Am I crazy to spend this much on a short film?

Some Hard Numbers

Looking back at the budget for this film, there are areas where we saved a lot of money, and areas where it wound up being crazy expensive.

The biggest expenses were travel and labor. Transporting even a handful of people from Los Angeles to a little mountain town in Washington is not cheap.

Pro-tip: Don’t cheap out on “basic economy” seats that give you no recourse if there’s a need to shift the schedule or change out one of the crew members.

That said, the flights were much more expensive than I’d budgeted because I just waited too long to buy the tickets, and the fare went sky-high.

Total cost of 5 round trip flights + rides to/from the airport: $2,816.58.

Add in $400 to our DP/producer who drove his van full of gear up to meet us: $3,216.58 on travel. Our other producer Chris flew himself out, saving us some budget.

Fortunately, we cut a deal with our hosts on lodging for our 4 days up there, and that place doubled as our main shooting location.

Lodging costs: $2,514.00.

Now once we GOT the team to Washington, we could save some money. We only brought friends out there because we couldn’t have people who were in it for a paycheck. Conditions were somewhat rough, and money was tight. So almost everyone was volunteering their time in exchange for food, lodging, and travel.

Where labor really added up was the 2 cave set days in LA. Unlike our skeleton Washington crew, we hired on about 15 crew members! And shooting on a sweaty soundstage is a lot less exciting than a wilderness shoot in a beautiful part of the country, so we paid (low) rates to everyone.

Total cost of labor for those 2 days: $8,125.00 😰

This was more than I expected – mainly because I didn’t expect such a big crew on those days, but we would have struggled to make our days without them. And when combined with the basically free labor costs for the Washington shoot, it kind of evened out.

And for the biggest nut punch – lenses!

This is the same thing that happened on my last big short, the DP convinces me that since we’re mostly shooting exteriors with minimal/no lighting, we should use vintage lenses that add character to the image. Cue us renting a $100k set of lenses lol.

I had hoped that I could leverage my channel for some bigger discounts here, but no dice. Also, we had to rent these lenses TWICE, and the WA rental was a long one that included some test shoot days.

Total costs for Washington and LA lens rentals: $4,879.00 😭

Never again will I be seduced like that! But I gotta say… the images are stunning. (Cooke Speed Panchros btw)

So already we’re at $18,734!

Crazy considering there’s still SO many things I haven’t added in like food, grip rentals, art, makeup, wardrobe, the cave set, etc.

Not to mention the crazy amount of free labor and gear we’re capitalizing on. My producers and I were prepping this project for months. Toni did multiple jobs for free. Anyone who did get paid, didn’t get paid much. If we were paying ourselves and everyone what they’re actually worth – this is easily a $250k short film.

Why spend big on a short film?

This is the second time I’ve done a “big” short film, and I look at these projects as calculated investments in my own future.

My first one, Will “The Machine”, ended up costing about $25k all in, and it was kind of a last hoorah to see if we could do a big festival run and maybe pitch the feature version of the film.

My co-writer/producer and I split it evenly, but we were still about $10k short, so we took out a loan to make it happen. (I don’t recommend doing that, but it worked out okay for us).

The film went viral on Omeleto’s YouTube channel, and they cut us in for part of the ad revenue, so we did recoup a few thousand dollars.

But you can’t really make a profit off short films directly.

The real return was in intangibles – greater credibility and respect from filmmaking peers, broadening my network, improving my confidence and skill leading more professional sets, and just scratching the itch of making a film I REALLY wanted to make.

I figured it would be the only time I’d ever do a short film that expensive. But my situation now is a little unique, and I can justify doing it again, simply because it gives me a LOT share with you.

So yes, I spent an ass-load of money making this new film, but I also collected fodder and broll for years worth of YouTube videos.

If I didn’t have this indirect way to recoup the budget over time, I wouldn’t have spent nearly as much money on the film.

But I assure you – this film was a lot easier to make after making Will “The Machine”, and I know my next feature will be MUCH easier to make because of both of these films.

So what’s the damage??

It’s actually hard to say what the real budget of this film is… There’s just a lot of ways you could chop it up.

How much of the budget was for the actual film?

How much was for the YouTube videos about the MAKING of the film?

How many purchases will be reused on future projects?

How much do we count what was given for free or for a shout-out on the channel?

What about the costs the other producers ate themselves before I could even see a receipt?

I kept good records, but when you consider all of the above, the total budget is very malleable and could be subject to Hollywood accounting.

I will say that I’ve given you the biggest nut punches from the budget, and we found some great deals & freebies on many other big expenses in this film.

However… we’re not done spending yet 😅

What’s happening with the film now?

Post production has been a little slow because frankly, I had to focus on making money for a while! But the film is basically picture-locked, and I’m feeling great about it.

I’m talking to an awesome composer now, more details coming once that gets confirmed – but we always planned some post-production expenses for the score and final sound mix.

Unfortunately we may also need a little VFX which we didn’t budget for, but hopefully we find a deal there.

Color will be done in-house by our DP, so at least that’s free. I’ll try to handle all the sound design unless I can be convinced that someone we can afford can do a better job.

Oh and we have to shoot a pick up shot, d’oh. Fortunately it’s just an insert of a prop we still have.

My goal is to finish and do a public screening of the film in LA before the end of the year, fingers crossed!

Worst case, I’ll screen it after the holidays, then release it on the channel a little later.

This film will make $0, and it’s been worth it to me.

But odds are, I will never spend this much on a short film again 🙂

Favorites this week:

👨‍💻 Website: Musicbed

Between filmmaking, YouTube, and working as an editor for many years, I’ve bounced around between all the popular music platforms to source tracks for my edits.

But after a recent talk with the great DP/YouTuber Jacques Crafford, he convinced me to give Musicbed a shot because “no other platform even comes close to the quality of their music selection.”

I was skeptical, but I was so tired of hearing the same tracks I used over and over in other people’s videos, so I started a Musicbed trial…

DAMN, Jacques was right!

You can tell they carefully curate the music they offer, because there is so much great stuff on there – but just as importantly – so little BAD music. I found all the best temp tracks for Oliver Brody there, and was even considering scrapping the composer budget to just use their songs.

Between the music quality and their easy UI and search tools (including an AI song matcher where you can paste in Spotify links to find similar tracks), it’s just the cream of the crop.

If you want to try for yourself, I joined the Musicbed Friend of the Brand program and made a playlist of some of my favorite tracks in different genres in the link below – keep an ear out for them in my upcoming YouTube videos and shorts!

Switch to Musicbed and start your free 14-day trial today.

💬 Quote

“I don’t give a f*** what anybody thinks. When you’re a race horse, the reason they put blinders on these things is because if you look at the horse on the left or the right, you’re going to miss a step. That’s why the horses have blinders on. And that’s what people should have. When you’re running after something, you should not look left or right — what does this person think, what does that person think? No. Go.” — Jimmy Iovine

Let’s make some movies.

-Kent