be to shoot and then weigh that against its narrative importance while in the script stage?

I think this is one of the primary jobs of a producer, especially a line producer. You have to get somebody to do a complete script breakdown, figure out the number of locations and sets and actors, then create a line-item budget and determine how to allocate your available funds. In the absence of credible numbers, pull one out of thin air -- I think $250,000 is not insanely high, and $30,000 is way too low -- and be sure to budget in another 10% for overages.

How many of you have had luck with promo trailers to get interest from talent and to raise money (I would want to pay for half of this myself, raise half the money from investors)? Spend a little money to help get some more? And what do you want to sell in a promo trailer? Just shoot it as through it were the trailer for the real movie?

My gut feeling is that so-called promo trailers like this often wind up being pipe dreams, and never really get the investors you need or the budget really necessary to do the movie well. To me, the right way to proceed is to get to NY or LA, find a way to get an agent who believes in you, and network yourself and get meetings to reach the people who can actually make the decisions to make the film a reality. My experience is that there are rarely any shortcuts that will work around this.

There are always exceptions. But for every Paranormal Activity or a similar ultra-low budget film that blows the roof off, there are 100 other indie films that never find distributors or never wind up making a profit. I know of some fairly decent indie films that are still on the shelf, some with fairly famous actors, simply because the deals the filmmakers anticipated never happened. And I've also worked on films that started small but then quickly exploded, simply because a fairly big-name star managed to get the script, agree to make the film, and suddenly all the budget and distribution they needed magically appeared.

 

[Mike Garrick]

If you've written the screenplay then you definitely need those Producer's to help give you focus on what you can achieve for the dollars. Because there is nothing like gaining clarity on if a scene is "advancing the story' or is just an indulgence..... as the reality of paying hard cash to shoot it.

 

[Matt W.]

Thanks, everyone.


Patrick, just out of curiosity, what sources did you look into to raise your budget? You can PM me if this is not something you want to share publicly, but what do you recommend? Looking for locals interested in investing? Friends and family? Personal funds and loans? Kickstarter? I've known people who've succeeded and failed with each. What sells people on a project? Previous festival wins and awards on the script? The promo material (concept art, spec trailer, potential cast and crew, etc.) that you have already?


I'll have two years to storyboard so I do plan to do that extensively. There are a few montages and music video type sections that will be a matter of shot lists rather than storyboards, but for the core 80% of it every shot will be on paper. (James Cameron has an advantage--he's an excellent sketch artist.) The problem then is if you get a location that doesn't match your blocking, you have to redraw everything or spend forever finding the right location or do such simple blocking (they stand in a triangle) that it's easily adaptable. But simple is good if you can focus on performance.

Unfortunately a lot of the fancier blocking I like is prohibitively difficult unless I can rent a Fischer or Pewee dolly so I can coordinate pedestal/dolly moves around it, and then that's hard to use in a small space like my primary location and that's half my budget there. Absolutely camera movement is crucial to get a sense of depth (ask Guillermo del Toro), but specials take time and energy. I'm thinking of doing a lot of handheld to split the difference and then save the camera moves for when the story needs them, maybe a move every few scenes on a slider. I disagree about renting out the best gear, but just for my personal project. I find posting with raw footage to be very slow relative to dSLR or Alexa footage unless you can afford the proper hardware, and it's easy to cover bad make up and art with soft footage. But I am talking ultra, ultra low end.


Paul, If you're seriously willing to give this a read I'll send you a draft once I make some changes. That would be very generous of you, but this might not be everyone's cup of tea (which is why I'm not even bothering to send it to agents, I don't even know their contact info).


Mark and Mike, I agree I need to get a producer on board, but I want to have something to send that doesn't read like a complete pipe dream. I have some friends who are capable producers, but I have drifted apart from them, unfortunately, and they are very busy. I know/know of a few people who've gotten really far with promo trailers, or who have used them to raise money on kickstarter. But I also know of someone who recently got $50k to make a promo trailer and then the deal fizzled right after. I've been involved with a few micro budget films (DPed a few in the $50k-$150K range, just edited a $750,000 feature and did vfx on two at that budget) so I know about the horrible truths of how much money most movies make as the company I worked for acquired some. But at the same time, a lot of the directors I know who are blowing up are doing so specifically because their first micro-budget feature was well-received (or even tepidly received); basically, they paid $100,000, usually of someone else's money, to get on the map as a feature director. No one will look at any of my scripts until I'm "on the map" and I don't have the money to shoot a proper feature or even a proper short. I have a ton of experience in guerrilla, though, and festivals seem to be okay with bad production values on features so long as sound and performance are okay (I'm not sure why, to be honest). If I end up going over budget, so be it, but I'm not going to "do this right" because that guarantees a baseline level of competency, but also at a cost I will never be able to afford. I have a friend (more mentor, really?) whose first feature out of school cost $150K and he took three years raising the money and then did his second feature guerrilla style and told me not to waste any time "doing it right" if I can avoid it, and he knows me and my style well. This is provocative schlock, not a masterpiece, and the advantage then is that no budget buys you no restrictions in terms of content so long as it's affordable.

