Sometimes this comes in the form of tongue-in-cheek comments like, “exposure doesn’t pay the bills,” or more aggressive stances like, “if you work for free, you’re an idiot.” And sometimes, it’s a misguided generalization like, “when you work for free, you devalue everything that filmmakers work so hard for.”

If you’re one of the folks who write those comments, I just want to say that I totally get it. Filmmaking is your livelihood, and it’s insulting when people ask for valuable work for free.

However, I just ask that you stick with me here, because I’m going to make a case for why all of us who genuinely love filmmaking should occasionally work for free and pursue projects which will require us to ask for unpaid help.

Again, not everyone will agree with the stance I take, but it’s important to me that the people who are interested in making films they actually care about aren’t scared away from asking for help just because the the internet seems to have an antagonistic attitude towards free work.

So let’s get started.

The case for making no-budget films

In the last two articles on this site, I’ve painted a pretty definitive word-picture about my stance on no-budget filmmaking. In the first one, I made my case for why filmmaking doesn’t have to be treated as a business if you don’t want to treat it that way. And in the second, I talked about what it means to make films that matter, and why we should always strive for that.

If you haven’t read those two articles, I highly recommend that you do so before continuing on with this one. They’re cornerstone pieces for this site, and they laid the foundation for everything I’m going to write going forward.