The Microbudget Filmmaker’s Guide to Stealing Locations
Stealing locations is a must-have skill in the world of DIY filmmaking. Even just a handful of shots in a great location can add to the production and aesthetic value of your film, expanding the scope of the cinematic world you’re creating.
With a bit of intelligent planning and simple procedure you can successfully steal almost any location you have in mind. Following are some principles and steps to get started…
Now that we’ve discussed our theories behind no-budget film production, it’s time to show you how we applied them in practice when producing our microbudget movie. Remember that each microbudget film production has a unique set of parameters and resources, so view this as a referential guide rather than gospel.
When producing a feature film for as little money as possible, it’s important to consider that not all shoot days are created equal. Like the concept of asymmetrical balance in art, you’ll get the highest production value and tell the most engaging story using a combination of scenes that vary in scope.
This is yet another instance in microbudget filmmaking where storytelling, artistry, logistics, and finance dovetail. By bringing the parameters of production into your story development process, you can find the optimal balance between the small scenes and more ambitious ones.
Modern films tend to favor spectacle at their story’s outset or around the plot climax, and if you want to do something extra in those scenes, you’ll have to find ways to do more with less in other scenes in your film. Just keep in mind, it might not always be an even trade. Sometimes you’ll have to shoot several smaller scenes to bring the energy and expenditures of the more ambitious ones into equilibrium with the rest of your film.
Don’t be wary that a series of small scenes will kill the momentum set by big ones. As we explained in Part 3 of our Screenwriting Series, intimate or “alone moment” scenes can actually make the audience feel the power of bigger scenes even more – through juxtaposition and contrast with the smaller ones.
When creating your story, it’s not so much about limiting the scope of your project, as it is not letting your no-budget production sink off balance. If you have a non-negotiable scene that’s super ambitious, and means one of your shoot days requires more equipment, more crew, and a couple dozen extras – then start thinking about a set of smaller scenes that require only the director, dp, and one actor. Even if the more ambitious scene takes a day and sucks up half of your assets, you know you can bring the production back into equilibrium by completing the smaller scenes more efficiently. The variation in the individual scenes (and the production elements that they require) can make your film work better on a whole.
Scheduling a no-budget film shoot can be tricky, because most scheduling formulas are based on an institutional model that has remained unchanged since the heyday of the studio era. The old models of production assume page-per-minute scripts, and shooting three pages per day – shoots that last 30 – 60 days.
But emerging microbudget filmmakers are increasingly less reliant on highly structured scripts or simple formulas, and almost none of us have the luxury of a shoot that stretches a month long or more. So how do you schedule your shoot based on three pages per day, when you might be shooting a story that’s completely improv - without any pages at all?
Scheduling is not the impossible (or tedious) task it seems, when you realize that logistics can be naturally occurring part of the creative process. Following are a few general guidelines and parameters to make no-budget film scheduling as painless as possible…
*NOTE: My paleo chili recipe has shown to be such a popular search that I have spun off my own paleo cooking blog – starting with the chili! Please CLICK HERE to visit.
Feeding the cast and crew is a concern for every microbudget producer. You want to treat everyone well with food that will keep them happy, energized, and feeling good…
But meals, even something as simple as a few sandwiches for lunch, can quickly get expensive. Say you have a cast & crew of 10 people and a 7-day shoot. At $7 or $8 a sandwich, you could spend over $500 to feed everyone on your shoot. Add the carb overload most restaurants will give you, and you’re faced with additional expense of declining productivity – the drag of the post-lunch coma.
Enter the slow-cooker to save the day.
These recipes will feed a cast & crew of about 10 people, and you can make them at a cost of under $3 per person (that’s a total of only $200 for our example shoot). Using the slow cooker is even easier than taking everyone’s lunch order. You set it up before you start shooting for the day, and six hours later, when you break for lunch, your meal is ready.
I love cooking. I probably love it more than filmmaking on some levels. Maybe on a lot of levels. At any rate, following the break, you’ll find some of my favorite custom slow cooker recipes. I am a paleo diet believer, and so these recipes are designed with the modern hunter-gatherer in mind. They’re full of nutrients and protein – and gluten free, to keep your crew running at full power, with no post-lunch coma.
Assembling a no budget film crew is one of the toughest tasks a microbudget filmmaker faces. If you’re fortunate enough to have production friends that you work with on a regular basis you have a head start on the process, but you also have to be aware of how to best optimize your production.
