Different Pathways
The Big Screen Symposium has run its course for another year. This time around, it had an emphasis on local content makers on the big and small screen, with micro-budget productions getting a good share of the limelight.
I moderated a session with DEGANZ director member Callum Devlin and actor and director Chelsea Preston-Crayford, who took wildly different pathways to their debut features.
Callum did it in a collaborative, micro-budget effort with his creative partners on The Weed Eaters, while Chelsea took the more traditional development and production path with Film Commission funding on Caterpillar.
In another session, Daniel Betty (What Lies Between), Matt Hicks (The Tavern), and Tom Levesque and Eva Trebilco (Shut Eye, Notes From A Fish) spoke about the trials, tribulations and joys of making, marketing and distributing their own micro/low-budget films.
In 2024, we ran a session on low-budget feature filmmaking with Tom Levesque (Shut Eye), former DEGANZ board member Michael Duignan (The Paragon) and Tom Sainsbury (Loop Track), who spoke about the production of their self-funded features for less than $500k.
The approach outside the traditional funding body path is more prevalent than ever. Government funding for films is tightening, and financing productions through traditional means is becoming harder.
But it’s not just on the big screen where filmmakers are finding their way forward.
The incredible success of YouTuber Curry Barker with horror feature Obsession, made on a reported “micro-budget” of US$750k for a box office gross of US$400 million plus, has driven Hollywood studio offers for him to direct. His feature opportunity came off the back of his YouTube channel short, The Chair, which attracted the attention of Obsession’s US producer James Harris.
YouTubers Viva La Dirt League, who operate out of their fan-funded $4.2 million studio lot in Henderson West Auckland, are intent on a similar pathway from YouTube to feature.
Back in 2009, Uruguayan Fede Alvarez, director of the Evil Dead remake for Rob Tappert and Sam Raimi and which was shot here, got the offer to make his debut feature because of his YouTube short Ataque de Pánico!.
The traditional path of film shorts to features has paid off, too.
Jackie van Beek’s trajectory came off the back of multiple film shorts that led to her first feature Inland Road, before going on to her now successful career as a director of film, TV and commercials.
Also at BSS, Kiwi director James Ashcroft spoke about his pathway from shorts to features, starting with his low-budget NZFC debut feature Coming Home In The Dark. This led to directing films with John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush (The Rule of Jenny Penn), Robert De Niro (Whisper Man), and most recently Emilia Clark and Natascha McElhone (When Darkness Loves Us).
The landscape for feature filmmaking has certainly changed, but the number of pathways to making that first film has expanded. All you need is bloody-minded perseverance and a little bit of luck.
Making that first film, however, isn’t always a precursor to career success as a filmmaker, even if you’re talented. So celebrate the achievement if you do it. Every film that gets made deserves it, whether or not it’s a hit.
Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director
Last updated on 16 July 2026
