Hello, my name is Eric Thornett and I'm the President of Piranha Pictures. I was sitting in my house the other day, thinking about many things. It's a good idea to do this when you make movies. Just sit back and think about things that are important. So I thought about many things for the better part of an hour, and I was just getting ready to put the pistol to my head and pull the trigger when I got a call from Frank Prather, who runs Hollywood Badass. He said that he liked my film 23 HOURS and wanted to know if I would write something for his site about how to make low-budget movies in general, and how I make them in particular. I said sure, and we argued over how much he would pay me, and I threatened to shoot him, and we came to an acceptable amount.

So now for your pleasure/education/torture, here are the steps of how to make a low-budget movie.

First, have no money. Check!

Second, you need a story. For this step, you could do two things. You could spend lots of time coming up with an original story and characters, but be warned; that takes awhile, and it's hard. It's much easier to rip off a bunch of other movies, call it an homage, and you're ready to go!

Now in order to shoot your movie, you'll need some equipment. You can't shoot in 35mm film unless you've got some real money or you saw some rich guy do something bad and have evidence of it, in which case you can get some real money. So you probably need to go with either 16mm film or digital video. If you're a real hardcore underground film guy, you could use Super-8, but then you'll stay underground. Trust me, I know this. I made a film in Super-8, and this is what I always would hear:

DISTRIBUTION GUY- It's great! One of the best indie films I've ever seen!

ME- Thanks! Do you want to distribute it?

DISTRIBUTION GUY- No.

So which would I recommend between the 16mm film and digital? Well, film sure is nice, but it's a difficult medium. If you're lazy you'll use digital video. You can see exactly what you're getting on set, and you can record your sound onto the tape and not have to use a separate recording device and later sync everything back up. Don't be fooled by the hype and how it's better than film, and how video makers say it's superior to film. Anyone who shoots DV does so because it's cheap and easy. So now it's DV all the way for me!

Now you've got everything you need to make a movie. Except…wait for it…you need actors! So where do you get them? You could either try to get professional actors who do this as a passion or your friends. Professionals want things. Like money. And encouragement. Your friends will do it for free, but then they'll remind you about the favor they did when it's time to move their sofa bed out of their apartment building on the 14th floor. Have you ever moved one of those sofa beds? They're heavy! It's not like a regular couch you know. It's full of metal springs and a frame, and it hurts your back. Plus they're not even comfortable to sleep on. Man, don't get me started on sofa beds.

Oh yeah, where were we? That's right, actors. I usually like to use a combination of friends and regular actors. Basically, it's best to have friends who can act. You can tell if they can act by their personality. I can meet someone and usually know within a few minutes about how good they'll be, without a reading. I very rarely hold readings unless it's a person I don't really know. And I like to write parts for specific actors to tailor things for them. The best part about writing things specifically for your friends is, let's say you have a friend who you know is afraid of worms. So you can write a scene where he gets a jar of worms dumped down his shirt. When he asks why he has to do it, just shake your head solemnly and say that it's in the script. It's fun!

Now for the time consuming part: the shooting and editing. My shoots tend to take awhile, as my movies are fairly large in scale, with lots of action scenes and sets. But if you have a nice little script about two people locked in a closet for the whole movie, I bet you could shoot that in a day or two. Make sure one of them's a killer though, so the movie will be a thriller. People like thrillers.

And then the movie is done and you can have a big party and invite everyone in it and your friends, and then submit it to festivals but it probably won't get in any of them, and then no distributor wants to put it out, and then your mourn the fact that you just spent a year of your life making a movie and now you have no social life or girlfriend so you just sit in a corner eating spiders until you die.

 

THE END

 

Eric Thornett is the President of Piranha Pictures and his latest film 23 HOURS actually did indeed make it to some festivals, including Slamdance. He is currently working on a large-scale kung fu science fiction movie, and eating spiders.