Classes

The Pinch: Producing A Micro-Budget Feature Film

 
I’m nearing completion on a micro-budget feature film called The Pinch which I wrote, directed, and produced. During the process of producing this film, I learned many lessons. So I decided to do this webinar to help anyone who’s thinking about shooting a micro-budget film.

During this webinar you will learn…

How To Write A Screenplay That Can Be Shot On A Micro-Budget

The screenplay is the blueprint for your entire film. This is the single biggest tool you have to keeping your budget under control. There are some obvious things to avoid like large crowd scenes and expensive locations, but there are also many things that you should also avoid which aren’t nearly as intuitive. I’ll talk about these items in the webinar. There are also some things that look expensive but are fairly cheap and easy to do and can really boost production value, so I’ll run through those items, as well. You want to write a script which gives you the most production value for the least amount of money, and I’m going to help you do that.

Raising Money For Your Film

This is the most difficult part of the process, by far. Unfortunately, there isn’t any magic bullet here that I can teach you. However, I will explain exactly how I raised the money for my film and also talk about some of the big lessons I’ve learned from colleagues who have raised significant amounts of money for their films. I ran a successful Kickstarter campaign for The Pinch, so I’ll talk about that in great detail. I also had some additional investors in The Pinch, so I’ll talk about how I was able to convince them to put money into the project.

Pre-Production, Production, and Post-Production

I will run through the entire process of producing this film, from pre-production all the way through to post-production. There are a million potential pitfalls, many of which I fell into, and hopefully with the help of this webinar you can avoid some of those same pitfalls.

I will talk about budget in great detail. I’ll go through my own budget line by line so you can see exactly how I spent the money that I had.

I will talk about hiring people. Shooting a movie takes a lot of people, and finding and hiring the right people is essential if you hope to make a good film. And it’s not always easy finding people who are willing to work for cheap or ‘deferred pay.’ I’ll tell you how I did it for The Pinch.

During production you’re going to need a million things, from a camera to lights to worker’s comp insurance. I’ll tell you exactly what I did and what you can do, too, to take care of all of these production necessaries.

When you first go into post-production it can seem complicated and very technical. Now that I’ve been through it, hopefully I can dispel some of this mystery and educate you on how professional level post-production works. I’ll go through the entire post-production process: editing, the dialogue edit, sound design and foley, color correction, music, score, the final mix, and eventually outputting your finished film.

Who is this webinar for?

Anyone who is looking to produce a micro-budget film should get tremendous value out of this webinar. I’ve been through the process and am happy to share my experiences.

Any screenwriter who wants to understand micro-budget production better. There is a big market for screenplays that can be shot on a micro-budget, so understanding how it all works will help you write micro-budget scripts better even if you don’t want to produce them yourself.

A good portion of this webinar will be a Q+A and no questions will go unanswered.

Class Details

This class already took place and you can purchase access to the recorded version of the webinar by going here:

The Pinch: Producing A Micro-Budget Feature Film Webinar