What’s up. This is Jack Peterson. I recently finished my first feature film which is called SAWGRASS and I’m making this video at the request of Film Courage. This is 5 Tips For Your First Micro-Budget Feature Film.
Tip #1 — Put In The Work:
Tip number one is basically put in the work. Don’t be lazy. Basically it takes a long time to finish these things. From the time I came up for the idea of SAWGRASS to the time I finished it was basically three years.
So it takes a significant amount of time and energy and focus to actually finish a full-length film.
SAWGRASS was 89-minutes long and it took 3 years from inception to completion, so it’s not easy. Even if you make something relatively short like I did it’s still going to take a long time.
I feel like my second feature film might be a little bit of a smoother process now that I have some experience and now that I know what it takes to complete something, but still it’s a really arduous process. You can’t be lazy and you have to put in the work even if you don’t feel like it. Even if you are having a bad day, it’s just required if you actually want to finish something. There are a lot of people that start a film or a novel or an album (whatever the case may be) and it never gets done pretty much because they don’t have the discipline to see it through.
So that’s pretty much the most important thing in this section is just to put in the work and actually try and finish the film instead of starting and stopping and starting again a year later because if you are not focused it’s never going to get done.
Tip #2 — Scale Back If Necessary:
When I initially finished the script for SAWGRASS it was like 93-pages long and it was super-ambitious and it had all kinds of live action scenes that I was going to film and all of these extensive special effects sequences that I had no idea how I was going to accomplish. I had this naive idea that I’d be able to raise financing for this crazy thing without any prior experience.
To be honest I didn’t really pursue financing too much because I quickly realized it was not going to work. I decided to scale back and do something small. I pretty much did a small micro-budget version of the same script. I scaled back a lot of things and I changed a lot of the elements around and made it more…well I put more documentary elements in it and I did a lot of animation rather than live action special effects. So I simplified it and kept the core of what it was. I scaled it back so I could actually do it on the budget that I had.
And as far as what the budget actually was it was so small that I didn’t actually even count it. I just spent money as I needed to so it might have been a few thousand dollars. But regardless it was probably smaller than what it would have been if I had tried to accomplish the original script so just tried to scale back if required.
If you can get a lot of money your first go-around, that’s cool. Most people won’t so just try and do something that you can feasibly finish with the budget that you are working with.
Tip #3-Don’t Be Afraid To Reach Out:
Pretty much what this means is if there is somebody you want to work with or if you have a question for…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
Bio: Jack Peterson is an American filmmaker based in Chicago. He’s been featured in the New York Times, the Daily Beast, and ABC News for his work as an activist. His first feature film, Sawgrass, is a psychedelic journey through Florida, featuring an extensive interview with the brother of the Las Vegas shooter. Sawgrass also features a performance by the Rock-afire Explosion, a vintage animatronic band created by famed inventor Aaron Fechter. Jack’s next feature film, My Perfect Everything, tells the story of a magician chasing an imaginary woman he met in 1989. My Perfect Everything is currently in the early stages of pre-production.
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SAWGRASS on Youtube by Jack Peterson. Jack is an American filmmaker based in Chicago. He’s been featured in the New York Times, the Daily Beast, and ABC News for his work as an activist. His first feature film, Sawgrass, is a psychedelic journey through Florida, featuring an extensive interview with the brother of the Las Vegas shooter. Sawgrass also features a performance by the Rock-afire Explosion, a vintage animatronic band created by famed inventor Aaron Fechter. Jack’s next feature film, My Perfect Everything, tells the story of a magician chasing an imaginary woman he met in 1989. My Perfect Everything is currently in the early stages of pre-production.
