I'm posting in this forum since this got a laugh out of my whole crew....

We are working on a project which involved filming scenes that take place in small, cramped, dingy urban apartments. Since I and everyone I know live in small, cramped, dingy urban apartments, we just filmed it our own apartments.

My producer showed some samples to other local filmmakers. What was the reaction?

'Great production value! That old kitchen set looked exactly like a real kitchen!'

That just made my day. :D

Hilarious!

C

Years ago I made a student film, no budget of course. In it the hero has to trash someone's house (don't ask why). I had evnvvisioned him using a baseball bat but it was late, it was dark, we had one hour to film and no bat. So I had him use an aluminium table leg I had just thrown out.
We were shooting onto 3/4" tape using single tube cameras, prone to smear in low light so that table leg looked a little glittering when it was being flailed around

The video went to competition. One of the judges told me how important the scene was where the hero wielded his "silver sword of justice" and how deep the symbolisim was.

Funny thing was, the darned thing won best script