Resources for the Student Filmmaker:
Scholarships, Grants, Tools, & Resources
Filmmaking is an expensive business. Even “low budget movies” can cost upwards of $50,000—not a sum many of us have to spare. As a student filmmaker, you want to express your abilities and explore your talents without making yourself broke. Sticking to a low budget is challenging. But you can do it.
There are many resources available to help film students and budding filmmakers. You just need to know where to find them. Whether you need to rent equipment, network with others in the biz, or expand your experience, there are many free or low-cost options.
Read on to discover how to become a world-renowned filmmaker on a budget.
How to Make a Film as a Student?
Film production essentially breaks down into four sections:
Pre-production and development
Production
The planning part includes everything from writing a screenplay and casting to sourcing funding and scheduling shoots.
Next comes the filming—the most recognizable part of the production. With your actors, camera crew, and director all in one place, it’s time to capture the story on film.
Post-production
Marketing & distribution
With everything you need caught on camera, it’s time to put it all together. With the help of an editor, you’ll add sound design, music, and visual effects.
Now that you have finished your film, you must distribute it to an audience. Testing, marketing, and distribution are crucial to your film’s success. Smaller productions use hands-on approaches to encourage others to watch.
As all student filmmakers know, it’s not as simple as it looks. It involves enticing actors to work for free or with very little money and sourcing affordable equipment. Editing tools are expensive and visual effects are not accessible.
Don’t worry; we’ve put together a list to help you find all the free and inexpensive resources to make a student film.
Free and Low-cost Production Resources
Good filmmakers need good tools. Even a talented filmmaker cannot work without a decent camera and editing software. However, everything in the filmmaking process comes at a cost.
As a student filmmaker, it’s unlikely that you’ll have the same cash to splash as the latest blockbusters hitting the big screens.
Yet, that doesn’t mean you cannot create an equally groundbreaking moment in cinema with budget tools.
Below, we’ve listed ways you can access high-quality equipment, free music, and inexpensive set designs.
Set Design
Set design is one of the core elements of making an excellent film. Right down to the smallest detail, it builds the world and helps tell the story of your movie.
Not every film set needs to be lavish, but sometimes we want something a little different. Fortunately, there are plenty of low-cost options available. For example, EcoSet is a budget-friendly production resource perfect for students. Located in Los Angeles, EcoSet takes disused sets from wrapped productions and offers them to students for free.
They’re an excellent filmmaker resource with a focus on minimizing waste and maximizing opportunities. They have an incredible range of available sets, furniture, decor, art materials, and more. Whether you have a specific need in mind or want to browse for inspiration, EcoSet is sure to have something that catches your eye.
Alternatively, you could source your own set designs. Look for second-hand items and clothing online or in charity shops. Remember, you can sell it after using it to make your money back. Sites such as Freecycle, Facebook Marketplace, and eBay often have quality items going cheaply or freely.
No matter how cheap or lackluster your set looks, lighting can make all the difference. Investing or hiring an excellent lighting system could turn your mediocre set into an Oscar-worthy design.
Equipment Rental
Making a film on a budget has never been easier. Student filmmakers today can shoot everything they need to with their smartphones. The latest developments in technology mean that any one of us can create low-budget films on our phones.
However, sometimes you’ll need something a little more advanced to create a masterpiece.
One of the best ways to find what you’re looking for is to share among friends. If you know someone with the equipment you need, ask them to borrow it in return for something of yours they might need. Alternatively, if none of your friends have the gear you need, you can use ShareGrid.
With ShareGrid, you can rent everything from cameras, lighting, and sound gear, to production assistants and locations. As one of the largest production-related rental companies, there are plenty of options available so you can find the most suitable and affordable. Plus, you’re renting from other filmmakers who share your creative passion.
Add your own equipment to the site to earn extra cash when you’re not using it. Moreover, to gain additional industry experience, why not list your skills on ShareGrid to help other student filmmakers in need?
