Learning About Film Budgets Can Help us Create an Industry

I love to find out budgets of movies especially the low budget ones. I have to say I do love to find out what black movies like Nora’s Hair Salon, Nora’s Hair Salon II, A Good Man is Hard to Find (that’s another post all together), Phat Girlz, Love for Sale even TP’s movies. I also watch movies from http://www.theasylum.cc/ (which can be very bad.lol but I have a weird love for bad genre films)also http://www.maverickentertainment.cc/ which is where you get movies like Nora’s Hair salon etc. (but we all need our starting point.lol this goes for York as well) http://yorkentertainment.com/ Also Bollywood movies like Bride and Prejudice (more of a Bollywood Hollywood collaboration which was around 7mill. A movie like Kabhie Khushi Kabhie Gham around 7mill USD. Yes filmed in India, but I think we could film movies for the same. And Seriously a 7mill movie that is around 3 hours and 25min. and Hollywood can’t even do that with 150mill.lol. Movies like El Mariachi which cost $7k, but ended up being 250k or so in post (but just getting in the can and distributed the way RR intended would have been around 7k maybe a little more but not $250k) I actually make a list of movies and go to http://www.imdb.com/search http://www.boxofficemojo.com/ or http://www.mooviees.com/
http://www.scriptsecrets.net/articles/blockb1.htm
http://www.scriptsecrets.net/articles/blockb2.htm

I would also got to some famous celebrities imdb pages and see in their bio how much they got paid for a particular movie (not all have this)and then subtract that from the budget.

Also tax incentives
http://www.slate.com/id/2117309 I can’t remember if some of this has stopped, but Hollywood finds all kinds of tricks as do indies.

Filmmakers also have to be careful when you hear that a movie was made for free or on nobudget/lowbudget. Many get euipment, actors etc. for free/deferred or low pay. What many don’t realize is if you started paying for these things then the movie would be higher. This can be deceptive because many forgot that the actors aren’t getting paid or they are getting low pay.

I also think it’s very important that filmmakers, writers etc. watch movies from the classics to international. It amazes me how many people don’t watch movies other than Hollywood. Just watch movies period.

My blog is about making a film industry that is not a part of Hollywood literally starting from scratch. Anyways that being said those who are interested in Hollywood are going to have to realize that as black filmmakers making predominately black films you are going to get low budgets (there is nothing wrong with that it makes sense. Most of black films make around 40-50mill or so back so don’t expect 50mill)that being said many black filmmakers in Hollywood get upset about the fact that they get around 3-19 maybe 20mill for a film mostly the films are cheaper than $20mill. We can make really good films on low budgets. Tyler Perry has proven that films can be made for low-budgets and make a good amount of money back (not into his films that much, but I do have to give him the credit.) Hell a movie like Bride and Prejudice puts us to shame. Not only was it made for around $7mill, but it was around 2hours (the hindi version I believe)shorter for the U. S. version and it has musical numbers/lavish sets etc. The teen movie Drive Me Crazy cost around $8mill. 10 Things I hate About You cost around $16mill. She’s All That cost around $10mill. I know teen films, but many were shot on lower budgets (which are usually the budgets black movies get anyway.) More grown up market films like The Wedding was made for $15,000,000 or Under the Tuscan Sun and reduce the 5mill Diane Lane was paid and it becomes even lower. What I’m saying is that we could take these budgets and make great films that people would want to see.