Budget Analysis
With the advancement of film technology and the opening of the film market, film genres have gradually become more diverse. The big-budget and big-production blockbusters are still the main force in active theater chains. However, in recent years, many micro-budget films have also entered theaters, and even achieved high box office. According the research, there are three types of micro-budget movies, which are Art cinema, Cult movie and Experimental film. When I read through the script “Anyone there”, I think this script can be made into a cult movie. Cult films are films with bizarre themes, unusual styles and controversial. They are usually micro-budget and non-market-driven. In short, it is a kind of films that is not in the mainstream but is popular among a certain group of young people. I think the script “Anyone there” is matching the characteristic of cult movie — The plot is a bit scary, and the sudden disappearance of the Man at the end is also controversial. If I only analyze it based on the script, I think this script is very suitable for making a micro-budget movie. However, when I analyzed each scene, I think it will be challenging to shoot this script on a micro-budget. Firstly, Based on the scene one that I analyze, the Man is walking on a country road which without any cars and people. This means that there are no cars or people will be allowed into the shooting venue during the shoot. The director team need to block off the street and hire security guards to guard the entrance to prevent unsuspecting cars or people from entering the shooting venue. It will cost money to hire the security guards, and if the country road that we are filming on requires rent, so does the cost of renting the venue. Secondly, I think the cost of renting a manor is a high expense. Because the shooting location is not a small house or a small apartment, the size of the manor is large, which means that the rental fee of the venue will also increase. Moreover, such common manors with large areas are generally privately owned, used as wineries or other private properties, or are requisitioned by the government. These manor are generally not rented out as shooting venues. Most manor will be located far from the city, such as suburbs. If the filming location is too remote, the director team also needs to solve the accommodation problem for the actors and other staff, which will also be a lot of money. Thirdly,, Since the shooting time must be at dusk, because the lighting will be different after the time. If the shooting cannot be completed in one day, the cost of the street, the manor, and the staff’s accommodation and catering costs will increase exponentially. Fourthly, since the shooting time is at dusk and the lighting is relatively dark, he director team will need a lot of lights for lighting, so that the audience can clearly see the characters and the environment, which means they need lots of lighting props, it also costs more money. Overall, I think it’s going to be a bit of challenges to make this film on a micro-budget.
Creative Statement
As what I highlighting in Budget analyze, I think we need to make both practical and creative changes to make this script into a micro-budget movie.
The first element is the production design. In order to present the storyline described in the script, we need to recreate the scene mentioned in the script as closely as possible. The outfits of the Man are very common in life. Suit, pant and tie are almost necessary outfits in every man’s wardrobe. We can let actor wear his own clothes, which saves the cost of renting clothes. In this movie, we also need a lot of props, although these props are easy to get from life. The props that mentioned in the script, such as teddy bear, school workbook etc., they are very common and easily find in our life, so we can ask the staff to bring them from home. We can also make the props by ourselves. For example, the red velvet curtain. It is expensive to buy a real velvet curtain, so I think we can buy a red flannel to instead. It is cheaper than a velvet curtain. The other is the child blue bicycle, I think we can a find ready-made child bike. If we can’t find a blue bike, we can buy some blue paint to put on the bike, or put it on with blue stickers, which are much cheaper than buying a brand new blue bike.
The second element is location. As I mentioned in Budget analyze, the renting of manor is very expensive, and most of these manors are in remote areas, and the cost of accommodation and meals for the cast and crew is not a small expense. So I think, we can change the filming location to a house, the rent of the house will be cheaper than the manor, and the house will not be far away, if the filming cannot be completed in one day, the staff can live in their homes. A more ideal solution is that if someone in the shooting team is willing to borrow their own house as a shooting location for free, there will undoubtedly save a huge amount of renting expenses.
The third element is sound design. The film will feature a number of sound effects, such as the man’s shoutings, the squeak of a door opening, and the crash of a foot on the fuel tank etc., all of which can be recorded on-site with radio equipment. But it can be a bit difficult to create an echo of a man’s speech. I often find that when I’m talking on the phone in the toilet, the sound is echoed, so I think we can record the echo of the man’s speech in the toilet. In addition, in order to save the cost of copyright, all our sound effects can be recorded by ourselves, if there are some sounds that we can not record, we can download the sound effects on the free copyright website, which is undoubtedly a cost-saving method.
Reflection
Before I started doing the scene analysis, I read the script several times. Because I thought that I needed to understand what the script was trying to say so that I could analyze each scene better. Actually, I didn’t quite understand the “silence comes back” which written at the end of the script at first. I’m not sure if the man was killed, or the author wrote that the man disappeared in order to create a sense of mystery. But later I felt that each audience’s understanding of each movie is different, and there is no right or wrong, so I don’t have to worry about what the script wants to express. When I filling out the scene breakdown sheet, I didn’t know which scenes should be divided into a scene at first, but when I gradually analyzed the elements required for each scene, I gradually began to understand, I think there is no fixed answer to the breakdown of the scene, the important thing is let people can have a clear understanding of what needs to be prepared for each scene. Also, I realized a lot of things that I would not have noticed when I was watching a movie as an audience. For example, the crew have to block the road if they are shooting the scene of no car on the road. In the process of doing the budget analysis, I had a deeper understanding of the cost of making a movie, and also improve my ability to distinguish what is a micro-budget movie, which something that I hadn’t thought of as an audience. In the process of doing creative statement, I learned how to save the cost of making a movie to make a micro-budget movie. Through this assignment, I have a deeper understanding on making a micro-budget movie, know how to analyze each scene and how to analyze and save the budget of the movies.
Reference
“小成本电影_百度百科” 百度百科, viewed 6 April 2022, <https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%B0%8F%E6%88%90%E6%9C%AC%E7%94%B5%E5%BD%B1/9839621?fr=aladdin>.