I only dredged up a couple, I can give modern examples you like... Fatal Attraction and Cape Fear are on that list, and the action sequences in those are in the same league or lower, than the examples I gave.
Fatal Attraction 1987! 26 yrs ago! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093010/?ref_=sr_1
Cape Fear 1991! 22 yrs ago! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101540/?ref_=sr_1
QUIT CITING ANCIENT FILMS FOR MODERN PRODUCTION!
THEY HAVE NO, ZERO, NO RELEVANCE TO ANY PRICE METRIC!
What is the title of this thread?
"What are some techno thrillers shot for under $50K"
Now, if you want action or thriller
elements of ancient thrillers, then by all means - gopherit!
But when considering any price or cost of anything bullsh!t like 1992's 'El Mariachi' and 1972's 'Last House on The Left' it just don't mean sh!t.
And it's apparent that you don't really mean thriller at all.
You're repeatedly talking about trying to make an action movie.
In this third script of yours how many pages of action sequences are there?
Is there only one shoot out between parties?
Is there only one car chase?
Now, lettuce get back to the $50k hole in your bank account you wanna dig.
A. Do you honestly hope to get that money back in revenues? Yes? No?
Yes: How? How are you going to get WHO to give you more thand $50k for 'Action/Thriller Script #3'?
Gonna cold call some distributors? Gonna pick up a distributor on the film festival circuit? Gonna strike VOD gold?
No: Cool. You're free to spend your money any way you darn well please.
Does that $50k include marketing + promotion or just production?
Marketing + Production: Cool. So really it's $15-$20k for marketing + $25-30k for production.
Just Production: Super. You know you'll probably spend anywhere from half to equal to production to get enough people to know about your film to buy it because unless a MARKETING distributor picks it up no one but your six degrees of separation (with each degree precipitously dropping in interest) is going to even know about 'Action/Thriller Script #3'.
Unless, the answer to question A above was "No", in which case you're back to just a $50k hole in your bank account + a 90-110min monstrosity only 400 people will ever watch. Ever.
C. Now, for simplicity's sake let's consider spending that entire $50k on production.
Average feature is 90-110min long; the shorter the film the more you can spend per screen minute.
$50,000 Production Budget
/ 90-110min Run Time
= $555-454 per screen minute.
IDK where you plan on showing your film for distribution, but a cheapo $1M film has a production budget of $11k-9k per screen minute budget.
A (still) relatively cheapo $5M action thriller film has a production budget of $55-45k per screen minute budget.
What is it again you've got planned to spend per final edit screen minute? $454 to $555.
Wow.
F#ck me.
That's like asking a skinny kindergardener to go up against a pro football team in hand to hand combat.
Pfft. It'll be a GD massacre.
So, no.
Keep some silly effing perspective on just how much you can push your tech.
I'm gonna spitball guess it'll take you 50hrs of raw footage to collect enough material to edit down into a tight little 90min film.
Could be 30hrs.
Could be 100hrs.
Lettuce say you plan on doing all of your own writing, planning, organizing, scouting, permitting, video editing, color correction, color grading, audio editing, audio 3.0 mixing, and audio SFX wizardry.
You can honestly do probably half of your marketing and promotion.
And your time doesn't mean sh!t. You pay yourself nothing. You love this sh!t.
So, you gotta pay... who?
Cast & crew.
Locations & Permits.
Insurance.
Costumes & props.
Destroyables (because I know darn good and well you wanna tear up some sh!t that CGI and AE just can't do.)
Lettuce say it's reasonably going to take you a full 12-16hr day to collect just 2hrs of raw video, and you gotta collect roughly 50hrs of raw video = 25 working days = an easy four to six working shooting weeks, weather and schedules permitting.
(Could be as little as 15 working days. Could be as much as 50 days.)
Limbo time where no one's doing nothing due to weather and schedules doesn't count, so it could easily take two or three months to bag and tag production between pre- and post-production.
Lettuce say you're going to spend the whopping majority of that $50k across those magic 15-25-50 working days.
$45k non pre&post-production budget
/ 15-25-50 days
= $3k-1.8k-0.9k per day
Seriously?
You're going to spend almost two thousand dollars a day for twenty-five days across two or three months to shoot a film that has d@mn near no chance of going anywhere or doing anything?
For really?
Pig in a poke.
Total spec filmmaking.
Okay.
Proly NSFW:
http://image.spreadshirt.com/image-...0.png/fucking-nuts-women-s-t-shirt_design.png
Because for all of the goofy questions you ask at this forum I have serious doubts about your ability to organize this project or proficiently operate the equipment, and... Lord only knows how well you can edit for time and content, THEN color correct, THEN color grade, THEN edit audio, THEN add audio FX, because you've only shown a single scene of such that I can recall, but surely you can make a 3.0 audio mix as any monkey with opposable thumbs should be able to do that.
And then you gotta market and promote your film during their festival runs and during their time uploaded to any VOD service, otherwise it's just going to waste hard drive space.
Filmmaking is like parenting: getting knocked up, gestating, and delivering the baby is the EASY part! NOW what do you do?!
Have you done a budget breakdown similar to the $100k film budget from this post?
http://www.indietalk.com/showthread.php?p=264223#post264223
CAN a decent $50k film be made?
Yeah, I honestly believe it CAN be done.
Is it likely? No. Not really. Not at all really.
There's a giant effing no-man's-land between vacation money and several million dollars where it's just foolish to spend money on filmmaking.
God knows I've been hunting for that magical distribution outlet nirvana where 10¢ of effort reaps $10 in return, but "No", I haven't found it. Yet.
