No Budget / Live-Action Films

• Due to being made without any major studio input, many independent films have very small budgets by Hollywood standards.
• Skinamarink has a grand total budget of only $15,000, including advertising and post-production. As such, Skinamarink having such a low budget means that its box office return of over two million dollars earned it a tidy profit.
• Robert Rodriguez' El Mariachi was made with a budget of $207,225. However, only $7,225 went into making the film, as it was originally going to be direct-to-video. The rest was later provided by Columbia Pictures to help get the film a theatrical release. In The Robert Rodriguez 10 Minute Film School and his book Rebel Without a Crew, the director lists the at times crazy techniques used to make the film on such a low budget:
  • He borrowed a 16mm camera that didn't come with a manual and needed to call a store in Texas to help identify it and teach him how to work it. To avoid spending too much money on film, everything was shot in only one or two takes (though he admits to spending more than expected because he only bought as much as he needed, keeping him from using bulk discounts). To give the illusion of multiple cameras, he would freeze the action after a few seconds and move to another spot to keep going.
  • The film was transferred to 3/4" video, saving tens of thousands of dollars that would have instead been spent on making a film negative, and edited on video. The resulting video copy is what got shopped around, and Columbia ponied up the money to make a 35mm film print for theatrical release.
  • Incorporating bloopers into the plot in order to avoid retakes and simply cutting to another angle to disguise mistakes.
  • All of the firing guns were real guns because he couldn't afford blank-converted ones from a rental armory (the submachine guns were borrowed from the local Mexican police!). Because the automatics would jam on the first round with blanks due to lacking a bullet to provide force working the action, he would copy the firing frames or cut away from the shooting while playing a canned machine gun sound effect and having actors drop handfuls of casings on the ground to provide the illusion of automatic gunfire. The guns that weren't real were water guns.
  • The only non-natural light was a pair of 250-watt desk lamps with some improvised filters and reflectors.
  • As the title of his book suggests, there was no crew. Rodriguez did everything himself from the writing and filming to the sound recording and editing. Because actors would otherwise be standing around doing nothing, he had them act as extra hands when needed.
  • The camera couldn't sync to a sound recorder and was too loud to record sound while filming anyway, so he shot the film silently and recorded dialogue and foley on set a few minutes later. When the dialogue didn't perfectly match the lip movements during post-production, he used cuts to other angles to take the mouth off-screen.
  • They had two guitar cases: a black one for the mariachi's guitar and a brown one with the guns (modified with straps on the inside for the weapons). Unfortunately, the cases are both supposed to be black. Rodriguez would simply film the black case being opened and then cut to the already open brown case.
• Steps Trodden Black was made with no crew. It relied on a budget of less than a thousand dollars, using volunteer actors and borrowed equipment, getting by on the strength of its dialogue and some surprisingly good amateur actors. The complete lack of a budget makes the relatively high production values and competently produced visual and makeup effects even more impressive.
• The Green Goblin's Last Stand was made on a budget of only $400 and had its starring actor be the director, producer, creative editor, and screenwriter.
• Hardware Wars was, relative to its budget, one of the most profitable films of all time, making over $1M on a budget of $8,000.
• Other than financial grants from the French government and producers who took interest in the film's premise, the 2016 Filipino romantic comedy Saving Sally was made in ten years on a ₱10,000 budget. That's around $200! It did pay off as the film earned ₱27 million or roughly $600,000 to positive reviews, which while definitely not to the same level of financial success as a mainstream Metro Manila Film Festival feature, is still commendable for an independent production.
• Auteur Shane Carruth made Primer with a budget of $7,000, most of which was spent on the film stock. It received strong reviews, but critics complained that the dialogue was made even more impenetrable by the terrible sound quality in some scenes.
• Christopher Nolan's first feature film, Following, cost about $6-$7,000. The cast and crew were all employed full-time, so everything was filmed on weekends. Every scene was extensively rehearsed, because they didn't have enough film stock for more than two takes. Nolan used his friends' and family's homes for location shooting, and had to film with natural lighting.