For most microbudget productions, a crew of about five people is ideal. A good basic setup is a director, dp, sound person, and two very saintly swing people (who can handle lighting, sound, take the occasional set photo, and don’t mind making a run for batteries). No matter how you crew up through, everyone you bring aboard should be willing to do anything on set at any moment it’s required. As Buckminster Fuller says “Specialization leads to extinction.” On a set with limited resources, that’s especially true. We’re not advocating chaos, where every person on set is tripping over each other to tell you why they think that light should go there. You still want to assemble a team where specific individuals are charged with making specific decisions.
However, an organization that’s a militaristic hierarchy of task performers will most likely slow you down in a no budget film production. To understand how to best assemble your microbudget crew, think of your on-set production time in two different functions…
Function 1 is setting the shot.
Function 2 is executing the shot.
During Function 1, anyone who has a free moment should be willing (and ideally technically capable of) helping someone who doesn’t. So the director might have to perform grip functions for a minute. The dp might help an actor get their lav on. And the actor might be resetting props.
During Function 2, the crew (and cast) focuses only on their assigned responsibility. The director watches performance, the dp watches the shot, and the sound person watches the levels.
In assembling your crew it’s important to consider the team and the collective emotional experience over any individual and their level of technical expertise. Your microbudget set is most likely going to be lacking some of the creature comforts or procedural certainties of a big budget production, but that can make the no-budget set a more rewarding experience for everyone involved. Make it a fun place to hang out. Don’t be blind to the fact that non-filmmaking friends and family might make for a better crew than the hotshot film guy complete with his own light kit that you found on craigslist.
In the spirit of evolution and collaboration, one of the things Todd and I have found most rewarding about microbudget filmmaking is co-directing. Just the same way that debate, open discussion, and differing viewpoints quickly lead to improvements in your story, they can also foster an improvement in on-set functionality. We’ve found that sharing directing duties unconsciously takes the tyranny out of the position and makes for a more open on-set environment. Big budget sets are about ownership. No budget sets are about kinship. Art is more than just an idea, it’s about creating a bond between the piece and the audience. Any way that you can bring that energy to your project will bring it closer to it’s ultimate potential.
It’s no secret that microbudget filmmakers need to maximize their resources when it comes to production. To do that, realize that resources don’t mean much when compared to the ability to be resourceful. Remember, filmmakers who seemingly have all the resources in the world often have to put up a fight to get ‘er done. For microbudget filmmakers, chasing after resources is a waste of energy that is better spent on getting the most out of what you have.
The first thing most anyone thinks about when it comes to filmmaking is the budget. At the microbudget level, the notion of budget is complicated. There’s a lot of gray area between what you could spend, what you should spend, and what you do spend. Every microbudget film is going to have a different set of resources, and a different way to deploy them. So while it’s difficult to say here’s the way to spend $1,000 bucks – we truly believe that anyone can make a film for $1,000.
The key is not about what specifically you spend your money on, but setting yourself up so that you’re efficient and effective with what you spend. Even though a lot of the help, equipment, or locations you’re getting might come free or dirt cheap, none are unlimited. Here are some parameters designed to get more from your production.
Create Your World in 6 Days (give or take) – If it works for a large contingent of true believers, there’s no reason it can’t work for your feature film. Designing a shoot that will last somewhere between 6 – 10 days is helpful in a few ways. First, though it does require dedication and friendship, it doesn’t require an insane commitment from your crew. Secondly, it can give you an advantage with rentals – most rental houses charge a 3-day week or a 1-day weekend. And finally, a short shoot can make it easier to break your production into even smaller blocks. Which brings us to the next point…
Work for the Weekend – Try to schedule your shoot over a few weekends. Generally, more of your cast, crew, and support will be available. Plus you can save money on equipment rentals.
Be Green – Often people think that being Green is more expensive, but creating cinema that’s conscientious can actually save you money.
• Find locations with natural light – Daylight looks better, and you’ll need less equipment. You still might need to augment and sculpt what the sun gives you with a lighting head or two. But you won’t be spending hours waiting on lighting changes, and that means more time spent shooting your story and finishing more scenes per day.
• Repurpose and Recycle – Use common items to sub in for grip gear or expendables. Really, it’s okay to use a piece of cardboard or a cookie sheet instead of a flag. Buy some $3 sheers at a thrift store instead of a $150 roll of 250 half-white. What you do on set stays on set – No one will know you used your 59Fifty over the top of the lens instead of a mattebox when they’re watching your film on screen.
