Low budget film

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A low-budget film [ loʊ ˌbʌdʒɪtfɪlm ] ( German  film with a low budget ) is a film production that has only a small budget and is usually produced outside of the established studio system . In classic Hollywood, the low-budget film was usually shown in double feature as a B-film with lavish large-scale productions ( A-film ). From the late 1940s onwards, independent companies such as American International Pictures (AIP) began specializing in the production of low-budget films . In order to save costs, used sets were often used and a short period of time was chosen for the shooting . By using a small number of production resources, the film genres of avant-garde , independent and exploitation films can also be assigned to the low-budget principle. The American Screen Actors Guild (SAG) created a classification for low-budget productions based on budget statistics in 1996 in order to derive guidelines for the remuneration of actors. The budget range of the five created categories ranges from under 75,000 ( Experimental Film Agreement ) up to two million US dollars. In contrast to a no-budget film , a low-budget film is geared towards profit.

For the opposite - films made with high financial outlay (and therefore mostly dependent on significantly higher income) - the term big budget film is sometimes used.

Definition and development

Independent of the industrially produced low-budget films from Hollywood, the low-budget aesthetic is also the subject of avant-garde, experimental and underground films . The low production costs and the shooting in the resulting circumstances allow small, personal films to be created that sometimes do not correspond to viewing habits. The New American Cinema and the Nouvelle Vague made the term low budget the epitome of artistic cinema far removed from the mainstream . Low Budget also stands for the films of exploitation cinema, which pursue the principle of cheaply produced repetition and the exaggeration of commercially successful ideas. The film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) by Melvin Van Peebles was, on the one hand, the initial spark for the blaxploitation genre and , on the other hand, a representative of the New Black Cinema . Both the artistic and the commercial low-budget film found their way into the general concept of independent film in the 1970s and 1980s.

In the 1980s and 1990s, directors of independent films such as Kevin Smith ( Clerks , 1994) and Jim Jarmusch ( Dauernd Ferien , 1982; Stranger than Paradise , 1984) established themselves through success at low-budget film festivals. Her first directing projects were not only groundbreaking for low-budget films , but were also a reflection of their own pop worlds, which appeared more realistic than the clichés of large-scale productions. In the 1990s, however, the low-budget film fell behind the mainstream, which was becoming more and more differentiated. They were small films that still caused a stir. For example El Mariachi (1992), which won the Sundance Film Festival on a budget of US $ 7,000 , or the Russian production The Brother (1997), which cost only US $ 10,000 and was awarded at the Chicago International Film Festival . The surprising success of the Blair Witch Project (1999) eventually made the low-budget film a mass phenomenon. The horror film , which was initially produced independently with a budget of US $ 22,000 , became an event movie with shaky, pseudo-documentary settings and efficient Internet marketing, and achieved sales of over US $ 248 million.

The renaissance of the low-budget film was made possible by the Dogma movement in Denmark initiated by Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg , whose films have found their way into numerous festivals. Digital cameras enabled inexpensive production and the engagement of well-known actors such as Jean-Marc Barr or Asia Argento . Dogma co-founder Søren Kragh-Jacobsen ( Mifunes sidste sang , 1998) compared the cinematic abstinence of the manifesto with the renaissance of unplugged songs . This analogy between Dogma 95 and the acoustic concerts of the music channel MTV also describes the dissolving boundaries between low budget and mainstream .

In countries with a lower standard of living, low budget films are standard. The action film Who Killed Captain Alex , which was shot in Uganda in 2010 , was made with a budget equivalent to US $ 200, but earned around US $ 1,500 in profit.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Andreas Rauscher: Low Budget . In: Thomas Koebner (Hrsg.): Sachlexikon des Films . 2nd Edition. Reclam, 2006, ISBN 978-3-15-010625-9 , pp. 407 f .
  2. ↑ Ludger Kaczmarek: Low-budget production. In: Hans. J. Wulff, Theo Bender (ed.): Lexicon of film terms.
  3. ^ A. Robinson: Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye: The Biography of a Master Film-Maker. IB Tauris, 2003, ISBN 1-86064-965-3 , p. 77.
  4. ↑ Tom Ang: Digital Video. Equipment, techniques, projects, post-processing . Dorling Kindersley, 2005, ISBN 3-8310-0765-9 .
  5. ↑ Big Budget Film Entry in the Oxford Online Dictionary . Definition: Involving the expenditure of a large amount of money. Example sentence: 'the book was made into a big-budget Hollywood film' . Retrieved May 1, 2018.
  6. ↑ Jessica Lane: Ava DuVernay Lands ANOTHER Big Budget Film, 'The New Gods' . In: TV One. March 16, 2018. Retrieved May 1, 2018.
  7. ^ Peter Broderick: The Filmmaker Articles . In: Filmmaker Magazine. Winter 1992. (English)
  8. ↑ The budget later rose to $ 500,000 to $ 750,000 through rework; see. ´The Blair Witch Project´ 10 years later. In: Entertainment Weekly. July 9, 2009.
  9. ^ The Blair Witch Project. In: Box Office Mojo. Retrieved February 13, 2010.
  10. ↑ A Ugandan Filmmaker's Quest to Conquer the Planet with Low-Budget Action Movies. In: vice.com