How to Direct a Dirt Cheap First Indie Flick

So if you’re ready to finally take the step and make the great American movie, here are a few things to keep in mind…

Imagination, Not Money

By just renting out the equipment, you don’t even have to buy anything. How many movies have you seen, major Hollywood movies, that seem to take place entirely in a suburban household, or a hotel room, and it’s really, mainly, just people talking? These movies typically have budgets of several million dollars US. Why? Because studios don’t solve problems creatively, they just throw money at problems until they go away.

Write What You Have

In novels, you write what you know. For film, you write what you have. When you sign a seven figure contract, you can come up with all the crazy stuff you want, but for now, don’t write anything into your script unless you know how you’ll film it. This doesn’t mean that you can’t write a space opera, just that you’d better be ready to build a space station out of macaroni, silver spray paint and super glue. Of course, with cheap consumer grade CGI software, anyone can create Hollywood grade visuals.

Keep the Cast Small

You’ll find soon enough that building sets and getting props and setting up special effects is the easy part. In fact, with consumer grade CGI programs, you can create a big budget film entirely from your laptop… Unless you want to put some characters in the story. Getting actors is the hardest part of making a low or no-budget movie. Even getting your friends to help out can be impossible. The only people you can really rely on are the people who want to make the movie just as bad as you do, someone who helped you write the script or raise the funds to rent the stuff to make the movie with. If all else fails, get some fake mustaches and wigs and play all the characters yourself.

Do it For Fun

Most people don’t make much money on their first feature. In fact, most debut features done at the dirt cheap indie level don’t turn over a dime. So don’t do it for the money. Know that if you stick to it, if you make one movie and then another and then another, you probably will, eventually, earn some fame as a skilled director, but don’t do it for that. Do it because you love movies and wanted to make one of your own, do it so you can have, at the very least, a cool DVD on your shelf to commemorate your best-spent-summer ever.

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