Serve The Story

📅 Today’s Topics:

🤷🏻‍♂️We F*cked Up… Sorry. (Anora’s marketing budget wasn’t so “indie” after all…)
📸 Grandma Cropped Our Heads (And why that’s actually genius in filmmaking.)
💡 No Light, No Image (Your camera is worthless without this one thing.)
📍 Where Are We Going? (Why location matters more than you think.)

🤷🏻‍♂️ We F*cked Up… Sorry.

Last week, we said Anora was this little indie film a $6 million project that beat Hollywood at its own game.

Turns out, that was only half the story.

They spent 3X their film budget on marketing. Yep. $18 million just to get eyeballs on it.

So, was this really the scrappy underdog story we all thought? Or was it just another Hollywood playbook move disguised as an indie success?

Either way, it worked. They poured gasoline on the fire and turned a small-budget film into an Oscars juggernaut. The lesson? It doesn’t matter how good your film is if no one sees it.

📸 Grandma Cropped Our Heads (And That’s a Good Thing?)

You know those family photos you’d get back from CVS where everyone’s heads are chopped off? The ones grandma proudly framed?

Turns out, she was onto something.

In filmmaking, headroom (or lack of it) can be a powerful tool. When done right, cropping tight forces the viewer’s attention exactly where you want it.

👀 Need to show intensity? Go extreme close-up. (ECU)
💀 Want tension? Cut off just enough to make it uncomfortable.

Not everything has to be perfectly framed. Sometimes, breaking the rules is what makes a shot work.

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💡 No Light, No Image. Period.

You can have the best camera in the world, but without good lighting, your video is dead on arrival.

And no—this isn’t just for cinematic projects. Even your executive talking head video needs proper lighting.

Here’s the quick breakdown:
💡 Too much light? Everything looks flat.
🌑 Not enough? You lose depth and texture.
🎭 Controlled light? Now you’re making something that feels real.

📌 Example: Jukebooth shot an interview in a tiny church room—nothing fancy, just walls and a table. But by controlling the light, they turned a dull space into something that looked like it had depth and life.

📍 Where Are We Going? (And Why It Matters.)

Your location is almost bigger than your lighting.

You can have perfect exposure, great composition, and a killer subject—but if your setting is wrong, the whole thing falls apart.

💼 Investor message? Keep it quiet, clean, and distraction-free—nobody wants to hear about a $50M acquisition with wild paintings in the background.
🌎 Travel vlog? Don’t film from your hotel room desk—get outside, find the most epic view, and show people why they should care.

The location needs to serve the story—not compete with it.

📍 Shareable

cool 1970’

That’s it for this week.

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Thanks for showing up,
Reel Basic Team