At HV, we’ve been telling a pretty consistent story lately. If we want a future for truly independent film, we have to make it ourselves. And if we’re making it ourselves, we’re doing it on a microbudget.
“But I can’t make a movie for less than $100,000!”
Yes, you can.
Here’s an incomplete list of great directors who made their first movie at that level: Barry Jenkins, Christopher Nolan, David Lynch, John Carpenter, Kelly Reichardt, Sean Baker, Quentin Tarantino (he may not count it, but he made it!). Even the directors of Avengers: Endgame did it. You can too.
In fact, it’s even easier now. Most of us carry a 4K video camera with us everywhere we go. If you want something more professional than a smartphone, it’s not that expensive. Even sound recording equipment can be acquired on a dime. If there’s a piece of gear you absolutely need and are missing, chances are you can rent it for a production through a service like ShareGrid, which is essentially Lyft for filmmaking. Even the financing is easier: it may be unrealistic to raise $1 million from crowdfunding or friends/family but raising $25,000 or so is not crazy.
Why do it this way? After all, there are still films that are technically independent. Some of them are even pretty good! This is true. Companies like Oscilloscope and A24 produce and release some interesting titles. However, if you look a little closer at how the sausage gets made, it’s more like a series of happy accidents that these great films aren’t infested with rat feces and severed fingers.
But if you still can make a good indie movie for $1 million or more, why not try? Realistically, if you want to make a movie at that type of budget level, you need outside financing and/or a well-known actor. Very wealthy people and recognizable talent tend to have a lot of opinions and personalized agendas. Perhaps that rich guy or rising actor will trust your creative vision to get what they want from the project—most likely, their name on a prestige indie that wins a bunch of awards. Probably not.
At the microbudget level, artists can have true creative control. The only restraints are what you can’t afford to do. That’s true of literally every movie. In fact, sometimes it actually makes a better film in the end. The mechanical shark didn’t work in Jaws, so Spielberg had to rely on suspense and character to tell the story that we all love. Yes, even no budget indie hipsters like us love Jaws.
Because once you stop harping on what you can’t do for budget reasons, you’ll find that there’s a lot you can. All you need for a great movie is a few good actors and a location. Sometimes, even less than that. For instance, the experimental horror movie Skinamarink is basically all location, public domain clips, and post FX. If you’re resourceful, you might even find there are more options out there for bigger production values. For instance, you could ask to film a planned demolition, use a drone for aerial shots, and suddenly you’re kicking Michael Bay’s ass for a few hundred bucks max.
Ultimately, though, you just need story and character to make a great movie. You can definitely film that for less than $100,000.
Image Credits
Piggy Bank by Markus Steidle from Pixabay
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