How many of you self-fund your first feature?

harmonica44 said:
Okay thanks. So how do you guys get your actors and crew to show up though? I am having that problem for my first short film, so how do you get it to happen for a feature? Especially if the script takes place in like three days. Then you have to shoot within the seasons. Finding a replacement actor who will show could take months, and by then it's winter, instead of summer, and the footage won't match, and more money to spend.
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If you're spending any amount of real money on a feature, that means you're paying your actors and shooting pretty consecutively. It's not "free time" at that point, rather a paying gig. People show up for work, and since it's work you can shoot 5 or 20 days straight if you want/need/can afford.

Granted, like any job if you're working 20 days straight it's nice to have a day or two off each week to rest, especially considering a normal shooting day is at least 12 hours, and the lower your budget the longer the day.
 
harmonica44 said:
Okay thanks. So how do you guys get your actors and crew to show up though? I am having that problem for my first short film, so how do you get it to happen for a feature? Especially if the script takes place in like three days. Then you have to shoot within the seasons. Finding a replacement actor who will show could take months, and by then it's winter, instead of summer, and the footage won't match, and more money to spend.

So what are some of these lowest common denominator movies you guys have made, to make money? I would like to see some to get an idea, of what those audiences like.
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I'm knocking on wood right now, but I have never had an actor bail on me in my entire career. In fact, on more than one occasion I've had actors show up even when they aren't feeling good and it's VERY obvious.

On our big fight scene, Justin Cone (plays Mouse in Superseeds) had fallen seriously ill and probably from our prior shoot through the middle of the night. It was earlier 2011, I think maybe February? So it was cold as HECK outside and there wasn't much we could do about it.

Well, on the second day he called me at like 3:00AM--and of course I was up prepping my brain for the mighty task of coordinating an four way fight scene, to let me know that he was sick as hell and would have to bow out. I could hear that he was ACTUALLY sick, so I asked one of the Producer's friends if he could double for him. Producer went to get wardrobe from J.C. and came back and told me he looked like he was seriously on the verge of death.

No problem, we had it covered, anyway. HOWEVER--

I think an hour into shooting, J.C. calls me and was like "am I too late?" -- this guy came out BACK in the cold, sick as all get out, to basically sit on the cold ground for a few hours until his lines/scene came up. A straight-up trooper, dude, and he was miserable but he rocked it still.

There were times when some of the actors really needed to bail but they did not, and I'll tell you why I think it's just never occurred:

Actors want to be a part of something awesome. We weren't paying our actors anywhere near enough to keep them on board, and they weren't contracted to stay. It was a very hectic, scattered, and unorganized shoot because of lack of experience and money, but every single one of them put in 100 percent to be there and be excited.

They aren't all concerned about money, creature comforts, so on and so forth. If you give them something that they can work with and be proud of, TRUST me, PLEASE HEED THIS... you will not have ANY actor that seriously wants to go somewhere bail on you.

Eight out of ten scenarios where actors bail? They don't like your material enough. My GF's a full time actress, not part time, full time. She always feeds me info on how Actors behave, work, think, so on and so forth and they're absolutely true.

One of those things is that if you don't have money, you'd better know how to shoot a nice image, and have a decent enough script that they can take parts of and pimp on a reel. If you don't, you are up poop creek without a paddle.
 
Kholi said:
This year we're going to shoot and complete a feature for 10K, also has VFX involved, but the main cast is half the size.

I'll probably shoot out a 90-105 page script in about 8 days, with two half days for quick pick up shots.

I need to spend no more than 5K on the actual production itself, and then 5K on post.

You're putting the cart before the horse: figure out what you're shooting first, then that informs the rest.
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I am curious about the math part of your budget:

If you have 8 crew members working 14 shooting days, in my calculations, you spend around 2K just to feed them (coffee and bevereges were not included im my calcualtion)

How do you make 10K work for you?

Do you mean to say that 10K budget you will spend on various expenses (equpment rental, gas, catering...) but those expenses do not include the acctual labor and work compensation, meaning the crew will work for free, right?
( Meaning they donate their work for your project or theiw invoice you with 100% discount :)


How much do you think the budget would be if all people involved would be payed according to some sort of industry standards?
 
Indigo said:
How much do you think the budget would be if all people involved would be payed according to some sort of industry standards?
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At my level, in most cases the pay at industry rates would be the same as they are getting paid now... no work = no pay. There would be no work, but I don't target working professional actors at this point either.

I look for actors who are at precisely the same point I am, just gearing up to make the leap from unpaid to paid. We understand that we have to do the work to build our respective reels with great footage to get the paid work in the near to mid-term future.

As mentioned before, I'm also in a market where there are little to no opportunities to get paid work at this point. Actors looking for reel footage are really hungry for work with a company with a track record of completing projects that look good, so they can put them in their reel proudly. Since this is how they're getting paid, the expectation is that we will provide them the footage (in some cases, even an edited reel for their time/efforts).