• The films made by Ed Wood had very low budgets. It shows. Here are the known budgets for his films ^note No estimates are known for Night of the Ghouls (1959) or his early 1970s films.:
  • Glen or Glenda (1953) had an estimated budget of $20,000. Bela Lugosi agreed to play in the film for a salary of $5,000, although legend has it he only pocketed $1,000 for his appearance.
  • Jail Bait (1954) had an estimated budget of $22,000.
  • Bride of the Monster (1955) had an estimated budget of $70,000.
  • Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) had an estimated budget of $60,000.
  • The Sinister Urge (1960) had an estimated budget of $20,125.
• The British zombie film Colin made some headlines due its reported £45 budget.
• Slashers was shot on a single handheld camera in a paintball arena. This was an appropriate choice, since the cameraman was also a character, hired by the titular game show to keep a live image of the contestants as they attempted to survive the killers.
• The Castle was made on a budget of AU$19,000. Not only that, but it was filmed in 11 days because the budget didn't stretch enough to cater anymore.
• Every Roger Corman movie ever made.
  • The Little Shop of Horrors was filmed in less than 48 hours. It was even shot on sets from another movie, before they were dismantled.
  • The Terror, which was made as said sets were dismantled. A film that didn't even have a script, but they had Boris Karloff and Jack Nicholson and built from there!
  • And then Corman handed Peter Bogdanovich footage from The Terror and the last two days Karloff was obliged to film for him and said "Make a movie." The result was Targets.
  • Constantin Film had to make a Fantastic Four movie quickly to retain the film rights. They handed Corman $1.4M, and it was made (but not released).
• Mike Jittlov's original The Wizard of Speed and Time short had no budget and was created by Mike.
• A Fistful of Dollars was made on the set of a much crappier Spaghetti Western called Guns Don't Talk as an attempt to recoup its budget. The actors had to provide their own costumes.
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail (most of the money came from rock groups such as Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and Genesis). The ending used was partially because the team couldn't afford the one they had written. (They'd blown too much money on the pyrotechnic effects for the Tim the Enchanter scene.)
• You can tell the makers of Forbidden Zone had way more ambition than they had budget to pull it off, as one can tell by the sometimes outrageously cheap-looking sets. But, given that the film is so damnably surreal, it kind of works at recreating that strange, Fleischer-cartoon feel they were going for. Plus, it helps that the director was related to Danny Elfman and able to get him to compose a really awesome soundtrack.
• Subverted by The Room (2003). Extremely limited sets, very few location shots, crappy blue screen effects. Final cost? $6 million. Tommy Wiseau wasted money like crazy, buying two cameras to film every scene side-by-side on film and digital. He spent a fair amount licensing the song "Happy Birthday" so the characters could sing it.^note Warner Chappell Music's claim on the copyright was declared invalid in 2015 and they had to return licensing fees, so that cost could have been recouped. Some people speculate that the film was a money laundering scheme, which would be where most of the supposed budget went.
• Peter Jackson's first film Bad Taste was filmed by just him and a few friends over a few years, in which their lack of budget led to things like several actors playing two or more roles, making latex moulds in the kitchen oven, and various other (sometimes quite ingenious) solutions.
• 12 Angry Men partly counts as they could only afford enough film to record once, so no mistakes were allowed.
• Friend of the World was financed by Apocalypse Now actor and stuntman Kerry Rossall. While the budget has not been disclosed, a review of the film claims it "seems to be a budget smaller than the amount I spend on coffee every month."
• In-universe example: Chubby Rain, from Bowfinger. Bobby Bowfinger says the $2,184 spent are the actual budget for every blockbuster, but Hollywood Accounting inflates it to a million-dollar figure.
• Birdemic. Made for under $10,000. Where to even begin?
  • The birds are played by low-quality GIFs of hawks and vultures with poor seagull cries. They tend to explode upon striking the ground. All explosion, fire, muzzle flash, and smoke effects are likewise extremely low-quality GIFs.
  • In an infamous scene, the protagonists fend off a bird attack with coat hangers. They were scripted to use curtain rods, but the Motel 6 used for filming had no detachable curtain rods and apparently it would have been too much money to buy them.
