Micro-budget horror films vs. microbudget action films.

[Nate North]

Well us newcomers trying to break in have got to start small. I was hoping to win audiences over with a compelling script and sequences of terror and suspenseful violence of survival, rather than pyrotechnics and higher budget. I was in inspired by El Mariachi, but the only microbudget action film that seemed to do as well, was that one. Plus with todays technology, you can beat El Mariachi on a microbudget. Are there any more examples of microbudget done just as well as a good serious micro horror film?

Probably the best story of all time about starting from nothing and making it is Sam Raimi.

He went door to door across 3 states, selling shares of his 1 million dollar film "Evil Dead" (3.5 million in adjusted 2011 dollars)

it was successful, got a bigger sequel, then an even bigger one, all of which were great.

30 years later, he has directed some of the largest Hollywood movies in history.

As far as having to start somewhere, I understand. You are small, so start small. Your goal as a director is perfection. So achieve perfection for 30 seconds. Do that until people are paying you, beating a path to your door to see 30 seconds of your footage. Then start escalating to the best of your ability. If they won't watch 30 seconds of your footage, they won't watch 90 minutes.

 

[rockerrockstar]

I am sick of Zombie movies. I think they are so un original. I am also pretty much tired of vampire stuff too. If you are going to make one make it good. Otherwise please come up with something more original. I feel it is a big waste of my time trying to watch these low budget indie zombie movies they are most of the time horrible. There is only really three zombie movies I liked. There were zombie land, shawn of the dead, and the crazies. As far as vampire stuff I am into buffy the vampire slayer, blade, dusk tell dawn (the first one only).

I love the series Supernatural it is a great show and has elements of horror and humor.

Other horror stuff that was cool was hell raiser the first several movies, Final Destination the original, Night Mare on Elm Street, Aliens, and predator.

I would be more interested in a action movie even though it probably would be more difficult to do then a horror movie. I would think doing a movie like Die Hard the original would not be too hard now days with after effects. The whole thing is done in a building.

As far as fight scenes you could take lessons from a instructor on how to do movie fights. Movie fights are different than actual fights there are safety concerns. Depending on how you place the camera you don't need to actually near punching each other to make it look like you are. I went to one of my networking groups and saw a demostration on movie fighting and it was pretty cool. There is a compete art to it.

You could hire a stunt man to do the car crash scenes too after modifying some cars for safety. Maybe to a crash scene on some private land to avoid the red tape.



As far as car crash scenes I have heard you can out source that stuff to some people in a foreign country and they can do it for you cheaper.

I think with After effect we can do now days that a low budget action flick is not out of the question if your willing to learn how to do after effects and maybe get some video copilot tutorials and elements.

 

[Kholi]

Microbudget movies are a mistake in general. I've never seen a microbudget movie in my entire life that I actually liked (counting release features only)

Maybe "I'm gonna get you Sucka" wasn't a 100 million dollar film, but it wasn't 5 grand either.

Whoever came up with the idea that you could put together a feature film for less money than a Hank Willams cover band was looking at their wallet and not at the screen.

Maybe Red Dwarf is an exception, but it's not actually a movie, and that was 30 years ago.

A reality tv show costs over 50k an episode these days, I certainly wouldn't watch "The Bachelor: the movie"

Following - Chris Nolan : nano budget
Primer - Shane Carruth: nano budget

That's two right there that I'd put my money on.

Saying nano or micro is a mistake is kind of ridiculous, man. Most of the people we admire started with a micro budget feature whether you saw it or not.

 

[rockerrockstar]

As far as having to start somewhere, I understand. You are small, so start small. Your goal as a director is perfection. So achieve perfection for 30 seconds. Do that until people are paying you, beating a path to your door to see 30 seconds of your footage. Then start escalating to the best of your ability. If they won't watch 30 seconds of your footage, they won't watch 90 minutes.

Sounds like a great idea.

