Making Indie Films

Begging your friends and family and offering them nothing in return is not always the best idea. Family can get mad and things will never be the same between you when they realize that your film isn’t starring Tom Cruise (oops…). The best way to safeguard against anger on the part of your family is to offer investments, or shares of your film. Darren Aronofsky () funded his film Pi by asking his family and friends for $100 dollar donations, and if the film made a certain amount of profit, they would get their $100 back, plus $50 interest. This may seem like a bad idea right now considering that you have no idea of how much your movie will make, or even if it will make money. Just remember, if your film doesn’t make money then you don’t need to return the $100. There’s a bright side to everything!

Next time we will be looking at fundraising.

One of the major problems that plagues independent film makers is raising money for their films. In order to make the money to make El Mariachi Robert Rodriguez enrolled himself as a guinea pig for one month. He made $7,000. The budget of his film, $7,000.

Many filmmakers have cooked up hair brained schemes to raise the money, from selling body parts (not really…hopefully) to opening lemonade stands. How will you raise yours?

The first, and most commonly used plan is asking. If you tell your family and friends that you are making a film, they will go into a trance, pull out their wallets, and fill your hands full of cash. It pretty much works like that. You need to have a few copies of your screenplay at hand so you can let them read it before they decide to take the plunge, if they are so inclined. After you tell your friends, and they tell their friends, you should be prepared to start your film.

This works best on budgets under $20,000, unless you have a rich uncle.

Keifer