How to Make a Low Budget Movie or Short Film

Let’s start with what you have. Or don’t have.

Does it matter how tall you are? Maybe. If you want to play in the NBA then being tall helps. However, there were individuals who were short according to basketball standards, but just didn’t consider it a weakness.

Filmmaking certainly doesn’t impose the kind of demands required in professional sports, or the armed forces, or the medical profession. In fact, it’s one of the most laid back professions you can think of.

The biggest challenge facing filmmakers is money. Depending on your film, $1,000 or a $100 million could be too little.

Just like any other roadblock in life, you can either get busy doing what you love, or find excuses not to.

In this article and video I’ll give you the best advice I can, based on a couple of decades of scraping for cash and trying to make whatever I have go a long way. I’ve sort of become an expert at it.

Start by watching this video:

How to make a film on a “low budget”

The first step is to acknowledge there’s no such thing as “low budget”.

Your movie might have gone grossly over budget, but it wouldn’t matter if it was a spectacular success at the box office.

On the other hand your movie might have been made for pennies, but you’ll still go into debt at the end of it because you didn’t earn any money while it was being made.

So, what is low to you might be too high for someone else. And zero budget movies don’t even exist.

Someone’s always paying for your movie. Even if the equipment is free, somebody paid for it. Even if everyone’s working for free, they’re really not. There are costs and a time factor associated with every aspect of filmmaking, especially if you’re trying to hit a certain professional level.

A lot of filmmakers conveniently ignore expenses just because they are oblivious to it. Then, they wear their ignorance as a badge of honor. “It only cost $100.”

Yeah, right.

This is just reckless immaturity. Sadly, I’ve done it myself, and I’ve learned my lesson the painful way.

If there’s no low budget film, then is there an ideal budget for a film?

What is the ideal budget for a low budget film?

The ideal budget for a low budget film is one which allows you to:

• First earn it within your current means.
• Spend it without penalty.
• Recover it with reasonable activity.

What do I mean? If someone stole your wallet with all that money in it today, your life shouldn’t change.

If you have to take risks, make sure you are willing to pay the price of failure.

Don’t ask anyone else, especially friends and family, to pay for your failure.

Still young and dreaming you’re going to make that $200 million movie next year? Grow up.

Oh wait, what? You know guys who did just that? Well, I have a few examples of people who contracted fatal diseases and never lived to see their dreams being fulfilled. Don’t cherry pick examples to rationalize irrational beliefs.

That’s like running into battle with an empty gun but still dreaming of hitting the bullseye.

I’m all for optimism, but not unrealistic optimism.

Nobody can or should stop you from dreaming. But there are a billion things just itching to stop you from making your dream a reality.

Shoot for the stars if you must, but never forget you have earth to deal with at some point.

If you ignore reality you’ll be dealing with earth after you’ve crash landed. If you’re smart, you’ll deal with it before you start your film.

If you agree to be serious about your money, then we can talk serious money.

Disclaimer:

The information in this article and video is for entertainment purposes only. It is not legal, investment, financial or career advice. The information should not be construed as personal investment advice or financial planning advice. Please consult your accountant, and/or local and country laws before taking any action.

How do you know when you have enough money for your film?

At the beginning you know two things for sure:

1. You know you have a great idea for a film, and
2. You know how much money you can swing.

The big question is: Can you actually pull off your vision within your financial means?

Making a movie is a long and complex process. What seems like a simple affair at the beginning becomes murkier the deeper you get. Often it’s impossible to remember how a movie project started once you have passed through the filmmaking process.

“What was I thinking?”

– Almost every filmmaker ever, after the movie has been made.

It’s a classic case of the butterfly effect. Every small decision you take at the beginning will alter your film in profound ways.

When you’re young you believe you are indestructible, and that’s fine.

Go fight the demon!

But, before you do, let me just pull back the curtain to give you a sneak peak at him.

There are always expenses that suck your “budget” dry:

• Inflation
• Failure of gear or its maintenance
• Per diems
• Unexpected expenses
• Failure of the project to recover the money spent
• Taxes and unforeseen fees

Money is serious, even if you don’t believe that yet.

What’s your budget? The wrong answer is: Whatever you can afford to lose.

The budget for your movie is not the money you have with you right now. The budget for your low budget film depends on two factors you might not even have considered yet:

• What is the size of your audience?
• How much will your film earn?

What is the size of your audience?

Let’s assume you get to show your film in cinemas. Typically for a low budget film, you might get one show in a multiplex with many screens. The higher your marketing budget, the more shows you get.

Each theater can hold about 250 people. Let’s assume you get four shows (that’s a lot harder than it seems. You’ll be lucky to get one).

