by Anthony Dorsey
As a beginning filmmaker, it is important to be able to make your movie look the best it possibly can without breaking the bank. Robert Rodriguez understands this better than most and certainly better than I and others I know personally have done in practice. As Rodriguez described in the two short documentaries I watched, The Robert Rodriguez Ten Minute Film School and Robert Rodriguez – Ten More Minutes: Anatomy of a Shoot Out, when working on a low budget you want to spend as little as possible to make the best film you can make while also retaining your creativity.
In the Ten Minute Film School, Rodriguez went into detail on how he made El Mariachi on a budget of $7,000. Some of these cost cutting measures included filming with no sound so he didn’t need slates, had cast double as crew, reused props and vehicles and cut around it, and saved film by not shooting master shots and not cutting if someone screws up like in the shot when the actor ran up the stairs and failed to throw the case onto the next floor. These tactics to shoot cheaply are very useful for me in my own projects as in my latest short, The Loop which I directed, shot, and edited, I would discard angles I knew I wouldn’t use in the edit including master shots when I felt they weren’t necessary. I also only used things I had in my apartment (where I shot it) and things someone helping me brought over. To contrast that, on another project I’m currently involved in, there are people making big purchases for the film without saying anything as if they expect a bigger cut of profits (if we even get any) despite us all contributing to the budget and trying to keep spending to bare minimum. As Robert Rodriguez said “if you want to make a movie [for] a really low budget, you can’t spend on anything. You have to refuse to spend [on anything] …Think of a creative way to get around your problem and keep your money in your pocket.”
In his Anatomy of a Shootout Documentary, Rodriguez goes in detail on the making of the opening sequence of his film Desperado. One thing he says early on in the video that I found interesting was when you hire a storyboard artist that artist is basically directing the movie and creating the shots for you, so it is beneficial to draw on your own to retain creative control. Throughout the rest of the video he details an alternative method for those, like me, who can’t draw, which is video storyboarding. He basically took a video recorder and walked through the scene with Antonio Banderas and stunt people/crew in the order he wanted while recording in the way he wanted to shoot the final scene. I find this method great as it makes all the time spent planning the scene and rehearsing more efficient by making it double as storyboards. I did something similar on a past short film where I was DP where I would put the other crew in the positions the actors would be in when we shoot and had them pose for visual storyboard shots which would help me easily set up the shots on the day of filming.
These short documentaries by Robert Rodriguez were very useful and informative and has made me want to watch more of his films as I have only seen a couple. The films he described here I’d especially like to see as I don’t think I could ever pull off what he did for $7,000 budget, but in any case I’ll be sure to keep in mind what he talked about here if I ever have to shoot an action scene on a low budget.
Bibliography
Rodriguez, R. (Director). (1998). The Robert Rodriguez Ten Minute Film School [Documentary Short]. Los Hooligans Productions.
Rodriguez, R. (Director). (1998). Ten More Minutes: Anatomy of a Shootout [Documentary Short]. Troublemaker Studios.
Anthony Dorsey's Mastery Journal 