Inside the Secrets of Crafting a Micro-Budget Feature Film with Ashley Scott Meyers: Hollywood’s Best-Kept Formula Revealed
As I said, we kept the cast small. It’s a romance. Really, it’s the two main actors are in almost every scene, certainly our lead actor. I think he’s in like 99 percent. There’s maybe one scene that he’s not in, but he’s in pretty much all the other scene and then our female lead is in probably 85 percent of the scene. So it was really a small crew and it was really working with those two actors, but it starts with the writing, having that script that’s low budget and just condensed and as condensed as possible, as few actors as possible, as simple as sets as possible, things that you can get, you know, I would say, too, you can add production value by using the things that you know you have access to. And you know, I had I live in Los Angeles. We shot in here, shot around here so I could use my house. My mom has a house here. We were able to shoot there. So, I just and I and I knew this going into the production. Again, a lot of these sets, all the sets are just contemporary apartments, houses, you know, the bar. They go to a store, all things that I felt like I could get fairly easily. And that’s, I’d say, the biggest piece of advice is just put on your producer hat when you’re writing the script and just think through, you know, how would I go if I was the producer? How would I go about and get this stuff? Even if you don’t want to be the producer, it’s good to sort of be aware of that, you know, and it could make, you know, if you write your script to be shot, you’re really conscious of these things. Even if you don’t produce the script yourself, a producer will be more interested in it because they can produce it more easily. Anyways, that’s the screenplay.
