"After the premiere of Kissing on the Mouth at the 2005 SXSW Film Festival, I had a burning desire to make another film and absolutely no money to do it. I had pulled Kissing on the Mouth together for less than $2,000, but the cost of making the DigiBeta screening copy, postcards, posters and traveling to the festival added considerable strain to my already growing credit card debt. I wasn’t working full-time, and I didn’t particularly want to be either because I was high on the feeling of being a filmmaker.
My fiancée and frequent collaborator, Kris Williams, landed a job doing some video work for the Chicago Opera Theater and hired me to shoot and put together a DVD for them. The little bit of money from this project was going to be enough to pay my rent and allow me to get to work on something new. I was also doing some part-time Web design work that allowed me plenty of flexibility to shoot when I wanted to. I knew I could make it through the summer this way, but I also knew that future income was uncertain, so I decided that LOL, the new film, could only cost about $3,000.
I made a few big purchases right away. I bought a Sennheiser wireless lavalier microphone ($500 from B&H Photo’s Website, bhphotovideo.com), excited by the possibility of allowing my actors to roam around freely while still getting good audio. I also purchased three boxes of Sony DVCAM 40-minute tapes ($350 from taperesources.com). I figured this would be enough tape stock to get me through the film, and it was. Based on my experiences with Kissing on the Mouth, I knew there would be other miscellaneous costs, but the new microphone and plentiful tape stock were enough to get me started.
I believe that food is always a good thing to spend money on when you are making a film, even if you have extremely limited resources. Taking everyone out to dinner after a shoot is a great way to bond and let people know that you appreciate the time they are giving you. Since everyone was working for free, I did my best to schedule our shoots around meal times so that everyone would be fed at least once. Even if it was just ordering a pizza and sitting around watching TV with everyone, I always looked forward to these times, and they kept morale up during the eight months that we ended up working on the film.
Some of the most memorable sequences in LOL are the “noisehead” videos that pop up throughout the film. These are short segments that Kevin Bewersdorf (co-writer, co-star, composer) put together featuring music and accompanying video created by people pointing a camera at their face and making noises with their mouths. (You can see some examples at lolthemovie.com.) These videos are extremely cool, and they didn’t cost us anything because we asked friends to make them on their own and send us the tapes. It’s just one of the ways that we used creative strategies and the goodwill of friends to cut costs.
We also put the Internet to work for us. Chris Wells (co-writer, co-star) and Kevin were both in Chicago during the summer, while I was doing the majority of the shooting, but by the fall Chris had returned to New York, where he was going to school, and Kevin had returned to Berlin, where he was living at the time. There was still work to do on the film, including some additional filming and also composing the score. Rather than spend hundreds of dollars sending DVDs and tapes through the mail or via FedEx, I continued working with Chris and Kevin by uploading Quicktime files that they could view and comment on. Kevin composed the score entirely from Berlin using a Quicktime version of the film that I sent to him in several chunks, and he sent me all of the final music you hear in the film as AIFF files using free services like yousendit.com.
Rather than spend money flying Chris back to Chicago to shoot some additional scenes, we scheduled the shooting around school holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, when he was going to be back in town anyway. Because the film takes place during the summer and we were trying to match earlier scenes, this often meant avoiding the snow that was frequently on the ground during some of this additional shooting. We got pretty sick of having to wear T-shirts in the freezing cold and avoiding seeing our breath on camera, but it meant spending no additional money on airfare.
Throughout the production the food and gas money started adding up, but a trip down to St. Louis for the finale of the film was the only other big expense. Kevin and Tipper Newton, the actress who played opposite him, tried to convince me that we didn’t have to actually drive to St. Louis and that we could just shoot the scenes in Chicago and fake it, but I was insistent that I wanted them to actually go through the experience. We left Chicago one afternoon, drove down in a few hours, filming along the way, and shot early into the morning. Kate Winterich, who was the lead in Kissing on the Mouth and has a small role in LOL, let us stay the night and film at her mom’s place, so we didn’t have to pay for a hotel. The next day we woke up, shot one more scene and headed back. Kate’s mom even took us out for lunch before we left so that we didn’t have to spend our own money.
No matter how budget-conscious you are, it’s impossible to pull something like this off without tremendous generosity and support from very talented people. If I paid everybody what his or her time was truly worth, the budget of LOL would be astronomical. But the drive to make the film and the knowledge that we were all in it together was enough for Chris, Kevin and I to keep moving forward even in a climate where most indie films never find an audience and never make a dime. None of us entered into the project with financial aspirations, and I always assumed that the money I spent was gone, never to be seen again.
