Introduce Yourself : From Chicago with Horror by Ricardo Islas

If you like horror, you might like my horror novel, The Roots of Evil by David E. Gates

I'll have to look it up; thank you.

Hi, Ricardo. Cool trailer! Please excuse me if I'm being nosy, but IMDb estimates the budget of "The Sacrifice" at only $50K. It looks like your production values are pretty high. Is that $50K estimate low? I ask because I have a limited-location horror script and I'm trying to informally ballpark a budget for it.

Hi Joe, I have no problem being candid about this: 50K would have been the budget if folks had gotten paid. The budget is quite accurate, except that the whole movie was produced for only 5 (five) thousand dollars...

Wow, that's amazing. Does that include post-production? I'm guessing you did a lot of careful pre-production and have a lot of friends who were willing to help out. Great work!

Thank you, Joe. I have a group of great guys with whom I've worked for years. True that I do a lot myself, since I'm an editor and DP. There's a method to make this work, and I would lie if I said that it's something that anyone can standardize. However, we have done this for others, making it possible for them to produce a movie for a budget that would have been impossible almost anywhere else. Yes, very meticulous pre-production has a key role. I will make the movie available through my youtube channel this Halloween. I will be happy to share it here.

Thanks for the background information. How does that saying go, "The only mistakes in production are the mistakes made in pre-production?" I've been involved in TV production and know how important it is to think things through ahead of time and arrange for everything you need before everybody's on the set.