I've worked on a lot of no-budget movies (no-budget in Hollywood terms is anything under $100k). I have dont feature films that cost as little as $30k. The trick of making a short cheap movie is to know what you're doing well enough to shoot the whole thing in a short period, like 1-2 weeks.<p>The $70/45 pound is bullshit. Even if you don't pay people (you can get away with this because everyone wants to be in movies), the rule is that you at least feed them and pay for their transport costs (bus tickets or gasoline). Unless you are exceptionally good at scheduling, you'll have them there for a full day which means feeding them twice.<p>I guarantee this thing cost at least $10,000 in food and expenses. What it probably means is the filmmaker spent $70 and scrounged up the rest from his parents and friends' parents. Even if you do home cooking, feeding and stumping up bus fares for an average of 20 people a day ain't cheap. I hate these kind of stories because when you're trying to raise money for a low-budget movie people say 'well X was made for $150', while many of your suppliers (particularly suppliers of locations, which you can't afford to build) hear 'movie' and think you're going to drop thousands per day.
It helps when you have friends just coming off the X-Men 3 production: "Most of the zombie make-up in the make-up artists' cases was inherited from other movies."
I'm always curious how they tabulate costs for this kind of movie. Why exactly were the crow bar and drinks included in the $70, and everything else not? The video camera, or the editing software, or the computer he edited on, or the time of the creator and actors, or even the actors make up and costumes, all cost money, it's just that they were donated or already owned.<p>If he just recalculated some of the expenses I'd imagine it could also be $0 or several thousand.
Agreed, the $70 estimate is very misleading. It doesn't include opportunity cost of capital (time), cost of education, his existing equipment, his friends connections etc. etc.<p>Also, I'd like to add: his opportunity cost is actually HUGE - 5 years earlier and he was not qualified enough (guessing - tied down with education, learning the ropes etc.), while 5 years later and he's too old to be doing this (pushing 40) and probably tied down with wife and kids.
Hollywood has a long <i>long</i> history of fudging the numbers on the true costs of movies. They use it for everything from simple tax evasion to huge complex schemes in order to deprive rights holders of royalties.<p>Calling it $70 as a publicity stunt is pretty benign.
I learned from a Media Studies course that distribution and promotion costs 100% of the cost of a movie. So a $30 mil movie costs another $30 mil to promote. Unless of course you get promotion by saying how much it cost!<p>[Additional] I loved the Hunt for Gollum and that was astonishing film making for the budget.
Certainly impressive, but I take issue with the statement that this film cost $70 -- is the creator's time worthless? If this film grosses $140, I doubt he'll be jumping in joy over a 100% profit.
How much of this is just buzz-creation? It is next to impossible to verify the $'s spent. However, 18 months of time + volunteers does have a high opportunity cost.