Beware of Little Expenses

Benjamin Franklin once said:

"Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship."

This could easily be one of our mottos. We are very careful with how we spend our money... which seems kinda counter-intuitive considering that we’re in showbiz (which is synonymous with the spending-money-like-water mentality, right?)

Actually, we’re usually over-careful with how we spend our money. But we also wanted our film Dear J to look like it cost a million bucks. So in order to keep costs down, we scrounged around for costumes and props, frequenting thrift shops, tag sales, our own homes, etc. For example: the brown curtains in Frolick’s office came from the home of our production designer.

And all those candles? We originally found them lying in a drawer in the church where we were filming. They were already half-used, so we asked if we could use them, promising to buy the church some new ones. Well, we burned those candles down on the very first day of shooting.

We had the church secretary order some new candles; a box for the church and a box for us (as we thought we might need to do some more shots with the candles... which we did). Well, when we got the bill, it was a little higher than we expected. (How much could candles cost?!)

Well, apparently these candles were of the top-notch variety! With a top-notch price tag... In fact, it turned out that of all the props we purchased, those candles were the most expensive prop we used.

We’re glad to say that they actually made it into the movie...

As opposed to the cutting-room floor!

Good ole Ben was right: little expenses do begin to pile up. Especially, on things that you never really intended to buy in the first place.

{{ photo :: The ballerina surrounded by those expensive candles. }}

*Note: Some of you faithful visiters might remember this post from our other blog.