Helping Tampa Film Makers with Micro Budget FilmsThere is a lot of unrecognized talent in Tampa's film maker community and we want to foster that into success both for the film maker and ourselves. That is why we work with micro budget films anything under $10,000 is considered a no budget film.
But that is not technically true, because every resource has value and should be considered part of the cost.
If you have several friends helping as grips, camera ops and talent without charging, there is value in that and hopefully they have been promised something on the upside if you get distribution.
Many micro budget movies are not really micro budgets since they will share revenue with everyone that participated. So if the film earns $25,000 in distribution or pay per view, less say a $5,000 budget, there is $20,000 in expenses since it will all be distributed to the help and talent.
Because everyone's pay depends on the movie being great, everyone is more motivated to make the project a success.
This is the environment we hope to create in our projects. A record of successful distribution, great productions and everyone making money from the projects.
We also see a lot of abuse in the industry, recruiting actors for IMDB credit and sometimes a free lunch while the film maker is hoping to get a profit from the film.
That is something that we will not tolerate or participate in. We expect a fair distribution based on participation or up front pay for all work from crew to talent to craft services. If you want to keep all the earnings, pay the crew and talent or share the profits.
The point is, no film is made for nothing or no budget, so in our case, micro budget should really be deferred budget.
In Hollywood productions this model is common but anyone paid this way usually gets screwed because the production is so expensive there is no profit. But with a micro budgets, the chance of profit is much higher.
In the instance of the 1994 movie Forrest Gump a $55 million production earned over $1 billion world wide. The writer was promised 3% of the net profit but through creative bookkeeping, the film lost money and the writer got $0 from the 3%.
Sure they get away with that in Hollywood, but we don't want to be part of that scam or any movie that does not fairly compensate all the participants.
Micro budget does not me taking advantage of people, it just means you are going to be sensible with costs, distributions and resources.
By allowing film makers to leverage our resources into quality productions, we hope to create a more welcoming model for low budget films and participants that are willing to help on many productions.
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