The Dog Pile

This Is One SHIVER You Don't Want Running Down Your Spine

2006-09-25T18:34:00.000-07:00

Tis the season for sequels. The Grudge 2, Crank (Come on, it's really just The Transporter 3), utility companies crying for rate increases and most of the crap on the fall schedule for network television.

And Fear Of Clowns 2. Yup, Shivers is clawing his way back to a DVD player near you. For those of you who have no idea what the first film was like, go rent or buy it. Scary clown, severed head, naked blonde and big axes. Good for an afternoon of thrills. But the sequel offers more violence, more action, and, well, just more.

Kevin Kangas, the director/writer of both of these films, is currently wrapping up the editing and polishing on Fear Of Clowns 2. As much as I'd like to say that we here at The Dog Pile ran into him at the local Supercenter as he was buying large amounts of cold medicine and sulfur matches in a bid to finance his next project, it just wouldn't be true. He's at home working around the clock (the man doesn't even have the time to watch an episode of Family Guy). So, we pestered him through emails until he threatened lawsuits to get this interview. Thankfully, he has dropped the lawsuits, but he did mumble something about still having that huge axe Shivers used in the first film.

Dog Pile: What prompted you to revisit the Fear Of Clowns concept? I mean, I know Lion's Gate asked, but beyond the simple answer, what do you want to achieve in this film that you didn't in the first one?

Kevin Kangas: Well, when they indicated they were interested in a sequel, it was the furthest thing from my mind. So at first I balked -- I didn't really want to jump back in, especially since the entire experience wasn't exactly a good one. But then an idea hit me, and I got excited. I thought it was something I could get behind, and, at the same time, I could answer some of the unanswered questions from the first movie -- things that got cut out of the final version of the movie. I started writing the script, and things fell together. I was pretty happy with the final script -- after the set up it's pretty fast paced.

D. P.: You seem to have Shivers and the leading lady from the first film back. But Rick Ganz is absent. Why is that? Are you saving him back for that sequel to Hunting Humans? Since he doesn't seem to be on screen, is he on the crew? What did you do with his body, man?!? We know what you did last summer!!!!!!

K.K.:Well, I don't want to go into the specifics of why Rick's not in the film. I haven't talked to him in about eight months. Eventually I'd love to get him back for a Hunting Humans sequel, but for now I'm done on the sequels. From a story vantage though, this is actually Detective Peters' story now -- it's not even Lynn's anymore. So Tuck(Rick's character) didn't really fit into the picture anyway.

D.P. : From what I've been able to figure out from the message board postings and from your casting, this film sounds like it will be less suggested horror and more action horror. Is this the direction the film is going, or do you have something sneaky in mind using a group of beefy guys going after Shivers? Brokeback Carnival, maybe?

K.K.: Damn -- you leaked the subtitle of FOC2: Brokeback Carnival--well, I guess it's out there now. But seriously, yes, this is a faster horror film -- more killing. There's burning cars, gunfights, action scenes, stunts and, oh yeah, CLOWNS.

D.P.: What can you tell me about the story without ruining things for anyone who stumbles across the interview on my blog site?

K.K.: It's two years later, and Shivers has escaped from the asylum with two other psychopaths -- and he's once again on the hunt for Lynn Blodgett. Frank Lama returns as Detective Peters, the sarcastic cop with an attitude. He's diagnosed with a rare disease that's going to kill him within a year (not a spoiler -- it's the first scene of the movie), and he decides that rather than try to catch Shivers and put him away again, he's going to kill him. Only problem: Shivers is not that easy to kill.

D.P.: You torched a car in this film. Is this the one you mentioned on your message board (http://kangaskahnfilms.com/phpBB/) you were saving back for just such an event? What history does this vehicle have? Why sacrifice the poor thing? And what was up with the freaky clip of the torching on YouTube? Anyone get hurt?

K.K.: Yes, it's the car I was saving for this event. It was my old car whose engine died. It still looked great, so I never got rid of it. I knew I'd either burn it or blow it up or crash it, and it would look like I'd ruined a perfectly good car. So it sat in my driveway for three years -- neighbors offered to buy it from me because it looked so nice. But I knew one day it would come in handy. The Youtube clip ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caP9X-1_6HA) shows Johnny, the pyrotechnics guy, lighting the car. It was supposed to be a small, controlled fire, but you can see from the clip that all that went out the window. The car blew up, and the fire burned out of control. Johnny got some pretty bad burns and then, later got arrested. All in all, another perfect day of low-budget filmmaking.

D.P.: How did the production go this time? I mean, no hurricanes or tropical storms got in your way. And this is your third film. Did it go smoother? Do you feel more confident as director? Any new challenges (don't ya just hate those damn Yuppie buzz words?) this time around? Anything happen that honestly made you want to throw your hands up and walk away?

K.K.: It didn't go any smoother. We were denied permission to shoot in a park that originally gave us permission, and it was too late to change the schedule. So I found another hole in the fence, like I did in the first movie, and we snuck in. We had to post crew to watch for the security trucks -- every time one came by, we'd all hit the ground. And this was the first day of the shoot -- and I'm using an actor who appears regularly on One Tree Hill and was on Dawson's Creek. I was completely embarrassed. And also that day Mark had problems with the contacts -- he couldn't get one of them in. So all day long I have to shoot a movie about a black-eyed clown when he only has one black eye. We're shooting all sorts of weird angles so we don't show that eye. Another day we had police shut us down because we had two fake police cars with real police light racks driving around, lights blazing. Without permission or permits, I found out -- I thought our producer had all that stuff. Then the police tell us there's a local ordinance that says no one over the age of 12 can wear a mask or costume within the city limits. And I'm shooting a movie there with three clowns. The good news is that we had a behind-the-scenes guy shooting during this movie, and he got some great footage of all that stuff (including the cop shutting us down), so even if you don't like the movie you're gonna LOVE the Making Of. As far as directing, I get more confident after each movie. It used to be that if things went wrong I wondered whether I'd be able to make the scene work -- now I'm not so worried. I can always make it work. The question now is: How well can I make it work? But there were plenty of problems, believe me.

D.P.: You openly said you weren't completely happy with the last FOC film. Did this one give you a better feeling? Any one thing in this film that made you think, "This is why I got into filmmaking."?

K.K.: Yes -- this is going to be a much better movie than the first. I had more time to devote exclusively to the script, and I designed it from the get-go to be faster, much more action and killing. I set out to write the kind of script that I would have loved when I was twenty, and I think I got close. How close the script comes to the movie is still to be seen...

D.P.: Not to get into the budget, but did you bring this film in on the money? Have you discovered ways to cut corners without cutting yourself or the film short? Any one scene or event in the film that you can point at and say, "That is the most expensive thing in the film."

K.K.: This film went over budget by about twenty percent. I didn't try to cut too many corners on this one; I really wanted to make sure this didn't suffer from sequel-itis. I wanted better than the first movie -- and for the most part, it is. It still has a few problems -- indy shooting is all about compromise, but I hate compromise. As for the most expensive thing -- I spent a lot on FX this time around. There's thirteen deaths in this movie that involve FX as opposed to the four or so from the first movie. And then props and costuming cost a fortune. One of the new clowns is 6'8" and that costume had to be specially designed. They just don't make them that big. Then we had to get duplicates made of the other costumes since they're vintage, and you can't find them anymore.

D.P.: Are you done with Fear Of Clowns for the time being, or is Shivers going to be your trademark character, like Craven's Freddy or Paul Naschy's Waldemar Daninsky (a German/Polish name for a latino character in a series of Spanish films -- now THAT takes balls)? What is next for you as far as films go?

K.K.: I am DONE with Shivers--DONE with clowns. My crew tried to get me to commit to a third movie, but I've had enough. Even thinking about doing a third one sends images of the word "SELLOUT" through my mind. FOC2 is a self-contained movie. If I never revisited it, the story stands, and as it is, I feel like I've completely told the story. That said, a writer buddy of mine did advance a story idea that interested me, but I wouldn't do it until I had another movie or two under my belt. That said, I'm thinking about doing a Fear Of Clowns comic book. As for my next movie, I'm mulling over a few things right now. I have to finish the FOC2 stuff before moving on to anything else.

D.P.: Totally off the wall, but have you EVER considered a gothic story reworked for a modern setting? I think something like that could work. Like Blood-Spattered Bride with Renee Zellweger as the young bride and Sharon Stone as Carmilla. But on a far smaller budget. Just throwing the idea out there.

K.K.: No. Gothic to me screams of women in castles. But as far as remakes go I had a chance to see Brigadoon again for the first time in years, and I gotta tell you: I'd love to do a horror remake and call it Brigadoom. And yeah, I'd probably still keep it a musical, but it would have music by Rob Zombie and Nine Inch Nails. It would rock. And I'm not even joking.

D.P.: Not to have you trash other filmmakers, but what is the WORST film you've seen in the last year or so. I mean, one that makes you want to physically hurt people.

K.K.: X-men 3. This movie sucks so hard, especially coming after a good sequel in X-men 2. I don't think I've been this offended by a movie since I saw Tomb Raider.

D.P.: Thanks for the interview!

K.K.: Anyone in the New Jersey/New York area is welcome to come meet me and see the first footage to FOC2 at Fango's Weekend of Horrors at the end of September. The details are below: http://www.fangoria.com/news_article.php?id=2753

(As always, The Dog Pile would like to thank Kevin Kangas for being a good sport. And we'd love to be on the list for a screener for Fear Of Clowns 2, but suggesting such a thing would be rude. Hint, hint. Show your support by visiting Kevin at his web site: http://kangaskahnfilms.com.)

Back Into The Bloodbath

2006-08-08T19:12:00.000-07:00

Those folks at Mill Creek Entertainment are at it again. Well, they will be in a week or so. More new releases. More horror. More Science Fiction. More weirdness. More cheese.

I know, I know. I'm starting to sound like the self-appointed cheerleader for this company. Okay, I guess I am. But I gotta tell you, it isn't often that I find anything in the video stores that makes me feel like it's Christmas morning when I get my purchase home. These 50 and 20 and 10 movie sets leave me half-crazed with which title I want to sit down and watch first. But you should have no pity for a fan with a deep love of cheap movies in vast quantities. No. You should pity my poor girlfriend. She is often kind enough to grin and bear through these films. (I think Terror Of Tiny Town damn near killed her, though I found the second half to be a tolerable cheapy Western tale.)

So, now we have another 50 movie set called "Nightmare Worlds". There are a good number of titles fresh to Mill Creek's line up. Alien Contamination. Atomic Rulers Of The World. Embryo. Radio Ranch (The Phantom Empire). Nightmare Never Ends (seen in a drastically cut version in Night Train To Terror). Terror At The Red Wolf Inn. UFO: Target Earth. Werewolf Woman. Eternal Evil. Ring Of Terror. That's just a few. With forty more movies, you'll be burning up almost 67 hours. So take a week off work. The boss will understand.

And if you prefer your horror a touch more modern and often more bloody, then definitely check out the new releases from Mill Creek's Pendulum Pictures. 3 titles: "Everlasting Evils", "Demented Deviants", and "Brutal Bloodsuckers".

Each collection has six films on two disks. If you are a die-hard fan of Brain Damage Films, a direct-to-video film company, then you may have some of these titles, so check the title listings. For those of you who have never heard of Brain Damage Films, prepare for movies that push the limits of gore, good taste and, on occasion, logic. Still, if you like your violence without sugarcoating and your savagery shown in full color, these releases from Pendulum Pictures will keep you busy for a weekend of gruesome entertainment.

(As always, we like to thank Mill Creek Entertainment for the kind use of their graphics. Check out their site at www.millcreekent.com)

Mostly Indie Films, Cheap and Plentiful

2006-06-19T18:21:00.000-07:00

I can understand how someone could log onto this blog and wonder why I am talking up companies selling collections of films on DVD. This blog is, by its own definition, about indie films and the people who make them.

Films don't stand on their own. Long gone are the days of Herschell Gordon Lewis and filmmakers promoting their own films at local drive-ins. These days, it doesn't matter if you have the greatest thing since the discovery of Lycra -- no distributor, no one is gonna see your films. Part of the whole is the distributor. The people at Mill Creek Entertainment are dredging up mostly indie films that, in some cases, time has forgotten. Of course, opinions may lean in the direction that some of these films should be forgotten, but the point is they are compiling collections for those who enjoy the old stuff and/or for those who want to do their homework before tackling the new stuff.

