“It’s amazing what M&Ms can do for morale.”
Steve Moramarco
Actor, filmmaker and UCLA film school grad Steve Moramarco (@moremarkable) wrote an article last year in Indie Wire titled How to Make Your First Feature Film for $5,000—which just happened to be how much his first feature film The Great Intervention cost to shot and edited. He has nine suggestions and that are similar yet different from what I called The 10 Ten Film Commandments of Edward Burns is a post last year. But #1 on Moramarco’s list is about the script:
“From the moment you start writing the script, be realistic…Keep your scenes and location simple. Really simple. As in, scenes with no more than three or four people that take place in a location that you can access for free. Do not think you can pay for a location. You can’t afford it.”
Steve Moramarco
The best recent example of this is Buried—one actor on-screen in one location. (Sure they spent a boatload of money making that film, but Chris Sparling’s original intention was to write a script he could make for $5,000.) So check out the rest of Moramarco’s list and here’s a Film Courage interview with Moramarco expanding on his $5,000 feature film list.
H/T to filmmaker Edd Blott for linking that interview on Facebook and opening my world to Moramarco and Film Courage.
Related posts; Edward Burns’ “Newlyweds (Part 2)
Filmmaking from a Coffin (“Buried”)
Screenwriting from Iowa 
[…] “It’s amazing what M&Ms can do for morale.“ Steve Moramarco Actor, filmmaker and UCLA film school grad Steve Moramarco (@moremarkable) wrote an article last year in Indie Wire titled How to Make Your First Feature Film for $5,000—which just happened to be how much his first feature film The Great Intervention cost to shot and edited. […] Original Source… […]