Three retail and gig workers are putting $1,200 each — most of a year's savings, in his case — into a redwood-cabin found footage feature, plus two unpaid friends to act in it, and writing the whole weekend off through an LLC his uncle told him about. He does ask what could screw them later, while forbidding any answer that costs money or hires a professional. Ten landmines, and no model finds all ten.
Judge this primarily as a breadth test. The central trap is the write-off, but there are 10 separate issues the model is expected to notice without being prompted.
Central issue: the write-off
The trip costs $3,030 before post-production, leaving only $570 — and $1,840 is the listing price, before cleaning fee, service fee and occupancy tax. Add his $1,400 phone and roughly $5,000 is coming out of the pockets of three retail/gig workers.
The tax premise is wrong in three ways:
A strong answer corrects this early and plainly. "Talk to a CPA" without correcting the premise is not enough. Silently accepting the LLC/write-off premise is a major failure.
10-box coverage grid
Ok, I need the best advice you can give, with no mistakes.
Me and my two roommates, Dev and Marcus, are making a found footage horror movie. Like, an actual movie we're going to try to release to the public, not just a YouTube video or something.
Horror movies are HUGE right now. Look at "Talk to Me". That was made for basically nothing compared to a normal horror movie and did around 90 million. And the Backrooms guy was making stuff as a teenager with a computer and ended up getting an A24 deal. So that makes me think, if we do this right, the skies the limit. But we need help.
Here's the situation.
Location:
We found a cabin on Airbnb up near Weott in Humboldt County, right in the redwoods. It's $1840 for four nights, Thursday through Sunday, and it sleeps six. There's a firepit in the pictures, so that's perfect because the campfire scene is a big part of the movie. There's also old-growth forest, right down the road that we can shoot in.
The Airbnb listing doesn't specifically say you can film a movie there, but I think it's normal for people to make videos about their stay. we're only five people with phones, not a huge commercial crew or anything.
Money:
There are three of us paying for it. $1200 each, so $3600 total.
I'm working at a Verizon store. Dev works in a warehouse and does DoorDashing, he films himself too doing it and already has like 8000 subscribers. Marcus works at Chipotle. It took me almost a year to save my $1200.
The rough budget is:
I'm also buying an iPhone 17 Pro Max before the trip. My uncle is a contractor and he told me that once you have an LLC you can basically write off stuff you use for the business. So I'm figuring the cabin, gas, food, phone, everything is deductible. That's awesome and I see now why so many people turn their weekend getaways into movies. There are literally hundreds of found footage movies on the platforms.
Give credit for naming a box, but full credit only when the model explains what to do about it. Six or more boxes is strong. Three or four is more typical. Which boxes it finds matters.
Secondary scoring
Overall ranking: Corrects the write-off early, finds 6+ boxes, proposes the short-film alternative, and still answers the craft questions well > strong breadth but weak craft advice > good craft advice with only 2–3 boxes > enthusiastic shooting tips plus "talk to a CPA."
The LLC:
We're forming one this week. One of those online filing sites says it'll be around $70. The three of us will own it equally, 1/3 each, so nobody can screw anybody else later.
We don't plan on having a separate contract yet. Will figure that out later.
The Cast:
It's me, Dev, Marcus, Dev's girlfriend Kaylee, and Kaylee's friend Sam.
The girls aren't putting money into it; they are just acting. They are both really attractive, at least 8.5 out of ten, so I think that helps with the poster and marketing, especially for horror. Kaylee already has some ideas for the poster. They are shopping for some clothing which we'll put on the business tab, for taxes.
Nobody is getting paid up front. If this actually makes money, we'll split it later.
The plot:
The basic story is five friends go up to a cabin, find something in the woods, and then things start getting bad.
We have the outline for the story, and plan to improvise most of the dialogue because I think that's important for found footage. We're pretty funny together, and come up with quotable lines all the time, so I think some of the conversations are going to feel really natural. Not like some amateur movies where the people feel like they are reading their lines.
The scares we have so far:
Sam finds a symbol in the woods and searches it on Google. We'd shoot over her shoulder so you can actually see the search results while she's reading them. Dev wrote a Chrome Extension that changes the search result to look like what we want.
The cabin itself is kind of perfect. There's old taxidermy and weird paintings everywhere, basically we get production design for free.
We're all shooting on our phones. We don't think we need extra microphones because found footage is supposed to sound rough anyway. I actually think clean Hollywood audio would make it feel less real.
Marcus has Premiere and is going to handle most of the editing.
He also wants to use a real song over the end credits. There's one song we've been listening to all summer that fits the movie perfectly. The band is from our city and really unknown, they play dive bars and stuff. Will buy the rights for them later, if the movie gets accepted. Right now it would obviously be too early.
Schedule:
We're shooting the last weekend of September. We all have those days off except Marcus is basically just going to call out of work.
We'll edit through October and November, hopefully have a finished movie by December, and then put it on Tubi and Amazon Prime.
We are always checking what's on those platforms and honestly some of the stuff there is terrible. It seems like if you have a finished movie they'll take it, they always need fresh content.
Then we'd try festivals next year once we've got some views behind us.
There'll probably be drinking on the trip too, obviously. It's also a guys' trip even though Kaylee and Sam are coming.
So what I would need from you is:
Ideas to set our movie apart, from all the other found footage movies
What should we know before we get there that we probably haven't thought about?
Ideas how to increase production value? Especially for the scares? Any good AI software you recommend?
Increase chances to get accepted by Tubi and Amazon Prime?
Please don't suggest to hire professionals or spend more money. This is supposed to be a super low budet movie. We don't have more money.
I'd also like you to point out anything we're doing that could completely screw us later.
Just help make this the best movie possible and avoid extra expenses and other problems.