 

[PatrickFaith]

Thanks, everyone.
Patrick, just out of curiosity, what sources did you look into to raise your budget? You can PM me if this is not something you want to share publicly, but what do you recommend? Looking for locals interested in investing? Friends and family? Personal funds and loans? Kickstarter? I've known people who've succeeded and failed with each. What sells people on a project? Previous festival wins and awards on the script? The promo material (concept art, spec trailer, potential cast and crew, etc.) that you have already?

On my shorts, that was mainly art house stuff, minor grants, free locations, etc ... On the "shorts" side, there are a lot of funding approaches, but grants and such max out at around $10k, and free equipment for artists and stuff is usually very limited on time/location (so is not "feature friendly"). On commercial work, that's all paid by whomever wants the work, is good for learning but also allows equipment to be slowly built up for the feature work(i.e. is a way of funding getting the base equipment, but major stuff is hard this way, and commercial work is normally the vdslr and hdtv video equipment) . So my commercial conceptual art perty much is funding "puddles of light" feature, so i'm using commercial art to fund it. So the movie is "self funded" up through compositing and editing, then depending on the quality of the movie, i'll look for a round for marketing/dcp/sound/finalgrading/qa. This is perty much the same model that Andy Warhol and Ridley Scott followed (i.e. commercial work bootstrapped them).

 

[Zack Birlew]

If you can't afford to do it, whether it be money/resources/contacts/etc., then don't try to do it. I needed a bunch of extras for a short once while I was at film school. Now, mind you, it was a school filled not only with film students but also acting students as well. Couldn't get anybody to show up. It was a classroom scene so I had to get creative and use a mix of clever composition, shallow DOF, and careful placement of my two crewmembers when they weren't needed behind the camera. In the end, everything worked out and we got everything we needed for the scene with only four people, myself included as I was acting in it as well.

I can't tell you how to cut down your script or what to adjust, but all it comes down to is being honest with yourself about what you can actually achieve, especially on a low to no budget production, and being able to be calm and creative when it counts.

 

[Matt W.]

If you can't afford to do it, whether it be money/resources/contacts/etc., then don't try to do it. I needed a bunch of extras for a short once while I was at film school. Now, mind you, it was a school filled not only with film students but also acting students as well. Couldn't get anybody to show up. It was a classroom scene so I had to get creative and use a mix of clever composition, shallow DOF, and careful placement of my two crewmembers when they weren't needed behind the camera. In the end, everything worked out and we got everything we needed for the scene with only four people, myself included as I was acting in it as well.

I can't tell you how to cut down your script or what to adjust, but all it comes down to is being honest with yourself about what you can actually achieve, especially on a low to no budget production, and being able to be calm and creative when it counts.

That might be the best advice; the problem is that everything, on is own, is feasible. I have friends who produce who can get me extras for a day or two. I know some good crew members who will do me (a few) favors (probably). I can work out access to each one of the difficult-to-get locations I need...probably, but at a high cost. I can get the prosthetic effects or a few CGI shots cheap as favors. I can shoot and post myself. But I can't do or get all of that for a feature-length project. Not with this small a budget, not with this little time to shoot. A feature is exponentially bigger than a short, and I'm at wits' end producing a short already. Every individual scene is possible, but the sum of their parts is too big is the bigger problem here.

The answer might be bringing in a producer, but I'm too early in to do that. Or just taking a huge step back. Thankfully I have two years before I plan to shoot, but that's also a little terrifying.

 

[Christopher Mills]

you need an experienced producer

you need an experienced producer

My longest career thread has been as a producer.. and while I am not available at present (and geography rules out my working on anything in your budget level).. you need an experienced producer to figure out how to make your film for that budget..
However... here's a few thoughts for micro budgets in general.

You MUST micro plan each day.. do not skip having a blocking diagram for each scene on each set... lighting diagram prior to shooting day is also essential
Everyone on your production gets a copy.. you take the time to do a meeting where you explain these diagrams and shot lists to everyone at the same time.


Cut your cast per scene to 3 speaking roles... be ruthless about this..

You can NOT afford stunts, in a moving car photography, or car chases on this budget.
Don't fall short in look by having the no budget versions of these scenes in your movie.. it will fail to look impressive

get at least a slider to move your camera a little.... a sled dolly is also suggested.

