9 Movies That Were Improved By Having No Money

3. Clerks

Clerks was made on the paper-thin budget of $28,000, which Kevin Smith got by maxing out his credit cards. When you're making a movie for so little (and using your own money), it's not going to take a lot of prodding to cut back on what other major motion pictures might consider "necessities."

This is where the idea to shoot the whole thing in black-and-white came from. If he'd went full color, a good chunk of money would have been spent fixing all of the lighting issues in post. Since Smith filmed at actual store he worked at, and could only shoot when it was closed, there was no chance at using natural light (which explains why the plot had some jerk gumming up the lock to the window shutters.) In black-and-white, Smith could use whatever random lighting source he needed without worrying that color temperatures wouldn't match up continuity-wise.

Also, there was one scene in the script they couldn't afford to shoot. In it, Randall and Dante are at the funeral of a former classmate when Randall "accidentally" knocks over the casket. It was an uncharacteristically slapstick-y scene which was thankfully cut out of the script because Smith couldn't afford to rent the funeral home. Instead, the two characters simply recall the story in conversation in much tamer scene.