It’s an excellent way to earn extra income, network with other budding filmmakers, and learn on the job.
Free Music
Soundtracks often make or break a film. Think of Jaws, Star Wars, or any other legendary film—it’s the music that sets the scene and makes it memorable.
However, as a student filmmaker, hiring John Williams to write a score is probably beyond your budget. In fact, hiring anyone to write a score will use up precious funds you cannot afford to spend.
Fortunately, there is a way to get your hands on free music. The Free Music Archive is a database of diverse, original, royalty-free music. Sign up for free and access thousands of potential soundtracks for your next project.
You can either use the ‘Free Music Archive’ or sign up for a license to use a royalty-free track. You’re bound to find the perfect piece to set the mood. Search their library by genre, feeling, energy, with or without vocals, or a keyword.
Alternatively, AudioJungle, MusicBed, and Audio Network are cost-effective options to source music for your next film. Starting from $1, these sites promise to connect you with composers and tracks. Remember to credit the artist and help support other creatives.
Stock Footage
Sometimes, as a filmmaker, you’ll need stock footage to boost your movie. Without unlimited resources and funds, we cannot film everything we need ourselves.
Whether you need historical footage or special effects, plenty of free stock footage options are available.
Archive.org is a non-profit library of video footage, images, and music in the public domain. It has a wide range of footage, guaranteed to have whatever you need. Categories range from “old time radio” to “Vietnamese audiobooks,” Charlie Chaplin episodes, and 9/11 news broadcasts.
It has over a billion resources available. Simply search for what you’re looking for, find the right footage, and download it.
On the other hand, if you need special effects, such as explosions, dust and smoke clouds, bullets firing, and splatter, then try Detonation Films Stock. All action movies require special effects, and there are few cost-effective solutions. However, Detonation Films Stock has plenty of VFX options to overlay on your budget film.
There are several free options—but even the paid special effects are highly affordable.
Finally, try Mazwai for stock footage of nature, time-lapses, or other mood-setting content. With everything from city to tropical scenes, Mazwai will help you set the stage and tell your story.
Learning Resources
Do you want to learn a bit about the filmmaking process? The movie industry is one of the most extensive, fastest-growing entertainment areas.
As a student filmmaker, you need to stay updated with the latest trends and technologies.
Fortunately, with the abundance of online resources and eagerness to share information, you can learn all you need to with an online film school at your very fingertips. Online blogs are some of the best places to get to know the industry and learn the latest tips and tricks.
Where else can you find experienced industry experts sharing their knowledge with aspiring filmmakers for free?
Moreover, amateur filmmakers write blogs to share their hobbies. One of the best ways to connect with like-minded people is to read their online blogs, follow their social media channels, and get involved in the community.
Here are some blogs you should take a look at:
Shares filmmaking news, tips, techniques, and reviews of the latest tools
Offers affordable courses to get to know the movie industry.
In-depth reviews of the latest movies, equipment, and industry news.
Shares resources to help you become a successful filmmaker, including screenwriting, post-production, and distribution tips
Aimed at students, this blog has everything you need to kick-start your career as a filmmaker.
Film Festivals for Students
Attending film festivals is one of the best ways to discover the latest trends in the industry, network with budding and professional filmmakers, and have a good time.
As a student filmmaker, film festivals are a must. If you want to succeed, you need to know what the best of the best are doing.
Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean attending Cannes or Sundance Film Festivals (although you should definitely keep an eye on what they’re doing); there are plenty of local student-friendly film festivals.
Experiments in Cinema
Held in April, the annual Experiments in Cinema Festival is about sharing and nurturing up-and-coming film talent. Foregoing the red carpet and awards ceremony, the Experiments in Cinema Festival presents a range of international screenings, live multi-media performances, interactive projects, lectures, discussion groups, and hands-on workshops.
The EIC is in Albuquerque, New Mexico. However, anyone less local can attend a virtual festival in May.
