Cinema Salad on One, Eleven, Oh Eight

How to Afford Anything (including a movie budget)
There a few things more empowering than financing your own flick. You don't answer to anyone, and you make your own rules. This prospect can be tricky, but photographer Ken Rockwell has a great post about how to hack your life so you can afford what you really want. It's all about frugality, with so many good ideas that I won't even try to go into them here. Just click on the link and learn what you can sacrifice for the creative greater good. There are no more excuses.

Omaha Beach on the Cheap
[Courtesy Indy Mogul, ProLost] Now here's something really inspiring. Want to duplicate Spielberg's D-day invasion from Saving Private Ryan with few resources? No problem! Just check out this video that quickly details how some enterprising types did just that for a BBC special. The results are very impressive and fall in line with Stu Maschwitz's (author of The DV Rebel's Guide) philosophy of using time instead of money to achieve quality results. Of course you'll need some extensive compositing and 3D knowledge, but what do you want, the moon?

Originality Doesn't Make Great Drama
While their posts over at $1000 Film are less frequent these days, when they do write, it is well worth reading. This time out, Clive comments about the misnomer of indies trying to be so "original" (and treating convention with disdain) that they end up shooting themselves in the foot. There is much to be learned from those who have gone before and ignoring things that have worked for decades is just plain foolish. This isn't to say you can't bend the rules, Clive adds, but just that there should be a reason for doing so, and not just maverick pride. People may not "get" your stuff because it's just not gettable, no matter how original it may be. A very good object lesson we can all learn from.

Good luck with those actors this weekend...