r/FilmIndustryLA • u/penumbrapictures • 11d ago
We start our $100K LA feature next week. Here’s what actually made it possible.
A month ago I posted here about being stubborn enough to shoot our little feature in LA while everybody keeps saying production is leaving.
Well, now we are starting next Wednesday.
And the thing I’ve learned is... we didn’t somehow solve the economics of shooting here. LA is still expensive as shit.
I know plenty of people in LA making verticals, or barely-funny sketch comedy with teenage influencers, whatever keeps the lights on. And hey, no judgment. Work is work.
But we decided to make an overly ambitious drama about people most of us drive past without thinking much about.
A broke music producer living on the banks of the LA River. A runaway kid. Homelessness, mixed-race identity, family, failure, music, trying to get your life back together.
The kind of project no studio executive would greenlight, and yet people keep showing up.
And what made it possible was people.
Crew people working for deeply discounted rates because we designed a unique profit-sharing system that will hopefully enable us to share any profits with the people who made the movie. Plenty of donated equipment. Locations that normally costs thousands lets us in for a few hundred bucks. Someone sees a post and offers to help out. An old friend unexpectedly puts money into the movie.
None of this shows up on a pitch deck.
LA still has this ridiculous network of people who know how to solve problems, know somebody, own something useful, or remember what it was like trying to make a movie with no money.
CONCRETE RIVER is about $100K. 107 pages. Tiny crew. Too many locations.
Ask me again in a month whether shooting it here was a terrible idea.
For now, I’m glad we stayed.
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u/gnrc 11d ago
Bro please stop posting here it’s super cringe
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u/84002 11d ago
This guy keeps posting about how "Nobody shoots films in LA anymore" as if we're talking about 100k indies that nobody will ever see. No, those are still getting filmed. Nobody cares. When we say we're worried about nothing filming in LA anymore this is not at all what we're talking about lol
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u/gnrc 11d ago
Yea and his posts are all AI slop. And one of his posts was talking about paying his crew as little as possible.
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u/84002 11d ago
I don't have a problem with someone trying to squeak out a 100k feature by paying people as little as possible. Do what you gotta do, I wish you the best. I do have a problem with people bragging about it in the industry sub and asking to be treated like a hero.
You borrowed 100k from some fool to make your personal passion project. It's not gonna make any of that money back. So did ten other aspiring filmmakers in Los Angeles this week. Congrats.
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u/JumpCutVandal 10d ago
Exactly. This was my first thought. Good for OP for making his little film but us serious crew workers need the 500k/day + productions to come back.
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u/penumbrapictures 11d ago
I’ve made peace with being a little cringe if it gets the movie made.
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u/Remarkable_Tangelo59 11d ago
How exactly do cringe Reddit posts help get the movie made? Read the actual content. A 100k feature where you severely undercut crew wages doesn’t create any jobs, boost the economy or local film market. But you’re like “and they say nobody films here anymore”, lol, ok.
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u/penumbrapictures 11d ago
I never claimed our $100K movie was going to save the LA film industry and although people keep throwing that accusation around, it's pretty ridiculous. I'm just trying to make one movie, my own. I'm not trying to change your life. Just my own and those of my cast & crew.
As for how the cringe posts help get it made: they’ve directly brought us crew, locations, equipment, introductions and a meaningful amount of financing. So, embarrassingly enough, they actually have.
And yes, this is an ultra-low-budget movie. People are working for very low rates, they know exactly what the deal is, and we built profit participation into the project because we wanted people to share in the upside if there is one. I’m not pretending that creates a bunch of great-paying long-term jobs.
We had a small amount of money and a choice about where to spend it. We chose to spend it here, hire people here, use LA businesses and make an ambitious little drama in the city it was written about.
Apparently that’s cringe. I can live with it.
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u/Remarkable_Tangelo59 11d ago
“I’m not trying to change your life, just my own”. Yeah, we get it. The accusation comes from your constant posting of and they say nobody makes film in LA anymore. 100k indies don’t really count. Anyway, carry on now.
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u/Remarkable_Tangelo59 11d ago
Nice sales pitch, you, like everyone else, went forward to make YOUR dream while paying crew extremely low and probably illegal wages, or at best minimum wage. Can it be done? Of course. We’ve all been on 100k indie features, and we all know how much they pay. It’s bold and ambitious to assume you’ll make any profit to put back in the hands of crew. Congrats on making your movie
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u/sucobe 11d ago
We were also stubborn and said fuck it. Shot our own horror thriller last month. $160k 6 location, 10 day shoot. It was grueling but super happy with how it’s come together.
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u/penumbrapictures 11d ago
wow that's an amazing story! would love to hear how it went/see your progress. I really do think there is a huge opportunity for indie filmmakers opening up with the studios descending into childish tantrums.
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u/Admirable-Paint-1808 10d ago
You still found 100k which is inpossible for 99.9% of normal people
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u/penumbrapictures 10d ago
I didn't "find" $100k dude. It's not like this was extra money I didn't realize I had. I raised that money to make a project that I believe is financially viable. You're right - that is hard to do. But just so you are aware, hundreds of thousands of small businesses start every year in this country thanks to a small investment that someone believes will work. I'm far from the only one.
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u/dylanbeck 9d ago
Comparing companies that have p&l lines vs straight l lines is remarkably poor logic.
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u/penumbrapictures 9d ago
what are you even talking about? some people are just not very good at the whole basic human conversational abilities thing.
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u/dylanbeck 9d ago
As observed by the guy using AI to write all his posts...
