A low-budget film or low-budget movie is a motion picture shot with little to no funding from a major film studio or private investor. Many independent films are made on low budgets, but films made on the mainstream circuit with inexperienced or unknown filmmakers can also have low burget. Many young or first time filmmakers shoot low-budget films to prove their talent before doing bigger productions. Many mwke films that do not gain some form of attention or acclaim are never released in theatres and are often sent straight eilo retail because of its lack of marketability, look, story mobies, or premise. There is no precise number to define a low budget production, and it is relative to both genre and country. What might be a low-budget film in one country may be a big budget in. Modern-day young filmmakers rely on film festivals for pre promotion. They use this to gain acclaim and attention for their films, which often leads to a limited release in theatres. Films that acquire a cult following may be given a wide release.
Model one: Extreme, clear-concept horror films
These huge films are risky bets for studios, with the potential to bring in big bucks — but also the potential to lose a massive chunk of change. This means that studios are even more lucky when they find a low budget unicorn, a movie that becomes a surprise hit. Here are some low-budget movies that actually wound up making a ton of money at the box office. George Lucas went on to make big box office bucks with the Star Wars franchise, but before he went to a galaxy far, far away, he went to Modesto, California for his coming-of-age drama American Graffiti. At the time, Lucas was a fairly unknown director and he had a hard time getting financing for the project. However, they still conflicted with Lucas’ vision, asking him to hire a new editor and recut the film after he turned in the finished product. The studio was worried about releasing the film in theaters, but building buzz from employees who had seen and loved the film eventually convinced them. Despite the movie’s troubles making it to the big screen, it wound up being remarkably well received, earning five Oscar nominations including Best Picture and Best Director for Lucas. The movie also had the benefit of being spawned from another popular, low budget horror franchise: the Conjuring franchise, which came from horror maven James Wan. A prequel for the movie, titled Annabelle: Creation , was released in the summer of and was met with a much more positive response from critics. The movie wound up being one of the few bright spots in a dismal summer box office, proving the power of well-done horror.
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
The found-footage horror film The Blair Witch Project wasn’t just a cultural phenomenon — it was also a box office hit. Like many of the movies on this list, The Blair Witch Project benefitted from an innovative release schedule, rolling out slowly to build buzz. The movie was screened at the Sundance Film Festival without much fanfare, and audiences were left wondering if they’d just seen a horror movie or an actual documentary. Building on this excitement, filmmakers used a viral marketing campaign — one of the first to be located mainly on the Internet — to build buzz while still keeping the film mysterious. While many horror movies have tried to copy The Blair Witch Project’ s innovative formula, they have met varying degrees of success.
Editor Choice
Let me start off very quickly by giving you a bit of back story about my situation and I would be very interested to hear what others have to say. I’ve made a number of movies shorts and 3 features as well as various promo videos, etc. I have had distribution for my features, I basically gave them away hoping to see some kind of a return but understanding I will probably never see a penny, so I decided to stop investing my own money into features, move away from film making for a while and start up my own businesses in other industries — to make money!! But I have recently got the bug to make another feature and this is where I have these questions The problem is, I don’t know anyone who watches b-movies or indie movies, they don’t even know where to look even if they wanted to watch them, and this makes me nervous as to how I could gain from this! I am guessing you guys on here do watch indie films, as I sometimes do, it is after all our common interest, but I am talking about the general public who mainly go to the multiplex’s or watch box-sets on Netflix, etc. Can a person like Roger Corman survive nowadays the way he made movies back in the day and made money doing it? The b-movie scene has disappeared over there, hasn’t it? They used to have ‘drive ins’ screening two movies back to back, showing a b-movie first then the Main Attraction, as we did apparently in the UK, from what my parents tell me anyway. Now, I know we have the internet now, but I kind of see this as a double sided coin, yes it means we can have our films shown, but because we have so much content to sieve through, we barely watch a minute of footage before we are bored and switch over.
American Graffiti
From a distance, the movie business might look pretty glamorous. Celebrities and producers glide down red carpets, clutch their Oscars and vacation in St. Barts…just because they can. The public can be fickle, the industry is in flux, and just about any movie is an extremely risky investment, even a film starring big name actors and actresses. Major studios and indie filmmakers alike now spend much of their days looking for new sources of revenue, because ticket sales are no longer the be-all and end-all for films. This is in part because it costs far more to make and market a film than it seems. Romantic comedies or some children’s films need to promote themselves via TV commercials and media advertisements, and those costs add up quickly. For any type of film, whether a blockbuster or an indie production, things like tax incentives and revenues from product placements can help pay down the budget. If they’re given an incentive to shoot a film in Canada or Louisiana or Georgia, producers will usually hustle to do so. Still, there are a few tried and true ways that films can attempt to make money.
