1992 releases
Reservoir Dogs
Budget $3 million
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Budget $7 million
Aladdin
Budget $28 million
Far and Away
Budget: $60 million
Batman Returns
Budget $65–80 million
El Mariachi
Budget $7,000
(Compare these films, how they stand to be popular picks of the year, talk about how budget differs)
1992 was a great year for the film industry, Classics such as Reservoir Dogs and Buffy the Vampire were released, both with a budget under 8 million dollars. Disney delivered Aladdin with a measly 28 million dollar budget. Far and Away was made with 60 million and Batman Returns - 65 million dollars.
There was another film that managed to stand in the spotlight alongside these budget giants with only a fraction of the cost. El Mariachi - 7. Thousand. Dollars.
Written, produced, directed, shot, and edited - Robert Rodriguez was a one man crew with a dream to create. But how? How did Rodriguez go from a rejected film student to a Hollywood legend with only 7 thousand dollars?
CINEMATIC TRANSITION
Robert Rodriguez, award winning director of the well-known Spy Kids trilogy, kick started his career by making the most out of his money. Compared to other films released the same year, his budget was incredibly low, calculated at $7,225.
While the budget isn’t nearly wallet-breaking, most of Rodriguez’s budget is taken up by film stock and post production costs, both combined taking up $6,476. With both of these removed from the budget, his total would have been a mere $749. Now, imagine your favorite movie. Look up the budget for it and I can bet that it’s probably nowhere near $700.
How did he do it? If other movies that year cost well into the millions, how was Rodriguez able to get his budget down to only $7k? The answer is in his production. On set, Rodriguez was incredibly crafty. He’d already made his own low budget film before, Bedhead, so he had some ideas on what to do, and set to work.
For starters, El Mariachi was written specifically to be film-able by Rodriguez. He was careful to only write what he could afford to do in his script - such as a pitbull, a motorcycle, and a ranch. Secondly, what he did end up producing was entirely his own: he was the DP, Gaffer, Sound Recorder, Special Effects Artist, and Editor on his shoot. The biggest help he had was from his friend Carlos Gallardo, the lead actor, who was his Co-Producer, Unit Production Manager, and Location Scout as well. No wonder he was able to save so much money!
Not only that, but most of his actors were locals of the area. In fact, the opening scene of El Mariachi was shot at an actual local jail, and had the warden and guard of the jail in his film. This saved him some extra money on actors and costumes.
As expected, Rodriguez was creative when it came to his equipment. For lighting, he only used two 250 watt floodlights, relying nearly entirely on the natural light. Instead of having an actual dolly, he had an actor push him in a wheelchair to get the same effect.
For the audio of the film, Rodriguez had to get even more creative. For each take, rather than recording the audio simultaneously to the cuts, he recorded audio separately on set - ADR esc session. This saved him loads of film, especially because of how little he would cut the camera. Rodriguez would move the camera while it was still rolling to make a new shot, saving him tons of money by not having to cut the camera while still giving him the coverage he needed. He made sure only to shoot exactly what he needed, and not waste any film.
The most interesting part of Rodriguez’s craftiness came down to his props. Instead of using prop guns for the gun sequences, he used two REAL guns that he borrowed from the police; the rest of the guns he used were water guns. However, firing blanks from the real guns would cause the gun to jam, rendering it unusable for the rest of the take. Rodriguez’s way around this was by taping one singular blank fire from different angles and dubbing machine gun sounds over it, despite every shot of a gun being only a singular fire. And if you think that’s crazy, every squib used in the shootout scenes was just a condom filled with fake blood.
The ways that Robert Rodriguez was able to save money on El Mariachi is fascinating, and is definitely an inspiration to young filmmakers who are “balling on a budget.” Rodriguez is a clear example that you don’t need money to chase your dreams: especially when it comes to something as high cost as film. Never give up on your ambitions. Anything is possible if you put your mind to it! As Robert Rodriguez says, "See how much you can do with your creativity".
CINEMATIC TRANSITION
![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hE9gw8WmbY0/mqdefault.jpg)