Micro-budget filmmaking is bloody hard work.
After wrapping production on ForeFans – our sixth micro-budget narrative feature – at the start of the month, I can feel that in my tired bones. And creaky knees.
We spent two weeks filming guerrilla style all over Zagreb and Paris, 18 different locations, a skeleton crew of only three or sometimes two (only Sarah and I), 12 to 14 hour days, 5 hours sleep a night.
To say it was exhausting is an understatement. We were stretched too thin, multi-tasking like mad, putting into practise philosophies for micro-budget filmmaking that we teach in our own educational courses:
Our crew with four of the six actors after half a day filming ForeFans.
“Use a small crew to move quickly and keep costs down.”
But halfway through filming I realized something about this philosophy and perhaps micro-budget filmmaking in general: I’m getting too old for this.
It was a startling revelation. I’ve worked hard to get to a point where I can make filmmaking the sole focus of my life and these last few years I’ve been absolutely certain I will be pumping out films year after year. I am still certain of that. But less certain if micro-budget filmmaking – this particular self-sufficient, any-means-necessary, do-it-all-yourself style of filmmaking – is all I want to do. If it is even healthy to do. It’s the first time I have had these doubts.
ForeFans was too much. I was the writer. The producer doing everything from booking flights for the cast (we flew actors in from Ukraine, Hungry, Spain, and France) to trips to the store on lunch breaks to pick-up more batteries, to sending out callsheets for a future shoot at midnight after a long day on set.
I was the director. The DOP operating two cameras at once, my own gaffer and grip hauling lights and C-stands up and down stairs, setting it all up, packing it all down at the end of each day. I was the sound recordist, taking turns with Sarah depending on the scene, setting up the boom on a C-stand and lapels on actors and monitoring audio as best I could while also monitoring the cameras and performance.
Ivan setting up the boom mic on set of ForeFans.
I was the location scout, hunting and securing all locations and I was the driver of our rental car too, picking up actors from the airport and driving around Zagreb looking for non-existent parking when I should have been on set preparing for the next scene instead.
Now, I don’t want this to come across like I am whining. I chose to take all this on. And the team we did have, though small, were fantastic, the camaraderie some of the best I have experienced working on a film. Everybody lent a hand, cast included, and if we ran overtime (as we often did) nobody complained. I am super grateful to all our cast and crew. But each of us was doing too much to make ForeFans function.
Sarah was the production designer, dressing each scene, hunting for last second props in the middle of filming days, creating backdrops and decorating them with spray paint to add colour to a bland white-wall set. She was the costume designer, charged with creating cosplay costumes based on a made-up anime show called Final Destiny, re-teaching herself to sew, tracking down two separate sewing machines (for free) to use during production as the first one didn’t work.
Sarah was the sound recordist when I couldn’t operate the sound. She organised all the catering, ordering food, sometimes picking food up, something cooking for the cast and crew and stocking the kitchens of the AirBnB’s the cast were staying in. She produced too, did some AD work, booked the extras we needed for a restaurant scene. She even helped actors with make-up on certain days when we didn’t have our production assistant and make-up artist, Jelena, on set.
When we did have Jelena things were so much easier, an extra pair of hands, a huge burden off our shoulders. She was a production assistant, running errands, picking up gear, helping to set up equipment. She did make-up and made costumes, helping Sarah. She provided props, she drove actors to the airport, she was an asset so much so that we asked her to do extra days once the shoot began and we realized we needed more help. Unfortunately, a day job prevented her from taking more time off.
And that was the entire crew.
Our Machination crew on location in a garage with our lead actor. Photo taken by our assistant on the day.
It was a miscalculation to do so much ourselves on this shoot. We used a similar skeleton crew setup back in 2020 on Machination, three people split into Producer/Director/Camera/Sound, Producer/Director/Production Design/Costumes, Production Assistant/Everything Else. It worked well, hence we took the same approach with ForeFans.
But 80 percent of Machination took place in one location, the apartment we were living in at the time. ForeFans, in contrast, had scenes set in two separate hotel rooms, three separate apartments, a University, a cafe, a restaurant, and various outdoor locations all over Zagreb and Paris. There was a lot of moving around, days which required a location move, packing up and packing down, and so, so many stairs.
It was such an endeavour we were undertaking that I had nights in pre-production where I struggled to sleep. My head was full of thoughts and doubts and questions to solve for the shoot. I had moments of anxiety, unsure if we could actually pull this one off. We were diving into the deep end, making a complicated film with too little resources and too little connections in a country we had only recently moved to.
But, somehow, we did pull it off. And I am tremendously thankful and proud to reach wrap on ForeFans. I haven’t found any film as challenging since we shot Friends, Foes & Fireworks in a single night in 2017. But I swore to myself I am not going to make such a complicated film again with so little money, resources, and crew.
I’m too old for such insanity. Old enough to know better. Old enough where I don’t need the stress. I wrote an article called The Boldness of Youth a few months back about how the young are more innovative, more willing to sacrifice, more likely to pull off that wild idea because youth often equals bigger dreams and boldness.
Our key crew on Friends, Foes & Fireworks — NPG’s one -night improvised feature film shot over New Year’s Eve.
But the older I get, the more help I want. I want a caterer to prepare the meals. I want a PA to get those meals in time for the lunch break. I want help setting up the lights. I want a DOP to collaborate with so I can focus on directing instead. I want less multi-tasking, more specializing.
Sarah gives me a hard time when we travel because I refuse to consider hostels to save money. I won’t do dormitories and a shared bathroom is something that makes me cringe. I will no longer live like a backpacker – something I had no qualms about doing when I used to travel in my twenties. Sarah says I have become posh but now I am 40 years-old. I feel I have earned the “luxury” of a private bathroom.
This attitude seems to have seeped into my filmmaking. I want helping hands to make things as simple as possible. Filmmaking, micro-budget filmmaking especially, is already difficult enough. So there is nothing wrong in recognizing you can no longer do everything yourself, nor is it a good idea to try. My back hurts now, my knees don’t bend as smoothly as they used to, so yes, “I do want some help carrying these heavy sandbags up the stairs. Thank you.”
That said, I don’t think I would ever go back to employing large crews either, like we used to do on our productions in the days when we made scripted content. Films like Choir Girl or El Western or Half – crews of over twenty. That is too much, too expensive, too many people standing around doing nothing, making things inefficient. But ForeFans taught me that a crew of two or three is too little. Our weary bones “doth protest.”
I am not sure what the ideal number of crew should be. It depends on each project and what specific roles you need to fill, and what roles make sense to multi-task. But one thing is for sure, on our next narrative feature, whatever that is, I am going to make sure I find the budget for more crew than what we got away with on ForeFans. I’ll raise my hand and ask for a helping hand.
Written by Ivan Malekin