| I have a couple of self-imposed guidelines for doing "low/no"s, which I can share. First, if I don't know you, professionally, personally or even by reputation, then the very-low-budg project you are asking me to do had better: 1: be saying something I believe needs to be said, 2: allow me to do some aspect of my work that I enjoy or that I haven't gotten to do before, and 3: have other people onboard that I know and want to work with. In other words, there has to be something in it for me besides some sort of abstract "credit" mojo. Another guideline is that faced with an offer of a very small amount of money--I'll say keep your money and feed us better. The payment of even a small amount of money removes your "volunteer" status, and for $100 I want to keep my ability to speak my mind to all the people involved and walk away the moment I feel mistreated or BSed in any way. That is a powerful incentive for the filmmakers to keep their "acquired situational narcissism" at bay--good for everyone, and removes any notion that the project at hand is anything other than a special situation--not a real job. Finally, you have to decide how much of this kind of thing you can afford to do, and examine your own motivations and attractions to it. In my distant youth I did several grossly under-supported large-scale projects, and finally had to admit to myself that the results I was getting weren't all that great (because they couldn't ever be under the circumstances) and that all I was really doing was a kind of macho search for the point where things were so screwed up that I couldn't make them work at all. After that I relaxed somewhat and became more realistic about what was actually possible in those very low budg situations, and am not shy about telling the producers of projects like that what I think they can realistically expect (whether they want to hear it or not).
Philip Perkins |