So when you are just starting to make films they say you should beg, borrow and steal. I would advise against the stealing part but you get the point.
So how much did it cost to shoot our short film like Keep The Change, which was just under 7 minutes long, had one actor and was shot over 3 nights. Well lets work it out.
Actor - Free
We have worked with Liam for years, one day we will be able to pay for his acting services, but for this project he just wanted to be involved.
Crew - Free
We had a crew of 4, me, Richard, Ed and Opie who like Liam just helped us out for the fun of it. It's not about how many crew members you have, its about having the right type of people and we defiantly had that with Ed and Opie.
Food Supplies - £20
When you can not pay your cast and crew, make sure you feed them. It really doesn't cost that much, but its very much appropriated when shooting. Tea and coffees are a good starts.
Equipment - Free
Yes we could of spent money renting the best camera equipment, but we just used what we had.
Locations - Free
An interesting location really helps to achieve the film look, for us when writing we already had the locations in mind that would cost us nothing.
Travel Cost - £20
Petrol costs money.
Props - £5.75
For the film we need certain props to help tell the story and dress the set, we made a video about it here. Some of them cost money and others we already had or we borrowed.
Pizza - £5
Since the main character is a pizza delivery driver we needed to buy a pizza for certain shots in the film. We did eat the pizza, it is pizza after all.
Costume - £26
We had to make sure the character looked like a pizza delivery driver, so we had to design and order the costume. This was necessary for the film.
Clapper Board - £13
We have decided to us a new clapper board for each film, so one day we can have a whole wall of clapper boards from the films we have made.
Editing - Free
We edited the film so that was free.
Music - £6
For your film you can get free music, cheap music, and expensive music.
These all range in quality, luckily we found something in the cheap music section that worked well for the film.
So it cost us £95.75 to make the film, not a lot when you think about it. The thing that did cost us the most was time, a lot of time went in planing, shooting and editing the film. What value do you put on your time when your making a film, well for us we do it because we love making films.
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