Producing : The Great No-Budget Producers by Bill Houser

Zack Ward, Franco Sama, Brad Hibbs Wyman and Tyler Gillett are some people you might want to look up here, Bill. The first 3 have taught some of the most popular webinars we've ever had here on Stage 32, but they also hang around these forums.

attend American Film Market in Santa Monica, CA. Lots of low budget filmmakers doing what you want To do. Talk to a sales agent, research the genre and the Buyers.

It's easy to make profit with a $5 to $10K finished feature.

I would buy your finished film for $5K cash. Dont care what genre. Or story. Just make sure the picture is at least 80mins, the image is in focus and the audio is good. Actually, I want a $5K horror movie.

Richard & Dan, thanks for the comments. I'll dig deeper. Dan let's talk! The $5,000 film is very possible here in Missouri. And you'd likely be surprised with the result.

Thanks, Bill

Yes, you'll actually find a few people on this site who make no-budgeters. I've taken the Mark Twain tour through your city. It has some nice shoot sites, particularly along the river.

Bill, put me in the loop if you get together with Dan.

My $5K cash offer is for any filmmaker with a finished movie of at least 80-minutes, shot on HD resolution. Any genre except for Porn & documentaries. Narrative stories.

Get it done to broadcast specs and I will buy your movie. Not interested in investing or producing.

Dan - interesting. Unless this is just a provocative hobby, how you plan to get your money back so you can do it again. You got some distribution plan up your sleeve?

Im gonna sell the film at AFM for $10K, worldwide global distribution. There is plenty of meat on the bone for Sales Agents to make some

Scratch. Just need a fancy movie poster and a decent trailer.

I can do my own movie poster. I have photoshop and I have final cut Pro, and access to an Avid Edit Bay for free. (Just have to edit at night from 12am to 5am when the Bosses are sleeping).

I sold a movie for $$$$ to the queen of home videos, Tanya York of York Entertainment. Got a whole check in less than 2 months. Didn't do anything but make a phone call and got my commission.

Dan - sounds a little risky to me. $2K return on $5K is a 40% equity return rate - even Vegas can't match that.

Dan... I'll be private messaging you in a sec.

I'm a bit skeptical of $5k films, even when someone writes/directs/edits it all themselves. Can't attach name talent, for sure. But there are sometimes exceptions to that in horror and family films.

In the $40K to $100K range, however, there have been some VERY profitable films made recently, using limited locations, small crews, B-level actor cameos, and unique scripts.

Thanks for all the comments guys... Erik, your last comment is dead on. I'd love to pretty much just stay in the $50K range and do everything I can myself. However, finding investors in the mid-west is difficult. So I've had to fall back to self-funding. The big reason I made this post was to get advice on how I might jump up into that $50k range.

Oh and it's not just write/direct/edit... It's write/direct/edit/SPFX makeup/VFX/composer, and of course catering. One thing, you learn a lot.

Ignore the video quality (bad youtube compression) this is a scene form the C-Grade slasher I was talking about in the original post.

https://youtu.be/XHtoycDfal8

The best way to raise film money, of course, is to have a successful ROI track record on your past films, whether $5K or whatever. Doctors, dentists, attorneys, almost anyone will take a flyer on a guy who can make them $$$$, at least until your latest flick bombs. Guys like Vitaly and Dan M on this site can give you great advice, because they've been in the trenches, but raising funds is pretty much up to you. I've been very fortunate to have made ten small micros (five were kids Muppet-type films @ $12K each, only one a feature, most targeted at the educational market) which all did gang-buster business, so ROI is a huge plus for me. It takes hard work and lots of networking, Bill, but you're already well on your way!

Thanks Erik... My wife is a puppeteer, maybe I'm looking the wrong direction. Ha!

A lot of my problem was not really wanting to go deep into the business side of things, and I missed some awesome opportunities because of it. When we were making our first feature I shot David Latt from The Asylum an email, and to my surprise he called me and talked for an hour. A couple years later he sent me an invite to their studio anniversary party and I didn't go... Bad call.

I'm lucky enough to want to be a bottom feeder. I have another career. I want to hit and stay in that $20K to $50K range. Really would be happy if I could get things consistently made at half that. Not chasing fame or stars... just want to make my movies.

Vitaly. It's difficult to soar like an Eagle when you're surrounded by Turkeys. (But there is some scratch in the barn yard.)

Vitaly - I said "difficult"; not impossible. But now, this old bird flies a little a little lower and slower. Yes I've breathed that high altitude rarefied air and a lot more of that brown air along the LA 405 when I was cruzin in my Maserati Sebring. It was fun, I'm glad I did it, I learned a lot but I certainly don't want to do it again.

Glad to say none of what you guys are talking about is even remotely interesting to me. Success for me would be making the B movies I want to make, being able to pay all the bills, and getting to wear a T-shirt to work everyday. I'm a child of the direct to VHS movies of the 80s, and that type of genre market is where I want to snuggle into now.

Really just missing the contacts for the sales/distribution.

How about I just get out there and then you each buy me two drinks.

following.......

Napping...

Awesome! Congrats!

Cool discussion, but that's not No-Budget - that's $5K. We shot www.DoSomethingJake.com on $0, nothing! #ComingSoon https://dosomethingjake.wordpress.com/2017/05/02/extreme-uk-guerrilla-fi...

James,

Looks great. Good luck, can't wait to see the film. I would say the no-budget thing about our first feature as well, but it's more accurate to say it was shot out-of-pocket. We had the gear, and we bummed for the locations, etc. Still, when we sat down and really looked at what went into it all we had spent roughly $3,500 to $5,000. $1K on DVDs we had made to try to market it to distributors that we didn't need because it was picked up by the first one. I still have 600 DVDs in the basement, the distributor made their own.

Obviously no one here is talking bout Art or Oscars.

It is just product to put on shelves and fill airtime in some part of the world.

An informative and entertaining thread... thanks for posting everyone.

Dan M -Actually I'm thinkin' of shooting for an Oscar in the live action short category.

The DVD and Blue Ray market may be a unicorn soon, too, following in the path of Blockbuster and Hollywood Video stores... and soon Red Box.

Netflix and Amazon and all the OTT (Internet) subscription, ad-supported (AVOD) and free video platforms are revolutionizing our industry. So, stay focused on the VOD arena, to be sure. You can give it away - first episode - and hope people will sign up or PPV, there's Patreon - and many other similar platforms, aggregators who'll bundle yours with other genres, you can do this yourself on your own ecommerce site - or partner with Hulu or others.

The opportunities are burgeoning.

GOOD LUCK!

That's funny HH, I don't see any Red Box rental machines disappearing in my area. There are still vast areas of the US and the world not wired in any way to support streaming services.