Making a Zero Budget Short Film in 28 Days: Our Musical Filmmaking Challenge
- Indie Film Podcast
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
What does it actually take to make a zero budget short film under serious time pressure? In the latest episode of Indie Film Podcast, we challenged ourselves to find out. Instead of just talking about filmmaking, we decided to document the process of making our own short film for a festival competition, and we gave ourselves only 28 days to pull it off.
Naturally, we also decided to make it a musical. Because if you're going to attempt a zero budget short film, why not make it as complicated as possible?
Why We Decided to Make a Zero Budget Short Film
Many indie filmmakers talk about their projects long before they ever start them. We didn’t want to do that.
When a film festival & competition gave us the opportunity to submit a 10-minute short film, we decided it was the perfect excuse to finally put our ideas into action. The catch? We had procrastinated long enough that by the time we began planning, we had only 28 days left before the deadline.
So we committed to making a zero budget short film using whatever resources we already had.
No expensive gear.
No large crew.
No elaborate locations.
Just creativity, planning, and a little bit of panic. (Well, a lot of panic, and also a lot of support from friends!)
The Twist: Making a Musical Short Film
Of course, we didn’t make things easy for ourselves. Instead of producing a traditional short film, we decided to create a musical short film built around a strange combination of political satire and tabletop gaming inspiration.
That meant we suddenly had to deal with challenges most zero budget productions never face:
Writing original songs
Recording vocals and music
Designing scenes around pre-recorded tracks
Planning lip-sync performances during filming
Musicals add an entirely new layer of complexity to filmmaking. Once music is recorded, the timing of every scene becomes locked in place. Editing flexibility disappears, and small script changes can require completely rewriting a song (which, we don't have the time or budget to do).
For a zero budget short film, that kind of structure can either be a blessing…or a disaster.
We’re about to find out which!
Writing the Script Under Deadline Pressure
With time running out, we did something many filmmakers eventually experience: we wrote a large portion of the script during a long car ride.
Twelve hours.
No internet.
No distractions.
Just notebooks, ideas, and a growing realization that writing a musical script quickly is much harder than it sounds. (Thankfully, while Victoria was writing, Chuck served as a fantastic rhyming dictionary!)
One of the biggest lessons that came out of this process was the classic storytelling principle of “kill your darlings.” When you're making a zero budget short film, every scene has to earn its place. Extra dialogue, unnecessary characters, and overly complicated setups don’t just slow down the story, they make production harder.
Under a tight deadline, cutting pages early can save days of work later.
Swinging for the Fences With Indie Filmmaking
One of the themes we discuss in the episode is the idea that indie filmmakers often benefit from taking bigger creative risks. Safe ideas are easy to produce, but they rarely stand out.
Sometimes the most memorable projects come from unusual combinations of genres, strange storytelling approaches, or creative constraints.
Our goal with this zero budget short film is simple:
Make something weird enough that people remember it. Whether it's a train wreck or a masterpiece, we don't want audiences to be able to look away.
Whether that works…. We’ll keep you posted!
Follow the 28-Day Musical Challenge
This episode is just the beginning. Over the next several episodes of Indie Film Podcast, we’ll be documenting the entire process of creating this zero budget short film, including:
Casting and rehearsal challenges
Recording music and vocals
Production day chaos
Editing a musical under deadline pressure
Submitting the finished film to the festival
If you've ever wondered what it really looks like behind the scenes of indie filmmaking (mistakes, panic, and all) this series is for you. Follow along as we attempt to finish our musical short film before the deadline!
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