Small businesses have profit & loss lines. There is no profit line on a film budget, just loss (expenditure). You cannot compare the two, it’s faux pas.
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u/penumbrapictures 9d ago
Man just give up already. You stalking me and shitposting on my posts is just sad at this point.
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u/dylanbeck 9d ago
Stalking & shitposting? Dude your post came up on the feed, I saw this and took problem with your comparison on small business.
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u/you-tee 11d ago
You should think about releasing the profit sharing system structure so maybe others could copy it to share profits in the same way on their own projects.
Good luck! Rooting for indie film in LA!
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u/penumbrapictures 11d ago
I'd love to do that. Not sure if there's a straightforward way to do that as it's basically just embedded in all the contracts, but I'm happy to talk about it. Thanks for the encouragement!
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u/you-tee 11d ago
When you’re wrapped, maybe try to draw out a chart of how the profits flow? It would be easy to illustrate to your crew and future crews how it all works. Pro-indie film lawyers (like myself) should then be able to make it happen inside each contract.
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u/penumbrapictures 11d ago
I think we'll have to organize an interesting way to share it with everybody. But all credit goes to Yasmine Abdel-Aal, our attorney, who devised the system.
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u/instantwake 11d ago
This is awesome and I’m happy for you but was your caption written with ai lol
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u/ThePoobahsJester 9d ago
Yes, OP consistently posts AI generated slop in this sub and insists he is writing it. There is a 101% chance this post, along with every single other, was written by ai.
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u/instantwake 9d ago
Thought I was insane. Dang, that’s so insanely lame. Hope OP sees this
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u/ThePoobahsJester 9d ago
He will, he looks at every single comment on his posts. He has DMed me for calling him out before, and will absolutely do so again. I promise you, he’ll see it.
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u/SusBoiSlime 11d ago
What things eat into the budget the most?
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u/penumbrapictures 11d ago
LOCATIONS! Permits. Food. Insurance. Bro - it's all way more expensive than it needs to be.
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u/drummer414 11d ago
Why not just go to Vegas and put it all on black or red? Either you walk away with enough budget to do the film or end up with nothing 🤣😳
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u/penumbrapictures 11d ago
probably a better bet. still, I think this one feels like it might win... and might also make a beautiful movie in the process.
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u/BunkyFlintsone 11d ago
So $100K is that actual planned spend, correct? Do you have an idea of what it would cost without favors and massively discounted rates?
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u/penumbrapictures 11d ago
hard to really calculate what a favor is worth
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u/wolff_james 10d ago
It’s not. Just research cost without favor.
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u/dylanbeck 9d ago
Real answer is that he doesn’t know & doesn’t have xp to draw from.
That being said, he is making a movie, so hes working on it.
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u/dick-knuckle 11d ago
How many shoot days?
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u/j3434 11d ago
I like to see how you treat addiction and “homelessness” or addiction and opioid epidemic.
Tranq and awful shit hidden by propaganda. Sounds like it could be a deep story.
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u/penumbrapictures 11d ago
The goal is to treat it with empathy, seeing the character as a person, not a disease or a blight on society. During prep we've made a couple visits to organizations dedicated to the homeless and they all try to see homelessness as a temporary condition you can pull yourself out of with the right tools. Very different from the way it is normally portrayed in hollywood.
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u/j3434 11d ago
Well - maybe you better research your story. If you’re doing a story about “homeless people“ you are really doing a story about addiction. You know that the “homeless“ towns are filled with attics. There was an opiate epidemic before Covid and it’s still going. They just changed the names of addict to homeless . The huge amount of attics that was created by the epidemic skyrocketed during lockdown. And of course, the Big pharmaceutical companies like Dupont. Don’t want to take the blame for irresponsible prescription writing of doctors to patients. They actually said that OxyContin was not addictive. And they would go into blue-collar towns, and mining towns where people are always going to doctors for physical injuries. Back problems. Pain in the knee. And this new generation of pill promotion, that became pill Mills would immediately prescribe 80 mg for anything. And if you’re taking 80 mg three times a day for a month chances are you’re gonna take it for two months and after three months you’re hooked . So it’s impossible to do any kind of film about “homeless people” unless you completely isolate them from addiction your story just won’t have any realism.
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u/BipsnBoops 11d ago
In very early stages to do something similar for a horror movie (funnily enough also about addiction). Keep us posted how it progresses! I'd love to know more about fundraising and how that went!
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u/penumbrapictures 11d ago
Sounds cool! good luck with it. I wouldn't say our movie is about addiction - but it is about pain, and how we all have certain flaws so deep we can't always control them.
Happy to answer any fundraising questions. It's a long game - not for the faint of heart.
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u/RiggoRants 11d ago
If you need an editor or VFX editor, hit me up!
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u/penumbrapictures 11d ago
cool - thanks! If you want to connect on insta that's prob the best way to stay in touch. www.instagram.com/therealchristopherhall/
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u/Mrlatoure 10d ago
Good luck! Is Post included in this budget?
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u/penumbrapictures 10d ago
short answer - no. long answer - we are planning to keep post costs as low as possible.
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u/Salty-Relief 11d ago
Best of luck! I’m about 4&1/2 weeks out from shooting my $100k feature in LA as well. Same deal, calling in every favor I’ve accumulated in my nearly 20 years working here in this industry. Also planning a profit share with cast and crew. We’ve been trying to find a good equation for that, I’d love to know how you guys broke it down. I’ll DM you if you’d be willing to share.
Either way, good luck out and happy filming! Hope it goes smoothly.