How To Make Your First Feature Film

I made a feature film for £4000. I also made a web series for £30,000, which I ended up cutting into a feature-length pilot (so I’m counting it as a feature). I’ve already written lengthy posts about the making of both. But for this post I’m going to talk in general terms about how to proceed and what I learned.

When I first decided I was going to make my first feature film, I heard and read a lot of conflicting advice. For someone starting out, it can be hard to clarify in your mind the best route ahead.

Searching online can turn up some dubious results. For example, I just glanced at this article in IndieWire, How to Make Your First Feature Film for $5,000. Sounds promising, but then you scroll down to see he recommends you pay your cast and crew $100 a day.

But hang on… if you shoot for 21 days, $5000 will buy you 2 crew members, with $800 left for everything else. And then the writer recommends you hire your camera rather than buy it. Well, punching that into my calculator, I make that $38 a day for camera hire (you can rent a Canon 50D for that). But then your $5000 budget is spent.

So you would have $0 for cast, travel, food, makeup, props, lights, lenses, locations and so on. But I guess it ranks high in Google searches because it’s written in IndieWire? Either that, or there just aren’t too many good articles on the subject.

Make the numbers add up

First rule of indie film budgeting (or any filmmaking, or any budgeting, for that matter) is: make sure your numbers add up.

First Feature Film Model 1: “Pay As You Film” Open-Ended Shoot Duration

Now, for my first film I didn’t need to add up my budget, because I had an open-ended shoot time. I took Christopher Nolan’s first film Following as a production model. This involved shooting scenes when locations and cast became available.

Each shoot period lasted less than 4 days, sometimes we’d shoot only for an hour or two to pick up a scene. The first location covered quite a bit of the script, so we shot there for 4 days consecutively. After that, we might film one evening on a Tuesday night, for example. We also had 3 days in a friend’s flat in London.

A day here, a day there, with days or even weeks between.

Advantages

Getting locations for free becomes easier when you’re not shooting everything in one 21 day (or more) shoot. Also, cast and crew are more able to volunteer their time when the shoot fits around their day job or other work. Whereas, asking someone to commit to 21 days or more for expenses only is a lot harder.

You can use the time between mini shoots to prepare for the next one. Added to that, prepping for a mini shoot is much easier than prepping a longer shoot. As well, footage filmed so far can be edited in the time between. This allows you to discover any pickups needed or unusable audio, while your cast are still around.

Another advantage is being able to fund each mini shoot period as you go along, rather than needing a larger sum from the beginning of production. So this enabled me to pay as we filmed and save up any money needed as I carried on my day job, in between.

Personally, I enjoyed this method as it allowed me to give extra thought and care to each individual scene and mini shoot. Whereas, filming the 2nd feature over 21 days meant we had to quickly motor through everything to make sure we got it done.

Disadvantages

Asking cast (mainly) to commit to filming over months or even years (in some cases) is something of a risk. Famously, David Lynch shot his first film Eraserhead over several years and the lead actor had to keep his distinctive hairstyle for that entire time. Similarly, in Following the lead actor had to change hairstyle midway through filming, as he was cast in another production. Nolan’s solution was to write that hair change into the story so it was part of the plot.

There’s less of an issue with crew, because if someone can’t make the next shoot, you can always replace them. But with lead cast that’s not possible.

Obviously, the main disadvantage is that the film takes far longer to shoot. Therefore, you’ll be required to commit more of your life to filming if you choose this way.

Another disadvantage is that you’ll be shooting guerilla style, which places you further from the industry you might be trying to make a break into. Film industry folk rather than being impressed by your feats, might in fact look down on your project, be upset by your breaking of the rules and undercutting professionals, or simply dismiss you as an amatuer.

First Feature Film Model 2: Fixed Shooting Date

This way of filming is the more traditional method. For this you will need all your shooting budget in the bank ready to spend in the weeks before shooting begins. Many people advocate the “credit card” method of funding, in which case rather than money in the bank you will need enough credit available. Disclaimer: I certainly don’t advise borrowing more money than you can afford to pay back.

In my example, we raised £30,000 using Kickstarter. Yana and I then worked very hard making sure our numbers added up. In the final calculation made after filming was complete and everyone we promised to pay was paid, we went a small amount over budget.

I reduced the cost of filming by making several schedules. For example, if we had shot the film going at 2 pages per day, the shoot would have taken much longer. Shooting at 8 pages per day would have been shorter (and therefore cheaper) but would have been tough to keep to. So I settled for 5 pages per day, which gave us a 21 day (3 week) shooting period.

Advantages

The obvious advantage of this traditional method is the time required to film is far shorter. Securing professional, working cast and crew is much easier as they’re unlikely to be able to commit to an open-ended schedule. In addition, you build a cohesive team where everyone is mostly focused on the project for the duration of the shoot.

You learn to make films in the “real world”. Most films are made this way, so it makes sense to learn how to do it. The industry does not advocate or get involved in guerilla filmmaking methods, too often. So, by making a film in a way the industry approves, you’ve notched your belt, so to speak.