Let’s say you want your movie to run for 7 days (this is not in your hands, really). The total number of human beings who can (theoretically) watch your movie = 250 x 4 x 7 = 7,000.

Can you get these 7,000 individuals to show up? They might, if the subject is something close to their hearts. Usually, it’s not, so they won’t. In most likelihood, the seats will be empty most of the time. You will be lucky to get 1,000 paying movie-goers to watch your movie over its 7-day run.

If each person is willing to pay $10 (just a number), then the total maximum gross revenue from such an exercise is about $70,000.

The cinema owner and distributor will get a percentage, usually about 50% (or more!). That means you will be able to collect a theoretical maximum of $35,000.

If only 1,000 people buy tickets during that week, then you’ll earn $5,000.

That sounds great, doesn’t it? Except, you’d have spent that $5,000 for the following:

• Marketing and advertising
• Posters
• Taxes
• Legal and accounting
• Prints (DCP)
• Any four-walling expenses
• Sales agents
• Festival expenses

All right, that brings us close to zero. Then there’s the actual budget of the film that you have to recover.

The only way to do that is to release in more screens and more shows. That means your marketing reach has to be wider, across cities and states, and the costs go up exponentially.

Whatever you’ll have left is the below-the-line budget of your film.

The total budget of your film = below-the-line budget + marketing and release-related expenses

What is the ratio between the actual making cost of a film and its marketing budget? It’s getting worse every year. If you make your film very cheaply, and with a subject dear to the residents of the town or city you’re living in, then you might get away with local marketing and recoup your investment.

But most filmmakers dream a lot bigger than that, and the subjects tend to cater to a larger audience. You really want your film to be seen by everyone.

At the time of this writing, I would peg the ratio at 1:4, just as a very broad ballpark figure.

This means 25% of your budget goes to the making, and 75% goes to the marketing. E.g., if you have $100,000, then you really only have $25,000 for the film. You’d better keep $75,000 aside for marketing.

Shocking, right?

Except for a few exceptions, that’s the reality of independent filmmaking today.

Today, the only real hope you have is to get an OTT platform (Netflix, HBO, Disney, Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc.) to buy it, but because their businesses are doing poorly worldwide, you’ll still have to market the film yourself.

So first, estimate your total marketing and release budget. Whatever’s left is your film budget.

You might come to realize you’ll have to make your movie on a really low budget to not feel the pain.

Now the onus is on you. Can you make your film for that budget?

If yes, you have your ideal budget.

If no, rewrite your film or look for something that can be made in that budget.

Can you make money on a short film?

As far as I’m aware, except for a few really rare cases, no one will buy your short film.

Even if your short is “picked up”, it’ll most likely be on a revenue-sharing basis. And you’ll almost never see any revenues.

The only three practical avenues for any monetary return are:

• YouTube ad revenue for the views your film will have, or
• Any monetary prize you get at film festivals or grants.
• You four-wall your film at the local theater and get your town to come watch it.

If you’re screening your short film for just one show over the weekend, you’ll have to fill 250 seats. At $10 you stand to earn about $2,500. You can even try to sell merchandise at the venue.

This is definitely doable. Deducting the costs of marketing and four-walling you still might break even with just one show.

The big elephant in the room is: How many people can you really reach? It’s a lot harder than it seems.

This is why companies spend lots of money on advertising. You’ll have to research the true costs of advertising your film in your town before you decide it’s the route you want to take.

Here’s how you would go about making that calculation:

Let’s say the average cost is $1 per click (This can vary a lot). To reach 1,000 people through advertising, you’ll be spending $1,000.

That’s not the whole story. Most conversion rates are less than 1%. Let’s say for fun it’s 10%. That means, for 250 ticket buyers you’ll need to reach 2,500 people.

But that’s not the whole story either. Not everyone who watches your trailer will come to watch your film. Let’s say for fun the conversion rate for that is 10%. For 250 tickets you’ll need to reach 25,000 people. At a $1 a click, that’s $25,000.

Unless you have inundated your town with stories about your movie, don’t expect people to show up.

What’s the takeaway here?

You know you have the ideal budget when you know you have enough money to market your film.

Now that we’ve settled the budget problem, let’s take a look at marketing.

How does marketing work for filmmakers?

How far can your scream be heard?

Go to the rooftop and scream about your low budget film. How many people are likely to hear it? If you’re in a crowded city maybe about 20-30 (unless you’re a T-rex, then about 100).

Out of the people who hear you, how many are likely to arrive at your doorstep (or payment processor) with cash to watch your film?

A lion’s roar is more powerful than a mouse’s squeak, unless the mouse can mimic a lion’s roar.

This is what low budget filmmakers have to do in marketing – mimic a lion’s roar.