The EIC welcomes anything, including essay films, dance films, structural films, post-structural films, post-post structural films, underground films, abstract films, experimental narratives, video installations, and portrait films.
Either submit your latest masterpiece or attend to meet new people and watch the latest developments at the forefront of the movie industry.
The Ann Arbor Film Festival
Held in April, the annual Experiments in Cinema Festival is about sharing and nurturing up-and-coming film talent. ForegoThe Ann Arbor Film Festival is the fourth-oldest in the US. Held annually in March, the Ann Arbor Film Festival began in 1963 and celebrates independent filmmakers and artists every year.
Over six days, the festival presents 40 programs, with 180 films from 20 different countries in all lengths and genres.
With more than 20 different awards offering cash prizes, it’s an excellent way to catch the latest cinematic advances or kick-start your own career with a submission.
Some famous names to have previously graced the Ann Arbor Film Festival include Kenneth Anger, Agnes Varda, Andy Warhol, Barbara Hammer, George Lucas, Matthew Buckingham, and James Benning.
Media City Film Festival
An international film festival, the Media City Film Festival has celebrated film and digital art since 1994.
With artists worldwide contributing, the Media City Film Festival hosts gallery exhibitions, film screenings, live performances, workshops, lectures, notable artists’ editions, and more.
The festival is at various venues across the US-Canadian border, including The Detroit Institute of Arts, The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, and the Art Gallery of Windsor.
Over seven days, they present experimental and avant-garde screenings from international submissions.
International Video Festival Videomedeja
Videomedeja started as a female-only competition in 1996. Now, anyone can submit their work to the international film festival. Bringing together artists around the world and celebrating tradition, it’s a well-recognized event in Novi Sad and Serbia.
The festival primarily focuses on avant-garde social culture and alternative art forms and promotes independent video production.
Videomedeja encourages critical thinking, visual arts, international cooperation, and intercultural dialogue. Plus, they welcome students and young artists into the creative industry.
Awards include:
The Sphinx Award
for the best work in screenings
The Bogdanka
Poznanović Award
for the best work in media projects
Special Mention and
the Audience Award
Women’s Filmmakers Festival
One of the newer film festivals on the scene, the Women’s Filmmakers Festival, started only three years ago. Held at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in honor of Women’s History Month (March), it celebrates female artists.
Each year, the festival picks a theme—in 2022, it was “Her Story” and the celebrated artists included Cecilia Vicuña, Coco Fusco, and Mariam Ghani.
Held exclusively online, it’s free to sign and accessible to everyone. Each week of the festival, they focus on a new female filmmaker. At the beginning of the week, watch a longer video by the featured artists and submit questions to discuss in a live virtual discussion.
Blue Water International Film Festival
The Blue Water Film Festival honors World Ocean Day on the 8th of June. Held in San Diego, it lasts a week.
The festival aims to encourage people to think about climate change effects and how to act. With about half of its film selections from international artists, the festival promotes cross-cultural understanding.
Join discussions from leading film and media artists to debate the relationship between film and our blue planet. It’s an excellent opportunity to network, attend special events and meet other filmmakers.
The Argo Student Short Film Fest
Argo is a short film and documentary streaming platform. They held their first-ever student filmmaker festival in January.
Enter for free, join the competition and steam the latest short movies.
Throughout the year, submit your creations to Argo to connect with the largest short film student community.
Film Grants and Scholarships
Funding your film is often more challenging than actually making the movie. As a student, you have to source the funds yourself. While you might be able to spare a dollar or two, it’s unlikely you’ll have anywhere near the budget you need. However, finding film funds doesn’t need to be a struggle.
There are a multitude of different ways to fund your filmmaking career. For instance, entering competitions (like those mentioned above) sometimes rewards you with cash prizes.
Moreover, there are film grants and scholarships for every filmmaker. So, what are your options?
Unrestricted funds for the development, production, and distribution of a project.
A committed residency or service to create a film with the awarding committee. More restrictive than grants.
