Low Budget Success

            Many believe that in order to produce a successful film, one must have a wealthy financial budget or at least a well-known studio company to invest in their film project. The film industry has always epitomized the importance of how success is obtained by producing the best content, but only the moneymakers on top can help achieve that status of success. Some individuals would agree that a person in this business must have money if they want the success, but over the pass decade, that theory has been challenged, and has proven to Hollywood that one does not need a big budget to produce a film for success.
           Over the years, I have recognized that a lot of successful films have been some of the industry’s most low budget films to date. These films are mostly considered independent films that are solely produced by a group of regular citizens who just simply want to become successful filmmakers; most of these films do not even have investors at all, and are financed by the production crew themselves. Again, regular people with average jobs who just want to become successful.
           In 2004, young and aspiring filmmakers, Jared and Jerusha Hess created a film about the king of awkward Napoleon Dynamite, based on Jared’s previous short film, Peluca. The $400,000-budgeted project could only afford its leading actor for a simple $1,000, which is extremely nonsense to Hollywood executives, most actors would never agree to sign on a film project with that kind of amount. The filmmakers shot the movie’s memorable title sequence in the cinematographer’s basement, edited on a MacBook computer, and completed production in only twenty-two days. The film would then premier at the Sundance film festival that gained a grand amount of success with critics applauding it and the audience loving it from start to finish, making it a hit in cinema. Fox Searchlight Pictures won the rights to distribute it, which made a gross amount of over $46 million. A new era of low-budget films would begin its road of success, proving Hollywood’s standard to be wrong about success only being achieved by moneymakers.
           Films like Napoleon Dynamite gave inspiration to other aspiring filmmakers to not be afraid of producing a film with a low budget. This whole idea has proven that bigger is not always better, and that an individual does not always need a moneymaker to obtain the success of a project, but it can surely help.