Tips for Making a Microbudget Movie with an All-Female Team
Making a movie is a daunting task, making a movie for less than $20,000 with only 3 days of production is… a really daunting one. When we set out to make To the New Girl, a stage-to-screen adaptation of a play that one of my best friend’s from high school, Samantha Macher, wrote we knew that both the costs and schedule were going to be tight. We also knew that it was vital to the project that we work with as many women as possible.
The play was written as ten monologues for an all-female cast of women that read letters to the “new flames” in their exes’ lives, specifically as a way to give women in the theatre companies Samantha was working with an opportunity to shine. As we were developing the film, I had just taken on a role as Assistant Editor-in-Chief of Ms. In the Biz and was immersed in the work of so many women in the film industry who were just trying to get their feet in the door. It felt right to focus a project that already called for an all-women cast to also have an all-women creative team and crew (save for our sole male dolly grip.)
We’ve seen such a spotlight on creating more gender parity in the entertainment industry in the past several years… but often it seems like the focus is always on the big budget projects. Of course, it is vital that blockbusters like Bridesmaids and Wonder Woman make waves for women in the industry. However, as much as there is a “trickle down” effect from those big films, I believe there’s also a “trickle up” in microbudget and independents that is important not to forget. Just because you have a small budget doesn’t mean that you should forget to focus on gender equality and diversity! Our movie was the “first feature” of over 50% of our team, all of whom have been able to use that job to secure other projects.
If you’re putting together a project and are hoping to focus on creating opportunities for women and other marginalized groups rather than worrying about your budget, here are a few tips:
- Find your tribe. One of the best things you can do for your career as a filmmaker is build strong personal and working relationships over time. Work with the same people again and again, call them when you have something that’s right for them.
- Find sponsors or companies who are excited about the work you’re doing. There are many awesome equipment rental companies in Los Angeles who are thrilled to work with independent filmmakers, especially those that are creating projects that focus on diversity and inclusion. Reach out, use your networking skills, and you’ll be surprised how many places are willing to offer discounts or free rentals.
- Be flexible. We would have loved to shoot in a million locations, and had a lot of ideas about what the “perfect” version of our movie would be in pre-production. Ultimately, we had to let go of many of those ideas in order to get the film made. Don’t be overly attached to things you can’t afford! We ended up shooting our entire film in one location over three days, using different lighting setups to mix up the space. For our stage-to-screen project, this ended up being the best artistic choice at the end of the day, too. Sometimes your limitations lead you in the right direction.
And if you’d like to check out what the finished product looks like, we’d love for you to check out our little indie, To the New Girl, which is available on both Amazon and Vimeo on Demand.
By Laura Hunter Drago, producer of To the New Girl.
