Budget?
Anybody know? For this or Funny Ha Ha?
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shareI saw the film in NYC when the director showed up to discuss it. I believe he mentioned a budget of $400K.
shareI hope that's not accurate. I love this movie, but there definitely is not $400k worth of production on it.
"...but the bees won't sting/'cause you love me."
400,000 grand??? Looks like it cost 10 grand.
sharehahahahahaha
share$34.95c
It's a wooden pickle
thats real funny ha ha.
shareThe thing about El Mariachi was that it was a $7,000 ACTION movie. With cool settings. It wasn't some (I haven't seen this movie) but some kind of dreary drama with 2 people in a room. It had guns and production value and chases and stuff. For $7,000. THAT"s why people talked about it.
share[deleted]
I believe when post-production was wrapped up, the budget came close to 40,000. The 16MM film alone probably cost somewhere around 20K. The equipment, I believe, was borrowed. Also for this film, Andrew Buljaski received some sort of grant to aid him in financing, while Funny Ha Ha was mostly financed from his own pocket and generous family relatives.
Moral of the story: Use digital.
Yes, I concur. I saw this film in Harvard Square when Bujalski was there and I believe it was about 50k if I remember correctly.
I remember one of my friends who was taught by Bujalski mention that he got a donation of tons of candy during Funny Ha Ha and that was all the catering they could afford. The cost of buying and developing film is very expensive by the way, so you have no idea what you're talking about when you say it seems like the whole movie cost less than 10k.
First of all I didn't say it cost 10 grand. I said it looked like it cost 10 grand. Secondly its been done before. Hell its been done before for way less then 50 grand and in color. Primer is a color 16mm film and it cost 7 grand so you have no idea what you are talking about. Lets not forget other movies too like El Marachi, Clerks, The Following, Slackers. Those are all under 30 grand. Slackers was in color and cost 23,000. The Following by Christopher Nolan was done in 16mm black and white and it cost 6 or 7 grand so you are wrong jackass. Yes maybe this film did cost more than 10 grand but all I'm saying is it doesn't look like it is and many others seem to agree.
shareYes, but you're forgetting that those are the costs to get those films 'in the can.' Once they were picked up for distribution, more money was poured into them. Clerks alone had $27k spent on music clearances alone. El Mariachi had several grand spent on it just to add subtitles. Mutual Appreciation was self distributed so there were no more fix ups after post.
"...but the bees won't sting/'cause you love me."
I'll agree with that but they still made it for that amount of money. They just got some music or had some fixing up done to it. But the other movies I named really did cost that much.
shareI'm not trying to argue w/ you, but they did do other things to the films as well. They cleaned the pictures up, added titles, etc.
"...but the bees won't sting/'cause you love me."
The First Test film made for El Mariachi cost 30K, then he shopped that film around. Once the studio picked it up he re-shot the whole movie with a real budget. So the actual movie you watch in the theatre or on DVD cost close to a million dollars. The 30K budget 'story' was used since it is a romantic story and hipsters will run out to see and promote it. And Repeat the marketing half truth about the budget forever and ever and ever......
shareRobert Rodriguez spent $7k getting El Mariachi "in the can." The film was not picked up and re-shot. The studio added sound effects, titles and cleaned up the picture.
"Wanna play stuffed animal parade?"
@Blister. Just to transfer the film to be shown on a cinema screen can cost 200K. The 7k story, is just a marketing tool. It sounds good, but don't get caught in the hype. Think about it.
I want to make another point about lots of people focusing on Budget. It is not so important how much a film costs, the focus should be the quality of the film. Maya Deren's "Meshes in the Afternoon", cost very little when it was made and is one of the greatest films ever. Championing the Budget of 'El Mariach' is silly since it is a terrible movie. Anyone can make a movie. But, how many people can make a good one? That should be the focus. Kurosawa always went over budget and spent tons of money, does that make his movies bad? He made some of the best movies ever. Nobody talks about his budget, but rather the quality of his films.
Roman
That cost of the transfer was picked up by the distributer. El Mariachi was shot on super 16 for $7k. Another movie, Primer, was shot for $7k on super 16. They didn't get much coverage.
"Wanna play stuffed animal parade?"
I highly recommend reading Rodriguez's book "rebel without a crew" - it's essentially his daily film-making journal leading up to, during, and after the production and shopping of El Mariachi.
He goes into fascinating detail regarding his budget and cost-saving measures - both the ones that worked and the ones that backfired. He claims believably that he only spent about 8K on filming El Mariachi. He did not think it would picked up by any American distribution company but rather a Mexican straight to video outfit. He thought initially that if he could make a few Spanish language straight to video shoot 'em ups for cheap, then he could move on to the bigger-budgeted English language American market after having honed his chops a bit.
@romanticnihilist: you're right that the studios had him reshoot the film for the American market but that film was different (Desperado) and released in addition to El Mariachi, not in lieu of it.
That said, comparing El Mariachi to Mutual Appreciation is just a bad comparison. They're both great imo, but two different animals.
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For what's it worth, it still costs a decent amount of money (for an average joe) to make a film. Going by the math, if one were to shoot on low-grade, 16mm film, I know it costs about $26 to buy a 100ft roll. It then costs about $15-20 to develop this film. 100ft of film is at most 3 minutes worth of time. If all 110 minutes of Mutual Appreciation were shot perfectly on each and every film roll used, then the movie would cost roughly $5000. Of course, there are certain discounts involved when buying film in bulk, plus there is a VAST difference in cost depending on the quality of the film used. Not to mention that there were undoubtedly many, many rolls of film shot that was not even used in the final edit of the movie. And obviouslly, all of this is only the cost for the film. Any other expenses could easily raise the budget.
It is virtually pointless to raise examples of other films and their budgets in an attempt to prove something. When films are made on this small a budget, friends and favors make a big difference in the final cost.
Of course, you are all talking only about shooting on film.
I picked up a DV camera for just over £1,000 (actually the same camera that Lynch shot Inland Empire with) - so with a cast & crew working for free, the costs of actually shooting films is much less than all the figures in above posts. Of course, there would be post-production costs in up-resing the images to suit a cinema screen (bear in mind also, those of you who have seen Inland Empire, that Lynch is really highlighting the "limitations" of this camera's image - it could, with a different approach, be made to look more like film).
Or, just get an HD camera for a couple of grand more, and shoot all you want...
But yes, it is certainly true that "friends and favors" are enormously important.
[deleted]
$0.
shareThe only major cost incurred was for 16mm film stock and processing. Bujalski won an award for Funny Ha Ha with a $20k prize which allowed him to quit his job but he had to borrow money from friends and family to help cover some of the costs. So I'd guess it would probably have been between $20k - $30k total. But on the other hand I have absolutely no idea how much 16mm film stock and processing costs are.
share