Making a Zero-Dollar Film

An end-to-end thought exercise on ultra-amateur feature filmmaking.

I recently had somebody ask me how I would go about making a zero-dollar film. Not a low-budget film, not a micro-budget film, but truly one where we didn't spend a dime.

I've never done this. I've made films for a couple hundred dollars, a couple thousand dollars, all the way up to around sixty thousand—which is still ultimately a rounding error on the budget of a ‘real’ production. If you're a student or you're just starting out, though, those amounts aren't rounding errors. They're your very own hard-earned money, and every dollar is one that could've paid your rent if you hadn't spent it on your art. So, as a thought exercise, I decided to ask myself how I really would go about this. How would I make a film without spending any money?

Obviously, there are some presumptions here. There are materials that you may already own (a computer and phone), and resources that you can take advantage of in your community (locations and friends). These are not universal. For the sake of this exercise, I'll imagine that I’ve got what I had when I was in high school—time, people, no car, and no money to spare.

They say it starts with a script, but a script is only useful if it can be made. So, what it really starts with is an understanding of your resources and the story you want to tell. These come together to form a concept, piece by piece, as you work over the problem again and again.

Maybe there's an abandoned location like a mall or a quarry that you know you could shoot in without anybody bothering you. That resource can be the seed of the idea that propels you forward. On the other hand, maybe you have this actor you know who is absolutely dynamite, and you know that he's willing to work for free on your project. Maybe your idea starts by creating a character that can play to the strengths of your available talent.

Maybe instead you have a feeling that you want to convey. Even if you're starting with something in the abstract, you still need to shape your script around the practical limitations of your environment. So, it starts with sizing up your resources. After that, you write.

Your script should probably be two to ten minutes long, or ninety minutes. There's no good reason to work at any other length if you want your film to be seen. That's just how the American norms are established at the moment. For the sake of the exercise, let's be bold and assume that we are making a full ninety-minute film, a feature film. A page, by the way, is a minute of runtime.

Let's assume you have a computer. If you don't, you can go to the library. Use Final Draft, WriterDuet, or Celtx. Before you begin, research and internalize screenplay formatting. You can do this by reading screenplays, and by reading about the art of writing screenplays. The conventions are important. They let you write in a universal language that can be understood and digested by the rest of your team. Don't reinvent the wheel out of ignorance. Do your reading.

As you write, keep your limitations in mind. There are certain things we know we can't do with a zero-dollar feature film. We can't control large crowds, although we can film them unaware. At the moment, we can't do elaborate video effects, although I have a feeling that within a matter of years complex visual effects will be available to amateurs at a consumer software level. Let's set that idea aside for now.

The best thing you can do is to put people in front of the camera that we care about and show them having a hard time as they work to overcome obstacles. They have something they want, and life is getting in the way. That's a distillation of a whole lot of screenwriting theory in a couple of sentences.

The fewer actors you write for, the easier your life will be. Keep in mind that over the course of a feature, audiences expect to see something new at least every fifteen minutes. So, you can think of your film broadly as containing six sequences, and each sequence needs something to differentiate it from the others. This doesn't necessarily mean a new character or a new location. You can make a film out of one person alone in a room for an hour and a half—it can be amazing if you do it right. But, it's hard. You need to find ways to keep the audience interested by throwing new things at your protagonist.

Once you have your script, spend a while making it better, which usually involves getting other people to read it and taking time away from it before returning. This is not something to rush through. If you have a bad script, everything you do afterward will be a waste of time. Specifically, it will be a waste of other people's time, which is even more indefensible than wasting your own time.

Because we have zero dollars, we're going to shoot on whatever camera you can get your hands on. If you're a student, this might be a camera you borrow from the equipment locker of your university or your high school. If you're friends with a photographer or a videographer, they might have a camera that they're kind enough to let you borrow, or they might be willing to come on as a volunteer camera operator and cinematographer.

More likely, though, you're going to need to use your phone. That's okay. Phones have gotten very good at filming video, and you can get the quality you need from a flagship consumer cell phone in the United States without much effort.

Another benefit of shooting on a phone camera is that you're less likely to be stopped when you are stealing locations, which is to say filming without permission. With a zero-dollar budget, you're almost assuredly going to be filming without permission in certain places.

Whatever camera you're shooting on, you need to take the time to understand how to correctly expose an image. You need to understand ISO, shutter speed, and aperture width. Unless you have a very good reason not to, you should keep your shutter speed at 1/48 and your frame rate at 24 frames per second for the entirety of the project. You're not going to like how it looks if you stray from that.

Next, you'll need to understand the basic principles of cinematography: a master shot, what coverage consists of, the differences of shot lengths, and when you should use them. You should understand the difference between an OTS and a clean single, and how to get matching coverage of two different people in a scene. You should understand what the line of action is, when you can cross it, and when you can't. You should get comfortable blocking actors in a scene and then figuring out in your mind where the camera should go to get proper coverage.

You're also going to need a microphone. The microphone on the phone will not cut it. You need a shotgun microphone, which is a microphone that captures sound from a narrow cone-shaped field. Because you have no money, you're going to have to borrow one, and a recorder to go with it. If you get very desperate, you can buy one and then return it later.

Once you have your gear, you should do camera tests and sound tests and make sure that everything comes out at an acceptable level of quality. You don't want an unexpected hum or hiss in your recorder that ruins an entire day of shooting. Once you can prove that you can capture a shot and accompanying audio with your gear, you're ready to start capturing footage.

You need to cast your film, which means you need to find actors who are willing to work for free. You can post on Facebook groups, or you can contact local theater departments or community theater organizations. I highly recommend going to local theatrical productions to scout talent, then directly approaching the actors that you would like for your project.

