Write to Shoot

5Money Changes Everything

I’m assuming you’re not made of money, but I’ve met lots of people who’ve spared no expense to get their short made. There was the assistant director who was so desperate to get to direct something that he called in favors and mortgaged his house to spend over $30,000 on a short. It looked great, but the only problem was that the script (which he got someone else to write) wasn’t great so it went nowhere. There was a graduate student who had a generous rich boyfriend who gave him $75,000 to spend on his 30-minute short that looked fabulous but fell flat because the story didn’t work. In spite of advice from lots of people to ditch that particular script, he was married to it so he went ahead. The film went nowhere and, ...