Fully or partially funds students to study filmmaking.
Discover the right funding solution below.
Grants
Student grants are available for anyone in higher education and can help you kick-start your career as an emerging filmmaker.
Student grants include:
A competition hosted by the Academy offering cash grants of $5000, $3000, and $2000. The deadline is the 1st of June.
Open to both established filmmakers and fresh voices, the Flies Collective Grant funds short films, documentaries, and low-budget features.
Offering $7,500 to a female filmmaker for any film raising awareness of physical or developmental disabilities.
Offers two grants to emerging filmmakers, including the Short Film Funding and Early Development Funding, with rolling deadlines.
The institute offers grants to filmmakers, producers, and directors for any movie depicting human freedom.
The largest granting body for independent narrative feature films in the US, SFFILM supports creations that address social justice issues. The grant includes up to $25,000 and a two-month residency.
With grants up to $30,000, the ScreenCraft fund also offers mentorship from renowned filmmakers.
Describe your project in one sentence to be in with a chance of getting up to $10,00 to write, produce, or direct your next film.
Ensure you look out for opportunities for minorities. There are plenty of grant opportunities for LGBTQ+, female, or ethnic minority applicants to diversify the industry.
Fellowships
Fellowship opportunities include
Offering a range of grants and fellowships for longer narrative films over 90 minutes long, each upwards of $10,000.
Winners receive a $35,000 cash grant and a two-month residency to create a feature-length film related to technology or science
Focusing exclusively on documentaries, nonfiction, short films, and low-budget fiction, they help filmmakers source financial resources with support for independently produced film projects
A fellowship made by students for students, it helps screenwriters reach their potential.
Scholarships
Funding your filmmaking education is another expense many balk at. However, it doesn’t have to break the bank. Many institutions offer filmmaker scholarships to get you through college.
Some scholarships are specifically for those from a specific background, while others are open to anyone. Moreover, check with your chosen college about the scholarship opportunities available.
Here are your filmmaking scholarship options:
Worth $500, the Andrew Flusche Scholarship is for undergraduates or graduates. To apply, submit a public service video on courteous driving in any form, including narrative and documentary.
The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Foundation offers scholarships of varying amounts to black students applying for an art degree. To apply, submit a sample of your work with a personal statement.
C-Span offers varying amounts to high school students with plans to study filmmaking at college. Create and submit a short video based on a politics-related prompt to apply.
With up to $27,000 available, the Create Real Impact Scholarship requires applicants to create original work—whether creative writing or video—about distraction-free driving.
Available for Texas-based college applicants, this scholarship awards students between $2,000 and $5,000. To apply, create a project, such as a short film, to combat a specific litter-related problem in the community.
Offering varying amounts to students who submit a video project detailing how a parent’s death affected their lives.
How to Apply
Competition can be fierce whether you’re applying for a documentary grant or trying to secure a scholarship to embark on your filmmaking career. Each organization specifies its own requirements, so make sure you carefully review the application in advance. If you can afford it, try to begin application preparation a few months ahead of the deadline.
There are a few aspects most grant and scholarship applications have in common. Before submitting your application, you’ll need the following:
- Write an Artist Statement
- Write a Film Treatment
- A Film Budget
- A Mood Board
- Letters of Recommendation
- Submit a Video
Write an Artist Statement
An artist’s statement is a one or two-page letter introducing you and your project—detail why you want to complete your project and outline how you plan to see it to fruition.
Write a Film Treatment
A film treatment summarizes your project in one or two pages—often a challenge for screenwriters. You’ll need the film treatment throughout the life of the project. Once you’ve written it, you can use it again for future film grant applications.
A Film Budget
To persuade someone to finance your filming dreams, you’ll need to show them how you plan to spend their money—the more detailed and professional your budget, the better your chances of securing a grant.
A Mood Board
While it’s not usually a requirement, including a mood board in your application will help bring your vision to life. Make sure it’s clean, simple, and not overly long—you don’t want to overload anyone with information. You want to offer a taste of your project.
