How a Director Made a Film for $6000 & Got into a Major Film Festival

Step 1) Get prior experience
Step 2) Don't pay for anything
Step 3 ????
Step 4) Profit

Heh, interesting article but important to note that this was not a rookie first-timer getting lucky on his first script. Dude had all his ducks in a row before calling in earned favours & more. There's no substitute for experience and paying one's dues, as it were.

Movie looks good. Gonna have to check it out. :)
 
Zensteve said:
Rodriguez spent $7k on El Mariachi - the movie cost faaaaar more to bring up to an acceptable level to screen theatrically. It's not a $7k movie.
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99.9999% of low cost films have terrible sound, both production and post. A perfect example is "The Blair Witch Project" which required almost $1million of audio post work to bring it up to theatrical screening quality. They also put quite a bit into color correction if I remember correctly.
 
Zensteve said:
Rodriguez spent $7k on El Mariachi - the movie cost faaaaar more to bring up to an acceptable level to screen theatrically. It's not a $7k movie.
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That's what I've heard -

- However I feel it does not negate the achievement. Rodriguez put 7k in, the studio took it the rest of the way - because they saw the vital elements of a movie that would fly in the 7k creation

Today, the 7k of Primer/Mariachi could be put to purposes other than the celluloid they were shot on.. an amazing movie can be made by someone with the know-how and desire..
 
Alcove Audio said:
99.9999% of low cost films have terrible sound, both production and post. A perfect example is "The Blair Witch Project" which required almost $1million of audio post work to bring it up to theatrical screening quality. They also put quite a bit into color correction if I remember correctly.
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& that was what needed the big redo with El Mariachi.. the sound he recorded was non sync adr on a little tape recorder

- a little lacking
 
Sage Pictures said:
- However I feel it does not negate the achievement. Rodriguez put 7k in, the studio took it the rest of the way - because they saw the vital elements of a movie that would fly in the 7k creation

Today, the 7k of Primer/Mariachi could be put to purposes other than the celluloid they were shot on.. an amazing movie can be made by someone with the know-how and desire..
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, you can't mix and match and have it both ways!!

Either you think about technology of 10-20 years ago along with the market of 10-20 years ago (both in terms of the distributors and audience expectations) or, you think in terms of today's technology along with today's market. But what you can't do is think in terms of today's technology with the market of 10-20 years ago!

Even 10-20 years ago, films like El Mariachi and Blair Witch were incredibly rare exceptions, there's probably barely more than a handful examples of a studio taking an amateur film and pumping in the cash to turn it into a commercial product. More importantly though, the market has changed significantly in the last 5 years or so. Not only in terms of the costs of filmmaking but in terms of audience expectation and the wider economy. The strategies, risk assessment and investments of the studios/distributors has of course had to change in response and they no longer seem to invest in turning amateur films into commercially viable films. I know of no examples in the last 5 years or so of this occurring.

In other words, while it maybe interesting to cite El Mariachi and a few other such films purely from a film history perspective, I can't see how they are applicable to today's filmmaking world?

G
 
Sage Pictures said:
That's what I've heard -

- However I feel it does not negate the achievement. Rodriguez put 7k in, the studio took it the rest of the way - because they saw the vital elements of a movie that would fly in the 7k creation
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You are correct.

Unfortunately what way too many filmmakers take from that fact
is that audio isn't important. They figure that their movie is so good
that a studio will pick it up and spend hundreds of thousands or even
millions fixing their audio.

Of course we have to go back 22 years (when festivals and distribution
were very different than they are now) for examples of this, specific
phenomenon. And we have, what, four examples in 20 years?

Yep, it happens.
 
As an example of what people are talking about...

Several years ago, I knew some people involved in a small indie film that shot for a total budget of about 50K. It played in several of the major film festivals. (Not Sundance though. ) It did get picked up a known indie distributor and it had a very limited theatrical run: Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles and New York City. Then it hit On Demand, Netlix, Amazon all that.

They told me that the film needed an additional 30K of work to bring it up to theatrical standard. They didn't specify what was needed exactly.

But think about that. The movie needed over half of its original budget in addtional technical stuff.
 
Alcove Audio said:
99.9999% of low cost films have terrible sound, both production and post. A perfect example is "The Blair Witch Project" which required almost $1million of audio post work to bring it up to theatrical screening quality. They also put quite a bit into color correction if I remember correctly.
Click to expand...

That movie has theatrical quality sound? That surprises me
 
Its an existential thing;

You've got to wake up everyday and be grateful for the wonderful things in your life now...

And film from the joy of it
 
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Alcove Audio said:
99.9999% of low cost films have terrible sound, both production and post. A perfect example is "The Blair Witch Project" which required almost $1million of audio post work to bring it up to theatrical screening quality. They also put quite a bit into color correction if I remember correctly.
Click to expand...

mussonman said:
That movie has theatrical quality sound? That surprises me
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The entire soundtrack was rebuilt from scratch - completely ADRed, plus completely Foleyed and all the sound effects were recreated. If you remember, the premise was that the film was pieced together from found footage, so, although the sound design was very detailed it was mixed (mostly mono) to fit the found footage premise. Making it believable was harder than you think, since the tendency is to make the sound big and theatrical. It's actually a fairly impressive job.

YAnd you would not believe how bad the original sound was......
 
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