Four new releases should be hitting your entertainment stores around June 27:

"Tales Of Terror"

This is a 50 film collection that covers a lot of ground as far as film history. Throughout the 12 discs, you will find classics with Bela Lugosi ("The Bat," "Bowery At Midnight," and "The Ape Man") as well as oddities from the 70s ("Curse Of The Headless Horseman," "The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave," and "Werewolf Of Washington"). They took the time to track down some of the Skid Row horror films aimed at black audiences in the 30s and 40s ("The Devil's Daughter" and "Midnight Shadow"). You can have your own Todd Slaughter film festival with four of his films. If you tire of that, check out the various Italian horror films ("Terror Creatures From The Grave," "The She-Beast," and "The Long Hair Of Death"). This collection lists at $29.98, but you should be able to find it for considerably less, around $19.99 or so. At almost 62 hours of material, you'll stay busy.

"Strange Tales"

A 20 movie set that leans towards the science fiction film. Some of the more notable selections are: "Idaho Transfer" -- directed by Peter Fonda, a tale of time travel and ecological disaster; "The Doomsday Machine" -- an early 70s oddity with Casey Kasem (Shaggy from the original "Scooby Doo, Where Are You?" series on Saturday mornings from the same era); "Warriors Of The Wasteland" -- one of the dozens of cheap Italian sci-fi action films we were assaulted (and insulted) with in the 80s. The set lists at $14.98, but don't be surprised to see it for 10 or 11 bucks. Expect almost 29 hours to cheap thrills.

"Cult Classics"

Another 20 movie set, this time featuring some lovely grindhouse nightmares that dwell in mostly realistic subject matter even if the presentation is absurd. Drug-crazed people run the streets, corrupting all they touch in such heartwarming fare as "Cocaine Fiends," "Reefer Madness," and "The Marijuana Menace." Learn how to avoid moral decay by absorbing the lessons presented in "Delinquent Daughters," "Slaves In Bondage," "Escort Girl," and "The Wild And The Wicked," sometimes known as "The Flesh Merchant". Then you have films that defy rationale, such as "Child Bride," "Terror In Tiny Town," and "Chained For Life," which starred real Siamese twins. Lists for $14.98, but you are likely to do better price-wise. Almost 24 hours of some of the most insane films collected. Show it at your next frat party.

"Vampires And More"

A 20 film set that brings together the various vampire films from most of the other collections Mill Creek has out. A great way to sample the range of films the company has to offer as well as being a easy way for those who like their wine red and their meat rare to have a collection of bloodsuckers and flesheaters to entertain them until the dawn. "Devil Bat," "Atomic Age Vampire," "Last Man On Earth," "Nosferatu," "Revolt Of The Zombies," and "Voodoo Black Exorcist" (a personal favorite) are just a taste of the titles in the collection. Listing at $14.98, but -- well, you know the drill by now. Expect nearly 28 hours of bloodletting, bloodsucking and gut-munching fun.

Do your history lessons, folks. Check out the origins of your current favorite horror and exploitation genres. You might just find a few hidden gems.

We would like to thank Mill Creek Entertainment for the permission to use their cover art. To visit Mill Creek Entertainment's website for more information, go to http://www.millcreekent.com/

Bargain Bin Battle

2006-04-25T19:10:00.000-07:00

People love a bargain. Everyone knows this. Wal-Mart has made billions utilizing this information about the American consumer. Maximize the goods while minimizing the price, and even if you are pushing stale bread, a good number of people will do some quick math and fill their carts with bread on the verge of being tossed.

Entertainment is rarely the place you find bargains. Video games and game consoles are more complex and expensive. Movie ticket prices keep crawling upwards even in the face of more and more commercials running before the feature. Forget about the cost of going to see a major league ball game of any type; you'll be spending your kid's college fund if you take the family. Look at your cable bills over the last year, and you'll find that unless you drop services, you are paying more. And let's not forget that the price of new DVD releases have been slipping upwards a dollar or so every now and then.

So, do we hang our heads and weep? Is there no hope for a touch of sanity when it comes to entertainment? Can't someone do something to ease the burden?

Oh my, yes, there are voices of sanity out there, so take a moment to breathe deep, blink your eyes clear and look at the potential for cheap thrills in your local video stores. Welcome to the world of bargain-priced DVD sales.

There are many companies out there with an idea to get movies in your hands at prices starting as low as $1.99. On DVD. Think of the possibilities. Think of these companies. BCI Eclipse. Mill Creek Entertainment. Madacy. St. Clair Entertainment. East West DVD Entertainment. Some of these companies package multiple films per disk and/or multiple disks per package. The collections can be as large as 50 films per set for roughly 20 dollars.

"These films must be crap," you may be thinking. "No one can afford to release good movies for prices like that."

You won't be finding Julia Roberts and Mel Gibson starring in the films released at these prices. You can't expect them to make mega-millions by letting their films sell at a couple of bucks per DVD. But we are talking about entertainment. You want something to pop into your player and have some fun for an hour and a half. You will find a stunning array of titles, ranging from horror to crime to comedy to action. You'll see classics and cult nightmares. You can go from Lou Gossett Jr. to Yvonne Michaels. You'll see the spectrum of black and white to stunning color. You'll also see films that will leave you bewildered by their mere existence if you dig deep enough into this niche market.

"We determine themes or genres with broad appeal and attempt to gather the most appealing mix within the available content universe. We utilize a variety of resources for content masters, but focus on suppliers that are renowned in the industry for quality and diversity," says Ian Warfield, president of Mill Creek Entertainment. His company releases a large variety of content, from double feature disks all the way up to 50 movie megapacks. The collections are built around themes. A couple of examples are "Chilling Classics", which showcases enough horror and suspense films to keep you awake for weeks, and "Drive-In Classics", which puts together 50 films that will remind you of family outings to the local drive-in and will give those who never had a chance to go to a drive-in a glimpse of what their parents might have seen in their teenage years.

BCI Eclipse has been releasing collections of various themes for a number of years. The most visually arresting are the four movie sets which usually use a theme for the films, such as "Flesh Feast", which contained films about cannibalism, and "Horror Rises From the Grave", running with the theme of ghouls and zombies. The bulk of their releases lean more specifically toward the exploitation areas of horror, science fiction, action and urban thrillers.

Still, four films, even if they aren't blockbusters, at six dollars? How do they make money? Simple. They make use of public domain films (films that have fallen out of their ownership rights over the years or have had their ownership rights relinquished for various reasons) and special arrangements with various distribution companies.

"We used to release a good deal of public domain or unregistered films. We have begun to move away from this line of product and are now focusing solely on licensed/exclusive content...Our new multi-film sets that are made up of all licensed content come from sources that are willing to license content at a very competitive rate." That is the word from Jeff Hayne, Director of Acquisitions at BCI Eclipse. His company has long made use of direct-to-video films and recently have been re-releasing films from companies like Sub Rosa, known for their catalog of horror and erotic horror films made exclusively for video distribution, as well as Brain Damage Films, which tends to release extreme horror films. "We do have license agreements in place with both of these companies -- both of these companies provide films that are good examples of multi-film collection material."

Recently, Mill Creek joined with Maxim Media Group, a sister company of Brain Damage Films, to form Pendulum Pictures. This company will be releasing six-film sets under themed titles like "Savage Sickos", "Hostile Hauntings" and "Fatal Femmes". The bulk of these films tend to older and hard-to-find direct-to-video films. They will carry a very low price of $9.98 per collection.

The companies offer entertainment in pretty much whatever size you are willing to commit yourself to. They do so at prices that make you feel like there has got to be something wrong with what you are buying. Who cares if you get ten, twenty or fifty movies for less than you'd pay for a couple of mega-sized meals at some happy fast food joint? Well, people may want a bargain, but it isn't much of a bargain if you're getting something useless, no matter how low the price.

The bottom line is: Are they worth your time?

BCI Eclipse, under their Brentwood imprint, has a deep catalog of various collections. The packaging is often inventive to allow them to secure up to ten disks in a specially-designed DVD box. Every disk has at least one movie on each side. The DVDs sport at least a "Play" and "Scene" selection on the main menu, but some have trailers. Special features and audio commentaries are not to be found on any that have been previewed. No close captioning, so unless you are a dedicated lip reader, hearing impaired people won't get much from these collections. The films themselves usually look very good, though they are limited by the source material BCI is presented with. In some of the older films, the quality can be on the level of a VHS tape from a rental store, but it is definitely watchable. The product is occasionally edited, but not by BCI. On average, you are seeing the film uncut on all of their product.

Mill Creek Entertainment utilizes a variety of packaging, depending on what you are buying. The smaller collections are packaged in the usual plastic DVD cases, but when you get to the mega-packs, the films are placed in their own paper sleeves with the disk's contents, along with a description, printed on the outside. These sleeves are boxed in a Velcro-sealed heavy paper stock box. Again, the disks contain at least one (usually two) films on each side of the dual-sided disks. There are "Play" and "Scene" selections for each film as well as an image of the film's title screen. No special features, commentaries or close captioning. The films vary in quality, but never worse than VHS quality of image. In Mill Creek's defense, most of their releases are older films that haven't seen the inside of a remastering suite and never will. A number of these films are lucky to find anyone to give them a new lease on life. The films are occasionally edited versions (not edited by Mill Creek, though), but the bulk are as uncut as you can hope to find.

East West DVD Entertainment releases primarily single disks with two features on one side of the disk. They use slim-line plastic cases. There are "Play" and "Scene" selections for each movie. No extras, commentaries or close captioning. The versions they release are similar to the quality of the previous companies. Very few of their product were previewed, so it could only be assumed the versions they release are not edited anymore than the product from the other companies.

Emson USA releases 50 film sets on five double-sided disks. Packaged in a plastic DVD case designed to hold the multiple disks. The menus are just lists of the films on that side of the disk. No extras, no commentaries and no captioning. The films are packaged five per side on the disks. They use compression technology to do this. The downside is that the compression is so intense that the films become pixelated nightmares when there is any action on the screen. Aside from that, their selections can be had, at much high quality, from almost any other company mentioned in this article.

Product from other companies mentioned in this article were not available for preview.

Low prices. A wealth of films and a variety of genres. Quality of film sources that ranges from okay to excellent. As long as the buyer is aware of what to expect, there are plenty of bargains to be had from many sources. Consider these collections to be launching pads that might introduce you to new films, new filmmakers, old favorites and forgotten classics, as well as inspire you to seek out some of the higher-priced, remastered versions of some of these films that small, niche distributors are making available.

At the very least, you can never claim to be unable to afford to entertain yourself.

Links to some of the companies mentioned:

Emson USA

Mill Creek Entertainment - Changing the Face of Value entertainment

Welcome to Navarre Corporation (BCI Eclipse)

St Clair Entertainment's DVDs

(Many thanks to Ian Warfield from Mill Creek Entertainment and to Jeff Hayne from BCI Eclipse. They took time to respond to my questions about their companies and gave permission to use images from their web sites. There will be future short postings on upcoming releases from both companies.)

REVIEW: Fear Of Clowns

2006-04-18T18:36:00.000-07:00

Hunting Humans was the first feature by Kevin Kangas and crew. I was fortunate enough to snag that DVD from a bargain bin. I did so because a filmmaker friend of mine had an idea to do a film about two serial killers in competition with each other. Hunting Humans was nothing like what my friend had in mind, but was entertaining as hell. It had all the basics of the serial killer films, but threw so many twists and turns at the viewer that it never skated by on cliches.

So then the big question is: Can Kevin Kangas live up to a very solid first feature with his second feature?

Fear Of Clowns gives us a lead character haunted by some childhood trauma that left her with coulrophobia, which is a fear of clowns. She does the whole intensive therapy routine by way of splattering her mental demons onto canvas, creating an artistic resume littered with paintings of distorted, mutilated and just pain disturbing clown imagery. Her life is slipping down the toilet, her finances are fading, and, damn it all, a hideous clown seems to be stalking her. People around her die, often and in various grisly ways.

The film does a number of things rather well. The opening sequences are truly disturbing. Frankly, I would have been happy with a whole movie about a young girl haunted by a gruesome clown. The actors are very appealing, and there are no distracting performances. Fear Of Clowns also tends to avoid the "stalk and kill" format with small twists to the story that keep diverting your attention. And the single greatest thing is that Kevin Kangas knows how to actually put together a low budget film that looks like it was made on a far larger budget. Thanks in this area also goes to his Cinematographer, David Mun. It is a great looking film.

With the good also comes a couple of bad things. The least of the two problems is the opening of the film is so strong that it sets up some images that seem to go nowhere. It seems as if the main character's fear of clowns is merely hinted at and then takes a backseat to hitting the story points. A bit more development of this part of the film and the main character's fear would have made for considerable emotional tension as the story continued.

The biggest problem I had with Fear Of Clowns is the final third of the film. The whole film trips along with great pacing and action. Suddenly, everything grinds to a halt. The film seems to lose its focus and becomes the "stalk and kill" film it had so carefully avoided being. To be honest, Kevin Kangas said he had some misgivings about parts of the film. I assume it is the final third of the movie that he is referring to.