Letters of Recommendation
Letters of recommendation will boost your application. It needs to be from someone within the filmmaking industry—perhaps an internship leader or your college professor?
Submit a Video
Sharing actual proof of your filmmaking skills is the best way to secure the funding you need. Whether it’s a proof of concept for your upcoming project or something from previous work, it’ll prove your artistic talents. However, watch out for video requirements. Some applications provide prompts for you to follow with a video project.
How to Get Filmmaking Experience?
Studying in school is an excellent way to get a filmmaking education. However, you need to get some hands-on experience to break into the highly competitive industry. Of course, shooting and producing your own films is an excellent way to learn.
However, applying for internships and volunteer opportunities will broaden your experiences and enable networking with some of the leading filmmakers.
Moreover, to be a filmmaker, you need to understand all aspects of the industry. Knowing how to capture a story on camera is one thing, but the best filmmakers familiarise themselves with the distribution, marketing, reviewing, and critical aspects of movies.
When you research internship opportunities available, search for a range of different film-related experiences, such as working in a museum.
Here are our top internship opportunities for all budding filmmakers to take advantage of:
A part-time internship role assisting in research, preparation, and implementation of film screenings and discussion programs
While not specific to filmmaking, gaining experience in game production is an excellent way to explore career opportunities.
Interns will assemble programs from Canyon’s collection of art films for online streaming and a screening tour.
Internship opportunities in TV production, physical production, creative works, TV development, and post-production
Offering internships in post-production, delivery, publicity, regional events, and TV development.
Check out local film and production companies—even if they haven’t posted any internship opportunities, it might be worth dropping them a letter offering your services in return for experience.
Becoming A Student Filmmaker
The filmmaking business is expensive and competitive. However, it is also full of passionate creatives eager to find and help the newest talent.
Whether you rent camera equipment from other student filmmakers or apply for a fellowship opportunity with SFFILM, there are plenty of opportunities to learn and showcase your skills.
What Equipment Do You Need to Be a Filmmaker?
To start with, you’ll need recording equipment. Depending on how amateur your film is, you could get away with using your smartphone camera. In recent years, award-winning films like Unsane and High Flying Bird were shot on smartphones. However, if you want to use professional equipment, you can rent what you need from local filmmakers with ShareGrid.
What Is the Best Resource to Use for Documentary Movies?
Making documentaries is a very different art from narratives. To learn how to make documentary movies, take a look at the International Documentary Association. Moreover, there are plenty of grants and funding opportunities available for budding documentary filmmakers.
What Do You Need for a Short Film?
To shoot a short film, you will need a camera, lighting, and audio recording equipment. Generally speaking, shorter films have a smaller budget than feature-length films. As they’re under 40 minutes in length, you’ll need to create a concise, engaging way to tell your story.
How Can I Make My First Movie?
Firstly, you will need a script. Whether someone else’s words capture your imagination or you plan to write them yourself, script-writing is the key to beginning a movie’s production. Secondly, you need to organize your budget. There are many grants available to help fund your film project. Next, hire a cast and crew to begin filming. Once you wrap production, you need to edit and distribute.
What Should I Study if I Want to Be a Filmmaker?
There are no formal education requirements to be a filmmaker. However, plenty of colleges offer courses if you want to learn filmmaking. Alternatively, volunteer at film festivals, or apply to internships or fellowships for hands-on access to filmmaking mentoring.
What Skills Do Filmmakers Need?
Every filmmaker needs creativity, communication, decisiveness, open-mindedness, and organizational skills. Depending on your role within the filmmaking process, you might need other attributes, such as writing abilities, attention to detail, or leadership skills.
How Can I Improve as a Filmmaker?
The best way to improve as a filmmaker is to immerse yourself in the latest filmmaking trends. Attend film festivals, get involved in the community, critique movies, and practice making films yourself. Follow other filmmakers’ blogs and consider starting your own.