You're missing the point. You're wrong about the number of movies made.
Your numbers all seem to be wild guesses and you haven't specified if
you're talking about feature length films or including all lengths
and formats.
I can only believe you're doing the latter because your numbers are just
way, way off for the former. (And what makes you think each film festival
gets applications for a completely different group of films? Sundance
requires it hasn't been shown anywhere else before them but most
festivals have no such rule. And they don't say films can't play other
festivals after them.)
Please don't insult us by suggesting that only you are so smart as to know
about films not made by the Hollywood studios or that we don't know about
low budget films. I assure you, that isn't the case.
And if you think the super low budget filmmakers all make wonderful
movies, you clearly haven't seen a significant enough percentage of them.
A large percentage of the indies are godawful. As are the majority of
studio pictures. But they don't suddenly become good because they're
made with low low budgets.
I've been in this business over 30 years now and I've worked with and seen
pictures at all different budget levels. The budget -- high or low
-- isn't what
makes them good.
Craig.
At 07:44 PM 7/22/2008, Robert D. Brooks wrote:
You guys don't seem to be getting my point: If 99.9% of all the
films that get made in any given year have a budget less than $5 or
10 million - you can't go calling $20 million 'low budget' -even if
it is low by Hollywood standards (and do you really think that I
don't know what the average Hollywood budget is nowadays or how many
films they put out in a year???). Hollywood isn't the only game in
town! You guys (like seemingly everyone else on Earth) only
consider big-budget Hollywood films 'films' - every other film
doesn't even exist in your world. Your world only consists of those
2-400 films a year that Hollywood puts out, not ALL of the movies
put out in total... That's doing a great disservice to the
film-makers, writers, actors and crews out there around the world
(who do a far, far better job, dollar-for-dollar, than Hollywood does)!
And, to clarify for you, they make somewhere between 2 and 5
thousand films a year - in Canada alone! The Toronto Film Festival
gets something like 5-800 applications each year from just Canadian
indie films (and only a tiny fraction of films will get
submitted). Vancouver gets another 4 or 500. Consider that the US
is ten times the size (as well as Europe, Australia and Asia - we'll
even exclude Bollywood just to even things out), and my numbers are
probably quite conservative actually. There's likely well over 1 or
200,000 English language films made each year. But, as I said,
those other 199,800 don't matter to you, so they might as well not exist...
Cheers,
Bob
----- Original Message ----- From: "Craig Miller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 6:09 PM
Subject: Re: [MOPO] Can a major director shoot an "epic" on a low budget?
What is "low budget" depends on who you talk to. $10-20 million is
moderately low. For a studio level film, it's positively tiny. Even for
a lot of small companies, it's considered low budget. I've dealt with
companies that if a film isn't over $10 million, they won't consider
distributing it because it's way too low. (An average studio film is
over $65 million, for comparison. So, no, $10-20 is not "ridiculously
high". Except in the absolute sense of why should they cost so much.
But the fact is that they do.)
But for people not at the studio level, $10 million is toward the high
end. $2-3 million is about the range for most "independent" low
budget films. Ones that actually have a likelihood of making a deal
for distribution.
Absolutely there are films made for less. $400,000-$1,000,000 is
the range for low budget TV movies, such as those that air on Sci Fi
Channel (and then get sold on DVD or get some theatrical distribution
in Europe). And there are films made for a lot less. But those rarely
are of a quality -- in terms of acting, lighting, sound, etc. -- to get any
sort of distribution.
Also, I doubt very strongly that there are "50,000+ English language
movies are made every year". I doubt there are that many in all
languages made in a given year. Unless you're including shorts and
internet videos and student films, etc.
Craig.
At 05:09 PM 7/22/2008, Robert D. Brooks wrote:
What on Earth are you guys talking about?!? You're talking about
'low budget' as if $10 or 20 million was LOW! That's not a low
budget, that's a ridiculously high, Hollywood budget! A million
or less is a low budget. A hundred thousand or less is a
shoe-string budget. Here's a clue: if there are major stars in
it and a full union cast and crew, it's not 'low budget!' Probably
50,000+ English language movies are made every year, and far less
than 1% of those have a budget over 5 or 10 million...
Cheers,
Bob
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