The secret to doing that is twofold:

1. Reduce the area you have to scream to, and
2. Make sure it echoes all around to reach even more people.

In a small echoey space a mouse’s squeak can sound like a lion’s roar.

That sort of makes sense, doesn’t it? I am an optimist. A tough optimist.

The goal is to find the perfect balance between the marketing area and the total size of your audience, so you can recover your money.

This is marketing.

Advertising is too expensive. You have to find other ways to reach people.

You could leverage local influencers. They could be online, or offline. it’s a lot of legwork. You must try. You must explore all the options at your disposal. Some of your efforts might pay off, so try!

The other option is to build a following of your own. This takes time. Ideally you should start building a social following the moment you decide to make your film.

I feel if I’m giving advice, it needs to be something most readers should be able to do. Otherwise I could just tell you to buy a lottery ticket – if all you want is a pipe dream.

Step away from Internet marketing and look at the real world. Believe it or not, your greatest chance of success is with the people around you. The people you know.

In a small town, to reach every individual, you’ll have to do one or all of the following:

• Get on your local radio and/or cable station. Make your film interesting and local enough for these stations to show interest in you.
• Find local YouTubers, TikTokers, Instagrammers, or other social media personalities. Even the small ones. Especially the small ones.
• Get on your local newspaper multiple times. Having many local angles to your film helps.
• Stick posters wherever it is legally permissible to do so.
• Cinema advertising, but try to get barter deals. Make a commercial for a company in return for some advertising for yourself.
• Hand out flyers. Make them creative! Use QR codes on your phone that anyone can open and watch in an instant.
• Ask your friends and family to publish your trailer and poster everywhere they can.
• Get your trailer on every screen at every mall, bar, saloon, hospital, gym and sports center. And your poster next to that screen!
• Ask local businesspersons, shopkeepers, online marketers, ecommerce owners, etc.: “Hey, how do you market to our town?”

Sometimes, you’ll need to place ads because people won’t take you seriously. Money always talks. You still need some money to print posters or flyers, or to make phone calls, or to go to the other end of the town hundreds of times for meetings.

Make that spend go a long way.

This is where smaller towns have an advantage. You’re very likely to know people who know the right people. The larger your town or city, the more difficult it gets.

Large cities have more people (just like a country has more people), but they’re harder to reach because the demands on their attention are more.

You’ll really have to market for at least two weeks in every avenue possible. Get your film to as many people as possible, and be relentless.

You can breathe easy when it’s all said and done.

You might be thinking: Can this really be done?

Yes. It’s been done before. Thousands of times.

Somebody somewhere is making a movie right now.

I’ve spent the majority of this article on the subject of money and marketing. Now let’s look at some advice on making your film.

How to Make a Film on a Low Budget

Here are seven tips to help you make a film on a low budget.

1 Stop making excuses

Some people look at the empty wallet and say: “Oh, that’s a problem”. Others say: “That’s one less problem I have to worry about.”

Which one is you?

The people I see fail the most in life are those who are great at finding reasons not to do something. E.g., “I don’t have a nice camera”, “I don’t know anybody”, “I don’t have 10-bit 4:2:2”, etc.

These people have been complaining all their life, and they’re experts at it. And, they’re going to keep doing it while someone else makes their movie.

These kinds of people will never get ahead in life, because they specialize in not starting.

Try to take ownership of your life and look for reasons to get something done. Stop making excuses. Look for solutions.

2 Write stories about the people you know

A lot of filmmakers write scripts that take place in their rooms, because that’s all they have. That’s perfectly normal. But why do they insist on writing about characters they have no idea about?

Write about people you know. It’ll make your film look real.

If you don’t know anything about firefighters, but your film is about a firefighter trapped in a room, how realistic is it going to be? But let’s say you know the postman very well. Why not write a story with the postman trapped in a room instead?

You don’t have to change the genre. If horror’s your thing, go for it. Pick characters who you know, and place them in situations that excite you. Don’t write about characters that you have never met or know personally.

Kurosawa made Samurai movies, Spielberg made films for kids, and Scorcese made movies about Robert de Niro and Joe Pesci killing people. Tarantino makes movies about psychopaths cracking jokes before and after killing people. They write about things they know.

3 Don’t make your film in 4K or 8K

Many films are still being shot and projected in 2K. That’s HD for all practical purposes. 1080p.

Here’s how shooting in 1080p opens some magical doors:

• You can buy a cheaper camera with better image quality.
• You get higher frame rates in 1080p.
• You don’t need the sharpest lenses.
• You can edit, grade and finish on a cheaper computer system.
• You can make focus mistakes and it’s not so evident in 1080p. Neither is bad makeup, problems in costumes or hair.
• All the things that make low budget look worse are hidden in 1080p.