Does that soft final act of the film ruin the whole thing? No. Sure, it's frustrating, but I still sat through the rolling credits feeling as though I'd gotten my money's worth. The main thing is that the film is entertaining and worth investing your time in the hour and a half or so that the movie lasts.

Another nice bonus is the "Making Of" documentary included on the DVD. It is as fun to watch as the actual movie. It makes you realize the strain a production like this puts on everyone. Watch Kevin Kangas slowly deteriorate as the documentary progresses. Marvel at the hurricane that put a crimp on the crew's very limited filming schedule. Cringe as Shivers the clown puts in some very uncomfortable-looking contacts.

Rent or buy Fear Of Clowns. Consider it an investment in the sequel that Kangas is supposed to start filming soon. You'll feel good about doing so.

(Images are used with the kind permission of Kevin Kangas. I just hope he's as kind after he reads this review.)

Clowning About (Or, How I Beat Down A Slag At Wal-Mart For A Bargain)

2006-03-29T18:01:00.000-08:00

I have a love/hate relationship with Wal-Mart. I think everyone does. Cheap crap and lots of it, but it does tend to attract the dwellers of the Nether Realms from Trailer Park Limbo. Sadly, much like myself, they seem drawn to the dump bins of DVDs for three bucks or so. And such a situation came to pass when I paused to scan the jumbled mass of cases one day.

Instantly, a bovine-inclined lady awash in a heady fragrance of cigarettes, body funk and spoiled food decided I shouldn't have freedom of choice, but that I could have what she deemed "beneath" her refined taste. Wherever my hand went, hers beat mine there. She pretended to be intent on making her selection when I tried to see the evil in her face. Nah, she was just ugly as a turd. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw my buried treasure. Hunting Humans sat unsullied by her nicotine-stained fingers. I focused on some Pauly Shore tripe, muttered a happy "Oooh!" and reached for it. Sensing I might snap up something wonderful, the heifer yanked it up as my fingers touched Pauly's image on the cover. I swiftly snagged Hunting Humans and muttered, "Bitch" as I walked away.

Was my showdown worth it? Hell, yes.

Kevin Kangas wrote, directed and produced Hunting Humans, a great example of what can be done with a minimal budget and a cast and crew who will see the project to the end. It deals with a slick and likeable guy who happens to be a serial killer. No stalk and kill crap here, though a few folks do bite the dust. Kangas opted for suspense and mystery by having our anti-hero be the target of someone hunting him for their own purposes. A refreshing change in the indie horror world full of slasher clones.

On the DVD, released by Mti Home Video (out of print as far as I can tell, but check eBay and Amazon, or if you want a copy with an autograph, go to www.marauderproductions.com/order.htm), I found a mention of their next film buried in the "Biographies" area of the disc. Fear Of Clowns (kangaskahnfilms.com/foc) had an interesting title. And I went on about my life, silently waiting for the movie.

Fear Of Clowns is now out. Does it stack up to Hunting Humans? Well, check out the review to be posted soon. But it did inspire me enough to use those cyber-stalker skills to track down the director/writer/producer Kevin Kangas. Okay, he has an email address on his web site. I have no Internet kung fu skills. But I did convince him to answer a few questions. I have people skills. Okay, Kevin Kangas is really just a nice guy who enjoys talking about movies, so it wasn't that hard to convince him.

At the risk of appearing lazy, I'll present my short interview with him in the question and answer format. I could pretend we met at some hotel restaurant, and I could pepper the give and take conversation with little details of the wallpaper and the food and the odd looks from the other diners. This isn't Vanity Fair. In the time it'll take you to peel those damn security seals off your copy of Fear Of Clowns, you can just read the more direct questions and answers.

Dog Pile: One thing I've noticed about Hunting Humans and FOC is how professional they both look, though FOC does seem to be a stronger film as far as visual presentation. Most low-budget, direct-to-video features look cheap and are impossible to hear. Your films have such a strong element as far as how the shots are framed and structured. Do you take the extra effort to storyboard your shots in advance, or do you just work within the confines of the locations you have available to you?

Kangas: Thanks! We love compliments! And truthfully, a large chunk of that should go to my DPs (Director of Photography)--David Gil on HH and David Mun on FOC(he'll be returning for FOC2). To answer your question--I don't do any storyboarding, but my shooting scripts are extremely detailed. The only problem comes when I haven't actually SEEN the location before we get there to shoot. (Hard to believe, but this happens a LOT on low-budget flicks.) Then it's a matter of looking for interesting compositions given the layout. David Mun in particular has a phenomenal eye--he's working on big, real-budget projects out in Los Angeles, so he knows what he's doing. I trust him a lot, so if he tells me what I'm thinking of shooting is gonna come out like crap--well, we shoot it anyway, but then we get the shot he wants just in case.

Dog Pile: I noticed FOC had the camera moving for a wide variety of angles, whereas Hunting Humans seemed to have fewer cuts within any given scene.

Kangas: Hahahaha. Yeah. For HH we had almost NO money, and we shot entirely on 16mm film. So we shot a total of 5.5 hours of footage to make a 90 minute film. If you know anything about shooting ratios you know that's RIDICULOUSLY low. There were times we only had one-take shots--get it or you don't get it at all. For FOC, we shot a combo of digital and Super16, and we had a crane (small) and a steadicam. Makes all the difference in the world. You can do a LOT more, the more toys you get. But those toys cost money.

Dog Pile: Do you work with one camera?

Kangas: Yes, though FOC2 may employ 2 cameras.

Dog Pile: How do you and the cast handle the time involved shooting the same scene from different angles? I mean, you have a fairly small window of time in which to shoot your films, so anything that slows forward progression would have to be a bit nerve-wracking, though the multiple angles do improve the movement of the scenes.

Kangas: It's tedious, obviously. But most of the actors--if they've done ANYTHING--know to expect it. So you just get it done, as well and as quickly as you can. When stuff goes wrong, you curse and wish you'd picked another career. So there's a lot of cursing and wishing going on. But you try to have fun too.

Dog Pile: You've said Fear Of Clowns fell short of your expectations. In what ways?

Kangas: As a filmmaker who started as a writer I'm constantly fighting an internal battle: Story versus Marketability. The writer wants to tell the filmmaker, "Fuck your marketability--the story is all that counts! Write the best story you can and the movie will sell itself." This, unfortunately, is a lie. Especially in the low-budget market. So I wrote Fear of Clowns knowing that there really aren't that many good horror movies featuring clowns. I had in mind a kind of homage to Halloween--with the strong, silent killer pursuing the woman in distress.But things happened and the first draft took longer than I expected (my wife got pregnant--she delivered the child about 2 months before we started filming--right in the middle of MAJOR preproduction). I should have spent another three months on the script, but if I had done that we would have had to wait another eight months for the weather to change again. So it was either: Film now and do the best you can, or wait. I went forward. The result was that the ending was completely unusable, and since the clown's entire motivation was based on that ending--there I was in the editing room trying to come up with new motivation. We also lost the rationale behind the lead character's coulrophobia, which was a MAJOR part of the story. My bad. I take responsibility for it.

Dog Pile: How do you intend to address these elements in the sequel?

Kangas: The sequel will avoid those problems for two reasons: I've spent more time on it, and I've gone back to basics. It's more of a mainstream horror, where the original became more of a suspense movie. For those die-hard horror fans who were bored by the first movie--that's not gonna happen in the sequel. Believe me.

Dog Pile: How do you feel about doing sequels? Did you originally intend a sequel to FOC, or are you attempting to make the movie you hoped the original would be? Do you see sequels as being a likelihood in your future, or do you prefer to focus on fresh topics for each feature?

Kangas: Sellout! I see it already! But no, sequels were not something I was planning on doing. As far as FOC I had no plans for a sequel even though I left it open, but when Lionsgate mentioned they were interested...well, how stupid would I be to say no? Still, I gave it some thought, because I wasn't going to just crank out a film to crank it out. When I commit to a movie, I'm committing about 2 years of my life to it, so I have to be invested. And I came up with something that interested me a LOT. Then another idea popped up and I started writing. As for the future...who knows? I wrote a sequel to Hunting Humans and am actually writing a third, but that's more because I really find Aric Blue (the main character) fascinating. Neither script could be shot on the budgets I work at. I may shoot another feature at the end of the year that's not a sequel. In general I would say I won't do too many sequels (for instance--the likelihood of me doing FOC3 is almost nil).

Dog Pile: What kind of budget to you have for your films?

Kangas: HH's total budget was about $24,000--and it was shot entirely on film. That is MINISCULE for film. Anyone who knows anything about it knows that about half of that went to film/developing/transfer to video. So for those douchebags online who like to act like they know something when they say "God, when are filmmakers gonna learn not to shoot on video, it looks like shit" when they talk about HH--clearly you don't know the difference between film and video.The reason HH looks so muddy is not because it was shot on video. It's because it was shot on film and then one-light transferred (which is like $300/hour) instead of best-light transferred(which is like $500/hour). That per hour fee is not per hour of your footage--it's per hour of the transfer house's time.Not that I'm bitter about know-it-all online critics or anything... As for FOC's budget I'm not supposed to say. Not that much more than HH.

Dog Pile: Do you still have to pound the pavement to round up investors, or is it easier now that you have a couple of features to back you up?

Kangas: One of the producers from HH came back for FOC, but we needed someone else so a long-time friend came in, plus I put my money back in. Now I'm pretty much footing the bill on FOC2, but when I step up to the half-million range, I'm going to have to have investors. No way can I come up with that kind of cash.

Dog Pile: What kind of contract do you have with Liongate Films? By that, I'd like to know if you have a set number of films you will be doing for them, or are they working with you on a film-by-film basis?

Kangas: Film by film. I'm an unproven commodity right now (even though FOC has made almost a half million dollars in rental fees alone in the two weeks it's been out). Who knows what will happen after FOC2. My master plan is to finish FOC2 and one more ultra-low budget, and then I'm hoping to step up to something more in the half million dollar range. Which is still ultra-low budget for most films, but will be a major step up for me.

Dog Pile: I remember reading that you have a different type of film coming up, or at least, that is what I remember from a recent Fangoria article. What do you have in the works other than the FOC sequel?

Kangas: The thing I'm going to try to shoot isn't exactly horror, but I'm not talking about it yet. Until I finish the script I'm not exactly sure what it's going to be. And with all the preproduction going on right now for FOC2, I haven't had much time for PE, which are the initials of the script's name.

Dog Pile: Any plans to do a frat house comedy? Just kidding.

Kangas: No, but my interests are broad. I like horror, suspense, fantasy, thriller, westerns (yeah, I know) and more. The only thing you won't ever see me doing is romance, and probably comedy, unless it's very black comedy.

Dog Pile: Last one. What horror movie freaked you out the most when you saw it? I don't mean your favorite movie, unless it happens to be the same.

Kangas: Well...I'd have to say Giant Spider Invasion and The Giant Leeches were two that scared the shit out of me. I was 5 when I saw GSI and not much older when I saw GL (it was on an afternoon Creature Feature) and they REALLY scared me. If you watch them now, they are hilariously bad. Later on Nightmare On Elm Street did scare me (I had to walk home from a friend's house that night, and I walked in the middle of the road so if anyone jumped out at me I'd see them coming), but that always had the "It's not real" rationalization.Which Friday the 13th and Halloween did not--those killers felt like they were real. Those two scared me probably more than Nightmare.My favorite horror movie is John Carpenter's The Thing. It scared me and grossed me out at the same time, but it also played with the theme of identity which is something that really resonates with me. Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers wigged me out a little for the same reason. Like, maybe one day people I knew would start acting different because they weren't THEMSELVES anymore...THAT'S scary stuff, especially for a kid.

Dog Pile: Thank you for your time.

Kangas: No problem. I think it's great when people enjoy the low budget stuff. There are a lot of people who rent the films and expect to see Star Wars and are naturally disappointed.

(Kevin Kangas appears here of his own free will, and The Dog Pile thanks him. All images were "borrowed" from his web site www.marauderproductions.com. Please visit the site and find out more about him, Rick Ganz (the star of both of Kevin's features), as well as order goodies. I would also like to thank Lionsgate Films and Mti Home Video for releasing these films. For the love of God, please, no one sue me!)

Being of Unsound Mind

2006-02-14T19:13:00.000-08:00

I tend towards obsessive behaviors. Get a bug up my butt about something, and I'm a gone Daddy-rabbit. One of my recent obsessions? Brentwood Video. You've seen this stuff in your favorite place to buy DVDs. You know, the mega-compilations of mostly horror movies going for bargain-basement prices? Well, I've started buying these silly things any time I find them. Why? Mostly, it's my Wal-Mart mentality -- Cheap is good. Not "quality", but like most guys are by breasts, I'm a quantity over quality guy when it comes to movies.