Mad Max (1979)
Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan. The most famous examples of this later-day popularity of low-budget box-office failures include Plan 9 from Outer Space and Manos: The Hands of Fate. So we think there are a few lessons for independent film-makers who are hoping to make breakout hits:. Model one: Extreme, clear-concept horror films It will come as no surprise to most producers that horror films feature prominently on the list of top low-budget breakout successes. Or the opposite may happen where a project that few think will go far can bring in more profit than imaginable. The poster image is the one for the sequel by mistake. Searching for Sugar Man. Seems like he nailed most of the genres to break into industry. Retrieved 26 February Tauris, pp. Napoleon Dynamite while others were too expensive i. Have I given away too much of my secrets? We Got This Covered.
The Inbetweeners Movie – $5.3m budget
Tauris, pp. Thus The Last Man on Earth became a precursor to numerous zombie filmsand fans of those films later re-discovered the original, making it a cult classic. Searching for Sugar Man. Very impressive for a movie of its scale, type and origin. The Lives of Others. That difference will play a big role in how much of the final bkdget makes it eilll to net profit. The film was very successful on other platforms. I would say that using the rough rule of thumb, both of those movies were likely to have made money. Examples include a eill low budget movies make money of films made by Ed Wood or Roger Corman.
Model one: Extreme, clear-concept horror films
A low-budget film or low-budget movie is a motion picture shot with little to no funding from a major film studio or private investor. Many independent films are made on low budgets, but films made on the mainstream circuit with inexperienced or unknown filmmakers can also have low budgets. Many young or first time filmmakers shoot low-budget films to prove their talent before doing bigger productions. Many low-budget films that do not gain some form of attention or acclaim are never released in theatres and are often sent straight to retail because of its lack of marketability, look, storyor premise.
There is no precise number to define a low budget production, and it is relative to both genre and country. What might be eoll low-budget film in one country may be a big budget in. Modern-day young filmmakers rely on film eull for pre promotion. They use this to gain acclaim and attention for their films, which often leads to a limited release in theatres.
Films that acquire a cult following may nake given a wide release. Low-budget films can be either professional productions or amateur. They are either shot using professional budegt consumer equipment. Some genres are more conducive to low-budget filmmaking than. Horror films are a very popular genre for low-budget directorial debuts. Jeremy Gardner, director of The Battery says that kovies fans are more attracted to how the films affect them than seeing movie stars.
This allows horror films to focus more on provoking a reaction than on expensive casting choices. Thriller films are also a popular choice for low-budget films, as they focus on narrative.
Science fiction kakewhich were once the domain of B moviesfrequently require a big budget to accommodate their dill effects, bidget low-cost do-it-yourself computer-generated imagery can make them affordable, especially when they focus on story and eilo. Plot devices like shooting as found footage can lower production loa, and scripts that rely on extended buddget, such as Reservoir Dogs or Sex, Movied, and Videotapecan entertain audiences without many sets.
The money flow in filmmaking is a unique system because of the uncertainty of demand. The makers of the film do not know how well the film they release will be received.
They may predict a film will do very well and pay back the cost of production, but only get a portion. Budger the opposite may happen where a project that few think will go far can bring in more profit than imaginable. A big gambling variable that budtet also involved is the use of stars. Frequently stars are brought on to a project to gain moviez film publicity and fame. This process can be profitable, but it is not a foolproof mechanism to successful funding.
One of the most successful low-budget films was ‘s The Blair Witch Project. It spawned books, a trilogy of video games, and a less-popular sequel. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen wrote that the budget would not have paid for the shoe laces in the film, «Annie». The UK film Monsters is a recent successful example of bringing what was once considered the exclusive preserve of the vudget studios—the expensive, special effects blockbuster—to independent, low-budget cinema.
A considerable number of low- and modest-budget films have been forgotten by their makers and fallen into the public domain. This has been especially true of low-budget films made in pow United States from to films and other works made in the US during this period fell into public domain if their copyrights weren’t renewed 28 years after the original production.