  • Many of the businesses appear to have been filmed in while closed for the night, such as the restaurant which is completely empty except for a waiter and a singer. Only a few corporate meeting scenes have an appreciable number of extras, leaving other scenes set in diners and restaurants conspicuously empty. Filming done near roads during the actual bird apocalypse shows traffic passing unimpeded and real birds flying around.
  • The whole film appears to have been shot on a low-quality video camera with little to no editing.
  • One of the extremely few practical effects in the film (birds spitting acid) was done by hurling several cartons of orange juice from off-camera onto the actors. This could only be done in one take, as that was all the orange juice they had.
  • Sound editing was almost non-existent. No room tone was taken and the background noise changes wildly between angles due to it. All sound was apparently taken off the camera's own microphone, with greatly varying levels and clarity.
  • Except for a few songs, all of the music is royalty-free. The infamously long opening driving scene has a short royalty-free clip simply loop multiple times.
  • Filming could only take place intermittently on weekends due to everyone having day jobs, causing the movie to take 4 years to complete.
• The whole reason Manos: The Hands of Fate was even made was because the director had a bet going that he could make a movie based on a shoestring budget. He technically won...
• Monster a-Go Go started filming as a B-Movie, but ran out of budget partway through. After being shelved for a few years, it was finished in a way so cheap as to be insulting.
• Many Nollywood (the Nigerian film industry) movies, the first cinematographic industry in volume, are like this, and a lot of times it shows. This has led to a backlash called the New Nollywood movement, aiming to uplift the status of Nigerian cinema from a quantity-over-quality factory of lowbrow Direct to Video fodder to a respectable industry able to keep up with those from industrialised nations. Some of these films, such as The Figurine and The Wedding Party avert this with more than decent production values, receiving critical acclaim overseas.
• Thanks Killing was made for $3,000.
• Violent Shit was made over four weekends on a budget of $2,000.
• Woodchipper Massacre apparently had a budget of only $400.
• MonSturd, another for $3,000.
• As told by director Tony Malanowski, Night of Horror was made for $4,000 after he dropped out of film school - "Lots cheaper than 4 years of college (even though I had a full scholarship)". Its remake Curse of the Screaming Dead is probably not much more expensive even if it has more gore and such.
• Anything made by the Polonia brothers, like Feeders.
• A Talking Cat!?! was made for only $1 million and it shows. The film has amateurish camera work, sound and special effects (especially the poor lopping and mouth movements of Eric Roberts' cat).
• This Is Not A Film was... not actually a film production. It's a personal video diary by Iranian political prisoner (and "former" high-profile film maker) Jafar Panahi, filmed partially on his iPhone in his own apartment. A good part of it is Panahi summarizing the story of a couple movies his government did not let him make because he was banned from directing, screenwriting, and interviews but not acting. The video was smuggled out of Iran inside a birthday cake, and screened internationally in movie theaters to critical acclaim. Its actual budget is rather difficult to factor — how much did the birthday cake cost?
• Amateur Porn Star Killer — $45.
• The Last House on Dead End Street was made for $800. The budget was originally $3,000 but the creator spent most of that on drugs.
• Manborg had a budget of $1000, and is all the more awesome because of it.
• The found footage mockumentary horror film The Last Broadcast was made for only $900, and is notable for being one of the first films shot on video to get a theatrical release.
• Cry_Wolf is an interesting example. The producers had made a short film as a contest for Chrysler, and the prize was a million dollars. They used the money to make the film, along with quite a bit of conspicuous Chrysler Product Placement.
• Who Killed Captain Alex? takes the No Budget thing to the extreme, being made on a budget of roughly $200. For context, the film company that made the film lived in a slum in Uganda, so you couldn't really blame them for the money issues. It makes up for it with the sheer level of passion everyone put into it.
• All three of Coleman Francis' directorial works play this trope in the most literal ways yet. The same actors, same locations ^note What few there are since all three are shot outside, non-existent makeup or effects, little to no props, terrible cinematography, and stock material that never fits with the rest of the film. The Beast of Yucca Flats takes it to an even bigger extreme by having next to no sound at all, that is unless an actor's face is obscured so that the dialogue wouldn't have to sync up with the mouth movements. ^note Supposedly the crew was unable to obtain any sound equipment at the time so Coleman improvised by shooting the film as it is to stay under budget. It's quite an accomplishment when you manage to make Ed Wood of all people look like a professional filmmaker in comparison.
