Talentless  will be an ultra-low-budget film. Movies made for under $300,000 fall into this category. Sometimes movies in this category are also referred to as micro-budget movies. For those of you living outside of filmmaking, those numbers may be shocking. I mean, you can buy a house for $300,000 here in Milwaukee! Or in California, you can buy a shingle! Okay, that's a slight exaggeration. You could probably buy a roof. But you get my point, moviemaking is expensive! A moderate-budget movie costs between $300,000 and $700,000. Theatrical releases typically have budgets over $2 Million with the average movie made today costing between $50 Million and $100 Million.  Why do movies cost so much?  Simple. It takes a small army to make one. There are at least fifty necessary positions needed to make a quality movie. These positions range from the ones everyone has heard of, like actors, producers, and directors, to the ones that go unnoticed, like transportation coordinators...

When I taught video production, my classes participated in the state-wide student film competition. I used to tell my students that the screenplay is the foundation of their movie. A movie will never be better than the screenplay. You can have the best director, the most talented actors, an extraordinary crew, and an award-winning editor,  but if your screenplay is dud, your movie will be too. As a brilliant audio operator once told me, "You can't polish a turd." This is why many actors and directors will turn down projects after reading the screenplay. This is also why talented directors like Spielberg will ask the writer(s) to rewrite portions of the screenplay. He's strengthening the screenplay because he recognizes the strength of the foundation directly impacts the quality of the final product.  Knowing this, I wanted to be sure that we have a strong screenplay before taking Talentless into production. Friends and family members are our best cheerleaders. But bec...