Probably the best story of all time about starting from nothing and making it is Sam Raimi.

He went door to door across 3 states, selling shares of his 1 million dollar film "Evil Dead" (3.5 million in adjusted 2011 dollars)

it was successful, got a bigger sequel, then an even bigger one, all of which were great.

30 years later, he has directed some of the largest Hollywood movies in history..

Great story. I did not know about the door to door thing to make his first movie. Pretty cool.

 

[rockerrockstar]

This thread made me remember a dream I had about vampires last night. Here it goes. I dreamed I was in a college town and went to a bar. In the bar something strange was going on where they were pairing guys and girls together for sex. They were like do you want her or her. Then I go her. Then later I try to change my mind to pick a different girl then they say you can't. then I go to leave and then I notice they are vampires as I sneek out. Then I think wow I could have been prey. Then I decide to destroy the place they are in. I see this weird power thing and try to blow it up thinking that if I did that it would blow up the bar and kill the vampires. Strange. I think the power thing was a tesla coil. This could have been similar to a vampire sorority party or something like that.

There you go my trippy vampire story for you. Anyone want to make a short about it go for it.

 

[harmonica44]

I am sick of Zombie movies. I think they are so un original. I am also pretty much tired of vampire stuff too. If you are going to make one make it good. Otherwise please come up with something more original. I feel it is a big waste of my time trying to watch these low budget indie zombie movies they are most of the time horrible. There is only really three zombie movies I liked. There were zombie land, shawn of the dead, and the crazies. As far as vampire stuff I am into buffy the vampire slayer, blade, dusk tell dawn (the first one only).

I love the series Supernatural it is a great show and has elements of horror and humor.

Other horror stuff that was cool was hell raiser the first several movies, Final Destination the original, Night Mare on Elm Street, Aliens, and predator.

I would be more interested in a action movie even though it probably would be more difficult to do then a horror movie. I would think doing a movie like Die Hard the original would not be too hard now days with after effects. The whole thing is done in a building.

As far as fight scenes you could take lessons from a instructor on how to do movie fights. Movie fights are different than actual fights there are safety concerns. Depending on how you place the camera you don't need to actually near punching each other to make it look like you are. I went to one of my networking groups and saw a demostration on movie fighting and it was pretty cool. There is a compete art to it.

You could hire a stunt man to do the car crash scenes too after modifying some cars for safety. Maybe to a crash scene on some private land to avoid the red tape.



As far as car crash scenes I have heard you can out source that stuff to some people in a foreign country and they can do it for you cheaper.

I think with After effect we can do now days that a low budget action flick is not out of the question if your willing to learn how to do after effects and maybe get some video copilot tutorials and elements.

I asked a couple of my friends and they too said they would rather see a low budget action since low budget horror has become so cliched. But that doesn't mean it will apply to everyone. So many want to do horror though for a first feature, it seems from posts on here. Where I live there are two other guys I know who have a feature written to be there first, and they both chose horror as well.

What CGI cars for a car chase? Me and CGI student are working on one now. Plus with CGI you can flip a car how you want to. With a real car, you run the risk of flipping it the wrong way, in which case you need to buy a new car for the scene! A lot of action fans complain about how movies like 2 Fast 2 Furious had CGI cars. However since that movie was a multi-million dollar one, and the one I wanna make a micro, would action fans therefore be more forgiving, with much more limited resources?

Perhaps I could source it out to a foreign country, I haven't heard of that before. The risk though is that you don't know if they are directing the chase how you want it exactly.

 

[TheNoob]

^^ Haha outsource movie scenes.

 

[SinEater]

I don't think you comprehend the time and skill it will take to create even a semi realistic CGI car chase scene.

 

[harpsichoid]

What separates horror films is imagination, not budget. All the evidence you need for that is in the American remakes of foreign horror films that cost about 50 times as much and are nowhere near as good.

 

[Alcove Audio]

would action fans therefore be more forgiving, with much more limited resources?