• Waste makes Waste – Try to use non-disposable service items for craft and meals whenever you can. If you’re shooting in a residential environment or an office with a kitchen, use glasses and fill up from the faucet rather than spending money on (and creating waste with) bottled waters. Make coffee on set and use mugs rather than buying a box and a bunch of paper cups. Use silverware and plates from the kitchen instead of buying plastic from the store. You might have to do a few dishes for your host, but you can save a lot more money than you realize and you’ll help the planet too.
Your Vision – In approaching microbudget producing, it’s helpful to think of this overriding principle… Approach your vision not as what you imagine, but what you can see. Part of this is being realistic about what you have, and part of it means seeing your resources in the light of your resourcefulness.
Now that we’ve concluded our video series on writing and story development, you might be ready to start carefully crafting each word of your script – but one of the true advantages (and joys) of microbudget is that it allows for more spontaneous storytelling.
We want our films to evolve at all times, and for us that means we spend some time developing a story, so that we have a set of scenes that work together. However, we aren’t that concerned with specific dialogue or writing a script. Again, don’t think of filmmaking as a component process – writing (and rewriting and rewriting) a script, casting, rehearsing – try to bring all of these processes together as a whole, and you’ll find you can truly unleash the potential of your story. For us, this means not writing a script in a vacuum, rather letting our cast be active in the creation of the “script.”
Writing your story begins with the outline – and as soon as you know who your characters are, you should know who you want to cast. We couldn’t say it much better than Jim Jarmusch “I start with actors that I know personally or I know their work, and there are things about their work or their presence or their own personality that make a character, that exaggerates some qualities and suppresses other qualities. It’s always a real collaboration for me.”
Think about who you know who would be great for each part, write a few of lines that would sound perfect coming specifically from them, and then bring your actors in for a table read. Don’t use your rehearsals as a time blocked out for memorizing and determining the way people should read lines, but instead work on the beats of the story, and allow the actors to take authorship. Know and trust the people you’ve cast will augment your story in a unique way – Rehearsal will become much more than a time to practice, it will become a time to rewrite, revise, and make your story better.
Give your actors space to improv and create their own lines and motivations. Realize that writing and acting are very similar disciplines. They draw on actual raw emotional experiences of the artist, that are then re-interpreted, analyzed, and understood until they can be emoted again organically. The only difference is that a writer can sit around for days trying to figure out how to do it, while an actor often has to do it on the spot. We turn to Larry David for some wisdom…
When all is said and done you might decide to commit some of your rehearsal work to a script or you might not. Mike Leigh uses improv with the aim of developing a tight script. But we create a hybrid document that’s part script, part outline, and part random inspiration, like director Drake Doremus.
Many people view directing as specific and technical – deciding on blocking, line reads, and camera angles – but when you take the helm on set, approach it from the more expansive terms of directing the flow of the story.
There is a misconception that auteurs succeed by demonstrating brute despotic strength, when the reality is that auteurs find success only through understanding and believing in the strengths of the people they work with.
In part 3 of our screenwriting series, we’ll see that not all scenes and sequences function in a storytelling function. Surprisingly few scenes are essential for your audience to comprehend story, but the others aren’t unnecessary - they’re vital to the experience the audience has watching your film.
In good fun, my friend Dexter recently sent me a list of “Microbudget Screenwriting Tips” he came across while perusing the internet. There are several iterations of these lists floating around online. The screenwriting tips they offer are recycled from books devoted to low-budget filmmaking that were written a decade or two ago… When DSLRs were just twinkles in their Super 16 mm parents’ lenses.
Most Microbudget Screenwriting lists consist of a fairly lame set of limits, grounded by lack of ingenuity, and are topped off with an appeal to overdone genres.
While the creators of these lists might mean well, they assume outmoded models of filmmaking that ultimately lead to misguided advice.
Limit-based lists might be fine for writers who are seeking a cheapskate producer or unambitious director to take a script off their hands – but if you’re a true microbudget filmmaker, limiting lists are totally useless.
Rather than a set of specific pool rules, here is a list of wide-ranging foundations designed from the ground up for the new age of microbudget production. Understanding the symbiosis between the practical, artistic, and technical resources you have is key. Continue reading