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Guerrilla TV is about making high quality programmes very cost-efficiently. That doesn’t necessarily mean very low budget - productions can still be dealing with £1 million or more - but it does mean putting all the money on the screen, and keeping very tight control over the resources that you do have.
For example, we produced a series of 8 one-hour food programmes, Cookery Clinic, for a total cost of £50,000, by recording all the shows ‘as live’ with a carefully-picked crew so that we needed to do no editing at all. At the end of each day we had two programmes of exactly the right length.
The £50k Movie
Here’s another example of first-principles costing to ponder on: the £50,000 movie.
There are sensible reasons why a reasonably standard two-hour drama costs something like $2 million. You’ll find a standard budget for such a production in the appendix, and we’ve already discussed much of what makes up this total.
So let’s throw it all out of the window and start again. We’ve got a producer (you), a desk, a telephone, and a book full of contacts. What do you really need to make a TV movie for a two-hour slot?
It's surprising how circumscribed your thinking can be without you even realising it. Colleagues and I had several times tried this exercise - how little money it really took to make a movie - and had always come out with the same kind of number. First it was £300,000; then as low as £150,000. You have to be tougher on yourself and really think differently.
The basic question is what do I really really need to make a movie? You need a script; some actors; a camera person; a sound recordist; an editor - together with various bits and pieces of equipment. The reason that feature films have much bigger crews is partly because they have big stories requiring lots of people to get the whole process moving; but it's also partly habit.
Imagine a scene between two people - just dialogue - taking place in a small room. Even if you have a crew of 100 and a cast to match, the scene in the room is going to involve only six people, including the cast. The rest are going to wait outside because there's no room for them. So why do you need everyone else?
You normally do need a few more people in fact, but the trick is to be absolutely sure that you only have what you need - and that you do have what you do need.
STEP BY STEP
First of all you find a story that requires only a small cast and a limited number of locations. The whole story doesn't have to take place in two rooms - this is a visual medium - but we can't go from Alaska to the Sahara, either.
You pay a script fee equal to the Writers' Guild minimum for that kind of script.
You pay your cast the minimum rates - but not less. And you don't forget that you'll need at least some walk-ons and extras.
So now you know what the action is, who's performing, and where it's happening (our basic shopping list). Now we need someone to shoot it.
I suggest that your necessary crew is a basic 3-person documentary crew: camera, sound, electrician. However big the crew, the real work is always done by those three people in the end, anyway. Everyone else supports them.
Additionally you'll need a couple of runners to run, fetch and carry to support the camera crew and the production crew.
Production staff? You, the producer, of course. The director; and a production assistant/continuity person ho will also help with general production management. You can cut this differently: there may be a producer/director, but then I think you need another ‘senior’ production manager/line producer to allow the producer to be in two places at once. Because you need to be able to work very efficiently.
Schedule? Ten minutes of finished screen time a day for ten days. It's a lot, but not unusual. Single-camera television drama expects 5 minutes a day in the UK, anyway, and series in the USA are often scheduled at 10 minutes a day.
Since this is television, you shoot on tape - but not on cheap cameras unless you really want it to look like it was shot on cheap cameras.
And finally you need to edit, so you need the person and equipment to do it.
You hire a fast, sensitive editor, and you use a desktop DV editing system. The end result, on digital tape, will only need an expensive facility to tidy it up.
That brings the total preliminary budget to roughly £65,000, including all the other bits and pieces, like feeding and insurance. And everyone is paid properly. No deferments; no profit share given away to crew.
The £50,000 movie is a bit of a cheat, because it assumes one person (you) writing, directing, and producing, but if you can do all that yourself (and do it well - cutting corners never saves in the long run) then all you need is £50,000...
Go for it
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