How did George Lucas make "American Graffiti" with such a cheap budget?

The movie only had a budget of about $777,000, which equates to about $4 million adjusted for inflation. My question is, with all those countless number of cars and other 50s props, with so much 50s music, and basically renting a whole city to film the movie lol, how did he have such a low budget?

I feel like if a movie like American Graffiti were replicated now, it would easily be in the $10-30 million dollar range. How did he make the project so cheap?

Submitted November 24, 2018 at 10:29AM by OnoSideboard https://ift.tt/2BsUC2q