Audiences are not forgiving; they expect "Hollywood" quality at every turn, or at least good TV quality.

Certain genres, like horror, have a built in audience, so they may be a bit forgiving, but they are more like addicts who'll take any fix they can get. But forget trying to do micro-budget action, it comes off as looking very fake and cheesy; so unless you are going for a laugh - or a groan - forget about it.

Good films are all about story and character identification; and that's much harder to do than an action fest, no matter what the budget.

BTW, there may be a plethora of horror flicks out there, but a very small percentage make any money at all, much less large profit.

 

[rayw]

What separates horror films is imagination, not budget. All the evidence you need for that is in the American remakes of foreign horror films that cost about 50 times as much and are nowhere near as good.

AAAAMEN!

My personal recent notable horrible US abomination:
Swedish : Let the Right One In - 29M Kr = US$4.5M
American : Let Me In - $20M

I'm cringing at how The Wood is going to bugger it's remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
Swedish : The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - $13M
American : The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - $100M (gasp!)


I'm groaning with recalcitrance. Groaaaaaannnnn...



Additional reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English-language_films_based_on_foreign-language_films

 

[rockerrockstar]

Yeah I hate action movies like 2 Fast 2 Furious where they have fake action from cgi cars. But who knows if you are just making a short well I guess you probalby would not care. But for a movie that you want to make money from then maybe it is a problem. I like real stunts when ever possible. If it is something you can only do in CGI then if you can make it look good then try it.

Here is a funny video of a failed video attempt at a car crash. It says it was remote controlled. Not sure because it did not work too well. Ha.... http://www.livevideo.com/video/D18FB57CB09C46E18F8A54221F130D50/real-remote-controlled-car-cra.aspx

Microbudget thread on car crash
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=311362

 

[JoshL]

I think a key component is knowing and loving the genre you are working in. A low-budget horror b-movie made by someone who watches and loves low-budget horror b-movies is going to be better than one by someone who doesn't like, or understand said movies. The same goes for romance, or comedy or action. If you don't like horror, what makes you think you could make a good one? If you want to make a horror film as a practice/learning project, do yourself a favor and find someone who loves horror to write it. They will understand the genre better than you, as someone who does not care for horror.

As I said the last time you asked this question, harm, horror fans are more forgiving of low-budget productions. I'd personally rather watch a no budget horror film than a well made action film. That doesn't mean that the fans have no opinions, or would rather watch a bad low-budget horror versus a good one. But if you don't like country music, how can you tell what's a good country song versus a bad one?

I think an important question to ask yourself is do you want to a) be a director for hire, able to take on any project or b) make the sort of movies you want to watch. If a, stepping outside your comfort zone is a good idea, though, again, find someone else to do the writing. If b, then make the movie you want to regardless of ANYTHING else.

 

[NIGHTFLYER]

To say it's IMPOSSIBLE to ever do a micro budget action film is kind of discouraging those who actually may want to do one. It's POSSIBLE all depends on how you go about it.. There are stock footage of some pretty effective explosions and such which look realistic. I agree about car chases and such. Yes for fight scenes it is imperative to have a fight stunt choregrapher in order to make the fights look realistic. Also for those sequences if possible to have 2 or three cameras shooting these sequences that way you can capture more angles and such, with out having the strain of just one camera doing everything.

 

[harmonica44]

What separates horror films is imagination, not budget. All the evidence you need for that is in the American remakes of foreign horror films that cost about 50 times as much and are nowhere near as good.

If you can have imagination for horror, then why can't you have imagination for action? I guess I can see why. Some of the action scenes I have planned are left up to the imagination. For example, I want to have a police chase, where the villains that the cops are chasing, have police radios. Now the cops have air support, and are setting up road blocks. Because of the low budget though, you can't see the air support looking for the villains, and road blocks. The character point of view it is told from is the cop in command, at the station, who is listening in on the radios and giving orders. Almost the whole chase is told from his point of view.

