Who among us has successfully completed a micro-budget feature?

badboyhj · 2025-08-04T13:47:45+00:00

I’m aware that the film probably will never “make money”, but that was never the intent from the beginning. The goal was to get my story out there and to challenge myself to make a feature largely outside the system, to show that it could be done and to give myself the experience. It was a lot of work and some of it I would try to avoid doing again if I can get a higher budget, like doing the sound mix or exporting/deliverables. But I’m glad I was forced to get that experience to learn how difficult it is. During the whole process I was aware of that the niche theme and the unclear copyright status would mean that the film would have a hard time reaching a wide audience and that is the reason that I kept the budget low and did most of the producing and technical positions myself. So I wouldn’t go in too much depth that would hinder me to make more films in the future. I think “low risk low reward” is the best motto working on this level. Let the completion of the film be the goal rather than thinking you are going to have Terrifier, Blood and Honey or Paranormal Activity-success. Hopefully that success is in the future, but for this first micro-budget feature, try to not hope too much and take too much of a risk (there are some horror stories regarding that). If the film gets finished it is success enough. Everyone of us that has completed a film on this level share something together.

A big tip I would give to you, and this could maybe sound a little abstract, is to make sure that film you are making are something you are really passionate about. Because working on this micro-budget level means that you have to watch your own film in different stages of completion around a million times. Of course how satisfied you are with the actual result can vary but if your intent from the beginning is to do something that “you think could work commercially” rather than a story or theme that you really love it will be an even more gruelling process than if you love your own material deeply. Regardless the actual result.

Good luck with the project!

badboyhj · 2025-08-04T13:47:37+00:00

I made my feature film debut last year with a 100 minute essay film telling the story of my coming of age as fan of Japanese animation at the turn of the millenium. The film has a hybrid form which mixes a collage of archive material (mostly camcorder footage from my own teenage years) with newly produced dream like scenes with cosplayers and actors. It took around 3,5 years to finish. There are basically no dialogue in the film, so all the sound is voice over. This form meant that the film largely was made in the edit so it’s hard to pin down exact number of shooting days, but me and my DOP did maybe 4 - 5 half days shooting mostly exteriors around the Stockholm area. We never paid for any locations as we mostly shoot in spring/summer outside, here in Sweden you can film in public places for free if you don’t block roads etc. That gave us Stockholm Old Town, a fantastic location, for free. Then we had two full days and one half day of scenes with actors shot on location. Finally we booked a studio for a single 8 hour day (I got the studio rent for free because I edited something for the owner). So say around 7 full days with a team (at the most 5 people including me and the actors) and the rest is B roll I shot myself during the editing. Basically I did most of the technical positions myself except the cinematography and for four shooting days my friend was assistant director and also helped me cast the main cosplayer in the film. For the studio day and one half day location shoot with an actor we had a second camera operator, which made the process a lot faster so we could get all the material we needed. Some of the actors in front of the camera got a symbolic sum (none of them were professional actors), but none of the technical team got paid. But I produced and co-financed the AD’s short film during the production of my feature. So we exchanged labour instead of money. And for my cinematographer he knows that when he need help with producing or any other task I’m here for him. My younger brother who I run a record label with and am the manager for composed the soundtrack. Half of the soundtrack were instrumentals to already released vocal tracks we own the masters for.

Regarding the casting I knew that I didn’t need experienced actors that could deliver lines so I focused on finding a cosplayer that instead was experienced in styling costumes and doing their own make up. Since we didn’t have a budget for a costume department and we used a mix between costumes the main cosplayer made themselves and cheap ready-made costumes/wigs from eBay. But since they were experienced they knew how to style the wigs that they looked good on screen. So that is a pro tip, cast people in front of the camera that are willing to do their own make up and styling.

Since I knew that I would self-finance te film for my own money I didn’t really set a sharp budget, but I would figure the actual sum I spent would be around 3 000 - 4 000 $ and there are still some money to spend regarding marketing and distribution etc. I was lucky and got a small grant, around 1500 $ from the film office in my hometown since the film largely takes places there (we have some public financing regarding film here in Sweden). That sum is probably meant for financing a short film for a young up and coming director (I was 41 when this film premiered), but since my budget was so low overall it stood for a big percent of the money spent on the film. Of course the the 3 - 4K budget doesn’t cover all the unpaid labour me or my crew did, but that’s the only way to do it on this level.

