Feature length movies can be made for ten thousand dollars. However, they are more likely to be turn out better and be a success if you pay about five to ten times as much. There are exceptions of course, and some movies costing only 10 to 20 thousand dollars to make have made millions of dollars. If you want to make a movie on a low budget there are many things to consider besides just getting it made cheaply if you want to be a success. This article explains different ways that movies can be made at low cost, and the pros and cons to the different methods. It is primarily for someone with a screenplay or a movie idea who wants to see their idea come to life.
If you have a movie script or movie idea that you want made into a movie, it can be done, with difficulty, or with relative ease. And it can be completed under budget, or over budget.
To illustrate what I mean, imagine you have a house and you want to add two rooms to it and you have no building experience, but you know what you want. If you have enough money, you can explain what you want to an experienced builder, and have them do it all. If you want to save money, you may think about doing some of the work yourself. You might think, well I have a table saw and I can measure and I can pound nails, so I'll do the framing, and hire someone to finish it. When the finishing crew comes to finish it, they may find the rooms are a bit off square, and not quite level, and for them to finish it it will take lots of extra work because the basics were not done right. The total cost can then be more than if you had hired experts right from the start.
The same applies to making a movie. You have your screenplay, and maybe a camera and some of the equipment, and you know some people who will volunteer, and you have taken some workshops on operating the camera and practiced a bit. You shoot your movie, and then hand it to an editor to finish it. Like with the addition to the house, if the basics were not done right, the editor will have a lot more work to make it presentable, and may in fact not be able to make it totally professional looking because of errors that were made during shooting. It would have been cheaper to get expert help right at the start, and to only concentrate on directing and telling your story.
You might think well, what else can I do? I don't have the money to hire a big professional crew to make it. The answer is to find a very small professional crew, who are expert at shooting low-budget movies to do it. The cost will likely be less than if you tried to "save money" by doing jobs you were not expert at. You can still do a lot of the work yourself, but restrict yourself for the most part to doing the simple no brainer jobs, and let the experts do their thing. You can find filmmakers who have the experience and know how to bring your story to life, and all you have to do is find them. After all, what you really want is a nicely finished, professional looking movie that tells your story. Search, and you will find the people that you need, and be much happier in the long run.