No-Budget Filmmaking: Work with What You've Got

The first film I ever worked on was not my own, but rather my friend's. It was an ambitious project, a period piece with over eighty speaking parts, just as many locations, numerous trick shots and 150+ pages of script. It took over six years to complete. Oh, and one more thing: it stunk.

The problem was one of ambition. His vision was too big and unwieldy for him to pull it off. It's hard enough finding six good actors willing to work for no pay, but eighty? And so he settled for a couple of good actors and seventy-eight bad ones. He didn't have too many problems with locations, because he had the legendary "gift of gab". He was able to sell people on his vision, on his ambition, on the greatness of his masterpiece-to-be.

The only thing he couldn't quite do was pull it off. And there's nothing more painful to watch than to watch somebody try and try and reach and fall short. A failed masterpiece is the worst kind of bad movie.

But, you say, what if he had pulled it off? Now that would be something to see! And I'll concede the point: an awesome movie can be an awe-inspiring thing. Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Pulp Fiction, The Lord of the Rings, Faces, Barry Lyndon, The Seven Samurai. The thought that your film might one day be mentioned in the same breath as these is what inspires many of us to start a page with the words, INT.-BEDROOM-EVENING.

But one's ambitions can too often elude one's grasp: take the notorious example of Heaven's Gate. In that case, Michael Cimino had money-- lots of money-- and he still fell flat on his face. If you don't have money, the chances of failure are even greater.

As the title of this article indicates, my advice is to work within your means. Cater your project to what you have, and eliminate the impact of the things you don't.

For example: let's say you have six actors of reasonable quality that you know you can depend on. Don't waste them in cameos and bit parts; make them the leads. In fact, eliminate as many small parts-- CASHIER # 2 and PASSER-BY # 1 and the like-- as you can. When you create a part, create it specifically for an actor or an actress that you know you can get. Don't write any parts that you don't have actors for.

But if you have two actors and four actresses, don't just write two men and four women: write specific men and specific women that your specific actors and specific actresses can play.

If your best friend Rodney is as about as funny as a dilapidated brick, you probably shouldn't cast him like he was a young Jim Carrey; if Rachel is nervous and has a lot of tics, she's probably not your best bet for a seductress. And if Joe has the memory of a slug, for goodness sake, don't give him a six-page monologue.

If you know of a couple of houses that you can shoot in, write with those couple of houses in mind. If you don't know anyone with a huge spiral staircase, then don't write in a huge spiral staircase!

"But Tom," you protest. "My film needs to have a huge spiral staircase! It's integral to the meaning of the entire film!"

Let me take a moment, then, to introduce you to the handiest five words in any writer or director's repertoire: "Do we really need this?"

Ninety-nine percent of the time, the answer to that question is, "No, we don't really need this. We can do this instead, or heck, we can just cut it out entirely."

Now, I'm sure some of you are bristling at this, and your line of thinking goes something like this: "Well, we don't really need anything at all, do we? We don't really need to have sets or props or, heck, even actors. You could go right on down the line, stripping everything away, until there's nothing left."

And in response, I direct you back to my premise: work with what you've got. That's where you draw the line. If you have six actors, then draw the line there; if you have four, than draw it at four. The same thing goes for locations, props, and just about everything else that filmmaking entails.

I would hardly hold Kevin Smith up as a paragon of the independent filmmaking spirit, but one thing he did do with his first film, Clerks., was work within his means. He worked at a convenience/video store, and so the film takes place at a convenience/video store. When he didn't have enough actors to play all the parts, he delegated several bit parts to the same actor. He didn't have the money or the expertise for a beautiful-looking film, and so he went grainy with it: and what's more, he worked with the graininess instead of against it.

Or, to put it another way: since he couldn't have any really beautiful or breathtaking shots, he didn't write any in his script. He didn't write any scenes that depended on physical beauty or visual sharpness, but instead played to his strengths-- namely, dialogue.

Many a beginning filmmaker take the wrong lesson from this example, and they write reams of somewhat-witty dialogue that their actors can't possibly handle. It's hard to watch actors struggling through pop-culture monologues that aren't that funny to begin with.

The lesson of Clerks. is not to write a talky film. It's to play to your strengths and to minimize your weaknesses.

It's to work with what you've got.