No-budget short films shoots are full of challenges. With a diminished crew (if any), and no financial backing, it can often feel like you’re walking into the wind. As such, it raises the question: should you sprint or take your time?<\/p>\n
What do I mean by that? Well, let’s use running as an analogy for filmmaking. When you’re sprinting, you\u2019re moving as fast as you can to reach the finish line. But this is only a short dash, not a marathon. From a filmmaking perspective, you\u2019re theoretically likely to run into fewer issues during a shorter shoot than you would a drawn-out project. You can give it your all without exhausting yourself.<\/p>\n
Conversely, if you take your time when making a no-budget short, you can create a longer film. And when you do run into issues, you’ll have time to stop fully address the concern. But the more time you take, the more issues you’ll run into.<\/p>\n
Recently, I released a web series that was a labor of love for the last few years. To be frank, I abandoned the initial concept quite a while ago. I envisioned it as a thirty-five to forty-minute sci-fi short film, and in the end, it was a fifteen-minute web series of three- to four-minute vignettes. I realized that a thirty-five- to forty-minute no-budget sci-fi epic, by a solo filmmaker, might have been overly ambitious.<\/p>\n