When you approach the actors, be honest about everything, and understand that you are in their debt if they agree to work with you for free. You also need to be at least reasonably proficient at directing them.

The most important thing you can do in that regard is be patient and kind. Acting is a very difficult, vulnerable thing, and you need to understand that the actors have the hardest job on set. Your job as director is to support them and help them get to the place where they can do their best work. If you can take acting classes and feel what it's like to be directed, that will make you a better director.

Once you have equipment and talent, you need to complete the rest of your crew. At the very barest level, this could just be you. You would direct, hold the camera, and point the shotgun microphone at the talent. There would be no lighting, no production design, nothing that you expect from a professional set. You would need to be your own script supervisor, your own assistant director, and anything else that you would need on set.

In practice, you'll probably get a couple of friends to help you out. Make sure they understand the level of commitment needed. They don't need to be passionate about your artistic vision, but at the very least they need to be passionate about doing the job they are given. If they can't, you're better off not having them on set at all.

When working with crew, you need to understand how to be both patient and firm. You need to know when to cut somebody loose when it's not working out, and you need to know how to protect both talent and crew from unkind behavior. You also need to be self-aware enough to measure your own tone and your own communication style.

With all these pieces together, you find locations and you schedule dates. You can either ask for permission to use a location, or you can shoot without permission. If you shoot without permission, you should plan on being kicked out. You should be emotionally prepared for it, and know how to keep your cool. You should also have contingency plans for what you're going to do after you're ejected. Ignoring somebody's requests for you to leave is a great way to end up in deeper trouble.

From the start, you should think about sound, whether a location is quiet or loud, echoey or flat. You should be able to evaluate when that ambient sound will prohibit you from getting clean audio on set. Quiet places are your best friend.

If you're shooting for more than six hours in a block, you'll need to feed people. It's non-negotiable. Since you have zero dollars, you can go to a food bank and cook the food yourself. People need to be fed to do good work.

One thing you cannot ever do is put people in danger—not your cast and crew, and not bystanders. It's never worth it. Any injury that results from your production will be a permanent stain on your conscience, your heart, and your soul. Don't mess around with guns. Don't mess around with cars. Don't mess around with trains. Don't mess around with heights or sharp objects.

On a similar note, if you're dealing with sensitive or traumatic material, you need to speak with your actors privately before shooting, to make sure that they are aligned with you on a mutual vision. Agree on the limits and boundaries of what you're going to do. Don't force them to have those conversations on the day of production, or in front of the crew. That's not fair to them. You don't want to walk away with anyone feeling like there was coercion on your set.

So, you shoot, and it's exhausting and freeing and a miracle. Once you have footage, you become your own editor. I recommend using Premiere Pro and familiarizing yourself with various concepts of editing. You can get all of that knowledge off YouTube.

Think of your edit like a person who is giving a charismatic speech or monologue. Think about the way that they pace themselves, when they rush and when they slow down. Try to find a pace that works in your film that lets you tell your story in the strongest way.

Keep in mind that you will be overly attached to things you shot that shouldn't end up in the film. This is because it took a lot of work to shoot them, and you are remiss to cut them now after all that effort. Ignore that feeling. Like a sculptor, you must take away material to turn the work into its ideal form.

Once you have a cut, you can evaluate the project and where it stands. You might need to do reshoots of existing scenes. You might need to go out and shoot additional new material. You might be happy with it the way it is.

Inevitably, you're going to have some audio that doesn't turn out, and you're going to need to re-record it. Go to a quiet place with your shotgun microphone. Play the video for the actors on a loop on mute and have them re-record their lines cleanly into the microphone. It's not going to sound as good as the performance on set, from an acting perspective, but it can get close. Clean audio is one of the most important things you can have in a film at this level. If it's hard to hear, nobody's going to be able to immerse themselves in the story.

When you have your final cut and your dialogue audio, all you need is sound effects, ambient sound, music, and color. All these things you can do yourself, or you can ask somebody kindly to help you with them. I recommend at least trying on your own before you bring someone in. It'll help you understand more about the process. Even if you're not musically inclined, it can be fun to try and score your own project in a digital audio workspace like GarageBand. John Carpenter did his own music back in the day, and it turned out great.

For your color, it might be as simple as finding someone you know who posts well-colored pictures on Instagram and asking them to take a look at your footage. Alternatively, just use your gut. Premiere has all the color tools you need to make it look good.

As far as a final mix, musician friends often have the taste required to balance your levels. Listen to it loud and quiet, on good speakers and bad. Play it for people and act on their notes.

From there, before you know it, you have a film. It's probably taken a year of your life, if not more. You've had countless setbacks, surprises, and challenges. You've learned a lot. You've become wiser. You've become more humble. You might be sick of the story that you set out to tell, or you might still love it just as dearly as the day you first wrote it down. You inevitably have a million things you would do differently the next time around.

What happens now is up to you, and then up to the world. Before you begin distribution or festival submissions, you need to make your peace with the idea that you may never see a dollar from this project. That’s okay. It needs to have been worth it for its own sake.

When you're done, congratulate yourself, and do something nice for all the people who volunteered their time and energy to get you across the finish line. They did a noble thing in helping you bring your artistic vision to fruition. You owe them, and you would do well to keep that in mind when they're pursuing their own dreams.

When all is said and done, you have a film in your hands that will last forever. You can show it to your children. It becomes a keepsake from this moment in time, as time marches on toward an uncertain future. It's a manifestation of you, and all the hopes and dreams that you had going into this wild endeavor. Cherish that—and remember to keep data backups, just in case.

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