• Clerks is famous for having been made on a budget of $27,575, boosted to $250K after Miramax bought the rights to it and added music. It was filmed at night in the Quick Stop where Kevin Smith actually worked, and most of the actors are his friends and relatives, several of them playing multiple roles. Smith stated that he maxed out eight credit cards to make the film.
• Kevin Smith made Chasing Amy for $250K. Initially, he was given a budget of $3M, but only if he cast David Schwimmer, Jon Stewart, and Drew Barrymore. He didn't.
• The Blair Witch Project holds the world record for budget-to-box office performance. The cost to create the film itself has been listed as between $25,000 to $750,000. It went on to make $250 million. However, it did receive a $25 million advertising budget.
• The Mission (1999) costs 2.5 million HK dollars, or 320K USD. Most of the money probably goes to the slick black suits worn by the six main characters throughout the movie.
• Napoleon Dynamite was made for $400K. Half of it was for the after-the-credits scene. Said scene (depicting Kip and LaFawndah's wedding, and Napoleon taming a wild stallion) wasn't even part of the original release; it was added for the wide release after the film's explosive popularity at Sundance.
  • Upstream Color was made for about $50,000 and manages to both look and sound fantastic.
• Ink was made for $250K.
• Halloween (1978) was shot on a budget of $200K, bringing in $35M (today equal to over $100M). John Carpenter spent most of the budget on getting anamorphic lenses (to hide its low budget), so they didn't even have enough money to make a mask. Instead they just painted an off-the-shelf Captain Kirk mask white.
  • John Carpenter's cinematic debut Dark Star was made on a shoestring budget of $60,000. And it shows.
• Mad Max was made for $400K. The director donated his own car to get smashed up in a chase scene.
• Producer Jason Blum is famous for his low budgets and the high returns he gets off of them, which has earned him comparisons to Corman. His strategy is to give filmmakers a few million dollars (Blumhouse Productions had never made a non-sequel film with a budget exceeding $5 million) and near-complete creative freedom, and let them go wild. He's best known for his involvement in the horror genre; he made his name by producing the Paranormal Activity series, and was also behind a number of other major horror films starting in the late '00s.
  • Speaking of Paranormal Activity, the first film cost $15,000 to make (and that's after Steven Spielberg gave money for writer/director Oren Peli to shoot another ending!) and grossed $193 million worldwide. This success allowed the filmmakers to do a sequel with the comparatively high budget of $3 million.
  • Insidious cost $1.5 million and grossed $92 million worldwide. Notably, it was written and directed by James Wan and Leigh Whannell, the people behind Saw (described below), and co-produced by Oren Peli, the maker of the aforementioned Paranormal Activity.
  • The Gallows, another film that Blumhouse picked up, was made for only $100,000. Since they didn't have the money for stuntmen, all of the actors had to do their own stunts.
• After Last Season is a subversion: despite looking cheaper than most every single damn last one of the films on this list, it was made with a $5M budget ($40,000 which was dedicated to produc-er, renting a warehouse and a crappy video camera, the rest to post-er, hiring an editor whose services they apparently didn't use, and a college kid with a rudimentary knowledge of Blender to make the special effects).
• According to The Other Wiki, Saw was made for $1.2M and grossed over $103M worldwide. Saw II was made for $4M, and grossed over $147M. After that, they started getting an actual budget (roughly $10M per film), which probably accounts for the amped up gore in the later sequels (more money for special effects = more gore).
• Since United Artists wanted a famous protagonist in Rocky but Sylvester Stallone sold his script on the condition of being the star, the studio only lent $1M for production. The producers had to mortgage their houses in order to get an extra $100,000 and finish the movie. It ended up grossing $225M worldwide, winning three Academy Awards (including Best Picture), and became one of the most famous movie franchises ever.
