On The Road

So I’ve spent the last two days driving and now I’m in London. I fly out to Ghana tomorrow.

Over the last couple of days I’ve had to explain the thinking behind $1000 movie making a few times and the common misconception I run into is that micro-budget means unprofessional. One of the abiding flaws in the film industry is equating budget with importance. It is pretty much the only business in the world where people boast about their costs. In every other business in the world the usual thing is to attempt to keep costs down and maximise profit. Not the film industry though, where people measure their importance by how much money they are given to spend.

I’ve always thought this was insane.

So, anyway, because the industry still has this insane thinking where the size of your budget relates to your ability to spend, a $1000 movie fails to even be considered a low budget movie, in fact it’s even pushing at micro-budget.

What people have forgotten is this: money doesn’t make movies, creative people and resources do.

Now, of course if you have money you can buy people and resources and you can get your movie made. Therefore the more money you have the more people and resources you can buy.

However, once you take the budget out of the equasion, you realize that, in fact, people and resources aren’t in short supply and you don’t need money to find either for your project. What you need to do is inspire people, and give people the opportunity to do the things they came into the business to do.

The truth is, very few people come into the business purely to make money, most of us are motivated by other things.

The other misconception about the $1000 movie is that the resources for the film will have to reflect the budget.

Once you realize that it’s possible to chase resources rather than chasing cash to buy resources, then the whole process gets easier.

By the time we’ve finished, we expect to have a movie that would have cost between $500,000 to $750,000 if we’d paid for the resources we used making it. In other words, a real, professional, full budget feature film.

When you look at it objectively you see that your cast and crew become your investors, they invest their time and expertise in the movie. We’re very aware of this and are always blown away when people offer to help. But like I said before, we’re not all in this business for the money.