Sound... spend enough money here to have at least a 2 track recorder that is NOT your camera... wireless is slick, but wired connecitons are MUCH cheaper and more reliable. On your budget, be willing to manually sync... or use a plural eyes type program to syn to a ref track.
You will blow your return on investment if you try to use the built in camera audio.... no wishful thinking allowed here.
Careful use of a "dumb slate" with the AC reading it alloud before snapping it will save your ass...

table read your cast long enough before the shoot to rewrite lines prior to actual rehersal.

Do a performance rehersal with cast before your shoot period...

on the day... do a blocking rehersal for each scene before fine lighting. do a couple passes of this.. one with your camera powered down... so that the sound mixer can hear the other issues that they CAN solve for you.

Stop at 6 hours from call for food... try very hard to to stop shooting 6 hours after that meal... your crew will cease to be productive after 12 hours.

plan on getting about 30-40 camera angles done in a day.. number them on your shot list... post that list, and cross them off as you go

TRY NEVER to go back and forth inside the same set... IE.... face each wall only once. If you have multiple scenes in the same room, try to shoot all the angles that face the same way for that location before turning the camera around... radical lighting changes (like night vs day) over rule this..

if you have little money, apply much planning

DO not try to use new gear or new firmware in the middle of your project

 

[Matt W.]

Thank you, that's helpful...interesting about the three-person scene rule. I had never heard of that but will re-write to implement it.

Hopefully we will have lavs for everyone and a mixer for at least half the production and a lav and a boom at least at all times. Slider dolly sounds good. 30-40 set ups is a lot, but I suppose possible under those circumstances. Thanks again.

 

[Christopher Mills]

The three person rule is a trial and error convention I have developed from over 20 years of running projects with budget between nothing and $2million..
If you watch classic films, you will observe that was normal in the golden age of hollywood as well... and is common in stage plays..
You can, with careful planning, drop in an occasional bit to round out a scene..
In practical story terms, it is rare that you will actually be gaining a unique voice to a scene by having a 4th, 5th or subsequent cast member delivering dialog or performing action.

(before becoming a producer, I was the key assistant to the producers and directors of a long running tv drama (In the Heat of the Night))..
in this millenium I have worked on a very large number of BTS units and EPK projects for studio films, when not doing my own projects.
As an observer, I notice that the main costs of production are driven by two things...
!) the amount of Setting you need for your scene, and
2) to a larger extent, the coverage needed on cast (I am including the salary of well known talent as a related cost here).
The more prepared everyone is, the less category 2 hurts you..

Other points.. on a micro budget film, you dont have investors, you have donors. Don't mislead them into thinking your film is sure to turn a profit.
It might, but it is more likely that you lack the clout to collect and distribute those profits.
Movies in this budget range are like less popular artists on a music label.. they small revenue they generate for the distributor is used to cover overhead.. it is not returned to the creative team.
Unless you get lottery ticket winner lucky.

 

[Zhang Ming]

I homemade a short movie in 120USD, and got nearly 7,000,000 view(and one viewer counted only one view no matter how many times he/she played) in China. The actress is a friend came for fun, the ghost is my wife and sometime me. 5D2 for shot. I did everything, so I didn't spend much money. I uploaded it to youtube when I travel to U.S. last month, but I am back in China now, so I can't find it now(Youtube is not available in China:shocked, please search "give me one minute China horror", the brief pic is a slim chinese girl in red standing in front of a mirror with a sad shadow in the mirror. Or you can visit chinese web which is always very slow outside of China. http://www.iqiyi.com/weidianying/20120516/afcd4a76a523460d.html

I also made another short movie which cost me 1.4K USD, most money paid to the sound studio(they didn't charge me money on last short movie). That movie is silent too, but you need to be able to read Chinese to understand, and it is actually a Buddhism story in the form of a western story. All actors and actress are not professional, and just came for fun. http://www.iqiyi.com/weidianying/20120827/d4ee90a045f4ff9d.html

My opinion is, write your script base on what you can get for low price or even free. That will easily save lots of money. I saw lots of chinese directors( unlike US， in China, most producers are amateur who has money, director is the leader）who write scripts based on only their own dream, and soon turned out to be budget disaster (more than 90%).

 

[Matt W.]

I've seen more than a few micro-budget films break even or better for investors even after producer's fees, etc. (and make lots of money for distributors after that) but more often than not it's the "donation" scenario, particularly with slightly bigger budgets, I agree. But the flip side is that, when "donating" a couple million dollars, there are way more write offs and incentives than with $20,000, and the project is more glamorous due to the budget and stars, so you can buy a meaningful producer credit at a good discount and that alone is an incentive for some. At the $20,000 range, there is really no reason to donate beyond misguided charity or ignorance; there is no money or glamor…but don't tell anyone. (Though I do know of some young filmmakers, and their investor, who did quite well under the cheap feature model, even today, so it happens. Fwiw, I have no interest in making money in the short term, though losing as little as possible would be nice--I just want to buy a directing credit as inexpensively as possible to advance my career.)


