Like these films, but hate this indie budget math. The way to get to low number is to barter as much as possible and steal the rest. People still put the hours in, but nobody gets paid. Handful of key people get the ip and something for their reel. The rest get taken advance of. It’s like doing an open source project except end result is commercial product licensed to a company. By all means do films for cheap but at least pay people salary or give a piece of the ip.
This is a good point but there are counter-example(s).
What about Kevin Smith with Clerks? Yes he got the IP and ostensibly the $/career but he's also brought basically everyone involved in that film with him along for his ride and continues to give them work in sequels/podcasts/tv shows etc.
It can be done ethically but to your point it doesn't seem to often be the case.
But really, they helped a friend - or family member - make a movie. I would help a friend make a movie. And I'd be thrilled if he made it big. Granted, I have the luxury of having a steady job - and of not having movie making be my career. But still.
I mean, I get what you're saying. But let's look at Robert Rodriguez and the cast of El Mariachi. He put several of them in Desperado, and I bet they got paid working money for that.
Looking through the cast of El Mariachi, it looks to me like every single one of them who made any other movies, also made movies with Robert Rodriguez. It seems like if they wanted to act, Rodriguez helped them get work. I don't know that for sure, but that's what Googling the results looks like.
A friend of mine in high school made a terrible zombie movie on a budget of approximately $5. He asked me to be in a scene and I happily agreed, I didn't feel taken advantage of at all. We also got the cops called on us for a noise complaint (we were filming at midnightish at a trailhead near some homes) so we even got some fun memories out of it.
if that movie went on to be extremely successful you might feel differently though.
I have a friend who works on low budget films, and it's a struggle. The directors are usually passionate and put in a lot of work, but also get all the credit and rewards if it succeeds. There's a budget, but it's mostly spent on paying travel expenses for out of state actors or for props and equipment and it's taken very personally if any background person want to be paid. "You'd take away from the quality of the movie just for your personal benefit! how greedy!" And in general expecting people with much less stake in the film to be just as invested and willing to sacrifice as they are without any of the upside.
ah fair enough, idk your project, sounds like a fun time
just saying that people who are expected to put in significant hours to semiprofessional low budget movies sometimes feel exploited. if you don't for yours hell yeah
I get that dynamic and maybe it’s not great to look at one of the all-time most succesful indie productions as an example. Rodriquez really did a lot by himself in that one also. Maybe to clarify a bit what I take issue with is the culture of celebrating no-budget success stories. It’s not less work to make those films so in the end you do spend the work hours, you just leave them out of accounting as nobody got paid. It’s really sort of a accounting trick leaving out sweat-equity. In what other field would we celebrate creating commercial products that take years of collective effort for cheap by not paying anyone.
Maybe it shows that I work in the field and get asked to do these all the time. Sometimes I do them, but it’s just sponsoring promising talent.
It's more! That's part of what makes it impressive.
You can come at it from the perspective of "It's merely an accounting trick and slave labor" but I think that's missing it for what it is. Most art is created without an expected paycheck. Movies especially are collaborative and everyone involved in small indie projects with no budgets knew there were working for little to no pay. You think the actors, camera man, lighting and set guys, were all thinking they were going to make a bunch in the box office from Dark Star / Mariachi? Likely not. They probably were thinking they'd try their shot at exposure. Actors might get recognized and get a career out of it, or not. Film crew at least had something on their resume. It's not like the directors (Cameron, Rodriguez) were making any promises they couldn't keep.
Well, plus the $200,000 that Columbia Pictures spent for post-production to fix it up for release to actual movie theaters. Still an amazing achievement, of course.
Around 500k in today's dollars. I can not imagine a group of Adults raising this kind of Money with the expectation of no return, let alone a group of college kids. Shows you the privilege required to be able to make it.
I would guess only around .1 % of the US population would ever get this kind opportunity and we are one of the richest countries in the world.
Who paid for it?