• In 1962, Dr. No was made for just $1M, before the effects team asked for an extra 100K to do the climactic explosion. James Bond's watch was producer Cubby Broccoli's own, and when an art director found out his name wasn't in the credits, Broccoli gave him a golden pen, saying he didn't want to spend money fixing them. This results in the most subdued Bond movie.
• Ben and Arthur is practically the Birdemic of gay romance movies. Despite a budget of $40,000 (4 times that of Birdemic), it somehow manages to accomplish even less in scope.
  • The diner Ben and Arthur work in is represented by a fast food chain restaurant.
  • One of the pistols used in the film is obviously a water pistol painted black. The many gunshots have no special effects except for a stock "gunshot" sound effect and cutting back to the victim with a bloody injury.
  • The church set includes a "stained glass" window that looks like it was made of thin paper.
  • Shots of Ben and Arthur taking an airline were apparently made by going to an airport and filming the first plane to pass close overhead. The two planes used are a FedEx cargo plane and an Alaska Airlines plane (flying from California to Vermont).
  • All of the music that isn't royalty-free is composed by Sam Mraovich, the star, director, writer, and overall creator of the film.
  • A Sony VX2000 camcorder with a tripod was seemingly the only camera setup used, making the film resemble a home movie. Two of the actors in the film were also credited as "cinematographers", suggesting that they hung around when not being shot to help manipulate the camera. The lack of a proper stabilizing rig makes any shots in motion very shaky and nauseating. All lighting is apparently whatever natural light was available, with one scene of Ben in a dark bedroom waking up being almost pitch black because of it.
• Hard Candy was made for $950K, mainly to avoid Executive Meddling due to the controversial topic. It was filmed in 18 days, in chronological order, in the director's own house, and used a bare minimum of takes.
• Darren Aronofsky's first feature π had a budget of $60,000. He didn't pay to secure outdoor locations and had one member of the crew stand by to look out for cops.
• SLC Punk! cost just $600K to make, even after its cast of familiar names, soundtrack of classic punk tracks and the use of anamorphic lenses.
• Margin Call was made on a $3M budget and made almost $20M. 90% of the film was shot on a single floor of a recently vacated trading firm. The All-Star Cast actors apparently liked the script so much that they agreed to the Screen Actors Guild's minimum salaries.
• The Evil Dead (1981) was shot for over a year with less than $375,000.
• Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! was made on a budget of $100K. The only reason they were able to afford the helicopter crash scene was because it was an unscripted accident, so the damages were covered by their insurance policy. The second movie had twenty times the budget of the first (which is still pretty small for a movie). It doesn't show (it also has a Running Gag of blatant product placements because they allegedly ran out of money partway through the film and needed an extra source of funding).
• The original Cube was produced for $400K. As to keep down costs, all the CG was done for free.
• Repo Chick was originally budgeted at $7M, which left one line producer wondering how (and where) they were going to secure a California Zephyr railroad car that was central to the plot. When the original financing fell through, director Alex Cox decided to shoot the actors almost entirely on green screen over 10 days, and composite in HO-scale model trains and sets in post-production. Final budget? $180,000.
• The original Night of the Living Dead (1968) was done on a budget of $114,000.
• According to IMDb, Doom House was filmed on a meager shoestring budget of only $60,000 (estimated).
• For years, the "official" shooting budget of the original Dawn of the Dead (1978) was listed as $1.5 million. It wasn't until 2004, when the "Ultimate Edition' DVD box set was released, that producer Richard Rubenstein revealed (on one of the commentary tracks) that the real number was closer to $500,000; they'd inflated the cost to make the film seem more impressive while marketing it to potential distributors.
• Monsters was made on $500,000 in spite of the massive, Hollywood-quality CGI monsters that play a small but vital role in the film. The locations, including monster-smashed landscapes and various exotic South American locales, are also pretty impressive. The director, Gareth Edwards, made all the CGI on his home computer, most of the locations were stolen, and many supporting characters were simply bystanders recruited to improvise scenes on the spot. The boats and trucks in trees were probably left there by previous hurricanes.
• Adam Sandler's first film, Going Overboard, lampshades this trope in the opening shot. "This is a No Budget flick. Not a low budget, but a no budget!"