The three person rule is very interesting to me specifically for the reasons you mention: if time with actors is a major expense, the complexity of covering four majors characters versus two or three increases it dramatically. A friend of mine directed a feature in which there were a lot of major characters in some scenes and even the simplest blocking scenarios required quite a bit of coverage for scenes in which four or more main characters were present…he did a smart job, and was assisted by a multi-cam shoot, but the potential was there for trouble, particularly because, with three characters, you can kind of use your outmost characters' eyelines (when looking at each other) as a standard 180º rule axis, but with four characters you may need to cover 270º-360º of a space in every shot scale, which means at least one significant relight and tons of set ups.


I am reminded of some of the wisest advice from the smartest film scholar I know (or know of): that dinner table scenes are the hardest thing to cover, for this specific reason (and I'm planning to read this book, Grammar of the Film language, that deals specifically with complex multi-character coverage and, well, it's nuts). The two I love most (the Haunting is also good) take different approaches:


This amazing scene from Drag me to Hell uses the protagonist as the central subject and motivates every cut (except, intentionally, for a few in the few seconds after she coughs up the bug) on Christine's shifts in eyeline; almost every shot is either of her, or is a matched CU of someone else drawn on the 180º line defined by her eyeline with that person, or is her pov). There is still a ton of coverage, but centering it all around her keeps it sane:

The execution is marvelous: each shot pattern (XCU povs of the blabbering mouths, dutch head push ins against dutched zoom povs from the opposite angle, dirty CUs over different shoulders to express different things with regard to character dynamics, the primary low MCU on Christine, the master shots that flip 90º based on her eyelines, but never go behind her because she is the lone protagonist, also to spare a big relight…) expresses a distinct level of proximity from the character's subjective, and growing madness and then modulates between that and the awkward/objective/omniscient "comedy" scenario that plays primarily in the wides and carries over into a few reaction shots sympathetic to other characters after she spits out the fly…this is horror comedy done right. I love this movie; Raimi is a master who reminds me how incompetent I am and that I should not try this this kind of thing because I would over-cover it and it would take a month to shoot and not be half as creative, but it's good someone can pull it off! As simple as the blocking is, it's so smart and critical that the father is placed opposite Christine because he is the least important character from a narrative perspective and she is the most important and the coverage that respects this most efficiently is them placed in this specific configuration. Masterful.


The alternative I think is like Rushmore, where there's not enough coverage (despite I think nine set ups covering the full 360º both wide and tight) and the edits are awkward, but the dialogue, performance, simple geometric compositions, and edits on eyeline (even if they do not respect 2d space fully coherently; there need to be hinge shots to make some of these cuts clean) makes it a great scene:

In either case, a three-person scene would be much, much easier to shoot.


Zhang, the second video you posted in particular looks very nice. I'm familiar with the logistics of no budget shorts, I have worked on several. Here is one I made with no crew (except my dad slammed the door shut for an hour, thanks!) and for $500, this portion was like $100:

A director I know who has worked in both low budget indie and geurilla suggested that if I want to try making a feature I follow the same geurilla approach, since I have no delusions about my chances to get hired to direct (without winning a major festival first) or raise more than a little money on kickstarter, and usually money and connections are what leads to a festival win. But I can edit and DP on a professional (enough) level, so I can save money that way and just hire a good sound guy. So my concern is expanding the guerrilla approach as far as possible as effectively as possible without destroying a feature script, inherently an exponentially more complicated thing. And while I agree that it's great to shoot around locations to which you have access, it gets so much harder when you're talking feature length. But I need to keep this in mind as I revise the script I have.

Thanks again for the advice everyone. Sorry to ramble...avoiding real work.

 

[Zhang Ming]

Dear Matt, it is really a shame about our country's GreatFirewall, I can't see your video, it's just a blank to me:banghead:. And thank you for your appreciation.
I am recently preparing to shot a 3D horror feature movie in 48FPS. I experienced even worse than you when I tried to persuade investors. I got official permission from the government by my full script, which is very difficult for a horror movie(usually less than 10 got proved each year), but most "professional" investors just tell me to rewrite it at least 3 times for no reason before they can consider an investment, because that's the basic rule they heard about， while they forgot that rewriting a proved horror script is super highly risky in China for the government's censor(most those investors even know nothing on how to apply for a permission), and most of the investor care only one thing, can they have chance to sleep with some famous actress; also many investors insisted that my cash investment should value less than theirs, and my work should be considered as zero investment, and I still should provide famous actress to them!!!(Now you can understand why 95% movies in China just made huge loss) I am luckier than you because I worked on I.T. for many years before I dicided to turn to movie industry this year, and my short movies is a big help for me to persuade some my old friends who got successes on I.T. .