Back to selection
An Interview with Director Jake Mahaffy About His New Book on Micro-budget Production
Jake Mahaffy on set (photo by Eric Sutton) A Filmmaker 25 New Face from 2005, Jake Mahaffy has been making microbudget films for two decades and has now distilled his creative and production philosophies in a new book, Micro-Budget Methods of Cinematic Storytelling: A Practical Guide to Making Narrative Media with Minimal Means, published April 2025 from Routledge. In the accompanying excerpt, Mahaffy outlines several foundational concepts micro-budget filmmakers should embrace. And below, we chatted about his impulse to write the book and his own personal path towards micro-budget production.
Filmmaker: We selected you in 2005 for our 25 New Faces list after you premiered War at Sundance 2004. In that film, you really embraced the micro-budget philosophy you espouse in this book, deciding to shoot not the script but the world and characters around it. When you made that film, did you imagine that you’d be advocating for micro-budget practice years later? In other words, did you see this style of filmmaking as a calling at the time or simply a necessity in the moment?
Mahaffy: I never saw budget as a calling. It’s just necessity. Necessity functions like a filter: it strains out extravagance and pretension. All the practical limitations and frustrations, instead of being seen as obstacles to your work, are the work itself. Those obstacles enforce specificity. You adapt your story, style and design to absorb all the problems money can’t buy out. So, it’s a chance for your work to become more specific instead of generic.
Filmmaker: Having made micro-budget films for the last two decades and watched others make them, how do you feel micro-budget practice has changed? Are the same factors at work, or has cultural and technological change produced different ones?
Mahaffy: Culture and technology have changed. But because it’s artificial, it trends toward centralization and conformity. There was a big talking point around a “democratization of filmmaking” in the ’90s with cheaper, accessible gear. But instead of the ground-up regional creativity that people imagined erupting from cheap cameras, the indie brand and arthouse style were redirected toward standard stories. This is done through targeted funding. Creativity is commodified as “content.” Maybe the most inventive work gets made in memes and short-form edits just because they’re free from oversight. We could have a renaissance of cinema if it were allowed to naturally develop as an authentic, national art form.
Filmmaker: One thing I was glad you discussed in the book was the ethics around micro-budget filmmaking, and that it’s not about people working for cheap but for other reasons. In your own practice, how has this imperative factored into the way you’ve sourced crews and collaborators?
Mahaffy: We’re not making cheap souvenir replicas of the mainstream standard. This is not sweatshop filmmaking, trying to increase profit margins by underspending on labor. We only work with the people who can afford it for love. It’s deterministic rather than delusional. It’s handcrafted. We’re making film as folk art, based in available resources. I just shot a feature in December about a farmer trying to make a movie in his barn. All the problems I encountered as a filmmaker, I passed along to the character in the story. Like, I used two actors for one role. A guy could only shoot for two days, so I replaced him with another guy. This dropout became part of the farmer’s struggle to make his movie.
If I can’t pay anybody, I can’t hire people who need to get paid. The project is a volunteer enterprise. We’re making something from nothing. By default, this makes the film more specific and less generic, every time. Without the professionals or standardized approach, the film is less “movie-like.” Instead of fretting over how unpaid we all are, we practice aggressive gratitude. Volunteers may have limited skills in commercial filmmaking but have other assets, like authenticity. Instead of inventing any story and trying to squash unqualified people into that template, we build a project around the people. We make the story match their abilities and availabilities.
We don’t care whether we look like a legitimate movie production. Only absolute practicality matters. Professionalism in practice is just safety and respect. It’s not the number of buttons in your kit or how many contracts you sign. Professionalism in the finished film is just creative control. No matter how sad your working circumstance, if you demonstrate creative control and deliberate design in your movie, you’ve demonstrated professional use of resources.
Filmmaker: Your last film, Reunion, was (presumably) not a micro-budget film. Were there elements of your micro-budget practice that you missed?
Mahaffy: The budget was never shown to me. I’m guessing maybe $500,000 went into production? It was a different kind of movie in a different kind of country. Compared to smaller projects, I missed the speed and immediacy, but the catering was great. No matter the budget, you understand that the director isn’t really in control. We supervise and react to what’s happening but we’re directing a film, not reality itself.
Filmmaker: Finally, why did you feel it was important to advocate for micro-budget practice at this moment in time and in the form of this book?
Mahaffy: I’ve been teaching, advising and consulting for decades around the world. The same questions and problems keep coming up. Taking a bit of this information and putting it into a book is a way to share creative principles and reach the ones who need it.
A lot of people want to make long-form movies, but they’re mystified by the process of turning story ideas into realized films. It’s difficult to commit to a process you don’t fully understand. But I want exactly those people who get vetted out of the usual approvals to make work despite the system. More than any schedule or budget, the greatest limitation in low-budget filmmaking is a lack of imagination. Nobody cares what we’re doing anyway. That’s independence. We can make movies that big money can’t afford to make with their commercial, political mandates. If we’re going to make movies in different ways than the industrial standard, then we’re going to make different kinds of movies.
