How to make a movie for $300
When Walter Woodman and Patrick Cederberg made “Noah,” a 17-minute film focusing on a young man’s relationship online, the intention was to shoot at least part of the film in the real world.
But they quickly realized how expensive it was to build a set or hire a crew, including actors.
“We just basically thought, ‘Ok, how could we just make all of this happen on a computer screen?’” said Walter Woodman, one of the directors. “He (Noah) has to see that his girlfriend breaks up with him. How are we going to do that? We could do that through a Facebook post.”
That was easier than it sounded. They tried making fake Facebook accounts but Facebook deleted them. So Woodman and Cederberg turned their own profiles into those of the film’s protagonists: Noah and Amy.
“We kept breaking up and getting back together,” said Woodman. “So our actual friends would mess up takes and we would be like ‘No, don’t comment on this!’”
The point of filming the entire movie online, Woodman said, was to “peel back the curtain of artifice that is these constructed media profiles.”
“I think the view that you get from Noah is a really voyeuristic view,” he added. “You get to see not only what people type but what they backspace.”
The biggest takeaway from this project? The fact that it cost $300. That, according to Woodman, is among technology’s biggest contributions.
“There’s less barriers to tell stories and less barriers means you’re going to get people who are saying what they actually want because they don’t need to go through the typical gatekeepers that once prevented really creative people from making stuff,” said Woodman.
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