So I snag this collection called "A Night To Dismember". Ah, the wit! But 12 movies for 17 bucks? Sure, I can be had, especially when one of those movies is "Bloodletting," a classic indie made a number of years back. So I get the thing home and decide to start from the beginning. "Insaniac" was the title of the first film. I rolled my eyes, and prepared to be cheesed to death.

The sound, well, sucked, which doesn't work well for me. See, I watch these things late night when my girlfriend, who has enough sense to avoid most of these movies, is conked out on the couch. If you turn up most of these "made-on-video" flicks to a volume that enables understandable dialogue, then the music or sound effects will cause the dog down the street to convulse and bite small children. But I stick with it, right through the barest story setup, and I'm wondering when the movie is going to take off.

Next thing I know, the film has slipped into this slightly Goth chick's mental Circles of Hell as she tries to come to terms with her past and what happened that apparently landed her in a psych ward. Rough made? Yes. Polished in every area? Ha ha -- no. Yet, even with half of the dialogue unintelligible, I was stunned and pleased that someone out there tried to do something different. The main character grows on you as you realize she is either very screwed up or very heavily drugged. Just so wonderful to see something other than the usual "let's copy anything that will allow spraying blood" mentality.

Still enamored of the film, I went to imdb.com to check out the filmmakers. I discovered the lead actress did work behind the camera as well. So I used those all-important cyber stalker skills and tracked her down. Ain't the Internet the greatest thing? Yup, that's her. Please meet Robin Garrels. She wrote "Insaniac". She starred in it. However, in spite of, or because of, her direct involvement, she seems to have her own reservations about the film. In one of my first emails from her, she thanked me for sitting through "Insaniac" and "Last House On Hell Street", another film she wrote as well as doing a small role. Odd behavior. Well, I can somewhat understand in relation to "Last House On Hell Street", which apparently was trimmed down to a short film later and will be added as an extra on another of Robin's films, "Buzz Saw". "Yeah, Last House was a nice experiment, and actually, it's an extra feature on the Buzz Saw DVD, it's edited down to a 17-minute short, which I think is MUCH better," she told me.

But what do we really know about Robin Garrels? Not much. She lives in Missouri. She seems to be in her twenties. She was, at the time I exchanged emails with her, running in 18 different directions with twice as many projects -- a play/film called "Fourth Dimension" with 8 handheld cameras filming and choreographed in sync with the actors, helping a friend with a film he was trying to wrap up, holding down an office-type job, writing another script and mainlining pure sugar and high-octane java. The woman should be ashamed of having so much energy.

Influences? The theater. "I played a prostitute in Madwoman of Chaillot in high school (a walk-on part) because I had a crush on one of the boys in the play. The next year I got the lead in Skin of Our Teeth. Senior year I wrote this HORRIBLE play that the school kindly put on, and I realized that this was in fact what I wanted to do...write scripts...so I majored in Lit in College, got a writing internship in L.A. at a theatre company my senior year, then came back to St. Louis, Missouri and started the 'shoestring' theatre company The Tin Ceiling, with some friends."

She takes her theater background with her when she writes and when she watches other people's work. "I love me some over-the-top pretentiousness. I don't know why, but I've always found theatrical films and t.v. to be so funny! Maybe not intentionally so...but there's this weird undercurrent when someone seems to be taking themselves too seriously that I just LOVE, and find HILARIOUS. I think David Lynch (my Yoda) does this extremely well...using...or rather, requiring over-the-top performances in certain situations to create a sort of (should I laugh?) state of mind."

What label can we throw at Robin Garrels to define her? Actor? Writer? Director? Being a member of the low-to-no-budget school of filmmaking, she clearly does all of them, but how does she see herself? "I have to say, that as far as an expression to product ratio is concerned, with WRITING, I feel like I've got about a 95%. In other words, I feel that on paper, I'm saying almost exactly what I want to say, in the way I want to say it." Robin feels less confident when it comes to directing her own material. "...I can't get outside of it enough. So that's what I'm working on." By her own admission, collaboration is more her thing at this point in her film career. She has co-written and co-directed "Buzz Saw" (with David Burnett, who has worked on "Insaniac" and "Last House On Hell Street"), and done the same thing on "China White Serpentine" (with Eric Stanze, director of the indie cult hit "Ice From The Sun"). Her next big step? "Directing someone else's work just hasn't really been something I've ever made time to do yet, although some day it'd be a great experiment."

Sadly, Robin is frightfully busy these days, and I have little else of interest to relate about her and her current work. I do intend to follow up and write a second piece about her and the films she has worked on as well as any new projects. Perhaps I can convince her to slip me a few photos of better quality than the ones I used here. In any event, I hope what little I have presented here will serve as an incentive to track down some of her films and see the beginning of what appears to be a long and innovative career for Robin Garrels.

(All screen shots were lifted from the Brentwood DVD version of "Insaniac" using using CyberLink PowerDVD. Just a word of warning, the Brentwood version of "Insaniac" appears to be edited, according to my conversations with Ms. Garrels. Go to www.amazon.com to see about ordering her films. Sub Rosa Films used to have a site, but I have had little luck in tracking it down. You might also try http://www.wickedpixel.com/ as it is related to the people behind Sub Rosa.)

Night of the Vampire Hunter

2005-08-31T18:25:00.000-07:00

(This is a repost of a film review from the old Dog Pile site. If you read this review and think you would like to see this film, do two things: 1. Go to www.coffeebeans-entertainment.de and poke around on the official web site for the film; 2. Contact American film distributors of horror films and badger them to pick this film up and release it in the United States. Go on and do it now.)

You know, I really don't care for Superman. He's like this all-powerful character with precious few weaknesses, so they have to keep bringing out more and more powerful enemies and more and more complicated schemes to hurt him. Oh, sure, he has his emotional weaknesses that have been played with in the last few years, but who wants Alan Alda as Superman?

Give me Batman any day. Not because he's dark and hip and got that Gothic thing going (although there is something to be said about Goth girls with their frightfully pale skin). I prefer Batman because he has nothing going for him except himself. Yeah, he's got gadgets, but he doesn't have x-ray vision or high-tech blades that shoot out of his hands when he wants to slice people up. He's human, just human, and a single bullet or miscalculation could end his life. That makes the man himself more interesting; the character IS the focal point, not his mutant/alien powers.

I know, I know, the question here is why am I talking about superheroes when I am supposed to be reviewing a movie? The movie in question here is "Night of the Vampire Hunter," also known as "Night Shade". It's a German film shot over three years as the production company gathered money to continue filming. And as you can tell from the Americanized title, the movie deals with vampires.

You know, I really don't like vampires. Here is where the superhero thing comes in. Vampires are the Superman-type of your basic roster of monster. They can shapeshift, turn into vapor, move with superhuman speed, there's only a precious few ways to kill them, blah blah blah. And they sleep ALL DAY! (Lucky bastards.) They have this supposed sexual attractiveness that wows the opposite sex. (How sexy can someone with rotted, clotted blood breath be?) They just have too much going for them; they are too much like Superman.

But there has been a recent trend to bring the image of the vampire down to earth, to make them more human. In essence, they are turning Superman into Batman. Kevin Lindenmuth has put a few spins on the vampire myth, turning vampires into supernaturally advanced humans in his "Addicted to Murder" series of films. Buffy the Vampire Slayer has paraded so many vampires past our eyes that by sheer volume they have become demystified and have taken on the image of people afflicted with some rampant disease.

"Night of the Vampire Hunter" continues this line of thought, only using traditional vampire myth where it helps to enhance the story. In fact, the story doesn't depend too much on the fact it is about vampires. With just a little tinkering, it could almost become a revenge flick of any genre. So you are really working with normal characters that happen to be vampires and WHO they are becomes more important than WHAT they are.

Jens Feldner(Stefan "Cheesy" Keseberg)writes under the name of Henry Gloom. He churns out a novel a week in an on-going series about vampires. His books have become a big hit. Yet he lives a simple life with his girlfriend Selin(Nicole Müller), who works nights at a photo-processing shop. The city is living in fear of a serial killer who has been racking up a hefty body count. Nothing too unusual. Except that Jens knows his subject matter so well because Selin IS a vampire. And Selin isn't too worried about the serial killer because she IS the killer. But that is just your set-up in this movie. The story itself doesn't really come into its own until Arnold (Alex Kaese) comes to Selin's aid after she is nearly killed during a fight with another vampire. Creepy Arnold wants nothing more than to be turned into a vampire, and he thinks Selin is his gateway to the dark side.

The acting is pretty solid from just about everyone. Only a couple of people ham it up, like Alex Kaese, but it tends to keep things from getting too serious and intense and maintains an air of fun escapism, which, I think, was the aim of the filmmakers. That is not to say that it is a family film. Ample blood splatters the scenery, nudity pops up occasionally, and there are a few truly tense scenes to remind the viewer that this is a horror film.

One minor complaint I have is the film quality. It is kind of muddy and dark. That may have been caused by the fact that the tape I watched may have been a copy of a copy. I tend to think the original film would look better, but then a lot of small budget films seem to look rough, and personally, I feel it adds to their charm as long as it doesn't get in the way of following the film's story and action.

The only other complaint I have is that the characters are interesting enough to support a couple more films, but to get a second film out of this, the filmmakers would have to pull the American bullshit of basically repeating the same story or popping the characters into a ridiculously contrived story.

No matter, though. "Night of the Vampire Hunter" is good bloody vampire fun. Crack open a couple of beers or a bottle of your favorite red wine and enjoy it. Now, where do I sign up for the Nicole Müller fan club?

Triple Threat review

2005-08-19T03:44:00.000-07:00

TRIPLE THREAT

Starring Lorin Becker, Curt Bonnem, Kay West and Stephany Sterans. Produced, Photographhed, Written and Directed by Mark Vasconcellos.

Just to prove that not all micro-budget movies have to be either horror movies or sex movies (preferably both, in the opinions of most of the producers I've worked for), Mark Vasconcellos has made this entertaining little tease of an action picture, sort of a La Femme Nikita meets Bond, played appropriately light and fast.

The plot tells of ex-assassin Dina LoBianca, a motorcycle riding super-spy played appealingly by Lorin Becker, who is brought back for "one last job" by her slick and slimy boss, played by writer/director/DP Mark Vasconcellos. She is partnered with an even more sexy side-kick/protégé (Stephany Stearns), who steals most of her scenes. Through the course of the mission she uncovers plots within plots and thwarts planned violence against innocents. She also gains a boyfriend along the way in a straight-laced-but-not-stuffy character played with good humor by Curt Bonnem.

We've seen this plot before, and this is really low budget stuff, so most of the action is of the one-on-one sort. No big stunts, explosions or car chases. So director/writer Vasconcellos was wise to keep the proceedings frothy, light and fun all the way. It never bogs down with pretenses subplots. It tries only to be popcorn fluff, and succeeds at it's goal admirably.

Also, it has a very slick look that appears more expensive than the picture's budget. And the performances are all of a professional caliber. Another thing not usually seen in a micro-budget movie.

For more information, check out www.bigbask.com

My Favorite Cameos

2005-05-25T08:40:00.000-07:00

I have died many times.

That's what most of my cameo appearances in cheap horror movies have consisted of. I have been shredded by a werewolf, beheaded by a clown, shot by cops (twice), vampire bitten, vampire staked and had my head blowed up. But two new movies have just arrived, and I have cameos in both. Even though I only die in one of them, they are easily the two cameos that I have done which have pleased me the most. And they are both movies that are a cut above the usual.

Ted Newsom's THE NAKED MONSTER was released years ago in a less-polished form as ATTACK OF THE B-MOVIE MONSTER. Since then, Ted (who played the serial killer in my movie DEAD SEASON) has shot a multitude of new material, completely re-edited it, and put in entirely new monster shots. And I am so glad he did, becuase what was once a cute but crude experiment is now a gloriously silly and heartfelt valentine to the movies we monster boomers grew up on.

The silly three-eyed monster is a rubber suit, just right for this goofy comedy. The script is a dizzying pastiche of puns and gags, like the AIRPLANE of monster movies. Some are gags funny, some make you groan, but it's all in the spirit of fun. But the real attraction here is the amazing assemblage of B-movie talent, headlined by the late Kenneth Tobey from THE THING (he is just marvelous; when handed a box containing a flight suit just like the one he wore in THE THING, Tobey exclaims with appropriate awe "my old monster-fightin' suit!"). The late John Agar is equally grand as a scientist who first realizes that the creature is pregnant female ("Your monster is a mother -- A big, uuugggglllyyy mother."). A partial list of the cast is as follows: Jeanne Carmen, Les Tremayne, Gloria Talbot, Robert Shayne, Daniel Roebuck, Ann Robinson, Lori Nelson, Paul Marco, John Harmon, Robert Cornthwaite, Robert Clarke, Michelle Bauer, Brinke Stevens, Linea Quigley, Bob Burns, Forry Ackerman, Tim Sullivan... Whew! Is that enough to pique your interest, you monster fans you?