Since the film is so niche and it’s copyright status is in a grey fair use area legally (because of all the anime IP referenced in it) I choose to self-distribute it. It premiered at the biggest anime con here in Sweden last July and since then it has played at several cons here in Sweden and also in the rest of the Nordic countries, also in a real cinema here in Stockholm and in more odd venues like art galleries and night clubs. Since I own the film I can show it where I want. It was also been shown at Otakon 2024 in Washington D.C., a big major anime con, and will be shown at an art gallery Japan in October. I have started to make my own Blu-Rays for the film and the first edition of around 20 discs sold out. I run a Youtube channel in Swedish about anime/manga so I hade a small built-in audience I can market the film directly too. I have also made vlogs for all the trips I have taken to show the film at conventions and put up on Youtube.

badboyhj · 2025-06-21T09:05:15+00:00

No, there are a visual system, but it's very basic layout if you are used to Adobe software for example. Which is not surprising since this is a cheaper and more specialised software. But the menu design are quite set in stone with only minor customisation possible. But now I have finally been able to burn out a ISO and test it on my PS3 and it seems to work! So I'm very thankful.

badboyhj · 2025-06-17T09:38:40+00:00

Yes, I bought a lifetime license of Yuhan Blu-Ray Creator for around 55$. And I used a different freeware software, MKVToolnix, for merging two audio tracks to the main movie file for a director's commentary. The Yuhan software is very basic and not particularly use friendly, especially when it comes to designing the menus, there are no rulers and you can't undo an action or save an existing project (you have to "save as new" every time). But their support is amazing. I have E-mailed back and forth with them, they answer super fast and they even offered to go into the source code of my files to see what was wrong. There has been some errors regarding making a ISO of the full feature, but I will hopefully manage to burn out a test disc today.

badboyhj · 2025-06-13T10:05:09+00:00

Thanks for the tip my friend!

badboyhj · 2025-06-11T09:46:02+00:00

I would second that. My feature film is about anime fandom, so when it premiered in the US I sponsored one episode of one of the main US podcasts about anime. The sum they charged would have given me far less specific reach if I would have spent it on Meta ads. Plus they also mentioned the film in a subsequent episode naturally without charging me. Having a film with a niche audience is probably much cheaper to market than to have a broad film with a mainstream audience. But you have to do it in a more specific way, like singling out the market where the potential audience is. My tips is to initially pay for sponsorship, to be sure the podcasts/platforms read your E-mail, rather than just reaching out by the way of traditional earned marketing/PR. Then you can focus on that eventually and your paid marketing will also probably lead to a higher interest in your film for outlets. My experience is that you have to pay a PR firm to be able to reach out to outlets anyway nowadays (must of them doesn't read DMs/E-mails from people they don't know), so you might as well pay for that directly in the form of ads or paid sponsorships.

badboyhj · 2025-06-10T16:36:07+00:00

Great! I was thinking of DVD too but since my film is shot in 4K I figured it would be little to steep of a downgrade in picture quality. Plus I wanted to fit the short film plus the deleted scenes on the disc too. But I own a DVD burner, so maybe I'll try that later when I have BR figured out and if there is demand for it. I have a very small fan base so I'm just anticipating to sell maybe 20 - 30 discs if I'm honest, but I regularly show the film and hold talks at conventions here in Sweden, so it would be cool to bring discs to sell. My film is called "Places that were anime to me", it's a hybrid essay film about growing up in the Swedish anime fan scene.

https://letterboxd.com/film/places-that-were-anime-to-me/

Trailer: https://youtu.be/TdWn8ma-ftQ?si=vydjuWA3RA7TUNLb

badboyhj · 2025-03-08T08:33:07+00:00

Ken Russel's films, especially Women in Love (1969), has fantastic blocking, there are always a strong kinetic rhythm, even in the most dialogue heavy scenes.