I never look at them as not getting paid, and they don't either. They are providing talent and time for me, I am providing projects for them, along with all of the time I've put into preproduction and will put into postproduction. This is currently a barter economy, both of us are rewarded for our efforts... we also both expect to move forward into paid work eventually.
 
I've always self-funded (music & movies) till this indiegogo thing.

The only thing I've ever asked for is the use of the contributors talents. If I do my job correctly, this of course benefits everyone.
 
Indigo said:
I am curious about the math part of your budget:

If you have 8 crew members working 14 shooting days, in my calculations, you spend around 2K just to feed them (coffee and bevereges were not included im my calcualtion)

How do you make 10K work for you?

Do you mean to say that 10K budget you will spend on various expenses (equpment rental, gas, catering...) but those expenses do not include the acctual labor and work compensation, meaning the crew will work for free, right?
( Meaning they donate their work for your project or theiw invoice you with 100% discount :)
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I make 10K work for me because I've been doing this professionally (read: for money) long enough to know what I need and what I do not. So your calculations are the calculations for your reality, not my reality.

Why would I need to rent any equipment?

Why would I need eight (8) crew members?

How much do you think the budget would be if all people involved would be payed according to some sort of industry standards?
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What does it matter? Budget is an arbitrary number to begin with, and industry standard is for union gigs.

Edit: And that probably sounded snotty, it's always silly when filmmakers project their realities unto others. Truth? You are not that filmmaker, and each of us are bound by our own realities when it comes to this; sad, but true.
 
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Kholi said:
I'm knocking on wood right now, but I have never had an actor bail on me in my entire career. In fact, on more than one occasion I've had actors show up even when they aren't feeling good and it's VERY obvious.

On our big fight scene, Justin Cone (plays Mouse in Superseeds) had fallen seriously ill and probably from our prior shoot through the middle of the night. It was earlier 2011, I think maybe February? So it was cold as HECK outside and there wasn't much we could do about it.

Well, on the second day he called me at like 3:00AM--and of course I was up prepping my brain for the mighty task of coordinating an four way fight scene, to let me know that he was sick as hell and would have to bow out. I could hear that he was ACTUALLY sick, so I asked one of the Producer's friends if he could double for him. Producer went to get wardrobe from J.C. and came back and told me he looked like he was seriously on the verge of death.

No problem, we had it covered, anyway. HOWEVER--

I think an hour into shooting, J.C. calls me and was like "am I too late?" -- this guy came out BACK in the cold, sick as all get out, to basically sit on the cold ground for a few hours until his lines/scene came up. A straight-up trooper, dude, and he was miserable but he rocked it still.

There were times when some of the actors really needed to bail but they did not, and I'll tell you why I think it's just never occurred:

Actors want to be a part of something awesome. We weren't paying our actors anywhere near enough to keep them on board, and they weren't contracted to stay. It was a very hectic, scattered, and unorganized shoot because of lack of experience and money, but every single one of them put in 100 percent to be there and be excited.

They aren't all concerned about money, creature comforts, so on and so forth. If you give them something that they can work with and be proud of, TRUST me, PLEASE HEED THIS... you will not have ANY actor that seriously wants to go somewhere bail on you.

Eight out of ten scenarios where actors bail? They don't like your material enough. My GF's a full time actress, not part time, full time. She always feeds me info on how Actors behave, work, think, so on and so forth and they're absolutely true.

One of those things is that if you don't have money, you'd better know how to shoot a nice image, and have a decent enough script that they can take parts of and pimp on a reel. If you don't, you are up poop creek without a paddle.
Click to expand...

Yeah but a lot of you said I should shoot a lowest common denominator film as my first in order to make money. How am I going to get people excited enough to my script, to commit to it, if it's a lowest common denominator one?
 
harmonica44 said:
Yeah but a lot of you said I should shoot a lowest common denominator film as my first in order to make money. How am I going to get people excited enough to my script, to commit to it, if it's a lowest common denominator one?
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You can still have a decent mainstream script.
 
I'm self-funding my first feature by syphoning off a bit of my paycheck every month. It's been slow going, but I'm close to being able to start production. I'll be paying my actor a total of 10K, and have spent the last year slowly collecting the equipment I need.

(It helps that the script is specifically targeted at a super low budget, using as much of what I already have as possible.)
 
Okay thanks. I was talking to a friend of mine and she says she used to be on a funding board, and that they would only fund films that were more original and a lot of the jury quickly dismissed cliched formulaic movies. Could this be why a lot of people don't get funding, cause their material is too generic? She also says she is applying for funding for her feature, but she only made two short films, so I wonder if that's enough, since most self fund their first.
 
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