Basically, Lo to No Budget Filmmaking didn’t exist when I started Raindance in 1992. Everyone was shooting on 35mm. You had to. The video cameras at the time were expensive and bulky to use. Shooting on film also meant costly lab expenses. Film editing on a Steenbeck or Movieola and time consuming. To make a movie you pretty much needed a million dollars or pounds. And you had to go to film school in order to figure it all out.
Now of course the low cost of high resolution cameras and easy-to-use editing equipment has meant that budgetary constraints have dropped to near nothing. But what are the main reasons people shoot on a low or near-no budget.
1. Making Your Film Is Your Film School
Trial and error is the real way to learn filmmaking. so grab a few mates and mess around with low cost equipment. Make your mistakes and more importantly develop the experience it takes to learn from your mistakes.
2. It’s Easier To Show A Profit
It is common sense that a million is a lot harder to get than a hundred thou. And a hundred thou is a lot harder to get than ten thou. And the lower the budget the less money you need to pay off your investors and turn a profit. And never mind that for every tenner in the cinema box office, half will go to the actual cinema, another 30% to the distributor plus the cost of advertising, meaning you need about $8 for each dollar returned to you, the filmmaker.
The trick of course, is to learn how to make money from your film. And the easiest way is to suck up the pain while you are making your film. Use deferrals and call in every single favour you can.
3. The Budget Ladder
Want to get 20 mil to make a film? Here’s how everybody does it: They get 2 mil and make a movie that makes money.
Want 2 mil? Here’s how everybody does it: Make a movie for a couple of hundred thou that makes money and you get a couple mil.
And so on. Cobble the amount of money you know you can get together on your own without annoying your landlord or your diet. Then make a movie that gets noticed and makes some money and you will get a couple hundred thou.
Remember the movie industy’s golden rule: first you make a movie and then you make deals to make movies.
4, Lo Budget Movies Don’t Need Stars
Everyone knows that if you have Benedict Cumberbach in your movie you are going to mint it big time. But the types of movies that don’t need stars are the ones that you can make cheaply. These are horror and sci-fi. These movies would kind of be ruined by a Cumberbach or Clooney going ‘Aaaargh!’
What makes horror and sci-fi sell? Basically, it’s the concept. And in these two genres not only don’t you need stars, you can’t really use them.
5. There’s Nothing Difficult about Making Movies
The film industry delights and over complicating things in order to mystify the entire process and to keep newcomers out.
Don’t let anyone tell you that filmmaking is difficult. it isn’t. it’s just plain old-fashioned hard work.
Which is what I go through in easy-to-understand steps in my Lo To No Budget Filmmaking Weekend Masterclass.
Finally, do you want to make a movie? Will I see you there? It’s an information intensive weekend that can launch your filmmaking career.
Did you know?
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You can join online >HERE< and start saving immediately - Raindance Open Classes are FREE for our HND and Postgraduate/MA/ students
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- Raindance is one of the world’s top film festivals ‘Variety’
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If our evening or weekend courses fails to meet your expectations, let us know at the break.
We will make a full, 100% no-questions-asked refund - We don’t teach ‘filmmaking’ at Raindance.
At Raindance we make filmmakers.
