Guerrilla Filmmaking Quotes

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.

I usually make films with $2 and a paper clip.

Because of the cumbersome nature of filmmaking, it's only recently that it has become available to the masses, with digital equipment and laptop computers. You can now actually make a pretty serviceable movie for very little money by yourself.

In lower budget filmmaking, everything is a favor. You're pushing everybody, all the time. You're trying to get the best out of it that you can, and it has to be a labor of love, or you can't get it done.

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.

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.

Independent filmmaking has always been there and it's not to be forgotten.

I came out of independent film, that's my roots.

Independent films now, they want to give you $2 million to make it, 21 days to shoot it and they want 10 movie stars in it.

I love films that are made with almost no budget.

Any asshole can make a good movie for $100 million. I think it's way harder to make a movie with no money, and to start with no contacts and work your way up to international productions.

When you start out as a filmmaker, you do parodies, because you can't really compete on a studio level.

I really am passionate about making low-budget movies. You can try new stuff and unusual stuff, and you can break the rules.

I've got to follow in the footsteps of Sacha Baron Cohen and do a prank show, or a film with real elements to it.

If you're going to make a movie for ten thousand you can talk everybody into doing it for free. You could make a really good-looking movie right for ten grand, if you have an idea.

The filmmaker Amos Poe was a huge inspiration for me by making guerrilla-style punk films on the streets of New York and - well, it's just a lot of painters and artists and filmmakers all within that scene, and it's very, very important to me.

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

After 'Maryada Ramanna,' I wanted to make a quick film on a shoestring budget.

If you want to do a film, steal a camera, steal raw stock, sneak into a lab and do it!

'The Muthaship' was an experiment. All my friends are working at Endemol, so they just kind of pushed me into it to see if we could shoot a little web series on an iPhone - and that's what we did: we shot it on an iPhone. So it's so experiential and so silly.

I ended up getting to do a lot of student films - no budget: somebody just wrangled up a camera and went to shoot stuff - and it was fun. It was great.

Gian Luigi Polidoro and his girlfriend had written this script, it was an American comedy, and they decided I was the guy to play the part. I was young, they offered me the lead in the film, and I said, "Sure, I'll do it." And I'm telling you, there is a movie waiting to be made about the making of a movie like that, particularly at that time in New York. I mean, we shot all over the streets of New York without permits. We would literally grab a shot and run. But Rent Control... I think the total cost was $100,000, and to this director's credit, I think it looks like $200,000.

When we made 'Primary,' it was just one camera. We were trying to make ourselves inconspicuous.

I want to have the illegitimate child of independent film making and the budget to make it. That's my aspiration.

I think the press mistakenly thought that all of these 'mumblecore' filmmakers were banded together in a similar ideology, but the truth is that we were all just using the same digital camera and helping each other make our movies because we were broke, and we were the only idiots willing to do it.