Nate Winslow: Writing a screenplay with budget in mind

We started a weekly column this week with Nate Winslow, a 22 year-old trying to get a $1M movie produced. I asked in comments:

I’ll ask a question on behalf of GITS readers. For someone writing a screenplay they hope to produce on a low budget (let’s say $1M), what are some of the obvious set pieces or story situations they should avoid (e.g., shooting in snow, shooting in water, helicopter shots)? In other words, what are some of the key considerations a writer of a low-budget movie should be aware of in terms of production?

Nate’s informative response deserves promotion to the front page:

Hm. Good question.
Let’s start with the basics.
Some of the everyday “moments” in screenplays that can be really expensive:

1. WEATHER. Water is really, really expensive. Rain machines, for example — avoid them at all costs. If a scene doesn’t absolutely NEED to be set in the pouring rain, don’t have it be raining. Same goes for the season of the film — if you’re making a winter-y film noir, it’ll cost more than if you were making that same film noir and shooting it in a calmer season/in a place like San Diego where it never gets cold.

2. Huge crowds. Anything with huge numbers of extras can be expensive. I say can because there are some ways to get huge crowds without every person in them being a SAG Extra (expensive). But in general, filming a speech to an arena of soldiers, or a political figure at a rally, or a sporting event, or a scene at the Boston Marathon is all going to be really expensive for you. Keep your characters away from huge public gatherings and you’ll save yourself a lot of money.

3. Complicated action sequences. Explosions, car chases, helicopter chases, anything involving planes and anything involving weapons are expensive.

4. Public transportation scenes: this might sound weird, but usually scenes involving some form of public transportation are really expensive. Buses, subways, trains…all really expensive because they’re all owned and branded, and they all charge you way too much money. Shooting in the subway in New York for one day is the cost of a tiny independent film in and of itself.

5. Like Scott mentioned, avoid shooting scenes on the water. It’s incredibly time consuming (which equals expensive), it’s potentially dangerous for your cast and crew, it’s really hard to control the shooting environment that you’re in (which equals more time spent setting up and doing that take over and over and over which equals expensive), transportation out on the water is slower/more complicated/more expensive and camera’s don’t like water.

In terms of general ideas of reducing costs at the writing stage, I think the most simple advice I can give is to know the cost of your sentences. Example: it’s easy to get caught up in the rhythm of writing and scene and, in a race to finish the scene at the pinnacle of tension, you write “Linus picks the bag of groceries off the counter, pockets his change and as he walks out of the door, 6 POLICE CARS-sirens FLASHING — go screaming by.” It fits with the story: he’s in a dangerous part of town, maybe Linus is a David-Kimble-esque character and he’s on the run from the authorities and every wail of a siren makes him tense up so every chance to twist that tension should be taken. Right. But as easy as writing “6 police cars go screaming by” is, shooting that is a totally different story…

Finding 6 retired police cars, renting them from whatever car company it is, getting permission from the police department to be using police car replicas, paying for the police supervision because you’re using sirens, getting permission to close down the road so you can line up the cars and have them go racing by on the correct mark…The list goes on. And that was one sentence in the screenplay. Know how much the sentence costs: if we’re going with the idea that Linus is a fugitive and we’re trying to heighten the tension there, how about this.

That story beat — the fact that he’s a fugitive and the sound of sirens signals his potential impending doom/discovery — doesn’t need a visual to have the same amount of impact. What if instead of 6 police cars racing by as he’s walking out onto the street it happens when he’s still inside the store? At the counter, about to pay the cashier, and the sirens come wailing up the street — the SOUND of the sirens and the faint red and blue glow on his face as Linus whips around and stares terrified at the window deliver the same beat and all it takes is a light rig with some colored gels and putting in the siren in post. And just as effective. That type of editing when you’re writing or revising your screenplay is what’s going to save you the most money at that stage of the process. By being aware of what you’re really writing when you off-handedly mention a scene detail, you’re going to save yourself thousands and thousands of dollars.

Same goes for locations. If you know this is going to be a million dollar movie and you’ve picked your genre and your story and you’ve got an idea of the main plot points, it never hurts to do some location scouting (mentally, physically, Google, whatever) to figure out what’s available to you at the start. A friend of mine is in the process of writing a horror film that he plans to film for around a million dollars at some point in the future. Originally, it was supposed to take place at a highway rest stop: after the first outline, he realized he wasn’t going to be able to easily get access to a rest stop for 21 straight days without spending a large amount of money. Turns out a very distant cousin owns a ranch out in Texas that he never uses and that my buddy should feel free to use for whatever he likes. Boom! That horror film is now set on a ranch that costs absolutely nothing to use and completely controllable, and now that he knows where he has a locked-down location to set the movie in, his next draft is even more focused: the “limitation” of having the movie move from its original location actually sharpens the script’s potential because he knows exactly where his movie is taking place and can shape the horror accordingly.

How many of you parents out there have said this to your children: “Actions have consequences.” From a screenwriter’s perspective, we can amend that statement:

“Words have consequences.”

Consequences as in costs. Nate’s list is a good reminder how what we describe on the page can translate into big bucks from a production point-of-view.

Here’s an additional way to reduce costs: locate the movie in one primary location. Save you a bundle in transportation costs.

Hey, all you indie filmmakers who follow GITS. What other tips can you give on how to keep a script’s budget down?

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