The production journeys of making both Horror Movie: A Low Budget Nightmare and the feature film it documents Red Christmas were not dissimilar in many ways. The nature of getting an ‘open ended' story like this funded, meant that almost three-quarters of the documentary was shot before any funding was ever received. This created some logistical challenges for documentary filmmaker Gary Doust who not only directed and produced, but also needed opperate the camera and sound to keep the production rolling.

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Gary had known the film’s key subject Craig Anderson for some years before embarking on the documentary. They first met at a local film festival where both their short films were screening, but it wasn’t until a few years later they became good friends during a TV production Gary was directing called Next Stop Hollywood, 6 part observational series which featured Craig as one of the actors attempting to 'make it' in LA.

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During many nights catching up over burgers ,Craig would brainstorm his unconventional plans to make his first feature Red Christmas. As ‘hilarious' and ‘scary' as some of those plans where, documentary filmmaker Gary Doust almost passed on capturing the making of Red Christmas, because he'd already been down that road with his first feature documentary Making Venus, a five year journey that captured disastrous attempt to make another low budget film The Venus Factory that left the producers over a million dollars in debt.

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Fifteen years on a lot had changed in the new fast-paced, digital world of film making where platforms like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu have quickly taken over the world.

Through Craig’s journey making his film,  Horror Movie: A Low Budget Nightmare became an opportunity to pick up where Making Venus left off to capture the many new challenges independent filmmakers now face to make and sell their films in a very competitive market.