Bret Woodard, Low Budge / No Budge Film Fest
- Apr 2
- 4 min read
Interview with Katie Bonadies, April 2026
Bret Woodard is the film, photo, and multi-media creator behind Low Budge / No Budge Film Fest happening on April 16, 2026, at Mayo Street Arts, a community arts space that seats 75 in the East Bayside neighborhood of Portland, ME. Woodard was previously featured in the March 2023 Running With Scissors newsletter.
Woodard makes–in his own words–‘dumb videos’ where he plays every part. He imagined the film festival as a way to see what else is out there. “It’s one of my favorite passion projects, and I was curious to see what other cool and weird and interesting stuff people are making with no money.” He did all the work himself and started by making a website and contacting potential venues before putting out the call last spring. A scene from his rendition of Good Will Hunting will be shown at the festival. It will not be eligible for any awards.
In his remake of Good Will Hunting, he acts as straight and as hard as he can. “I’m fighting with a wig on a stick, but to the character it is another human being. There is no winking at the camera.” Woodard got started by making goofy movies with his brothers and a camcorder. He still makes original films too, but only rarely due to time constraints. Woodard loves the short film format because they are very ‘digestible’. “If it’s bad, you don’t have to suffer too long. If it’s great, you want to learn more about that filmmaker.” Short films can be made by anyone, without a large team or massive budget.
Woodard received 226 submissions (50 hours of film) through the film festival site “Film Freeway” and used social media to find and invite filmmakers to submit. Featured films represent a global footprint from France to the UK, Canada, Poland, Belarus, Italy, and throughout the U.S. “The fact that happened was pretty incredible. Fred Armisen stars in one of them, which is also randomly cool.” Overall Woodard is impressed with the submissions.
Sixteen films will be screened during the two-hour festival. Each of the short films that made the program range between 1.5 - 18 minutes. Narrowing down the program was difficult. A short film is under forty minutes–anything longer than that was cut off the top. Documentaries were a hard category to decline because they were well done but were forty-minutes long and esoteric in a way that would be a strange punctuation on the night of the event. Next year Woodard would amend the submission criteria to under 25 minutes. He would also expand the festival to include a filmmaker talk and panel discussion about funding and other resources available to short film makers.
Woodard screened for content, honoring the venue’s only restriction of no representations of sexual violence. He had to cut a couple of films that dealt with the subject matter in a respectful but heavy way. He cut films that were overly experimental or really dark. “If it was a comedy and I’m not laughing within the first 90-seconds, that’s probably not it.” He kept in mind what the audience's experience was going to be like and cut anything that didn’t match the vibe. Woodard laments, “There were so many different programs I could have made.”
"There were so many different programs I could have made." - Bret Woodard
A lot of submissions had technical pacing issues that would have been more competitive with additional editing. A fair number of submissions were domestic, and a clear film-school aesthetic began to emerge, emulating filmmakers like Quinton Tarantino, Greta Gerwig, and Wes Anderson. “Six of the films opened up with an animal getting hit by a car and then panning to a stuffed animal. That is drama right away, and it was interesting to see tropes like that pop up.” Opening with exposition through the phone was another trope. The foreign submissions interested Woodard because he doesn’t have the references to recognize other culturally specific tropes.
The final program will screen a range of genres including comedy, horror, narrative drama, a handful of animated short films, and two music videos. A panel of judges will review the short films that made the program and vote on the awards criteria before the festival. The panel includes four professionals working in film: a producer, someone who works in the art department, a cinematographer, and a writer/ director. The fifth judge is Woodard’s cousin who “...is very funny, and I trust his opinion on stuff.” There are seven different criteria in the judging process that include categories like cinematography, performance, audio/ music, the technical stuff, originality of the story, creativity, and emotional impact of the film. The two winning films will receive a small cash prize and a handmade trophy by local ceramicist and RWS Studio Technician, Devin McDonald.
Woodard is astounded by the illusion of authority. “People have reached out after the yeses and no's went out to everyone, asking for detailed advice about what to do better. I don’t-to-barely know what I’m doing–ever–and more on the ‘don’t’ side.” The films may have been made ‘scrappily’ as Woodard puts it, but they are high quality. The Low Budge / No Budge Film Fest will, no doubt, be a fun night celebrating films that people may not have the opportunity to see otherwise. “Who knows, maybe Fred Armisen will show up. I wonder if his director read which Portland it was.”
Tickets are currently on sale and can be bought through the lowbudgenobudge.org website, the Mayo Street Arts website, and Creative Portland’s events and orgs website. The Low Budge / No Budge Film Fest will be screened on April 16, 2026, from 7 - 9:30 PM at Mayo Street Arts, 10 Mayo Street, Portland, ME.
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