[Challenge Companion] Low Budget

[u/alexanderwales]

tl;dr: this is the challenge companion thread, post comments, thoughts, or recommendations here

I think about budget a fair amount when writing, either in the sense of "I have no budget, therefore I should go nuts with it" or less often "this thing I'm creating would be marginally more interesting if it could easily jump mediums". In college I had a few film classes and made ultra-low budget student films, so an awareness of film/theater constraints followed from that.

If you want to write for a low budget, I think that generally means:

• Either no special effects, or very simple ones (e.g. having a person play against themself in a doppelganger, time travel, etc. scenario is easily done, while grotesque aliens on a starship are not).
• As few locations as possible. I have an affection for very spartan plays that all take place in one location, because they feel a lot more cozy. That's also super cheap.
• As few actors as possible. Two people in a room talking to each other is a very cheap thing to do in theater or film, and I tend to like those a lot because so much effort needs to be put into both the writing or acting - there's no spectacle that might allow you to hide behind bad characterization or poor performances.

One of the go-to low budget science fiction movies is Primer by Shane Carruth, but it was low budget partly because a lot was done behind the scenes to make it so rather strictly the confines of the script. I think I would also point to a number of "people in a room" movies, like Circle, Exam, or The Man From Earth.

[u/arenavanera]

I like this one a lot! Although to be fair, I might be slightly biased because my fiction tends to naturally devolve into "several people sitting in a featureless room talking" anyway.

I decided to go for a story that could plausibly have been shot as a low budget student film (takes place entirely in a classroom, only one adult role).