{"id":5454,"date":"2025-04-18T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-18T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/?p=5454"},"modified":"2025-04-24T18:20:08","modified_gmt":"2025-04-24T18:20:08","slug":"my-micro-budget-film-i-made-with-friends-beat-1000000-movies-heres-how-we-did-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/18\/my-micro-budget-film-i-made-with-friends-beat-1000000-movies-heres-how-we-did-it\/","title":{"rendered":"My micro-budget film I made with friends beat \u00a31,000,000 movies \u2013 here\u2019s how we did it"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Two Big Feet just won the Manchester Film Festival over films with \u00a31,000,000 budgets (Picture: Noah\u00a0Stratton-Twine)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To succeed in making a feature film as a normal person without funding seems nigh on impossible, let alone to win any awards – especially when you’re up against films with a \u00a31million budget. Forget it.<\/p>\n

That’s what actor Oliver Woolf, 26, and director Noah Stratton-Twine, 26, thought – until they did it.<\/p>\n

Last month, their debut full-length film Two Big Feet, which was made on a tiny micro-budget, won Manchester Film Festival’s jury prize for best feature beating movies on seven-figure budgets.<\/p>\n

While other contestants were fussing away with their bottomless funding, Noah and Ollie were making a film to beat them all – and they didn’t even have the budget for headphones. <\/p>\n

‘We had this attitude of Manchester, that we shouldn’t really be here,’Noah tells Metro<\/strong> alongside Ollie, both still fizzing from their win. <\/p>\n

‘It\u2019s put us on a map, which is more than we could have ever hoped for, Noah explained, calling it a victory for micro-budget filmmaking too. <\/p>\n

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Oliver Woolf (left) and Noah Stratton-Twine (right) decided to take filmmaking into their own hands rather than waiting for a call (Picture: Gloucester Independent Film Festival)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Ollie convinced his clown school peer Luke Rollason, star of Disney series Extraordinary, to get on board with Two Big Feet (Picture: Noah\u00a0Stratton-Twine)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

‘We felt like we were at the wrong place the whole time being at this festival,’ agreed Ollie. <\/p>\n

‘Having random people watching our screening was the coolest thing I’ve ever experienced,’ he adds, summing it right up with: ‘It was the funnest night of my whole entire life.’<\/p>\n

Micro-budget films can<\/em> win major awards <\/h2>\n

‘We’ve almost spent more than the budget on just festival submissions now,’ says Noah, director of the film – who also avoided costs by writing, editing, colouring, scoring, and doing all post-production himself. <\/p>\n

While Noah can’t disclose the exact spend while they are trying to sell the film to a production company, I am assured most of it was spent on parking tickets and buying the small team sandwiches. <\/p>\n

‘We didn’t even have the money for headphones,’ Noah says, explaining how they shot the film in a forest and around London in two blocks in September 2023 and January 2024. <\/p>\n

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The cast and crew wanted to emulate the feeling of teenagers going to a forest with their first camcorder (Picture: Manchester Film Festival)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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\n\t\t\t\tWhat the critics said about Two Big Feet \t\t\t<\/h2>\n
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Metro<\/strong>‘s deputy TV editor Tom Percival, who was on the Jury at Manchester Film Festival, says of the film: ‘With its offbeat charm and lovable characters Two Big Feet was both a fun comedy and a powerful reminder about the importance of maintaining friendship as you get older. <\/p>\n

‘What impressed the jury though wasn\u2019t just its impressive cast and story, there was just something rather winning about its bohemian spirit and underdog status. <\/p>\n

‘What makes all this more spectacular is how director Noah Stratton-Twine made such a great movie on a budget that\u2019s small even for independent filmmaking.’ <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

The improvised film, all about the value of friendship as we age, was born from a script Noah had written years before. He didn’t necessarily think the world needed to see it – but he thought it was a good story that could work with minimal resources.<\/p>\n

Having bonded at the London Film Festival over a shared gloom of their feature film funding prospects – with everyone forever in the dreaded ‘development’ stage – Ollie and Noah devised a plan. <\/p>\n

They would pool resources, gather industry friends also keen to attack a feature film, and make it happen themselves with just six people. <\/p>\n

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