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Topic starter
22/10/2026 3:23 am
I was recently chatting about low budget/zero budget movies. Not just those done under $1M (although these days even that seems difficult!) but movies truly made with $5 and a dream. Obsession comes to mind with a $750,000 budget, but its director actually made a found footage film before called Milk & Serial with a budget of $800. It has 4M views on Youtube and got him repped.
Outside of horror, Clerks is a great example of an incredibly successful movie made on a low budget ($27,000).
What are your favourite examples? Looking for inspiration and proof that you don't need lots of money to make good films!
Feroetling reacted
28/10/2026 10:42 am
Going back years, there was The Blair Witch Project which was one of the primal "found footage" films, shot on a shoestring but picked up funds to supplement it after a cut was circulated. Still, it was a microbudget. Of course there was Paranormal Activity shot as a microbudget that was a big hit and Paramount distributed it.
But in terms of microbudget films I liked the most, Clerks is right up there. Christopher Nolan's debut film, "Following", was very good and had a budget of $6,000. Kind of a baragin for the career it launched for him.
But in the modern day, it sure seems like horror and darker films are the genres that succeed best for microbudgets. They can use a central and unusual gimmick as the core to build tension and fear and often can just use single locations or minimal locations to tell the story. Technically, dramas could use the same single/minimal locations, cast, effects, etc. but they can't offer something different from bigger dramas where horror and darker films can find an edge or unusual approach to offer something different from more expensive films.
Something to consider for folks deciding on a genre to shoot as a microbudget film, how can you offer something different from bigger-budget films?