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The art of low-budget filmmaking is the art of being

thoroughly prepared and maximizing what you have.

And your preparation is at every level of design storyboarding,

technical scouting, selecting your locations,

trying to get the most bang for the buck out of a location,

versus having to build a set.

You'll sacrifice some control.

You'll sacrifice some design elements

that you might have if you'd had the budget to build

a million dollar set.

But it's okay.

The essence of the story will come through regardless.

And you're going to select a crew for their ability

to move fast and take no prisoners,

but still generate images of high quality

that are punching above their weight,

so that the film that you end up with looks great,

and you don't see and feel the compromises

that you know you've made.

You're not going to have a movie star, which

can be a blessing in the sense that it forces you

as a filmmaker to earn the audience's

interest in that character.

So I think it builds craft.

And maybe you have to make two or three films at a more modest

budget to prove--

to prove yourself, and to learn the craft,

and to prove that the craft that you have learned to,

you know, the powers that be, that sign--

that sign the checks.

Pick a subject that can be done within the budget constraints

that you have.

And let me give you an example from my own experience.

When I was breaking in, I made "The Terminator."

That was my first directing credit.

And I knew when I was writing it that I

had to write it for a budget.

So I knew I was going to be on location, so I wasn't

going to be able to build sets.

Now, the difference between building a set of a castle

and going to a castle or a large building or large mansion

and using the location is a difference in control.

You can knock out a wall.

You can go back on a longer lens.

You can stylistically do things in a set that you cannot do

on a location.

Does the audience care?

Probably not that much.

You might not win an Academy Award

for cinematography or design because of the limitations,

but you'll still make a damn good film.

So it's a question of, when are you

getting diminishing returns for where you're spending money?

And so with "The Terminator," the idea

there was to be very everyday, very commonplace, not exotic,

for a specific reason, then drop the exotic element into it.

And that was really a motif throughout "The Terminator"

films, for the most part.

Certainly, the first film was about,

this is everyday Los Angeles.

This is a restaurant.

This is a nightclub.

This is a city street.

And the extraordinary elements came into it

from the future, Kyle Reese, and the terminator.

And even then, they were forced to deal

with contemporary elements in terms of weaponry, and so on.

And that was done by design for a very simple reason.

We couldn't afford anything else.

That script was carefully written

to be something that was affordable.

Because I knew I was coming in as an entry level filmmaker.

I knew that I was going to have to pick

my battles with the visual effects in a very

controlled way, so that it was manageable within the budget.

So we'd do a few prosthetic effects.

We saved up all our big guns for the end, where the endoskeleton

is revealed by the fire.

We had a few prosthetic gags along the way,

and we had a couple of future sequences that could be bigger

or could be smaller, that the film didn't hinge on,

where I could do some of the effects work

that I had learned how to do.

Because I asked myself, what do I bring to this specific story

other than that I created it?

Well, I know tactical filmmaking.

I know visual effects.

I've done a bit of action second-unit direction.

With an early project, you want to come in with something that

speaks to the strengths that you've already developed,

or it better be the best damn screenplay in history.

It's really more important, I would say,

than the technical understanding of the art of photography

and lighting, is to have that communication with the director

of photography.

If you're working with someone you've never

worked with before, spend a lot of time

with that person looking at films and saying what you like

and what you see and what's important.

And ask the director of photography, how do I do that?

How will we do that?

How will we get that--

that sort of highly directional soft cross light

coming in through the window?

How can we get that?

How can we get that richness of tone based on your experience?

How have you done that in the past?

And what will that involve for me technically

during the shooting day?

And if I want to change my angle--

let's say I'm going to go outside the window,

and the person comes to the window,

how does that not suddenly look very flat?

Because I'm literally-- I've got the lights right behind me

at that point.

Well, how will we cheat that?

How will we manage window reflections?

How will we shoot in cars?

How will we do all these things?

So get that dialogue going as early as possible.

When I made "Terminator," I hired Adam Greenberg.

And I sat down with him, and we watched two films together.

One was "Blade Runner," and one was "The Road Warrior,"

so "Mad Max 2."

And we watched both those films.

And I said, I want both of those films put into a blender.

And he said, but they're completely different.

I said, exactly, exactly.

How do we create a common ground between those two films,

the kinetic, moving camera, wide lenses, hauling ass before

and following cars, very dynamic, but at the same time,

that moody, sort of almost noir, film noir quality,

German expressionist quality-- strong shadows,

deep blacks, hard edge lights, where

you need very precise lighting control to get that effect?