Ted is looking for a distributor, so hopefully THE NAKED MONSTER will soon be available to all.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. My cameo? I am passing out torches to angry villagers singing (or rather, lipsynching) The Festival of the New Wine from FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN (Fa Ro La Fa Ro Liiii!). Does life get any more fun than that? I don't hink so!

CAMP UTOPIA - I wrote about this movie in my first article for the old Dog Pile site, but I thought it was time to mention it again since it has just seen a DVD release via Texas Trouble Entertainment. It was produced by Duane Whitaker, an artist of great talent and integrity who I am proud to call a freind. He's most known as the guy who played Maynard in PULP FICTION, but his work behind the camera has been just as exciting, though has yet to be noticed and appreciated in a big way. This, his first "dead teenagers movie," (though to be fair the kids/victims in this slasher film are college age, not really teenagers), is his concession to the commercial (after the brilliant but non-commercial EDDIE PRESLEY and TOGEHTER AND ALONE, it seems a wise choice if he wants to continue getting financing to make films), but one done with Duane's usual intelligence and sense of humor. This slasher movie contrasts the young people of the sixties with those of today. Hippies vs. Yuppies, if you will, and it says a lot about the integrity (or lack there of) of the values from both generations. This one tells about a group of yuppie college students camping out in an area notorious for a hippie massacre occuring thirty years earlier. Flashbacks show Timothy Bach, a Manson-like mad-hippie guru (played by former Ratt frontman Stephen Pearcy) going on a rampage and slaughtering dozens of hippies gathered for a Woodstock-like festival of peace, music and love. Not much love was had that day, though.

Now, thirty years later, kids are being slaughtered again. Has Timothy Bach returned from the grave, or is there a new killer at Camp Utopia? I ain't tellin'!

CAMP UTOPIA is one of the smartest and funniest slasher films I have ever seen. Gore hounds stay at home, the blood is pretty minimal. This one is about people and ideas, and with some real smart laughs thrown in for... well, for laughs. But for horror fans looking for a little more than the normal thrills, this may be just the ticket.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. My cameo. I am the farmer who owns the land where the hippies frolic. Sort of the Old Man Metzger of Camp Utopia. I am seen early on with a large pig and two youg topless hippie girls. If that weren't fun enough, later I give Tim (Pearcy) a peace sign and get my had whacked off by his machete for the trouble. The funny thing is, I never got to meet Pearcy. We were shot on different days in entirely different locations. You will never tell when you watch the movie though.

Until next time...

Review of ACTRESS APOCALYPSE

2005-04-25T19:00:00.000-07:00

Rating: 7 out of 10

When I was in second grade, I wrote a little skit that we (three friends and myself) performed for the class. A simple scene. Carla and I played the two children, and Gary and Renea played our parents. Scene opens on Carla and I arguing about what we want to watch on the television. We were loud, rude and hyper. In an effort to shut us up, our poor parents asked if we would be quiet if they gave us each a lollipop. Hushed, we nodded. Of course, candy will sooth all ills; this is a universal truth. And so they handed us each a sucker. But hers was bigger than mine. More screaming and wailing from the naughty siblings. End scene.

Simple, but perfect in design. Or so I thought. The teacher, in my first and most stinging bit of critical evaluation (so painful because I had urges for her that I didn't understand at that age -- well, actually unnatural for my tender age, but that is a can of worms we ain't opening in this review), explained that while she understood the humor, she felt that there was entirely too much shouting and arguing. It made for a trying experience.

So why go to great pains to elaborate on a seminal event in my dysfunction as a writer? Well, this IS a review of "Actress Apocalypse". But, you wonder, what the hell does that have to do with anything? I'll explain.

"Actress Apocalypse", written and directed by Richard Anasky, is, if you didn't know better, a behind-the-scenes film of the making of "Clearwater Canyon". Never heard of "Clearwater Canyon"? No one of any note has either. It was a no-budget film about a big, gay killer Indian (Native American, I assume) who slaughters women who all hope the Army men will come save them. Unfortunately, the film never got past the audition stage. In-fighting, inept crew, no-show actresses, disorganization and an accidentally-on-purpose killing or two kinda derails things.

Confused? It's okay if you are. You've been dropped into the mockumentary world of "Actress Apocalypse". All bets are off, as are the clothes of the young actresses who audition for the film within the film. You are in the hands of David Lincoln, the director of "Clearwater Canyon", his psychotic brother Vance, and the two crew memebers, all who operate at about 180 decibels for the bulk of the "documentary". The rest of the time, you are confronted by a brain-bending onslaught of subliminal images that will disturb you more than anything on the market. You will see what the world of truly independent no-budget filmmaking is like (I had a taste of it from playing a detective in a student short film in college). And you will also see a couple of very beautiful young actresses who will never show up at your house if you decide to make your own crap film, so don't even ask.

So why the trip to my second grade class at the beginning of this review? Simple. Most of this film reminds me of the comments handed to me by my teacher. Too loud, too much shouting and arguing, too shrill. I swear, every time an actress insults the on-screen filmmakers, you'll be wanting to back them up. Actually, you'll be wanting to backhand the shit out of both David and Vance Lincoln. The thought of these guys still makes me tense. I finally GOT what my teacher tried to tell me in second grade.

But, that does not make this a bad movie. I found myself, though annoyed, laughing at some of the insane moments of the film. I believe that there is more truth to what you see in this behind-the-scenes film than you can imagine. Oh, I hope every production isn't a screamfest, but the weird power struggles and last-minute reworking of everything is no doubt accurate. So the intention and basic content of the film makes for worthwhile viewing.

Add in the fact that this film is a 90-minute tribute to visual overkill, and you have enough to keep you busy with your "pause" and "slow" buttons on your DVD remote for the next month. Honestly, I was constantly stunned by the bombardment of flashing images, most so fleeting that "pause" buttons have trouble capturing these "blip-vert" (sorry for the Max Headroom reference) moments. I can only assume that the editing of this film must have been fueled by buckets of coffee and crank.

In the end, I have to ask myself if I liked "Actress Apocalypse". Yeah, I did. It wore me out and wore me down. It gave me a mild headache. But it never failed to leave me shaking my head trying to figure out how in hell anyone could cram so much stuff from so many different directions and keep it focused and almost convincing. If you are fine with massive nudity and non-stop visual and audio assaults and want to see something most unlike anything else out there, order yourself a copy of "Actress Apocalypse".

Just don't blame me if you have seizures from the strobe-like editing. Really. Don't blame me.

Review of DEAD SEASON

2005-03-15T19:39:00.000-08:00

Rating: 7 out of 10

Oh, my, but I do love a nice taste of Italian giallo film. "Bird With the Crystal Plummage," "What Have They Done to Solange?", "Autopsy" and the like all have a warm place in my heart. The atmosphere of unpredictable violence, the threat that one of the main characters may indeed be the killer and the total aura of a nightmare gone horribly wrong make each of these films thrilling. And, as a testosterone-enabled person, I can never find fault in the many lush women featured in these films.

Sadly, these films have faded from the public eye. Yes, they are still out there on DVD, but you don't hear about these things unless you look for them. It's not as if you'll find J.Lo in a big-budget modern version of this genre (Thank the heavens!). Fans of the genre have to be happy with the efforts from the past, and just try to get through the day.

Here's where Ron Ford enters the picture. I've had the pleasure of reviewing a few of Ron's other films. From these films, I know that he is a lifetime fan of horror cinema. His "Hollywood Mortuary" is a tribute to the classic Universal horrors of the 30's and 40's. "The Crawling Brain" delves into the dopey Fifties monster films while mixing in the early Seventies Al Adamson sleaze factor. Each uses the old styles as a base on which to weave demented films of modern humor and weirdness.

Now, "Dead Season" uses the themes that Mario Bava and Dario Argento built their legends upon and runs in a new direction.

Lucas Swan is a one-hit wonder in the publishing field, having written an account of a series of murders that took place in a seaside town a number of years ago. He has crawled into a hole of his own creation and prays inspiration does not strike again. Into his closed universe drops an adoring fan who feels she will be Swan's personal Muse. Oddly enough, inspiration strikes Swan again, and a whole new series of murders begin.

Ford's style often has an air of camp about it. This time around, he has toned that down. Oh, sure, there is the goofy retarded groundskeeper, played by Mr. Ford himself, and Randal Malone's trademark star performance that weaves from mostly serious to calling down the spirit of Divine (John Waters' favorite cross-dresser, for those who don't know). But the overall tone is darker than his other homages, and the story, though occasionally stretching the limits of credibility, sticks to the mystery.

It may seem as though I am picking at "Dead Season". I'm not. I have never considered Ron Ford's films as intended to run against the slick, over-polished Hollywood product out there. He makes the film happen on the amount of money I probably piss away on Starbuck's drinks each year. And while that is enough money that I'm embarrassed to admit I spend, it seems an insanely small amount to use to make a film, yet that is what Mr. Ford does. He does it well enough that you tend to forget the quibbles you might have with acting in a scene or two or the lucky coincidences in the script. You find yourself wondering how the hell is this whole thing gonna work out, or hoping a certain character gets out of a tight spot. He makes loopy fun out of next to nothing. In the end, even if you didn't really like it much, you have to admit you were entertained. You can't help it. And that is what makes me look forward to the next Ron Ford film.

Put your brain in a comfy chair, count the oddball old-school film riffs and see if you don't find youself smiling at least once during the giallo-tinged insanity of "Dead Season".

2005-02-19T02:29:00.000-08:00

cover art

2005-02-19T00:03:00.000-08:00

Review INEXCHANGE by Ron Ford

INEXCHANGE - Written and directed by Zack Parker. Starring Sean Blodgett, Tiffany Wilson and Todd Richard Lewis.

There is a lot to recommend about this serious and atmospheric horror movie. It is lit professionally, the sound is good, and, amazingly, every performance is as good as those seen in bigger budgeted union pictures. That is saying a lot for a micro budget movie shot on video. Zack Parker is obviously a very serious film maker, and somebody I will be watching.

The story is slim on plot, but rich in subtext and characterization. College freshman Maury (Todd Blodgett) is introverted to the point of being nearly a shut-in. He rarely leaves his dorm room, except for class, and when he is forced to wander the campus at night because his dorm room mate has a girl over. When an attractive girl starts paying attention to him, Maury begins to open up. But when he learns she is just being nice because she feels sorry for him, all hell breaks loose. Add to this a mysterious specter who may or may not exist outside of Maury's head, urging him deeper and deeper into his private inner darkness. The specter is never named, but he is unique-looking. A man, blindfolded (and yet he has no trouble seeing) and dressed in a fur-trimmed, floor-length pimp coat.

This movie tries to emulate the atmosphere of a European horror film. The pace is slow, snail slow, but intentionally so, as it takes its time building characters and atmosphere before turning on the horror. And when it finally does so, the filmmakers do not wallow in the gore. What blood scenes there are are handled with style and taste, milking plenty of raw power out of them.

The major problem, however, is that the payoff of the movie is stale and predictable, story-wise (though visually well-handled). This is a big problem, after having invested so much patience into it by this point. However, that I made it that far without being bored is a worthy feat in itself. The characters are all interesting and well-played, and hold our attention throughout. None of them is a two dimensional cookie-cutter character.

It's nice to see a micro budget film maker who takes the time and care to plan and execute his shoots so well. This is one of the slickest micro-budget movies I have ever seen, and one of the most promising young directors to come out of that arena in a long time.

INEXCHANGE will be released later this summer from Brain Damage Films, and is definitely worth looking for.

Shot Lists

2005-02-13T11:19:00.000-08:00

ORGANIZATION PART I
Shot Lists: From Pre-Production through Post Production

By Peter John Ross

Like so many of us with a desire to eventually make movies for a living, I like to view my little DV shorts (aka Microcinema) as a training ground. Even when making a 5 minute camcorder short, the kind where you are the writer/director/producer/cameraman/editor, you can still prep for bigger shoots, and develop good habits. One of these habits is creating and maintaining a shot list.

A shot list is a list of all the camera angles for a shoot, including coverage and cutaways. This can be done from the script, on the fly during a shoot, or even AFTER the shoot, using the footage and just naming the shots that were obtained.

Shot lists in pre-production usually only blueprint a shoot. A basic shot list of MASTER SHOT, CLOSE-UPS (aka CU’s), et al help plan for time & basically outline what the shoot will consist of. Part of directing is deciding what shots best tell your story and elicit the emotional reaction from a viewer. Storyboards are a great second step for a shot list, but not everyone can draw or get storyboards, so a written list of shots can still achieve the real goal (which is organization).