Disadvantages

Personally, the main downside to this method was that it put far more pressure on me. Being writer, director and producer means you have to cover a lot of ground. And after we lost our sound recordist, I ended up recording sound as well.

If we’d been shooting using the open ended method, losing the sound recordist wouldn’t have been such a problem. Because we would have time to recruit new crew members for each mini-shoot, if needed.

We didn’t quite get our numbers right

Despite Yana and I working hard to meet our budget, in hindsight a few errors were made in spending. They didn’t cost us the project but made things a little more difficult. The small errors were basically down to inexperience.

Our first mistake was to pay the cast too much. Although this made one member of the cast very happy when I told him (“Wow that’s great! Cast usually get less than crew!”). When we set out to cast the film, I had no real idea what we should pay. But our casting director said £100 per day was a fair rate.

As we decided to cast the film before we launched the kickstarter, this ment this £100/day rate was advertised everywhere. Cast were signed up at that rate and we decided to meet our promises. But then, when we came to hire crew, again I had no real idea what we should offer. By chance, our DoP helped us out.

From volunteers to paid crew – learning curve

Both Yana and I made a first feature film with almost non-existent budgets. While mine cost £4000 (including buying the kit), Yana’s cost £100. This is only possible if locations are free and everyone volunteers their time.

So, now we had a bigger budget, Yana and I imagined this would be a small step up the production ladder. Rather than volunteer cast and virtually no crew, we thought this would be a case of adding a DoP and a sound recordist and a few bits of extra equipment.

But on meeting our DoP for the first time he enquired about wages. Yana knew him through a colleague who had made another micro-budget feature with him. But before we could say anything, the DoP came out with, “I suppose everyone will be on the minimum wage.”

The minimum wage in the UK at the time was about £67 per day. Both Yana and I quickly nodded our agreement to this suggestion. And that’s how we came to pay the cast more than the crew.

Just a little more kit, you say?

Our next lesson was that there turned out to be no small step up from zero budget filmmaking. The DoP insisted on having 2 assistants and enough lighting kit to fill a van. For the DoP, this was the absolute bare-minimum amount of equipment you could ever possibly shoot a film with.

This was not, in my mind, s small step up from what I shot my first film with. Essentially, I could fit all the kit and costume into 2 holdall bags which I could carry by myself. I often made it to set via a bus or underground train, with everything we needed to film.

But for this production, not only did we have 3 camera crew to pay, we also had to hire all that kit plus a van for 3 weeks. Then, when we came to enlist a sound recordist, again they wanted at least 1 assistant and more kit such as wireless lavaliers and a mixer.

But now there was no budget left for the sound department. At least, not enough to afford all that. Plus, as a sound recordist myself I knew it was possible to do a good job with the kit I already owned from the last film. So I dug my heels in and insisted we find someone who thought the same.

First Feature Film: Simple vs Complicated

Both Yana and I naively believed paying cast and crew would make the filmmaking process simpler, as having trained professionals would obviously do a better job. I mean, better than me and my camcorder, or Yana’s director and his Canon 5D Mk2.

Turns out, it doesn’t quite work like that. The reason being, the industry doesn’t work like that. Professional filmmakers have what they see as certain “standards”. Each department only looks at their side of the equation, and doesn’t care if there’s no money other departments.

Whereas, seeing it from an overall perspective, it was clear to me that spending too much on camera crew and kit would hurt the production overall. If I could shoot a film on my camcorder without a crew and get it into a B-list German festival, then we could certainly do better with a dedicated DoP, a slightly better camera and a couple of lights.

But it seems professional crew do not think like this. Having said that, I’m sure there are crew who are more flexible. But they probably take longer to find. As we had set ourselves a very tight date to start shooting, we didn’t have months to find more flexible crew.

So, for this reason, shooting a film with no crew over year turned out to be a far simpler process. It also felt more creative to me, as with a smaller production there’s more time to think about the story. The final film might be less polished, but in my experience it has a greater chance of being more rewarding.

Low Budget Film Kit List

If you choose the fixed shooting date method of filming, you might end up hiring “lots” (depending on your point of view!) of equipment. First, the hired crew members will make a list of what they want. Then it’s up to you and/or the producer to find this kit for the best possible hire price.

Make sure the hire stores know you are working with a tiny budget. Plead, beg, grovel, send flowers, promise to take their dogs for a walk… basically do anything you can to get that hire cost down.

For our Patrons we offer access to various filmmaking documents, including a Pitch Deck, Schedules, release forms and so on. I have today added the kit hire quotes we received during the prep of Kosmos (the fixed shooting date feature pilot).

Certainly, before our DoP made these lists, I had no real idea of what kit might be requested for making a first feature film. So I’m sure I would have appreciated the knowledge beforehand so we could have been more prepared for the costs.

Patrons can find those documents via this link. We really appreciate all our supporters who help us maintain this website and festival as a resource for all filmmakers just starting out.