I’ve been making low-budget feature films for a while, and after talking a lot about what I managed to do with Good Boy (made for about $7,000 with a tiny crew), I wanted to do the opposite here: make the case against low budget filmmaking. When I say “low budget” in this video, I’m not talking about $10 million being “low.” I mean DIY productions without financing, with very limited resources, where cast and crew are paid very little—or sometimes nothing. I break down the biggest downsides I’ve seen up close. First, the failure rate is high: many films don’t get finished, don’t have a plan for post, festivals, or distribution, and they simply can’t compete on perceived quality. Second, there’s a real risk of exploitation when there are no proper contracts, no union protections, and weird power dynamics—so I talk about setting clear limits and even negotiating backend percentages. Third is safety and liability: no insurance plus inexperienced crews plus stunts is a bad combo, so I’m blunt about writing safer scripts and not doing stunts you can’t do safely. Finally, I talk about how unpaid labor can devalue the industry, and why “no budget” still has a cost—it just shifts who pays, usually in time and risk.