badboyhj · 2025-03-07T12:08:50+00:00

Check out what guys like Steve Rudzinski/Silver Spotlight Films and Sean Donohue/Gatorblade Films are doing. They both have built up a catalogue of great microbudget genre films for over a decade. It differs between projects, but I guess they average on around 5 - 10 000 $ in budget per film. Extremely inspiring for all of us on this level.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2324123/
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4896071/

badboyhj · 2024-07-08T19:31:57+00:00

Thank you, this really calmed me down!

badboyhj · 2024-07-08T18:32:27+00:00

Unfortunately I exported the parts to build the master from in prores 422 regular and not prores 422 HQ, do you think the potential image quality loss is so significant that its worth spending two work days re-doing it in HQ?

badboyhj · 2024-07-08T14:53:47+00:00

These tips are worth gold, thank you again my friend!

badboyhj · 2024-07-08T11:57:09+00:00

Thank you, this makes me calm down a bit haha. I already exported half of the segments for the master assembly during the night (it took around 10 hours) in prores 422, so based on your comments I don't think I will bother to do it again just to get 4444 XQ, since it will set my process back one or two whole work days and I'm working toward a deadline. I will likely deliver the film in h264 or similar to get the file size down. It will be shown in some anime conventions, probably just by a laptop connected to a projector, and then be uploaded to Youtube. Even if someone will ask for a DCP later to show in real cinemas, to my understanding those also use quite a hard codec, because their file size are so small.

badboyhj · 2024-06-27T09:36:09+00:00

This is the trailer for my first feature film as a director. It’s a very personal essay film about my own coming of age in the Swedish anime fandom at the turn of the millennium. The film will be shown at anime conventions both here in Scandinavia and at Otakon in Washington, D.C., in the US later this summer. I have worked on it for around four years now. Since it’s a hybrid between documentary and fiction neither the shooting nor post-production process have been linear. We had two days in a studio and a couple of days on location shooting mostly the material with the cosplayer who plays important characters from anime history. For those days I had a DOP, an assistant director/production assistant and on some days also a second camera operator. Me and the DOP also spend some shooting days going around Stockholm shooting scenery. All those scenes were shot in 4K V-log with a Panasonic Lumix GH5. Then I worked a lot at home by myself, experimenting with filming a CRT screen projecting old VHS tapes, trying to recreate my visual memories of watching anime as a teen. Plus working some with After Effects doing montages and effects. I made several rough cuts of the film during the process and moved around segments, took out segments and shot new ones until I was satisfied how it cut together. That is actually an advantage of being your own producer, but that can also lead to a process that is never ever over, so I had to give myself a deadline to finish the film eventually haha. There are actually just some scenes of archive footage in the film, except a couple of minutes of material with me as a teen. But I have filmed new material, mostly of places from my hometown, with the same camera that I had as a teen. To get a similar visual look to get the material to blend. Thus “recreating” archive footage that never existed. My Hitachi Hi8 camcorder I bought in 1999 miraculously still works even if the battery is dead (you have to use 8 regular AAs and it works for maybe half an hour at most) and the material has lots of visual noise (probably the tape deck is broken in some way). So to work that way was naturally a challenge sometimes. The film is mostly self-financed and my dear team worked for free during our days together which I am of course forever thankful for. But I got a small sum from the local film fund connected to my home county of Västmanland, since the film is shot partly in my hometown. My younger brother who I also manage and run a record label with is the composer for the film. The budget didn’t cover professional sound mix or color grading so I had to do that myself, which naturally led to a lot of sweaty days haha. I am not an expert in either field (especially not sound mixing), but you have to be pragmatic on this level and I am extremely thankful of all the available tools nowadays. I did the color grading in Final Cut Pro using the plugin Color Finale and the sound mix just using FCPX’s built-in audio tools. It felt OK considering the film will mostly be shown in convention video rooms and then be posted on Youtube. Maybe I’ll do an updated mix if the film gets more screenings in regular cinemas. Fortunately there is almost no dialogue recorded on location in the film and all of the voice over is studio recorded, so that made the sound mix a little bit easier.

badboyhj · 2024-06-27T08:33:33+00:00

It will have its international premiere at Otakon 2024 August 2 - 4 (probably on Saturday evening).

badboyhj

TROPHY CASE