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 £1million budget. Forget it.
That’s what actor Oliver Woolf, 26, and director Noah Stratton-Twine, 26, thought – until they did it.
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.
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.
‘We had this attitude of Manchester, that we shouldn’t really be here,’Noah tells Metro alongside Ollie, both still fizzing from their win.
‘It’s 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.
‘We felt like we were at the wrong place the whole time being at this festival,’ agreed Ollie.
‘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.’
Micro-budget films can win major awards
‘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.
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.
‘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.
What the critics said about Two Big Feet
Metro‘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.
‘What impressed the jury though wasn’t just its impressive cast and story, there was just something rather winning about its bohemian spirit and underdog status.
‘What makes all this more spectacular is how director Noah Stratton-Twine made such a great movie on a budget that’s small even for independent filmmaking.’
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.
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.
They would pool resources, gather industry friends also keen to attack a feature film, and make it happen themselves with just six people.
‘I’ve made 10 shorts and the next step up is a feature, but then you’re just met with these funding schemes and all that stuff that sort of feels really daunting,’ Noah says.
Importantly, they would do all this with an intentionally tiny budget, to prove to others they can do this too.
As word spread that they were working on a feature after the first block of filming, more friends of friends got involved.
Ollie says: ‘It was just friends making a film in a forest, and that’s what we wanted to emulate.’
Noah's tips for making your first budget feature film
- Just go out and shoot it.
- Collaborate with industry friends who are in the same boat, and call in favours.
- Writing a feature is not the Herculean feat you think it is. Just simplify it. Don’t make it high concept, but write a script that will work with what you have physically around you. Think about what you have – your parents’ house? A few filmmaking friends? Shooting in your hometown?
- Don’t be too precious or sentimental about your first feature being this huge ‘here I am’ statement as a filmmaker. Instead of fussing about bearing your soul into a project, make a practice feature and have fun with it. You never know, it might turn into something more.
- Improv is great for first features. Two Big Feet was entirely improvised. This way actors don’t have to learn a script, which means you can get people on board last minute.
- Watch as many films as possible.
- The most important thing is the story – but also having a long form film full stop is key. To the industry that is a product, where short films are not.
Key takeaway: Do it! ‘The minute I made something 70 minutes or longer, suddenly people wanted to talk to me,’ says Noah. ‘Suddenly I was taken seriously as a filmmaker.’
How was Two Big Feet made on such a tiny budget?
‘Our pre-production was about three or four weeks before we started shooting so we didn’t have any time to get protective over the material,’ says Noah.
Ollie adds: ‘With a forest, you’re just shooting in nature so the natural light beauty around makes it seem like it’s X amount of budget.’
They didn’t hire in any hugely fancy tech – and they didn’t even have power out in the woods. All they had was a Sony FX3 – a camera the size of your hand that can be bought for £3,000 – a few LED lights, and a reflector.
‘In London I was fortunate enough to get favors out of friends – one manages a pub, and we got three different housing locations out of it,’ Ollie explains.
So… why doesn’t everyone do this?
‘People think it’s impossible,’ says Noah, explaining: ‘I thought it was certainly impossible until I did it.’
To make a feature film on a tiny budget you have to have the know-how, creative flair, ever-useful friends, but you also must decondition yourself.
‘You have to be like, “We’re just going to shoot it tomorrow.” If we’d prepped this movie for nine months, we probably wouldn’t have made it because we’d have got too caught up in it,’ Noah says.
The industry is also stacked against young creatives in the UK trying to get their foot in the film industry door.
What next for Two Big Feet?
Noah wants to sell the film to a platform which is going to champion it, like MUBI – distributor of films including Frances Ha, The Substance and Drive. But money is not the goal here.
‘If we booked out a 45-seat cinema and charge £5 on the door and we sold out we probably almost make double our budget back on the film,’ Noah says, almost still in disbelief.
‘I’m not like, “This needs to be seen on the big screen,”‘ he says. ‘But hopefully it will inspire people to make projects like it. It will also give us what the industry equivalent of nothing is, so we can make more films.’
‘The system is set up against making low-budget, independent stuff,’ Noah says.
‘If you want to make a feature film, you look at what successful British directors have done, and it’s all funding schemes. It’s all National Lottery, Film4, BFI – it’s channelled through one thing.
‘That’s why British filmmakers often end up in the USA,’ explains Noah. ‘If you pitch something in New York and it doesn’t go through you go to Texas. If that doesn’t work, go to Los Angeles. In the UK it’s London or maybe Brighton, but there isn’t much.
‘I would have made this three years earlier if I had just ripped the band-aid off.’
A couple of Olle’s friends have gone on to direct their first feature film after seeing the success of Two Big Feet.
‘I’ve directed another feature film since with a friend of mine, who was also of that same jaded nature I had of, “Oh, I’m going to need £500,000 to direct my first feature film.” But we did Two Big Feet, and they realised it can be done.’
You can see Two Big Feet at the 2025 LOCO Film Festival on the 10th May at the Ritzy Picturehouse, Brixton. Tickets here.
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