SOURCE: "Shadows and Shivers for Blood Simple," in American Cinematographer, Vol. 66, No. 7, July, 1985, pp. 70-72, 74.

In the review below, Sonnenfeld, the cinematographer for Blood Simple, provides a behind-the-scenes look at low-budget production.

There is almost no problem in the making of a feature film that cannot be solved by throwing money at it. More lights, more time, more crew, a bigger crane, a re-shoot, can all be bought with a big time budget.

One of the challenges of shooting Blood Simple, a Texas murder mystery shot in Austin, Texas, was to make a $1.5 million movie look like ten times that. The money was raised over a period of almost a year in the form of a limited partnership. The director, Joel Coen, had never directed before; his younger brother, Ethan, had never produced a film (and worked as a statistical typist at Macy's to pay their rent while...