Same goes for audio as well.

Don’t overcomplicate audio with more characters, overlapping dialogue, sound effects and complex music. A good simple stereo mix is better than a bad 5.1 mix.

It’s not a compromise. You’re just deciding to eat a fresh apple instead of a rotten apple pie.

Keep the technical side simple enough. Focus on your movie.

4 Learn the right filmmaking process

Taking steps in the wrong order wastes a lot of time and money.

The best way to take down a monster is not by approaching it head on. I have my own:

In this blueprint I’ve laid out the steps I would take to make a low budget film – in the order that I feel is the best strategy for all filmmakers.

I know you might have read some books, good for you. You might have been in film school or have read magazines or Wikipedia on how a film should be made. That’s great, at least it shows you are proactive. But most professional techniques don’t work for low budget films.

Ever seen Jackie Chan fight in his movies? He finds creative ways to use objects around him to kick ass. Look around you. What you see is what’ll be in your movie: the locations, the props, the things you have access to. They are your assets. This is what Robert Rodriguez did with El Mariachi.

Don’t feel restricted by it. Think of it as a game. That’s what being creative is all about. Failing is part of the process.

Start focusing on the how.

5 Make the world small

You remember the mouse analogy we talked about earlier, right?

When you make the world small and bring in the walls, a mouse’s squeak becomes a roar.

You make the world small in your movie. Everything becomes small. Locations are smaller, the number of actors and crew members are smaller, the number of days you shoot are less, the number of scenes are lesser, you shoot lesser shots, lesser lights, you get the idea.

In the age of the Internet, you’d think it’s a crazy idea to restrict yourself, but it’s not. You’re just preparing to roar like a lion!

Most filmmakers ignore the people closest to them and then complain when strangers don’t care. Don’t be like that. Embrace your community.

6 Don’t buy a camera or gear

It is the single dumbest mistake you could make. There might be scenarios where the camera rental works out to be more than the purchase, but in that case you can still save money by finding a cinematographer who owns a camera.

This is called a ‘wet hire’.

Let’s face it, humans are primed to buy stuff, sometimes for no damn reason. So it’s easy to buy a camera. However, having a camera doesn’t take you any closer to making your movie; just like buying a race car doesn’t take you anywhere near winning a race or even being able to finish a race. 

I’ve seen countless examples of filmmakers who won’t pay peanuts to a cinematographer with a camera, but somehow insist on buying their own camera. I’ve done it myself, I’m sorry to say, so I know how powerful the impulse is. I also know I was wrong and dumb, and I hope hearing it from me makes a difference to you.

I made my first short film with a Digital 8 camera. It was an embarrassment, but today, about 18 years later, it doesn’t really matter. What I remember most are the things I learned, the friends I made, and the fact that I got it done on a tiny budget.

I was able to do this because of my next tip:

7 Put together the A-team

No, not the Avengers, these guys:

A bunch of misfits who somehow complete each other and make everything seem fun.

You have to motivate your team. You have to take charge, and you have to believe in yourself.

Excitement is infectious. It works. Show people a mountain peak and motivate them to climb with you.

Note: I didn’t say “ask”. You don’t ask them. You don’t tell them. You motivate them. You don’t have to pretend you know the way. All you have to promise is fun. You keep the fun coming, everything else will take care of itself.

Don’t believe me? Speak to other filmmakers who have made their short films and feature films. Ask them what they miss the most? Was it the camera, or the technicalities?

I can speak for myself: What I miss most about all the films I’ve made over the last two decades is the experience of doing it, the fun.

If you gave me the option of going back in time to shoot the same projects with the same crap cameras and money, I’d do it in a heartbeat. Because today, I can make a bad camera look good. It is not as important as I thought it was.

I had to become better, and it took me two decades to learn that.

No matter how challenging your film, always remember to have fun. Make it the most important thing on your list, pronto.

How do you go about doing it?

Treat your short film like an event, like a night out with your new friends. It’s not business, it’s strictly pleasure. When that’s obvious to everyone, you’d be amazed how that attitude changes everything.

If you’re passionate but are not a good talker, beg a friend to be part of your A-team. They might not care about your film, but they care about you. Filmmaking is painful, and that friend is the glue that will keep your ragged band together even when it hits the fan.

If you can’t motivate others, or even get out of bed or finish a script, then filmmaking is probably going to be hard for you. Watching movies does not make you a filmmaker. It makes you the audience. Studying and practicing filmmaking makes you a filmmaker.

Want some more motivation? Watch this video:

https://website-39341349.tnb.awf.mybluehost.me/inspiration-for-film-directors

Now go make your movie!