Then from the running villains point of view, all we see is the police radio he's holding and he can hear which ways the cops are coming from, and he evades them. We don't see cop cars or SWAT. And you mostly just hear the helicopter coming closer. Perhaps I can have a CGI chopper the villain sees from for away, so it doesn't look to fake, or I can just have one villain point out the chopper to another, as they are hiding.

This is an example of, leaving action up to the imagination, similar to low budget horror. Is this possibly good?

 

[SinEater]

If you can have imagination for horror, then why can't you have imagination for action? I guess I can see why. Some of the action scenes I have planned are left up to the imagination. For example, I want to have a police chase, where the villains that the cops are chasing, have police radios. Now the cops have air support, and are setting up road blocks. Because of the low budget though, you can't see the air support looking for the villains, and road blocks. The character point of view it is told from is the cop in command, at the station, who is listening in on the radios and giving orders. Almost the whole chase is told from his point of view.

Then from the running villains point of view, all we see is the police radio he's holding and he can hear which ways the cops are coming from, and he evades them. We don't see cop cars or SWAT. And you mostly just hear the helicopter coming closer. Perhaps I can have a CGI chopper the villain sees from for away, so it doesn't look to fake, or I can just have one villain point out the chopper to another, as they are hiding.

This is an example of, leaving action up to the imagination, similar to low budget horror. Is this possibly good?

Seeing a guy sit in his office listening to a chase through the radio is going to be extremely boring.

 

[TheNoob]

AAAAMEN!

My personal recent notable horrible US abomination:
Swedish : Let the Right One In - 29M Kr = US$4.5M
American : Let Me In - $20M

I'm cringing at how The Wood is going to bugger it's remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
Swedish : The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - $13M
American : The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - $100M (gasp!)


I'm groaning with recalcitrance. Groaaaaaannnnn...




Additional reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English-language_films_based_on_foreign-language_films

You guys have to keep in mind that the cost of living in a different country might be completely different, earn less, spend less etc... Like in Mexico, you may get paid less at a job, but everything is less expensive than in the US.

If you can have imagination for horror, then why can't you have imagination for action? I guess I can see why. Some of the action scenes I have planned are left up to the imagination. For example, I want to have a police chase, where the villains that the cops are chasing, have police radios. Now the cops have air support, and are setting up road blocks. Because of the low budget though, you can't see the air support looking for the villains, and road blocks. The character point of view it is told from is the cop in command, at the station, who is listening in on the radios and giving orders. Almost the whole chase is told from his point of view.

Then from the running villains point of view, all we see is the police radio he's holding and he can hear which ways the cops are coming from, and he evades them. We don't see cop cars or SWAT. And you mostly just hear the helicopter coming closer. Perhaps I can have a CGI chopper the villain sees from for away, so it doesn't look to fake, or I can just have one villain point out the chopper to another, as they are hiding.

This is an example of, leaving action up to the imagination, similar to low budget horror. Is this possibly good?

This thread is going nowhere. Every point has been expressed and stated, and now they are just being restated.

Just make a film. Practice.

 

[NIGHTFLYER]

Make the film you want to do don't let no one discourage you. Who knows maybe you might do for microbudget action as to what PARANORMAL ACTIVITY did for microbudget horror. Strongly recomended are these two books.

ACTION FILMMAKING... By Nathan Masters.

DV REBELS GUIDE: An All Digital Approach To Making Killer Action Movies On The Cheap. .. By Stu Maschwitz.

 

[rockerrockstar]

Watch the Robert Rodriguez film school videos on youtube that will give you low budget action movie ideas.

 

[chilipie]

You guys have to keep in mind that the cost of living in a different country might be completely different, earn less, spend less etc... Like in Mexico, you may get paid less at a job, but everything is less expensive than in the US.

That is something to bear in mind, but it's certainly not the case in Sweden.