Making a list of those shots from the script usually winds up being different than when you get there on the day and do the shoot. New shots can come up, two shots get fused into one, or you just don’t have time to get them all. During a shoot, LOGGING the shots can be a valuable tool for post-production (thinking ahead).
A “script supervisor”, the person watching the shot list and the script verifying everything from the script got shot, can scratch off each shot as they are completed, and take notes about each take and each shot. Details like which take the director liked, merged or changed shots, audio problems, time code, and as much as possible for notes for post production. Having a person doing this function can greatly increase the speed and organization of post-production.

Now after the shoot, and either the editor or the person who is doing it all need to be able to take all these shots and make editing choices from them. Again, if this is a small, simple shoot with the same person writing/directing/shooting/editing, you may not have made a shot list, but now that you have a tape full of shots that now have to be captured to the hard drive – you have to name the files and the shots in the computer in order to edit them. So, no matter what you still have a “shot list”.

Now, if you had created a shot list from the script, you can carry the same names through pre-production all the way through post-production. It can be any way you feel like organizing. I can’t tell you how to best organize your shoot, but the only thing that matters is that everyone understands it from writer to cameraman to editor. A basic shot list can consist of just saying “scene 04, take 02 Camera A” and abbreviated “S04T02A”, or any variation therein. Make up your own systems, whatever ways seem best to you.
The reason to be so detailed and to make consistent notes is because as your projects get bigger and more people get involved, there is a system in place for everyone to know what everything is in every department. You can find out where you are in the screenplay based on a shot list, or if one shot needs a title, or there was a slightly different angle – all of that information is systematically (and subsequently anally) organized and easily found.

Having worked as a post-production supervisor and lead editor on a feature film, I was dealing with a director who was the only person who had the notes and shot lists, but they existed in his memory. When capturing & trying to synch audio to his 16mm film transfers, I was trying to find shots like “George gets in car” or “Jenny at apartment”. So where in the script does that happen? How many times is George in a car? It became impossible to do anything without the director present at all times. We then devised a system and naming and assigned scene numbers, and shot lists after the fact and we were able to synch audio for the entire movie.

On the big movies & TV shows, the whole production team synchronizes by a shot list and all the way to the end. Even when you’re doing it all yourself, you can prep for eventually delegating to people like a different editor or cameraman by being organized with a shot list, and making it something everyone can understand. It makes it possible for everyone to be on the same page.

Review ATLANTIC CITY EXPRESSWAY

2005-02-11T13:27:00.000-08:00

Review ATLANTIC CITY EXPRESSWAY - Written, directed by and starring Jeff Profitt. www.856Films.com

This 38 minute would-be "inspirational thriller" was sent to me for review, so here goes. That is to say, you asked for it:

In this bore-fest director Profitt plays Andrew, a basically good boy who was raised by his bible readin' granny (Sylvia Hockenberry). Meanwhile, Andrew works for his bad Uncle Ray (Bernard Fiscus), who works in "Organized crime." Granny begs Andrew to stop working for Uncle Ray, but Andrew is too big a chump to tell his uncle he wants to quit. So he is torn morally, and soon is followed by FBI agents. What to do? What to do? Well, we all pretty much know Andrew will do the "right thing," but just to make sure, his Guardian Angel and Satan himself pay Andrew a visit to facilitate things.

I like all kinds of movies and, being a micro-budget movie-maker myself, I am very forgiving of the kinds of compromises we filmmakers sometimes need to make with our limited resources. But this is just numbingly bad. These amateur-hour filmmakers make every mistake that amateur filmmakers make. Eyelines are mismatched throughout. Lighting is mismatched in close-ups. Bad sound. The acting is beyond wooden. The direction is lifeless, devoid of passion or style. The script is sentimental, lumbering and just plain idiotic. It's black and white, old school morality is pedantic and annoyingly naive. This is, in fact, not a movie at all but a sermon disguised as something palatable to the "masses." And badly disguised at that. It is the cinematic equivalent of those repellent little comic books they always handed out at Sunday school. Or of lame-ass Christian rock.

Give me a good religious movie once in a while, but make it one with some passion. Mr. Gibson's PASSION... may be questionable in terms of my own belief system, but I do admire his ability as an artist to put the depth of his passion so agonizingly onto film. This dumbass piece of drivel, ATLANTIC CITY EXPRESSWAY, inspires nothing but yawns.

Not the Same Dog Pile?!

2005-02-09T17:11:00.000-08:00

For those of you who have cruised by to look at the site, thank you. For those who remember the old site and still cruise by, we love you.

Yes, the Dog Pile has changed. Time moves forward; change is good; blah blah blah -- you know the routine. Doesn't change the fact that this is a different breed of dog. We've gone from the beautiful lounging canine to something akin to a street mutt, at least in how we look. We are leaner, and, once we get some more people working for table scraps, we'll be more active. Give us some time, and we hope to win over the old friends as well as new ones. Heck, given enough time and support, we'll even try to hop through a few burning hoops.

So click on the comment lines of the front page items. Tell us what you think, what you like or don't like, tell us what you want to see and read. We may not use any of your comments, but at least we'll know that people are out there, and they are reading.

Minds of Terror - mini review

2005-01-27T21:49:00.000-08:00

MINDS OF TERROR
Starring Randy Allen, Mark Adams and Nicole Crawford. With Joe Estevez and Conrad Brooks. Written and directed by Mark Adams.

A little BLAIR WITCH, a little SESSION 9, this meandering, cerebral and budgetless horror movie is smarter than most budgetless horror movies. Great locations enhance the unease and claustrophobia that the film makers are at least trying for. The stuff with Conrad Brooks makes no sense at all, and the gore scenes are clumsy and infrequent. Forget that, though. The focus here is an attempt at building and sustaining atmosphere, and that is laudable, even if it is not quite up to the task. Worth your time.

Ron Ford

DVD Film School

2005-01-06T20:55:00.000-08:00

DVD Film School
By Peter John Ross (www.sonnyboo.com)

What a world we live in today, originating with the laserdisc, supplemental material with a movie has become a standard as DVD's made their way into virtually every home. Filmmakers have benefited greatly from this, especially for the astute observers. Not a lot of us can afford film school, but I can help you make a curriculum from your own DVD collection and from discs available from the public library for free. A lot can be learned from DVDs in the form of commentary tracks, documentaries, as well as the obvious just viewing the movie for it's own value.

You can create your own "curriculum" from many of your favorite movies on DVD. If there are commentary tracks and extras, they usually contain a lot of valued information on how something was done. Not everything has techie, scary guys on how they did the special FX.

Commentary tracks have some of the best lessons to learn from. For example, Rob Reiner & Cameron Crowe commentaries are almost exclusively on performance and nothing on camera, and others are too much about camera tricks; they neglect to say anything about actors in the movie. And there's an all-new category of commentary tracks for people, like Tim Burton, who don't talk for 20 minutes at a time and teach us nothing.

My Best DVD commentary Tracks (for filmmakers)

ROAD TO PERDITION with director Sam Mendes. This isn't even one of my favorite movies, but it's, by far, my number 1 commentary track. Sam Mendes understands and has the perfect balance between actor's performance & directing the camera. A lot of commentaries are too skewed towards one & not the other.

STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN with director and uncredited writer Nicholas Meyer. It features the essence of storytelling from a formerly young up & coming director looking back after years of experience.

TRUE ROMANCE with Quentin Tarantino writer's commentary track.
A great story of how the kid from a video store worked several angles to become the "Quentin" that we know as a pop culture icon. More sedate than usual, and at his most endearing, Tarantino's storytelling is at its best with the commentary. Also an explanation of why he does his stories non-linearly is priceless.

THE USUAL SUSPECTS from Bryan Singer director, & writer Christopher McQuarrie discuss the beginnings of the story and again, the balance between story and acting plus the great cinematography of this movie.

SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (Criterion collection edition) from director Jonathan Demme, Jodie Foster, and Anthony Hopkins. Not available on the "special edition" disc widely available, the commentary track has many insights into the actor's process and the director anecdotes and trivia make for interesting examination of a landmark film.

SLACKER (Criterion collection DVD) - the "crew" commentary with Rick Linklater & Lee Daniel has many cost-saving tips and other seeds that can grow in the minds of many young filmmakers.

CHASING AMY (Criterion collection DVD/Laserdisc) - Although it's the usual comedy & antics of a large group of buddies, in between the jibes mocking Ben Affleck's movie Phantoms, there are some insights into the creative process of Kevin Smith. A few, and it's selective but the few nuggets of info are worth the banter.

LORD OF THE RINGS (all 3 movies from the 4 disc special edition DVD sets) - all 4 commentaries on all 3 movies can mine many great ideas and information on filmmaking in general. That's over 40 hours of viewing/listening right there.

FIREFLY: THE COMPLETE TV SERIES - disc four, the last episode commentary by Joss Whedon. By his own admission, creator/writer/director/producer Joss Whedon does a somewhat less trivial commentary and tries to describe the origin of the concepts behind the ideas for an episode of phenomenal television. Getting philosophical and still maintaining his wit and humor, Joss' revelations and gratitude to everyone around him make this commentary special.

EL MARIACHI (all DVD versions & originated on Laserdisc) when the opening words of the commentary tell you it's more like "how to make a movie for $7,000 or less", how bad can it be? It has a lot of great information delivered as you watch the inexpensive action movie.

The BMW Films series "THE HIRE" has all 8 films made for the web, plus their commentary tracks. Hearing insights from directors John Frankenheimer, War Kong Wai, Ang Lee, Tony Scott, Joe Carnahan, Guy Ritchie, and more make this a riveting and educational tool on telling stories in the short form. Not many will have $1million per 6 minute short, but the style and motives are priceless if you can learn to adapt the knowledge to match your budget.

THIS IS SPINAL TAP (Criterion version DVD and Laserdisc long out of print) - the commentary track by the three lead actors Harry Shearer, Michael McKean, and Christopher Guest is very very different than the one on the commonly available "Special Edition DVD". On the Special Edition, they do a commentary as the characters. On the hard to find Criterion version, they do a commentary as actors, writers, and filmmakers. Lesson learned? It really boggled my mind to learn they never set foot out of Los Angeles County to make the movie. The power of suggestion of putting a title that says "Atlanta, Georgia" whilst showing a hotel can really effect perception in the viewer's mind.

Honorable mentions -
RUSHMORE (Criterion collection DVD) for Wes Anderson on his second movie features many great cinematic advice.

GOOD WILL HUNTING with Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Gus Van Zandt carry on about the experience working on this Academy Award-winning "indie" film.

GLADIATOR with Ridley Scott lets go a lot of epic filmmaking nuggets

MADE with the "action commentary" by Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn and Peter Billingsley aka Ralphy from "A Christmas Story" where they use the same technology from football games to literally point out things on screen. MADE was an indie film shot in New York and features a lot of Soprano's cameos but also has some indie film techniques.

YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN/BLAZING SADDLES DVDs with commentary track from Mel Brooks let loose some comedy genius and methods of old from a guy who's been funnier longer than most indie filmmaker's grandparents have been fornicating.

SEVEN SAMURAI, Criterion Collection DVD, whose commentary has the sole distinction of being done by a film critic as opposed to a filmmaker, one of the cinemas greatest films ever made teaches a lot about the genius of Kurasawa from a unique, outsiders perspective.

---------------------------------------------------------

My Favorite DVD EXTRA's
Documentaries & Extras offer up a lot of fluff and sometimes some of the best reality of the film business. Here are the most educational in my humble opinion

EL MARIACHI DVD (all editions)
TEN-MINUTE FILM SCHOOL from Robert Rodriguez is one of the most common denominators between new filmmakers in this, funnily enough 13 minute DVD extra. It's not as obvious why this is inspirational. After you've made several DV movies, and done 200 hours of editing, you can start to understand how genius Robert's shooting & editorial style was and what he's really demonstrating.

JAWS 25th anniversary DVD (actually the 20th anniversary Laserdisc set transferred to DVD) in the documentary "On Location" features one segment where Steven Spielberg describes how he wanted to do the Kinter boys death scene on the beach, he wanted to do it in one shot, and it wasn't possible with 180 degrees. Spielberg's solution is genius and every filmmaker should see why he is a master filmmaker at age 29.

ENGLISH PATIENT (Miramax Collector's Edition) - MASTER CLASSES EDITING with Anthony Minghella. A lot of DVDs have deleted scenes, so rarely are they accompanied with such a great explanation as to why & how they get left on the cutting room floor. Sadly, the great Walter Murch, Academy Award-winning editor of English Patient, gets missed in this session.

PULP FICTION (Miramax Collector's Edition & Criterion laserdisc) EXTRA, Quentin Tarantino on the Charlie Rose show. At the zenith of the Quentin era, his history, perspectives, and ideals get put through the passionate mouth of Quentin unfiltered.

