With an all volunteer cast and crew, most any CG based movie could be made for "free". Sort of how I can make an application for myself without any money but would charge someone else $20,000 for it. No funny accounting needed.
Even if it cost 30k, he still owned them pretty hard, but its the volunteer thing that they should actually be afraid of. The technology is at hand for people to start making decent films for the fun of it. Open source movies are coming. They'll be short and laughable at first, but it will only take one breakaway to change people's minds.
This technology has existed for ages. Kevin Smith made Clerks for less than ten grand, and that was back in the 90s. Cameras and special effects may be getting cheaper, but talent remains expensive, since there seems to be a pretty limited number of people in the world who are actually good at writing, directing and acting in movies. Making a good movie is really hard.
Actually, Clerks cost $27,575 to make. With most of the budget going to licencing music for the soundtrack.