How They Made ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ On A Budget

I guess you could say that the budget could not be "everything everywhere all at once."
Everything Everywhere All At Once

Welcome to The Queue — your daily distraction of curated video content sourced from across the web. Today, we’re watching a video essay that looks at how the Daniels shot Everything Everywhere All At Once on a budget.

We’ve talked about how Everything Everywhere All At Once speaks to the experience of being chronically online. And we’ve talked to cinematographer Larkin Seiple about why the latest film from directing duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert is jam-packed with movie references.

And now we’re going to talk about how the 2022 universe-hopping sci-fi epic crossed a global box office mark of $100 million on a $25 million production budget.  Everything Everywhere All At Once feels enormous, spanning genres, time periods, genres, and dimensions with kinetic ease that never betrays the fact that the film cost less than the craft services budget of a Marvel film.

Everything Everywhere All At Once is a masterclass on how to stretch every dollar to wow an audience without bloating a budget. As the following video essay explores in more detail, the Daniels employed various “think smarter, not harder” techniques that saved the production money without sacrificing spectacle. The directors wisely did their best to combine locations and even production offices to curb unnecessary travel. They also used their multiverse premise to reuse sets (in ways you might be able to spot and others you won’t). Seiple, the aforementioned DoP, also made clever use of specific lenses and aspect ratios to convey the visual languages of different universes. It is also mind-boggling to think about how this film’s VFX team was just seven self-taught people.

It’s an indie spirit you don’t often see get this kind of commercial recognition. So it’s a good reminder: don’t let your dreams be dreams, folks.

Watch “Everything Everywhere All at Once — How to Shoot a Sci-Fi Kung Fu Epic (on a Budget)”:

Who made this?

This video essay on how the Daniels shot Everything Everywhere All At Once on a budget is created by StudioBinder. This production management software creator also happens to produce wildly informative video essays. They tend to focus on the mechanics of filmmaking itself, from staging to pitches and directorial techniques. You can check out their YouTube account here.

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    Everything Everywhere All at OnceFilmmakingThe Queue
    Meg Shields: Meg has been writing professionally about all things film-related since 2016. She is a Senior Contributor at Film School Rejects as well as a Curator for One Perfect Shot. She has attended international film festivals such as TIFF, Hot Docs, and the Nitrate Picture Show as a member of the press. In her day job as an archivist and records manager, she regularly works with physical media and is committed to ensuring ongoing physical media accessibility in the digital age. You can find more of Meg's work at Cinema Scope, Dead Central, and Nonfics. She has also appeared on a number of film-related podcasts, including All the President's Minutes, Zodiac: Chronicle, Cannes I Kick It?, and Junk Filter. Her work has been shared on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, Business Insider, and CherryPicks. Meg has a B.A. from the University of King's College and a Master of Information degree from the University of Toronto.
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