[danpalmer]

It was $7,500. $5,000 of that was the camera hire, $1,400 was the single paid actor (the rest were friends and family). The used expired film stock that a film company donated to the production. It was all edited in Premier Pro on a home PC. Shane Carruth wrote, directed, edited, composed, acted, produced, everything.

My favourite fact is that they only had ~80 mins of film donated to them. This meant they couldn't afford retakes. Normally there's a ~10:1 ratio of shot film to final run length. With Primer and their constraints, they storyboarded everything in such detail and rehearsed so much that they managed to shoot just 74 minutes for a 72 minute run length.

[yardie]

Is that 10:1 ratio post or pre-digital films? Because in my experience as a young PA film cameras didn't have live viewfinders. Film was maybe 2:1 or 3:1 because you didn't have unlimited film and unlimited film processing budget. Digital and reality TV has made it normal to film everything in multiple takes and clean it in post. But old school DPs, who were used to film, would get the whole thing done in one take without a lot of waste.

[danpalmer]

I heard the 10:1 ratio a while ago, and for "Hollywood films". So I'm guessing on-film, but where film/processing budget isn't much of a limiting factor. Primer was released in 2004 so at that time most things would have been on film.

That said, I'm not in the industry, this is just what I've read about the production of Primer, so if your experience was of 2-3:1 that may be more accurate!

[thorin]

Sorry for the 70k I might have been thinking of Pi, which was another favourite film of mine!