We took the film to festivals throughout 2006, and I’m happy to report that in December we signed a DVD distribution deal with Benten Films, a New York company, and the advance money will allow me to actually pay Chris, Kevin, Tipper and actresses Brigid Reagan and Greta Gerwig a small amount. It’s just a token of my gratitude for all of the hours they gave me, and any future money the film makes will be split between everyone. Their hard work and commitment to the project proved that the desire to make a film is worth more than money. LOL will be available on DVD at the end of August. "
—Joe Swanberg
My fiancée and frequent collaborator, Kris Williams, landed a job doing some video work for the Chicago Opera Theater and hired me to shoot and put together a DVD for them. The little bit of money from this project was going to be enough to pay my rent and allow me to get to work on something new. I was also doing some part-time Web design work that allowed me plenty of flexibility to shoot when I wanted to. I knew I could make it through the summer this way, but I also knew that future income was uncertain, so I decided that LOL, the new film, could only cost about $3,000.
I made a few big purchases right away. I bought a Sennheiser wireless lavalier microphone ($500 from B&H Photo’s Website, bhphotovideo.com), excited by the possibility of allowing my actors to roam around freely while still getting good audio. I also purchased three boxes of Sony DVCAM 40-minute tapes ($350 from taperesources.com). I figured this would be enough tape stock to get me through the film, and it was. Based on my experiences with Kissing on the Mouth, I knew there would be other miscellaneous costs, but the new microphone and plentiful tape stock were enough to get me started.
I believe that food is always a good thing to spend money on when you are making a film, even if you have extremely limited resources. Taking everyone out to dinner after a shoot is a great way to bond and let people know that you appreciate the time they are giving you. Since everyone was working for free, I did my best to schedule our shoots around meal times so that everyone would be fed at least once. Even if it was just ordering a pizza and sitting around watching TV with everyone, I always looked forward to these times, and they kept morale up during the eight months that we ended up working on the film.Some of the most memorable sequences in LOL are the “noisehead” videos that pop up throughout the film. These are short segments that Kevin Bewersdorf (co-writer, co-star, composer) put together featuring music and accompanying video created by people pointing a camera at their face and making noises with their mouths. (You can see some examples at lolthemovie.com.) These videos are extremely cool, and they didn’t cost us anything because we asked friends to make them on their own and send us the tapes. It’s just one of the ways that we used creative strategies and the goodwill of friends to cut costs.
We also put the Internet to work for us. Chris Wells (co-writer, co-star) and Kevin were both in Chicago during the summer, while I was doing the majority of the shooting, but by the fall Chris had returned to New York, where he was going to school, and Kevin had returned to Berlin, where he was living at the time. There was still work to do on the film, including some additional filming and also composing the score. Rather than spend hundreds of dollars sending DVDs and tapes through the mail or via FedEx, I continued working with Chris and Kevin by uploading Quicktime files that they could view and comment on. Kevin composed the score entirely from Berlin using a Quicktime version of the film that I sent to him in several chunks, and he sent me all of the final music you hear in the film as AIFF files using free services like yousendit.com.
Rather than spend money flying Chris back to Chicago to shoot some additional scenes, we scheduled the shooting around school holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, when he was going to be back in town anyway. Because the film takes place during the summer and we were trying to match earlier scenes, this often meant avoiding the snow that was frequently on the ground during some of this additional shooting. We got pretty sick of having to wear T-shirts in the freezing cold and avoiding seeing our breath on camera, but it meant spending no additional money on airfare.
Throughout the production the food and gas money started adding up, but a trip down to St. Louis for the finale of the film was the only other big expense. Kevin and Tipper Newton, the actress who played opposite him, tried to convince me that we didn’t have to actually drive to St. Louis and that we could just shoot the scenes in Chicago and fake it, but I was insistent that I wanted them to actually go through the experience. We left Chicago one afternoon, drove down in a few hours, filming along the way, and shot early into the morning. Kate Winterich, who was the lead in Kissing on the Mouth and has a small role in LOL, let us stay the night and film at her mom’s place, so we didn’t have to pay for a hotel. The next day we woke up, shot one more scene and headed back. Kate’s mom even took us out for lunch before we left so that we didn’t have to spend our own money.
No matter how budget-conscious you are, it’s impossible to pull something like this off without tremendous generosity and support from very talented people. If I paid everybody what his or her time was truly worth, the budget of LOL would be astronomical. But the drive to make the film and the knowledge that we were all in it together was enough for Chris, Kevin and I to keep moving forward even in a climate where most indie films never find an audience and never make a dime. None of us entered into the project with financial aspirations, and I always assumed that the money I spent was gone, never to be seen again.
We took the film to festivals throughout 2006, and I’m happy to report that in December we signed a DVD distribution deal with Benten Films, a New York company, and the advance money will allow me to actually pay Chris, Kevin, Tipper and actresses Brigid Reagan and Greta Gerwig a small amount. It’s just a token of my gratitude for all of the hours they gave me, and any future money the film makes will be split between everyone. Their hard work and commitment to the project proved that the desire to make a film is worth more than money. LOL will be available on DVD at the end of August. "
—Joe Swanberg
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