HUFFINGTON
06.17.12
CINEMA VÉRITÉ
making them.”
In some ways, making films
is easier than ever before.
Last year alone, Ed Burns
produced an entire feature
for $9,000 and Gena Rowlands starred in a movie that
was shot entirely on a cell
phone. But even with digital technology driving down
costs across the board, it’s no
small feat to make a feature
film for under $1 million.
A typical six-figure-budget
film will be shot over three
six-day weeks — 18 days in
all — with a handful of actors and between 12 and 20
crew members, all earning
the industry minimum of
$100 a day. Working with a
smaller crew and fewer locations can limit food, housing, and equipment rental
costs, and shooting on digital video instead of film can
save an additional $50,000
to $150,000. Schedules are
so tightly packed that a single setback can send ripples
throughout the production.
Producers, if they know
what they’re doing, don’t set
budgets so low arbitrarily.
Like other independents,
Knudsen and Van Hoy work
hard to gauge each film’s
earning potential, using foreign sales estimates as a
guide. (Foreign film markets
are more transparent – and
somewhat more reliable –
than domestic ones.) The
goal is to protect as much of
the investment as possible;
80 percent is covered by foreign sales estimates, another
15 to 20 by tax subsidies or
incentives. Whatever’s left
over has to be accepted as
pure risk by investors.
Unfortunately, the same
technological revolution that
has pushed down the costs
of production has also cratered the market for original
films, as viewers around the
world turn away from DVDs
in favor of a vast selection of
cheap or free entertainment
offerings presented on a bewildering array of platforms.
Unless they feature exploding
robots or are based on popular young-adult book franchises, most movies today
can’t drum up enough market
interest to justify budgets of
more than $5 million.
For industry veterans —