• Any movie by The Asylum typically doesn't go over the $1 million mark when it comes to budgets.
• Frozen Days was made on a $25,000 budget, which the creators had to raise themselves.
• Absentia was a project on Kickstarter, resulting in a $70,000 budget - this led to liberal use of Nothing Is Scarier.
• Another Earth was made for about $100,000. When they needed a scene of the protagonist getting out of jail, actress Brit Marling simply walked into a local prison claiming to be a yoga instructor, and then walked out again before anyone had time to realize that she wasn't, while the director filmed it all from outside.
• All Superheroes Must Die was made on a budget of $20,000. Several scenes were modified as the list of places they could affordably film shrank.
• The Kentucky Fried Movie cost only $650,000 to make and made $20 million at the box office.
• Tangerine (2015) was made for under $100,000. Most of the cast were amateur actors and it was shot mostly on the street using iPhones. It went on to be one of the most talked about films at Sundance that year.
• Teenagers from Outer Space was made on a budget of US$14,000 (with inflation that's about $114,000 today). This is indicated by such things as a toy standing in for a death ray and an extended sequence featuring a lobster dangled in front of the camera to serve as a giant alien monster.
• 20th Century Fox initially only gave $8 million to do Star Wars, and the Troubled Production made it climb up to a still meager $11 million (for comparison, the other big sci-fi movie of that year cost $20 million), which amounts to $45.5 million today. And yet it became the highest grossing movie ever upon release, and made George Lucas enough money to finance the following movies out of his own pocket (the very next started at much more comfortable $18 million, though once things went awry again, Lucas had to ask the studio for some extra cash).
• The Terminator was made for $6.4 million, with workarounds like only filming in illuminated streets to not spend on artificial lighting, and the crew always on the lookout for the police given the lack of filming permits.
• The filmography for Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer qualifies under this. Due to the duo's habit of writing their "parody scripts" around trailers for unreleased movies, and shooting their films within short deadlines, the end results are unsurprisingly less than you'd expect. There's a reason why these two are credited with killing the parody genre in theaters for a while. ^note Although with the success of Deadpool and Sausage Party among other titles, the parody genre seems to have been revived for the big screen to an extent. Their filmography following Vampires Suck takes this further as the duo has now resorted to producing their movies on even tighter budgets than their Hollywood titles, and don't even release them theatrically.
• Donald G. Jackson isn't called The Ed Wood of the Video Age for nothing.
  • Don initially planned to produce his first movie, The Demon Lover, for $6,000 which was raised by co-director Jerry Younkins cutting his own finger off at the auto factory they worked at. But by the time pre-production was finished Jerry had already spent the money, leaving the film in Development Hell for four years until its completion in 1977, by which point they had both lost their jobs and declared bankruptcy. Thankfully the movie managed to turn in a profit in the drive-in market... none of which they ever saw from the distributors.
  • For the wrestling documentary I Like to Hurt People, Donald initially wanted to follow Hulk Hogan during his rise to fame in the industry, but later settled for The Iron Sheik since he was willing to be documented for free. Even then the movie still had to be shelved since Donald couldn't cover the post-production costs, and it remained as such until 1985 when Roger Corman paid for the process along with the film's distribution rights.
• Open Water was produced for $500,000, with an additional 2.5 million spent by Lions Gate Entertainment to acquire the rights and another $8 million to promote and distribute it. It made $55 million worldwide.
• The 1991 indie comedy High Strung was mostly filmed on an apartment set-piece for only 13 days with a budget of $300,000.
• Kung Pow! Enter the Fist (2002) was made on a budget of $10 million by writer, producer, director and star Steve Oedekerk who made the film using re dubbed Stock Footage from the 1976 Hong Kong martial arts feature, Tiger and Crane Fist.
• Murder Party, the first film by the director of Blue Ruin and Green Room, takes this trope literally. Yes, as in "this movie was made for absolutely no money whatsoever". The cast and crew worked for free, most of the film's special effects were scrapped partway into production, and the creators even saved money by injecting themselves with actual needles filled with saline for a truth serum-centric sequence.