FROM DUSK TILL DAWN (Miramax Collector's Edition), there are two extra's worthy of note... the entire feature film documentary "FULL TILT BOOGIE" on an extra disc, and one snippet from the "Hollywood Goes to Hell" featurette where Quentin's mom describes his beginnings, and Robert Rodriguez' family recounting his early years.

CLERKS X: TENTH ANNIVERSARY - The "SNOWBALL EFFECT" documentary is a fine example, and an exhilarating story on how a schmoe not unlike us gets catapulted to stardom & a career in film. It's a great manual on the selling of an independent film.

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (original DVD release) - On the documentary "Into the Breach", Spielberg's father recounts, with additional stories from the man himself, several stories (including priceless clips) of his first super 8 and 16mm forays into war movies. Lesson Learned? At age 13, Spielberg was a better director & innovative filmmaker than 99% of the DV camcorder jockey's out there. Some people just have filmmaking in their blood and can be Mozart at birth; others have to work at it.

DIE HARD (2 disc edition) - On disc two there is a great supplemental on EDITING 2 scenes from the raw footage and also a cool 3 minute clip on "to letterbox or not to letterbox" which should be required viewing for anyone who needs to convince the idiots who think they get "less" picture with the black bars

AMERICAN MOVIE - The movie itself needs to be viewed by anyone who thinks his or her idea for a movie is so good it needs to be made. Mark Borchardt is a tragic hero. This is the guy we're all terrified to be. Lesson Learned? Whether we want to admit it or not, every filmmaker of any genre could very easily be perceived as wacked as him, but not all of us are as passionate.

THE GODFATHER COLLECTION (disc 4, the BONUS MATERIAL), the HBO documentary "A Look Inside the Godfather Family" is the antithesis of AMERICAN MOVIE. It's the same type of story except of a successful filmmaker with tons o' vision & talent. I don't think too many people can think that Francis Ford Coppola is not passionate. Unlike Mark Borchardt, though it's pretty clear he can get his vision on a movie screen and it exceeds expectations... whenever he doesn't cast Sofia Coppola in a leading role. Also the value of rehearsals and quality of script differ from Mark Borchardt. Lessons learned? Rehearsals and passion and teamwork and emotion and Al Pacino combined can make a good movie or two. Seriously, it's about how someone's passion & vision utilized in a collaborative environment can synergize a masterpiece. Tack on the business end of things & it's too rich to be passed up. For most filmmakers, we want to land somewhere in between Francis Ford Coppola and Mark Borchardt.

Walt Disney's FANTASIA, uncut version from boxed set DVD. The documentary and the commentary track, pieced together from archived radio & television interviews, demonstrate a lot of creativity and the innovative thoughts behind one of the 20th centuries greatest cinematic genius', long before it got raped by Michael Eisner for a few bucks at a theme park. How he conceived and executed so many radical ideas from nothing staggers the mind.

THE SHINING (from Kubrick Collection) - The documentary, on set material from Vivian Kubrick, shows a very real, not pretty at all look at Stanley Kubrick & his really evil directorial style. For all of us who hailed Kubrick as a genius needs to see what he could be like on set. Lesson Learned? I think you can get a good movie without resorting to this kind of anger and violence. In many ways this is great to see because unless your last name is "Kubrick", you will probably never get to treat people like this and ever make a movie again.

STAR WARS EPISODE I THE PHANTOM MENACE - On the topic of deleted scenes, the documentary preceding the deleted scenes section features Walter Murch, Francis Ford Coppola, and Phillip Kaufman explaining how & why scenes get deleted. The priceless story of Walter Murch excising a moment from film "Julia" and the director saying that the scene being cut from the film was the very scene that got him to do the project to begin with. Lesson Learned? Say what you like about the movie, all of the documentaries and behind the scenes on this DVD draw a pretty clear blueprint on how to tackle an epic in the new world of CGI, blue/green screen, and special effects.

THX1138 (2 disc version) - 2nd Disc the "Legacy of Filmmakers" doc on the early foundations of American Zoetrope is relevant to filmmaking not only for it's historical significance as it is the warning of being frivolous with money & opportunities as Francis Ford Coppola was, compared to the frugal nature of George Lucas. Then seeing the original short film "Electric Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB" has many redeeming qualities.

HIDDEN FORTRESS Criterion edition DVD - George Lucas' interview on the disc is indicative of ALL the 1970's filmmaking rebels and the influence Akira Kurasawa had on them.

BRAM STOKER's DRACULA (special edition laserdisc) the Featurette showcases the lengthy rehearsal process. Everyone was there from Anthony Hopkins to Keanu to Gary Oldman and how everyone worked long before cameras rolled. Again, the vision of the cast & crew living at the Coppola house & having dinner together makes me seek that sense of surrogate family (IE teamwork) that at least makes the work feel less like work & more like fun. Lesson learned? Rehearsals are important as is bonding between cast & crew.

LORD OF THE RINGS: FELLOWSHIP OF THE RINGS Special Edition, on disc four of this impressive set, the recounting of many stories of the fun of shooting the movie made this seem like the ultimate love fest of respect and antics. Lesson learned? Have fun and create an environment where people want to be there by allowing participation in the creative process and also mutual respect for every aspect of making a film.

SUPERMAN (special edition) - One word... "Verisimilitude". Watch the documentary on the disc & you'll understand. I refuse to say more.

ALIEN QUADRILOGY (as well as original Laserdisc sets) - the interview with Ridley Scott on why he deleted the "cocoon" scene in the original Alien, and James Cameron's idea to make an army of Aliens editorial by re-using the same alien suits make this another great catch for people making do with what they got and making the tough choices for reasons of "pacing".

1941 (collector's edition DVD and laserdisc set). The documentary features a very extensive history of the writing of the screenplay by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, and their involvement with John Milius. Lesson learned? Being a USC film school grad used to be quite an "in" to Hollywood via alumni. Read between the lines - When you get famous, never forget to help someone out who needs it. Francis Ford Coppola took in John Milius who took in Robert Zemeckis who took in Peter Jackson.

Some of the movies listed are big budget Hollywood movies, so learn to adapt some of the information to your own style & even budget. A lot of the information is creative in nature, or even business related and can benefit the savvy filmmaker that can infer relevant info for them.

If your favorite movies have extras or commentary tracks, listen and learn. Take something from the creation of the movies you love. Knowing a bit about how a movie was made possible gets you closer to figuring out how to make your own visions. Deductive reasoning is the key. Adapt & overcome any obstacle.

Hey, you behind the camera…

2004-08-28T11:53:00.000-07:00

Submitted by by Conrad Angel Corral

We’re people too

The other day, I received two good audition calls: One stated they wanted to cast me directly for a small role, and the other from an advanced Film School director. Both had the personal touch, so it made the calls all the more interesting.

However, all hell soon broke loose:

After several phone messages and emails, the “direct book” became a call for an audition. When I received the script, the character name I was to audition for was nowhere to be found. Between trying to set up an audition, and trying to find an answer to the character questions, I finally took it upon myself to choose which character was mine and after several calls/emails an audition time was tentatively set.

Moving from “direct book” to an audition, inability to speak with someone about the character and the unorganized feeling associated with this production was quickly dropped my interest in this project. Besides, I had friends come from out of town the weekend of their shoot. When the tentative audition date came and went, with a call later stating the casting person was going out of town and I should call with another time for the following week, I decided to walk away from the project. However, the following week I got a call stating the actor/director would call me to set up an audition directly. So, I continued.

When we finally did meet, it ended up being the night and exact time Presidential Candidate John Kerry was going to speak at the convention. I don’t know about you, but I want Bush out and Kerry in, so driving around town to some audition where the crew couldn’t get their stuff together was not high on my priority list. But, I’m and actor and it took it as a test in keeping my skills strong in the face of diversity! When I arrived at the apartment of the director, I grew more concerned. As I sat in this half-apartment facing a makeshift small stove, frig and sink and two dogs scratching at the back bedroom door, I couldn’t help but wonder how could this person afford a good final product? When I did audition, my limited seven lines (it was a small role to start with) were cut to five for auditioning purposes. After a couple of quick reads, I was out the door scratching my head why?

As for my audition with the Film School director, that too took a sudden turn for the worse:
When the director initially called, a lot of time was spent not only talking about his film and my role, but about how hard it is to work 9-5 and make a film and how we all need to make our own products to move a head. In the brief time we spent on the phone, I felt a nice bond with this person.

The evening of the audition, which was actually prior to the experience I mentioned above, I found myself running behind so I called and left a message. When I arrived (only minutes late), I came face to face with two other actors who had a look in their eyes like they had been there for quite sometime. After signing in and obtaining my sides, I went to sit down and look over the script only to be informed I should go in. When I mentioned I had just arrived and hadn’t had a chance to look over the sides, and suggested the other actors could go ahead of me, everyone looked at me like I was some kind of nut job. The director, now standing in front of me and the other actors, insisted 6:40pm was my time and we better getting in because my time was quickly passing.

As we approached the audition room, I took one more opportunity to inform the director I hadn’t had a chance to look over the script. However, he was to have nothing to do with it. Once in the room, he sat behind a desk with several other guys and started telling me about the role. Somewhere in the middle of his speech, he cut himself short saying we were running out of time and he began deciding which of his partners would read with me. As I was introduce to those I would be reading with, I quickly scanned the script for my dialogue and character intention, all the while a cameraperson began film me with a large camera that was literally about a foot from my face. Within a moment, I was informed we were running out of time, the first of two scenes would be dropped, and I had three minutes to possibly read the second piece twice. And, we started.

While my first read was reserved and a bit confusing (the behind the scenes folks couldn’t decide who was reading with me), it went pretty well. As adjustments were discussed for the second read, and I learned who I was suppose to be mad at and who I was allies with, I scanned the script for more info on my character and I decided my second read would include some Improv. Within moments, we began and I was up and out of my seat. I moved around the small room, I walked over to and talked at and with the other readers while delivering lines, all the while the camera followed closely. I don’t really remember what took place this second time around, but at the end there were smiles all around. As quickly as I was in, I was out the door. As I passed the guys still waiting in the lobby, I wished them good luck, only to have mean stares cut through my person.

As I proceeded to my next audition, and later rushed home to catch the final night of the Democratic Presidential speeches, all I could think of was “Hey, you behind the camera, us actors are people too”. We have lives that are just as busy as yours. We have hopes and desire to make it in this thing called acting, just like you. How can we (actors) be expected to give you (directors) our best work when the world you welcome us into is hell? If your project isn’t ready for auditions or you’re rushed to get folks in and out, why not just back off a little until all you ducks are in a row and/or you have more time? And, if you want a decent read, why rush an actor who isn’t ready? I hear so much about the folks behind the scenes wanting the folks in front of the camera to do well, however, the two cases I just described were far from that fairytale description.

When the whole evening was over, I found myself very humbled. I have a nice car, a 9-5 job that pays well and let’s me come and go to auditions and filming. I have a nice house that I can afford, a spouse that supports me when I’m down and out, and I have two films I made last year should be coming out in the coming weeks with guaranteed strong production value. Who am I to complain!

Maybe I’ll get callbacks, maybe I won’t. And, if I should get a callback what will I do? Hell, I’ll call them back, inquire more about the project and hope they offer me the role. Why? Because, I’M AN ACTOR AND I WANT TO WORK! If I don’t get a callback (which I didn’t to this point), I’ll chalk the experience up to yet another day in the life of this actor!

Ghosts of Saint Helens

2004-03-02T12:05:00.000-08:00

Submitted by Wayne Spitzer

I don’t know about other filmmakers, but for me, stories can take months, years, even decades to complete. Sometimes, obviously, they never get completed, and for a good reason: they weren’t ready. Other times -- like the clever little antigens they are -- they mutate, becoming something utterly unrecognizable from that which you had originally envisioned. Still other times – as is often the case with my own work – they get cannibalized, like all those battleship models at ILM, the minutia of which have provided high-relief detail to so many star destroyers.
And sometimes – sometimes they get co-opted. Taken over. Now, this may not be a hostile takeover (indeed, if it involves, say, a fellow filmmaker or writer, it rarely is), but a takeover is a takeover, be it invasion or seduction. Often times this takeover begins when something you have said about a personal work-in-progress inspires or otherwise lights a fire in the eyes of a creative compatriot: it may be a certain narrative premise, a singular but striking image, a compelling sub-text, anything – but it lights up their eyes, and you just know that you’re onto something. Because you just saw the evidence.

The takeover matures when, “inspired” by your idea, this creative brother-in-arms suggests changes -- experience has taught me that it is here, at the skin, at the body’s first line of defense, where one must exercise caution: most likely, the friend is just doing what friends do; that is, they are captivated by your idea and want to help you focus it, they want to offer insights on how this or that might be amplified, or this or that might be condensed, or some other might be enlarged upon. You know, shop talk.

