How We Made $125,000 on a $35 budget

I love making films. I love it so much I'll do it for free (for me, not for you... Sorry).

Back in 2019 a good mate and fellow filmmaker, Dan Farmer, invited me to make a short film for a competition.

We had no idea, no crew, no actors and no money. Just a lot of know-how and passion to make things that entertain.

The night before shooting we brainstormed a fun idea and I whipped up a script in about 30 minutes. We then shot over the next two weekends using only ourselves, Dan's family, and a $35 costume.

What resulted was an adorable little film called 'The Starey Bampire' that ended up winning every award, and the majority of prizes, in every film festival we entered it into.

Am I telling you I can do the same for you with $35? No.

The point here is you can do a lot with a little when collaborating with the right people.

Length

3 Minutes

Replicating this approach

With the industry shifting towards a creator model where fewer people can perform multiple roles, it's possible to reach a wide audience without overspending.

I replicated the above approach when working with ABC Gamer on a series of online shorts.

The Gamer team had struggled to reach an audience with their existing content and decided to let me have a crack.

Using a similar minimalist approach: A crew of two, myself and frequent collaborator Lucas Cappy, we performed every necessary role for the production between the two of us and were able to deliver 18 animated shorts which garnered over 125 million views across the ABC Gamer socials and boosted their YouTube Subscriber base by 625% to over 400,000 subscribers.

Inflated budgets and too many cooks

I've reached more people with my content than most Australian television shows produced today.

Why? Because they are using an old model where too many people are pulling a creative work in multiple directions over a long period of time.

This costs a lot of money. And rarely amounts to a creative work that resonates audiences.

Instead, a more modern approach, utilised by today's creators, sees them produce a cheaper piece of content, analyse the result, pivot, produce the next piece, and repeat.

This is exactly what we did in the above ABC Gamer example. The first 4 videos released, parodying the Legend of Zelda franchise, achieved a modest view count of just under a million on Tiktok, we assessed what worked, what could be improved on and created a new series that reached hundreds of millions of people around the world.

Embracing the New Way

You don't need to spend an arm and a leg to create something that speaks to people.

You just need a creative process and technical know-how that makes something BIG out of something small.

I LOVE talking creativity so let's chat about how we can make some amazing content with you.

ROI

300,000%

Views: 117 Million

Spider-Mates

Zelda Animated

Views: 700 Thousand