UK’s Mia Bays talks micro-budget
Posted in my articles on October 15th, 2009 by Rachael – 1 Comment
Window of opportunity: Mia Bays in Sydney
From small budgets, great things can come.
It worked for Kieslowski, who believed that technical and budgetary constraints always forced a simple and often more ingenious type of creativity.
Mia Bays, the marketing consultant for micro-studio Film London Microwave, agrees, giving here an anecdote about how budgetary limitations on the £100,000 Shifty forced even better solutions:
“There’s a great scene where Shifty is doing a regular drop to an older woman. As written, the woman has lots of cats. In pre-production, the production designer and producers said ‘we can’t afford real cats, and there’s a risk they won’t behave and you won’t get the shot.’ They pushed the director Eran Creevy to think about stuffed cats instead, to show her obsession. Soon, the flat became filled with cat trinkets; it followed right through the production design. Then one of the lead actors reacted spontaneously to the stuffed cat. Now it’s now a really, really funny scene.
“That’s happened several times on Shifty and on Freestyle, which is coming out in UK cinemas in February.”
Mia Bays will present the keynote address at 9.30am this Saturday at SPAA Fringe. Curious Film’s Michael Wrenn will talk about the Australian release strategy on Friday, 5-6pm at Friday On My Mind.