Primer was made for $7,000 with months of rehearsal

A closer look

Making a mind-bending time travel masterpiece is shockingly affordable if you simply refuse to make any mistakes. For the legendary 2004 indie film Primer, engineer-turned-director Shane Carruth had a microbudget of just $7,000. Because 16mm film stock was exorbitantly expensive, the crew couldn't afford to shoot multiple takes. Instead, Carruth forced his non-actor friends to rehearse the aggressively complex, physics-heavy dialogue for months until it was pure muscle memory. They ended up with an unheard-of 2:1 shooting ratio, proving that Hollywood's biggest expense isn't CGI—it's paying for actors who haven't memorized their lines.