Oren Peli Quotes

We had a tiny budget for 'The Greatest,' which was the opposite of 'Wall Street.' We just kind of went in and did it. You've got four or five takes and then you've got to move on. We didn't even have trailers to stay in or anything.

All studio movies are the middle of the Bell curve. The only way to do something is to do it yourself. And the only way to do that is to not take any money from anyone or take as little money as possible from anyone and that's it.

My dream is just to make zero-budget movies for the rest of my life, because I love that environment.

I didn't have a lot of independent film connections. It really took until the digital film revolution came along that I realized that I could do it myself.

I used the principles of Kickstarter to make 'She's Gotta Have It.' We filmed that in 1985 to 1986. The final cost was $175,000. I didn't have that money. It was friends, grants, donations. We saved our bottles for the nickel deposit.

We made this movie for $17, and nobody got anything. So it never dawned on me that we would get real people.

When I was 25 years old and had no money - and didn't know how to make movies and had no experience - I was able to get $25,000 together, and that film was 'The Brothers McMullen.'

Definition of an independent film is torture with less money and time.

Trying to make a feature film yourself with no money is the best film school you can do.

When you make a movie independently, you raise the money beforehand, and then you make the movie kind of by yourself.

To make a low-budget independent is not easy work.

I did a film that I shot in 24 hours that was self-financed for $5,000. It was a feature called Looking For Jimmy that I shot with a bunch of friends. I spent eight months editing because we had 24 hours of footage that made no sense and I learned a lot about directing while editing that film.

Yeah, it was always a low-budget passion project. It's my directing debut. I've always wanted to make an improv movie because I have so much experience in it, but it's not a big studio movie. It was an experiment that turned out better than I thought.

There is going to be a 'Stargate: Atlantis' movie. Unfortunately I'll be making it by myself in my basement.

I don't choose to make movies as small as the movies I've made. The combined budget of my two films is far under $5 million, but it's just by necessity that it ends up being that way.

Making an independent film is so different.

I feel that if you want to make films, you have to be willing to make it without a fee. You get a deferment, I guess.

'Tangerine' was less than half the budget of 'Starlet,' and 'Starlet' was already a microbudget film. A director always wants more time, and we had a limited amount of resources.

The thing I love the most about low budget films is the creative freedom.

It is easier to make a film but difficult to make it on your own terms. In that sense 'Madras Cafe' was a very satisfying experience.

On an independent film where you're working with just a handful of people, you don't have to explain anything because no one cares. You can do whatever you want. There's no one there to tell you not to do it.

I'm not really trying to reach a big mass of an audience. My movies are done for a tiny, tiny budget, and that affords me to make them more personal.

My offbeat choices definitely don't get me too much money because they are made in a very restrained budget. We do it because we love cinema, because we are passionate about the content and new ways of storytelling.

The movies I make - the goal isn't a mass audience. They're not expensive films. So the attempt is to reach a much more limited audience - one would say an audience that enjoys films that challenge them emotionally and intellectually.

If you're making a smaller movie, you're almost obligated to do something unexpected and surprising.