10 Low-Budget Script Ideas to Shoot in Your Town

All right, so you've made the decision to make a movie! Great! Now what's next? Well, the first step is to get a blueprint, right. You're not going to build a house without a blueprint.

Otherwise, you might end up with something like the WINCHESTER MANSION, a never completed project in California. She kept building, and adding to her home, and now all that's left is a haunted relic with stairs leading nowhere, blank doors, and confusion.

You don't want a movie like that!

Let's start with the basics. If you have some money, pour it into feeding the cast and crew (and send some my way, if you want me to write a script for you!) But if you're starting off on the premise that low budget is the best budget and you want to shoot a movie you can put on your credit card and pay off in a year (or less if you follow my awesome marketing plan), then these stories are for your.

First, come up with a premise.

Think about what you have, and what you have access to.

My first ultra low budget (under $700 film) was built on the fact that I had a couple of rifles, and woods near where I grew up, my car, some old abandoned trucks, an old house, etc... you see where I'm going?

I sat down and wrote a list of everything I had access to. Then, I divided the list up into pieces, and created a workable story around the sets.

I wrote THE HUNTER about a deer hunter who almost shoots a fellow woodsman, and then becomes the hunted in a fight for his life, based on what I had access to.

Movie ideas are everywhere.

I was taking my garbage down to the curb today when a new Shelby Mustang drove past.

"Look at that Cowboy," I thought. "Riding in his nice shiny pony."

BANG!

COWBOIZ, a new breed of undercover cop. That's the idea. (or at least the genisis of it.)

Now you develop the idea. I would want two or three Mustang cars, and two or three actors to play undercover cops.

One of the actors could be a woman, to create sexual tension.