I made my first feature film last year. I had a script I’d rewritten four times, a five-person crew, and no real idea what a production actually costs. What follows is the version of my first feature nobody puts in the trailer: the budget needed, the schedule, the money problems I’ve faced, and everything I’d do differently if I ever decide to do this again.
Development Stage
My original script started as a twelve-page short film idea. While I was revising that, it kept growing. Four drafts later, there were ninety-one pages. I ran table reads in my living room most weeks, cut a few scenes I liked just because they didn’t convey any meaning, and wrote down a shot list before I even had a location.
Back then, I didn’t have an assistant or a script supervisor to get a second opinion or honest feedback. All I had was just a laptop and a group chat of friends who’d read lines out loud when I asked them to.
Pre-Production
I’d expected to spend three weeks on prep, but it took me six. Two locations fell through: one when the owner changed his mind three days before we were supposed to start shooting. We had to scramble for a replacement while everything else was already moving. My girlfriend was handling permits and insurance calls, sitting on hold with brokers for hours some days. I kept messing with the shot list and lost more sleep than I’d like to admit. We arranged a fourteen-day schedule with two buffer days just in case something went wrong. We used both of them. By the time we were done with prep, half the shot list looked nothing like it did on day one.
Production
When I was planning, fourteen days seemed more than enough. But reality is usually far from our expectations, right? Our lead actor lost his voice in three days, so we had to move two days of dialogue scenes to the back of the schedule. We were shooting in a house with no air conditioning when it was extremely hot. Imagine how we smelled ten hours in. My gaffer worked for deferred pay and pizza, on pure enthusiasm. The sound guy left in eight days, so I had to finish the shoot, recording audio myself with a boom pole I’d never actually touched before.
I wasn’t a director anymore by day ten, I was doing absolutely everything. I was driving cast to set, running food, and dealing with a landlord who was going to shut off our access to the generator mid-scene. We were done on day sixteen, two days later than planned. Everyone was exhausted, but nobody quit.
Post-Production
It took me four months to edit. I re-cut the opening scene at least a dozen times. Color and sound design cost more than I’d expected, particularly ADR sessions because I hadn’t budgeted for those at all. Twice during that period, we ran out of money. At the end of the day, finishing the movie ended up costing me almost as much as all the production. Most days it was just invoices, re-exporting the same ten minutes for the twentieth time, and waiting on replies from the sound studio.
Budget Spent
I showed up with plenty of ambition and creativity, but none of that mattered until I sorted out the money. From beginning to end, the financial burden rested on my shoulders, and that is exactly why I tell first-time directors to hold onto their vision no matter what. I believed in this project so completely that I decided to personally fund it all the way through the post-production stage. After thinking through a handful of options, my very first move was to reach out to a close friend, Daniel, and ask him for $10,000. I even promised to return every cent within a year, but it led nowhere. Rather than give up, I kept digging, and my girlfriend put together a Google spreadsheet so we could line up loan offers from traditional banks and digital lenders side by side. Once we compared the interest rates against the amount the film actually required, this website turned out to be the perfect match for what I was trying to achieve. Along the way I discovered just how helpful their support team was, and they genuinely helped me hold onto money during post-production. Kayla Harris from the company also walked us through the process with real insight. She passed along a long list of suggestions, but three of them stayed with us the whole way:
- Only reserve accommodations when you truly need them. We waited to lock in locations and hostels until the shooting schedule was fully set.
- Cluster your scenes by location. We filmed everything at a single spot in one visit instead of coming back again and again.
- Always keep a small emergency fund. We tucked away $1,000 strictly for real emergencies, and it saved us a huge amount of stress.
Film Distribution
At this stage, I found out that distribution is a whole separate project. We applied to more than ten festivals and were approved for three. They were all small, with audiences who’d never heard of us and stayed through the credits anyway. Getting accepted doesn’t bring you any money, it’s actually the opposite. Entry fees ran $30 to $75 each, and with our long list of festivals, that turned into a few hundred dollars before we’d heard back from any of them. Plus, we wanted to attend the screening. That’s why we had to book flight tickets and a hotel.
I spent several months negotiating with sales agents before finding a smaller distributor willing to split future earnings. No one even mentioned paying us upfront. There wasn’t a huge payout at the end, no check that changed our lives. But what we did get was an actual audience, strangers who sat through the whole film and had opinions about it afterward.
Final Thoughts
If I had known all of this beforehand, it probably would have talked me out of getting started. Honestly, the movie is far from perfect, and some parts of it embarrass me now. But somehow, strangers have watched it anyway, and I learned more from making it than I did in four years of film classes. If you’re thinking of shooting your first one, budget twice the time and twice the money you think is enough. Then start anyway. You’ll figure the rest out as you go.