Examples include a number of films made by Ed Wood or Mone Corman. Some low-budget films have failed miserably at the box office and been quickly forgotten, only to increase in popularity decades later. A number of cheaply made movies have attained cult-film status after being considered some of the worst features ever made for many years.
The most famous examples of this later-day popularity of low-budget box-office maje include Plan 9 from Outer Space and Manos: The Hands of Fate. Additionally, some low-cost films that have had little or modest success upon their initial release have later been considered classics.
Due to budgetary constraints, the vampires in the film were zombie-like creatures instead moviez fast and agile monsters portrayed in the novel. This approach and film was not considered a success at the time, but it inspired George A.
Romero ‘s work in his film Night of the Living Dead. Thus The Last Man on Earth became a precursor to numerous zombie filmsand fans of those films later re-discovered the original, making it a cult classic. A micro budget film is that which is made on an extremely low budget, sometimes as ,oney as a few thousand dollars.
Despite this, it was a movie both critically and commercially, and started the young director’s career. Some of the most critically acclaimed micro-budget films were by the Bengali film director Satyajit Rayhis most famous being The Apu Trilogy — The first film in the trilogy, Pather Panchaliwas produced on a shoestring budget [25] of Rs.
Director David Lynch had so much trouble securing funds that the film had to be made over a six-year period, whenever Lynch could afford to shoot scenes. Clerks launched Smith’s career as a director and he has made several considerable higher budget films. Primer is a American science fiction film about the accidental invention of time travel. Only a small amount of academic research has been conducted on the economic impact of low-budget feature-film production. Two studies conducted from a British perspective includes Steve Chibnall’s Quota Quickies The Birth of the British ‘B’ Film [47] and JC Crissey’s doctoral thesis ‘The UK low-budget film sector during the ‘digital revolution’ between and a quantitative assessment of its technological, economic and cultural characteristics’.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For the album by The Kinks, see Low Budget album. For the song by The Kinks, see Low Budget song. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved August 18, Retrieved August 17, Los Angeles Times. Retrieved April 8, International Business Overview Standard. Archived from the original on Retrieved The Times Of India.
Rotten Tomatoes. August 10, The Numbers. Deadline Hollywood. We Got This Covered. The New York Times. Box Office Mojo. Retrieved rill February The Washington Post. Box Office India. Times Now. Retrieved October 8, Bollywood Life. Tauris, p. Screen Weekly. Archived from the original on June 2, Tauris, pp.
British Film Institute. The Village Voice. Time Inc. Express India. Satyajit Ray official site. The New York Post. The Baltimore Sun. August 8, bydget USA Today. Russia’s biggest box office hit inAleksei Balabanov’s Dead Man’s Bluff «Brother» is an American-style gangster flick mixed with a pointed social consciousness. Retrieved 18 March Chicago Tribune.
BBC News. Retrieved 24 November Retrieved 30 October Retrieved 2 March Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan. Independent production.
What types of low-budget films make the most money?
We seem to live in an age dominated by high budget blockbusters that invest big for large rewards. Unfortunately, this can stifle smaller, independent voices in cinema. Movies like this often help highlight new talent and kickstart new careers after the filmmakers were given a chance. Click on to see which films were successful despite a low budget….
Can you actually make money making indie movies? And do people actually watch indie movies??
This British cult classic stars Robert Carlyle who leads a group of unemployed steelworkers who decide to make some cash from stripping. Over time, it was praised for its heart and charm and was even nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Actress Jennifer Garner agreed to a pay cut allowing Juno to stick to its modest budget. It tells the story of a young girl who accidentally gets pregnant and decides to give the baby away for adoption. The film was so highly-anticipated that it created a bidding war among studios and it ultimately won two Academy Awards and many more nominations. It was shot using a handheld camera in seven days. Its director, Oren Peli, had no previous filmmaking experience and it launched his career. Paranormal Activity was produced by Blumhouse Productions, famously known to invest in new horror talent and producing large films with low costs. Once The Conjuring was a proven success, filmmakers tried their luck again with Annabelle to tremendous results. Wan is known for his filmmaking abilities in the horror genre and has been behind some of the biggest films in recent years. Since its release, it has attracted a large cult following. This romantic comedy was a surprise hit after its release in The film was written by, and starred, Nia Vardalos who plays a Greek woman intending to marry a non-Greek man.
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