Storme Wood

When we started Pre Production on Paradise Recovered, I hadn’t heard of the new en vogue term to describe films made with virtually no money, Micro-Budget. At the time, I was calling it a no-budget film. Truth is, it has a small budget. If my math skills don’t fail me, the budget for Paradise Recovered is about two tenths of one percent of the budget for Avatar. Or, as one friend so eloquently put it, most films have more money allotted for cocaine and hookers than we had for our entire film. But we got to shoot a film and that’s awesome. It’s just not that kind of movie.

We didn’t have much in the way of Craft Services, Transportation or Catering. We didn’t even have much in the way of Boom Operators, Grips or PAs. We had a small crew. The DP was often his own Gaffer and always his own Focus Puller. The AC was also a Grip as well as the Data Wrangler for the Red Camera. The Location Sound Mixer was also the Boom Operator. The Producer and Director also taped windows. Everyone pitched in. And it was fun. And we got great stuff. And hopefully, in the end, we’ll have a great film. One that everyone who worked so hard on it, few as we may have been, can be proud of.

So what kind of film is it? It’s a film with a lot of heart. Made with love. Made because it was a story that needed to be told. And these days, thanks to advances in the ways and means of filmmaking, you don’t need a lot of money to make that kind of a movie.