• Coherence is a sci-fi drama about overlapping parallel universes. The budget is undisclosed, but it was filmed over five nights at the director's own house, and the producer says that the cast outnumbered the crew.
• Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie was produced for about $325,000, which certainly isn't pocket change for a crowd-funded indie movie. However, the film itself is massively ambitious given that budget, featuring a huge cast, many different locations, several major VFX sequences including a full-blown Kaiju rampage through downtown Las Vegas, and a major character portrayed by Jim Henson-style puppetry. Many of the props and sets have a homemade, Mystery Science Theater 3000-esque quality to them because after paying the cast and crew, transportation fees, catering and other "normal" costs, there simply wasn't money left to do the "weird" stuff Hollywood-style.
• Silent Night, Bloody Night was made on a $295,000 budget; a portion of which was provided by Lloyd Kaufman two years before he went on to form Troma.
• Megan is Missing was shot on a incredibly low budget of $35,000 (most viewers theorize half the budget was spent on the torture photos and the rape scenes) with a small crew of only 5 people using little-to-no professional equipment and with a cast of unknown actors. Numerous production mistakes were left in (for example several scenes have a Visible Boom Mic and director Michael Goi can be heard yelling "Action!" during one scene).
• Gorilla, Interrupted: The movie was shot over the course of seven days by amateur filmmakers just doing it for fun. The purchase of a shop light and some Halloween-style costumes represented as much money as they invested.
• Tales of an Ancient Empire definitely suffers from this, just watch the movie:
  • There are no crowd scenes because they couldn't hire too many extras.
  • A cavern serves as an ancient tomb, adding rugs on the walls turns it into a palace.
  • Has pretty awful and notoriously cheap special effects, especially in the shipwreck scene.
• Wanda was made for $100,000 with a crew of 4 including director and lead actor Barbara Loden (the DP also edited the film). Apart from Loden and co-lead Michael Higgins (whose costumes were borrowed from Loden's husband's personal wardrobe) all the actors were amateurs.
• Most of the films John Sayles has made fall into this category, starting with his directorial debut, Return of the Secaucus Seven, which was made for $40,000, with few locations, very little camera movement, and the cast using their own costumes and makeup.
• Hellbender was made mostly by a family of three with some help of their extended family. Real life mother Toby Poser and daughter Zelda Adams play mother and daughter in the film.
• The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was produced on a budget of $140,000. Director Tobe Hooper hired friends or local actors who acted in commercials and the like to star in the film. Because of the exorbitant film equipment rentals, they had to film seven days a week for up to 16 hours a day, on a hot Texas summer, with no air conditioning of any kind. They only used a couple pints of fake blood, leading to liberal use of cutaways for the kill scenes.
• The original Friday the 13th had a budget of $500,000. Compared to later films, it has a very independent, grindhouse-film feel to it, thanks to the usage of handheld cameras and long takes.
• Gone in 60 Seconds (1974) was made on a $150,000 budget, and many of the cast members were actor/director H. B. Halicki's friends and relatives. Emergency service workers (i.e. police, firefighters and paramedics) were actual police officers, firemen, or paramedics, and the bulk of the bystanders in the film were ordinary civilians milling about their daily routines (although there were indeed a few cast extras). In addition, filming had to be interrupted for several days so that Halicki could repair cars and thus earn funds to continue production. It does help that Halicki owned a scrapyard where many of the cars were sourced from, including the iconic "Eleanor" Mustang.
• Zyzzyx Road had a meager budget of $1.2 million. Despite its very low budget, it infamously became a Box Office Bomb anyway, grossing $30 (yes, you read that right) on its opening run due to its extremely limited release (technically $20, due to one of the lead actors refunding tickets purchased by the movie's make-up artist).
• Superman IV: The Quest for Peace was meant to have a $36 million budget, but days before production began, The Cannon Group slashed the film's budget to $17 million, and it shows everywhere, e.g. the reused shots of Superman and Nuclear Man flying over different backgrounds, to say nothing about the shoddy green-screening of such shots.
• French historical biopic Vaincre ou Mourir had a €3.5 million budget, but that wasn't enough to allow for filming of battles outside of a few skirmishes, hence why the battles are given time skips.

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