[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: You said you had made your feature film ALTA CALIFORNIA for a budget of $5,000? Where did that $5,000 come from?
Andrés Taboada, Filmmaker: That’s right, $5,000 came from my savings.
In December 2017, I found out I was going to be a dad. I had this lifelong dream to make a future film. I was 35 at the time. I had never made a film before, never a short film, nothing. I had this dream.
I thought Well, I’m going to be a dad in nine months, so I have nine months if I’m going to do it. If I’m going to go into my own savings account and take $5,000 out to shoot a feature film. I better do it now before I’m a dad when it’s considered I guess less irresponsible to do so. That’s when I decided to do it. It’s all self-funded.
Film Courage: Why did you choose $5,000 as your amount?
Andrés: That’s all I had. I took a fraction of my savings (a good chunk), I took as much of my savings account as I could and still be okay and take care of things. I still have a full-time job. My partner at the time had a full-time job at the time too.
What if you remove every scene from this story except the intro of the main character?
We all still do. I was like How much money can I invest in this movie and still be okay afterwards? That’s how the number $5,000 came to be and technically it was actually more like $4,500. $5,000 was like You can’t spend more than that. You spend more than that, you shut it down. That’s where it came from. It was a nice round number to go by.
Film Courage: Once you decided on that number, did you start doing allocations of this is how much I’m going to spend on this (craft services, locations for the actors)? …(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
About:
Andrés Taboada was born in Perú, where he stayed until a scholarship sent him off to finish high school in Germany. After receiving a B.S. in Biology from Cal State Long Beach and teaching in Southeast Asia, he moved back to Miami for a Master’s in International Education. While in grad school, he became a standup comedian. Andrés won the award for Best Comedic Actor at Miami WebFest and was a finalist at the World Series of Comedy.
He then turned his focus towards Alta California, a bilingual dramedy, which he wrote, produced, directed, and starred in as “Perucho,” the hotel clerk. As the director of Alta California, Andrés won the award of Best Directorial Debut at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival. Alta California recently had a sold-out screening at the TCL Chinese Theatres in Hollywood, California as part of the 27th annual Dances With Films.
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