The Numbers Game

What a difference a year can make. In 1999, 20-year-old Amiel Courtin-Wilson of Melbourne, Australia, shot his first feature-length doc, Chasing Buddha, on a shoestring budget. The film, about his aunt Robina, a Buddhist nun, won rave reviews on the festival circuit as well as several awards, including the Dendy Award for best documentary at the Sydney Film Festival. So, when Courtin-Wilson embarked on his next doc project, Islands, in 2000, it was no surprise that things took a turn for the better financially. For starters, Courtin-Wilson didn't need to borrow equipment and tape stock like he did for Chasing Buddha, which had a total budget of AUS$82,000 (US$42,000), including post-production. 'The shooting budget for Buddha was literally non-existent,' says Courtin-Wilson. '[For Islands], we're looking at [a total budget of] AUS$125,000 (US$65,000). The development money we got for it was about the same as the shooting budget for the whole of Chasing Buddha. It was strange to get a wage; we ended up spending all of it on the film because we weren't used to getting paid.'