I said, we need to figure out how to do that.

And we talked about it a lot.

And we even went out and drove around the town

with a light meter to find out what streets were bright enough

that we could shoot essentially natural light at night

or available light at night.

Because we wouldn't have to bring

in condors and lights and things that we couldn't afford.

So we just found mercury vapor lights

on streets that were brighter.

And a good tip there is car lots, used car lots

or new car lots.

They always have bright lights.

In every city, there's a row of, like, car dealerships.

Just shoot on that street, because everything's all

lit up.

And you won't need any additional lights.

Of course, these days, the cameras

are much more sensitive.

But we were shooting on negative at the time.

So you know, we had to-- we had to find a way

to shoot without a lot of lights.

And Adam said, we're going to be shooting wide open.

We'll be shooting at F1.4 on prime lenses.

So you know, I had schooled myself

on the nature of lenses and photography enough

by that point to understand I won't have a zoom lens.

So if I need to change lenses, that's going to take us time.

I have to factor that into my shooting day.

And you know, I wanted a Steadicam.

We couldn't afford a Steadicam.

So the DP made a rig with some speed rail

tubing to drop the camera down into it,

like a Steadicam low-mode type position.

And he just kind of wore it with some straps over his shoulder.

And he happened to be an extremely good

handheld operator.

So he created, essentially, low-mode Steadicam shots,

and we just did it that way.

And so you know, you have to use--

you have to use every trick in the book and invent new ones.

The whole film was shot in about 42 days.

And when I got it done, when I got that body of shooting done,

there were still some shots I needed.

So I snuck back out with five people

and shot for a week, five people.

And I operated the camera myself.

I lit it myself.

I did all that.

So you have to be prepared to accomplish your goal

in ingenious ways and know where it's okay to compromise

and where it isn't.

And rehearse the crap out of it ahead of time.

Because rehearsals are cheap or free, and they pay off.

And have very, very good communication

with your director of photography,

so that you know exactly how you're

going to shoot everything.

And be prepared with a plan B and a plan C, in case

it's raining, or there's something else that

stands in your way on the day.

Because at that kind of budget, you're

not going to be able to get to go back.

And you know, I go on for hours about all the cheap house

tricks that we used on "Terminator" to tell that--

to tell that story.

But the important thing is to serve--

is to serve the story.

Find a way to serve the story and give it some style.

If I were shooting a very low-budget film right now,

and I need to get a lot of setups a day,

I would have a game plan for every day

of shooting that involved the nature of the lighting.

Because you lose a lot of time to lighting.

And it's technical.

It's understanding it's going to take time to move.

If you've designed the scene in such a way

that you have a big lighting change, that lighting change is

going to take time, you know.

Typically, people call it turning around.

You've shot the scene in this direction,

and the same lighting can't be used.

If you bring the camera around to do your 180

reverses or your reverse over the shoulders,

it's going to look flat.

It's going to look horrible.

And the lighting has to be all cheated

so that that reverse actually looks pleasing to the eye.

I remember once, just to prove the point to myself,

after I had made "Titanic" and done these big films, "Titanic"

and "True Lies" and films like that,

I did the last episode of a series

that I was producing called "Dark Angel."

And just to prove that I could do it,

I did 117 setups in one day.

And I did it in the following way.

I said, you will not bring a C stand or a flag

or a sandbag or any lighting instrument into the set.

We will light the set from across the street

with four 10k Xenons, and I will move every shot to the light.

We won't move the lights to the shot.

And it was a big kind of suspense action fight scene.

It was 117 setups in one day.

I shot it all handheld.

It was myself and another operator.

We kept the crew out of the workspace.

We had the stunt people standing by

to pop in for the actors at a moment's notice

within the fight choreography.

We had all our multiple takes of our effects breaking glass

and breakaway wood doors, and things like

that, all set up in advance.

I never did a second take of the same gag.

But I did have five takes of the gag ready of somebody getting

thrown through a window.

We threw them through one window,

and then we threw them through the next window,

and we threw them through the window.

And I made sure that it would all cut together.

So there are tricks like that that you can do.

And it was a little bit of a competition with Robert

Rodriguez, because I think he had done, like,

105 setups or something in one day on one of his films.

And Robert, of course, has written much and done much

to disseminate his ideas for how you do low budget.

So the point is it can be done, and it

can be done with relatively low level of compromise.