10 Amazing Movies Made On Shockingly Small Budgets

Because sometimes a $70 film can be as entertaining as a $70 million film.

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Breaking into Hollywood can be an arduous process, but luckily for aspiring filmmakers, in recent years it has become increasingly easy to make a movie. All you need is a camera and some friends, and sometimes that's enough to launch a successful career.

That's how a lot of great directors got their start: working a crappy job to save money, before buying a camera and shooting some crazy film in their parents' garage. If the passion is great enough, even something so cheap and lacking in resources can actually become a hit and resonate with a lot of people. You don't need millions of dollars. Hell, you don't even need thousands of dollars. 

This was the case with these 10 films, all made for insanely small amounts of money. They're all clearly labors of love, the work of a ton of people with day jobs coming together on weekends to get this weird project completed. Each one is a reminder that if you want to direct a film, you can't just wait around for Marvel to come knocking and offer Avengers 4. You just have to get out there and do it.

Ranging from $7,000 all the way down to just 70 bucks, here are 10 amazing movies made on shockingly small budgets.

10. Primer - $7,000

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In Shane Carruth's mindbending sci-fi film Primer, four friends accidentally create a time machine in their garage and must deal with the consequences of their invention. Carruth made the now extremely popular film while he was working as an engineer, gradually saving money and financing the $7,000 budget himself. 

It was an insanely small shoot, with a crew of just five people and with Carruth writing, directing, producing, editing, and acting in the film. He also composed the score and was the cinematographer, and a lot of the cast consisted of Carruth’s friends and family. He shot and edited the film over the course of three years, and it was such a difficult process that he nearly abandoned the project on several occasions. It didn’t help that he didn’t go to film school and had very little prior experience. 

Yet for how limited the film was, Carruth was able to land a distribution deal after the movie made a big splash at Sundance. It’s since become a cult hit, and Carruth has gone on to make much bigger films like Upstream Color. That all came out of a production that had all the elements of a YouTube video a high school kid shoots in his garage. Except in this case, the movie grossed $424,000 and can now be streamed on Netflix. Not bad.

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Lover of horror movies, liker of other things. Your favorite Friday the 13th says a lot about you as a person, and mine is Part IV: The Final Chapter.