Want to make a film with no money? Either become a self shooter, or do what Raindance MA student Julian Grant advices with: The 7 Essential crew members http://www.raindance.org/cinema-2-0-guerilla-strategies-7-people-you-nee...
Filmmaking / Directing : A Low Budget Crew by Elliot Grove
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That link is pure garbage. The person doesn't understand the jobs on a film set, how can he decide what's necessary and not?
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We've shot 2 feature films in the last couple years with a core crew of only 3 people - the Director, the Cinematographer (which was me in both cases), and the Sound Recordist. This coincides with the first 3 crew members on the Raindance list as well. We had a part-time Producer in one of the films to take care of the logistics like food, locations and transit - and that really did make a big difference!
....and where did those feature films go? Where they picked up in distribution or did they go direct to video?
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The first one was called "Hola Venky!" - we all flew in from India to shoot it in the Bay Area. The whole film was made for approx $20K and we raised another $10K for post through crowdfunding. It got a limited release over there, followed by a 100+ private screenings here in India. It was then put up for VOD on Vimeo, and after running there for a few months, it is now available for free viewing on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw87cYfrdyE
What have you done with the film? Festivals I hope
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The first one was more of a commercial film, so wasn't really the festival type of a film. The second one, however, is a good candidate, and we plan to send it to festivals as soon as the post production gets completed.
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Awesome...I hope everyone follows this advice..It will certainly kill off some competition. This could also be titled "How to Make Movies that are Unwatchable"...or even "How to keep your movie out of theaters"
+1 to the above. Did "Hola Venky" make any profits or at least return the investors money?
John, The advice is highly relative to your own project size, and can easily be adapted based on your particular requirements and resources. If you have the money, then by all means hire a big crew to improve your production quality. We recently shot a feature film starring a couple of well-known Indian actors - the budget was 10 times that of Hola Venky, and crew was about 50 people on an average. But if you don't have that much money, isn't it better to make your film with a minimal crew that you can afford, rather than not make a film at all?
Yes JD, Hola Venky did make a profit from the money it earned during the US release, the Indian screenings, and the global VOD sales.
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The movie I made last year with a 12 person crew - 14 day shoot - comes out in the UK on September 28th. Im quite proud of the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAIDsKkgdLE
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@Elliot, I like the trailer of the movie, I'd love to see it.
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Elliot, Definitely an amazing trailor! Looks very promising! Would love to see this film!
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Prashant, for the cost, Hola Venky is quite astounding. Is there any way you might share the budget breakdown? No names or anything, I am very curious about how you accomplished this with a budget that is a small fraction of the cost per day for principal photography of a typical scripted drama for television. Given where you shot, permits must have been a major line item.
@Andrew Permits, what are these permits you speak of??