Money Listens

You know, a low budget, you have to work harder. You have to plan well; you don’t have much time to rehearse.
Hector Elizondo

If you don’t know who Hector Elizondo is, you don’t have pre-teen girls. He played the head of the queen’s security in The Princess Diaries. Foodies know him as the father and chef in Tortilla Soup.

What is a low budget? A producer making a low-budget movie doesn’t have a lot of money for extras and special effects. He has to work harder and plan well. The same goes for us. When we try to make our budget as low as possible we have to work at it. Spending money is easy, stretching a dollar is hard work. Planning becomes a necessity. It takes no thought to eat out, buy the first thing you see, or pull out the credit card. You have to plan to have ingredients to cook with, you have to take time researching the best buy, you have to be creative and work with what you have.

Haven’t you seen some big-budget movies that were total flops. Remember Waterworld with Kevin Costner? It cost $150 million in 1995. Many low cost films have been winners. There was a low-budget gangster movie in 1972 that won 4 Oscars. Ever heard of The Godfather?

One of my favorite movies is My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which cost $5 million to make in 2002. Like many low budget films, this movie is about family and relationships. Low cost films explore one or two characters in depth. Usually there’s a serious problem and viewers watch to see how or if it gets resolved. There’s no need for superheros, gimmicks, or gadgets. We are interested in the people and their relationships.

That’s how it is with our low budgets. It’s not the stuff that’s important, it’s our relationships with one another. This week, plan something that involves your friends and family but doesn’t cost anything.

This entry (Permalink) was posted on Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 1:02 am and is filed under A to Z, Budgets and Planets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response , or trackback from your own site.