Do you know the average film budget for a conventional studio feature? It’s $65 million, not even taking into account the usual $35 million more for advertising and promotion. There is no doubt that such numbers stand to dissuade many promising filmmakers from even getting started.

However, no matter how you judge a film—its viewability, box office returns, Oscar-winning status or personal interpretation—the fact is that the size of movie production budgets doesn’t always correlate…