But this might also be the start of the takeover, hombre, and you better mind your borders. You’ll know right away if said friend begins making wacky suggestions like, “why not, and this would be just nutty, if instead of a two-eyed creature pursuing her, it’s – a 50-eyed creature! How ‘bout that? Or none? A none-eyed creature! Wouldn’t that be better? Wouldn’t that be more – well, more something?”

“More eyes,” you might concede.

You’ll want to pay very close attention to what they say and do next. Phase Two of the invasion will usually commence with your friend expressing a sudden disinterest, more often by finding some fatal flaw by which your project must surely fail. This will usually sound something like, “I watched Sasquatch the other night and it had a cave-painting hominid, too. It also had a crashed plane, which was instrumental to the plot. And this thing about a ‘rogue male’ bigfoot? Hmmph.
Sounds like a line of clothing.”

There’s an old saying, “God sees the truth, but waits.”

Well, some filmmaking companions are like God: they see the truth -- and wait.

Having thus contributed to your own invasion -- and, if you’re like me, you are your own Benedict Arnold, every time – you may be tempted (again, if you are like me) to put aside your stacks of notepads, your sketches and your overdue library books, your newspaper clippings, your storyboards, your bloody friend you have been carrying about in your head for perhaps the last 12 years -- Your Project, and just say: “Fuck it. Nobody wants to see a sasquatch movie, anyway. Certainly not one that isn’t so much about sasquatch as it is about being human, about being lonely, about feeling as though you’ve lost family, friends, lovers, your youth -- your whimsy and your hope and your trust -- your faith -- along the way. One that’s about finding some of those things again, or ghosts of them – including a species of Northwest hominid, all but one of whom may have been wiped out by the eruption of Mount Saint Helens in 1980. Nobody wants to see your ode to 1970s America and creepy documentaries narrated by Peter Graves (The Mysterious Monsters). Nobody wants to see a fucking horror movie in the tradition of Bill Forsyth (Local Hero). Go get drunk or something. Forgetaboutit.”

And so you do. Forget about it, that is. If you’re a bonehead like me you’ll even announce it, perhaps to Said Friend: “I … (just imagine John Cleese in all his clipped, English glory) have decided not to pursue Ghosts of Saint Helens at this time. Thank you.”

Months go by. The leaves fly from the calendar. Perhaps you tinker with an adaptation of a story you found during your research.

Then one day it comes: Said Friend has a great idea. He is on fire; he has never been surer of anything in his life. This thing is going to be huge. Said Friend is going to bust down the walls of Hollywood. He, the Alpha Male, is going to break the back of the opposition, leading us -- the timid and the unsure -- to victory. Said Friend is rabid. A storm is coming; Said Friend’s storm.
Said Friend wants to make a sasquatch movie.

Now, I want to be perfectly clear about this: One cannot expect to copyright, patent, trademark or otherwise own a mere idea. Same goes for titles, and – though I may be going out on a limb here -- giant hominids who’s existence remains un-proven. And yes, though I'd expended a considerable amount of research toward my movie -- one shouldn't even consider it until they've read all the literature; the John Greene catalog, Peter Byrne, Doris Lessing's "The Thoughts of a Near Human", Scott Sander's Bad Man Ballad, Robert Michael Pyle's Where Bigfoot Walks (which, at one point, touchingly describes sasquatch trackers as "men who don't so much want to find bigfoot, as be bigfoot.") -- one still cannot hope for any exclusive right to the material, much less expect it.

But one can, and should, expect friends to respect their borders, their privacy -- their sovereignty over their own brainchildren. No one else has to; it’s a free country, er, sort of. But your friends, if they be true, must.

Because they know what you’ve been working on, whether you’re working on it right now or not. They know that you’ve been daydreaming – and night-dreaming too – this thing into shape, that you’ve been combining this inspiration with that aspiration; and that personal experience with this fabled lore – and overall trying to organize chaos into something which, hopefully, not only entertains but works for you on some personal level. Something which may, if you keep revising and polishing and working it over, and if you’re lucky – gulp -- touch the universal.

They know this. Said Friend knows this. But he’s going to sell a sasquatch movie, by god. And you need to just let go of your ego and “go along for the ride.” You don’t ask Said Friend: “Er, if it’s not about ego, why don’t we just produce my Ghosts of Saint Helens? I’ve only been developing it off and on for over a decade.” You don’t say: “Ah, now come on, bud, you know that’s not cool.” You don’t say what you really need to say, because you value Said Friend’s friendship, and you admire his determination, and your fate really does seem to be tied up with his more often than not, and you just don’t know how to tell him that that’s your girlfriend and you’re not interested in a threesome.

And here, if you are like me, is your darkest hour. Here is your night in Gethsemane. For, if Said Friend, who is more motivated than you, who is a better salesman than you, who works faster than you and who will stop at nothing to get that big budget unlike you (a budget you just might want to be a part of, considering that it was, er, your project once?) is going to make Said Sasquatch Movie, well, you’ve got just one option left.

Collaboration.

I mean, really, that’s your option. This is microcinema, gang, not the big leagues. Whatever project is being made by whomever, the whole gang’s going to be in on it, and nobody wants to do the same thing twice. Now, you can let Said Friend make his movie and still do yours at a much later date, but, sheesh, what the hell is the point in that? So Said Friend can give you one of his patented smirks when some 15-year-old Internet critic accuses you of being un-original?

Is filmmaking tough on friendships? I dunno. It doesn’t have to be. But collaborations can be hell, that’s for sure. Especially if you feel – rightly or wrongly – that you’ve been forced into it.

Here is where we end up selling the farm. We, the Rogue Male, as opposed to the Alpha. See, I had envisioned my sasquatch as what the late professor and part-time cryptozoologist Grover Krantz called a “rogue male”. That is, a solitary bigfoot (Krantz believed the monster to be a species of Gigantopithecus blacki, which roamed southeast Asia some 400,000 years ago and may have crossed the Bering Land Bridge into North America) who is the last of his kind and is searching for a clan of like-animals; a clan, unfortunately, he will never find. I envisioned him as a wanderer and a moon-gazer, a sentient creature burdened with the ultimate loneliness. A creature that, after terrifying the hell out of an RV full of searchers, ends up revealing himself to be more evolved than anyone had ever imagined. A creature who’s learned fire, and who’s cave is adorned with primitive frescos.

In short, a creature that feels a lot like the protagonist, and yes, a little like the author … at the time. It wasn’t going to be some grand statement; I wasn’t trying to express myself. If your sole goal is to express yourself, start a diary, and leave filmmaking to people who want to tell great stories (filmmaking is tough; poets need not apply). I only knew that I felt comfortable with those characters (including a big Indian guy who was about as svelte as Rush Limbaugh and played against every stereotype imaginable) and the situations I’d put them in, and that eventually they’d start to walk and talk on their own. And I felt comfortable with my lone sasquatch, Atatilla – after an Indian legend. I envisioned him as something not so different from Rick Baker’s King Kong (yes, a lot smaller) -- badass yet bedroom-eyed.

But the thing with collaboration is that your unique vision goes in one end, intact, but comes out the other – transformed. Your rogue male becomes an alpha. And that’s a whole different animal. Said Friend’s animal. And what you end up with is two very different primates occupying the same clan (though usually the rogue is invading the alpha's territory, not the other way around). What you end up with is two very different philosophies butting heads. And there’s bound to be some blood.

How do you tell Said Friend, for example, that -- in your opinion – part of his current approach is trite at best and offensive at worst? How do you tell him that parts of it risk squandering all the mystery -- all the terror -- inherent in the sasquatch phenomenon? How do you tell him that Dog Soldiers and Sasquatch have already been made, and that little will be gained by combining them; i.e., swapping monsters?

Above all, how the hell do you tell him that, while you are charmed by his devotion to your evolved bigfoot, Ewoks were not what you had in mind?

Your friend just might take issue and lob what he thinks are subtle barbs at you on a filmmaking website.

Because they’re assuming that you think like they do, and that you’re as driven by ego as they are.

It’s a conundrum, and it leads to a kind of paralysis. It’s the age old question of choosing between two goods: Do I tough it out myself, knowing that without Said Friend’s near pathological drive nothing may ever come of it? Or do I take the plunge, knowing I’ve lost my girl right there because Said Friend’s ego and temper will make a true collaboration impossible?
Ah, hell. If you’re like me, you’re so beaten down by life anyway that you’ll take the plunge. I mean, you’ll really take the plunge: you’ll congratulate Said Friend on his panache and bluster, you’ll assure him that it’s about time someone made a rip-roarin’ sasquatch movie, you’ll offer your support, your 12 years of research and development, your texts and subtexts, your dramatic defining moments, your title – hell, you’ll insist on the title. In short, you’ll do and say all those things Said Friend maybe should have said so many years ago, during so many endless conversations, when you talked and talked your vision away, and he believed in it even if you did not.

You want to make movies, by god, and Said Friend does have a knack for making things happen. And now you’re in the back seat of a “SAID FRIEND and you” production. Now your razed temple has been rebuilt, but in someone else's image.

Now your sasquatch is an Alpha Male, which really is a fucking line of clothing.

And you’ve only got yourself to blame.

Look, I’ve gone on and on elsewhere about how much I admire and respect Said Friend. Nothing has changed since then. I may have introduced him to this filmmaking thing, and I’ve taught him a good deal over the years (as he has taught me, for sure), and I know I’ve inspired and influenced him, but at the end of the day -- Said Friend stands or falls by his own wits. His determination, his adaptability, and his talent have carried him far. They will carry him further. Believe me: one does not underestimate Said Friend. Because he'll prove you wrong -- er -- almost every time.

It should also be noted that I truly love Said Friend, though not, of course, in a Biblical sense. And I believe this feeling to be reciprocated. Moreover, as irritating as Said Friend can be in certain categories -- he’s been one helluvu a true friend in others. And there's more: If Said Friend wasn’t an Alpha, for example, there may never have been a completed Shadows in the Garden, and it sure as hell wouldn’t be in Monstersdotcom.

Finally, I think much of Said Friend’s treatment of what we are now both calling Ghosts of Saint Helens is excellent (though it may owe a bit much to Frankenheimer's Prophecy, a favorite, admittedly, to both of us). We’ll play it by ear. See how it goes. I’m damn sure going to have some input, I’ll tell you that.

That said, I’ve a few things to say about we rogues. I’ve got a few answers for Said Friend and anyone else who thinks they are always right, all the time. These are just non-specific responses to various comments, quips, barbs, and accusations leveled at me over time by Said Friend and others.

You’ll pardon me if this all seems a bit scatter shot.

My trigger finger’s been itching for a long while.

Ego.

People, mostly alpha males, who over-use this word are usually just projecting. They’re projecting onto others what is already in their hearts. In fact, they are the ones in a state of competition, in what Hobbes called a state of “every man against every other man for limited resources.” Oftentimes their ambition involves an active suppression or censorship of other's ideas and accomplishments.

Why? Because those just might make a shadow big enough for them to get lost in. And that pisses alpha males off. It’s all about them, baby.

Listen: You can be great without having to be greater than someone else.

Vision.

“Vision” sounds so pretentious and vainglorious, but all vision is is what you see, either with your own two eyes or your mind’s eye or your fifty fucking eyes. That’s all. And we all see things differently. Half the fun of watching a great director’s work is seeing the world through their eyes for awhile. It's not about one seeing better than the other, it's about seeing things differently. It's about a singular, unified vision which can take you to the strangest new world of all, another human soul’s perception.

Self-Doubt.

Hey, when it comes to being an artist, self-doubt is part and parcel to the territory. Sauce for the Goose. I don’t think you can be an artist without having self-doubt. I don’t think you should be an artist without having self-doubt. And you sure as hell will never be a great artist without having some measure of it; that’s what propels an artist to greatness. It’s what makes you try harder – not some demonic, fated obsession which came to you in a fevered dream, like Hitler, that you’ve just got to be better than everyone else.

Self-doubt lies at the very core of who we are – as artists and as human beings. An artist who never doubts himself is no artist at all. He’s a motivational speaker.

Cynicism.

We rogue males may rail at the world for its indifference, and we may seem cynical, but in fact it's a false cynicism, and it stems from the same source as all cynicism. Like poor Ivan Karamazov, we’re just mad as hell about the unfairness of things and furious that things can’t be better. Old Ivan is really just a bleeding humanist. In the end, false cynicism stems from an eternal hope and optimism – we know it is all useless and yet fight anyway!

True cynics -- whose ranks do not include Said Friend -- don’t care either way. They live, they make some flicks (usually bad ones), and they die. They never question the meaning of their, er, product, no more than they question the meaning of Life (there is none, by the way, but at least I ask). Isn’t that the ultimate cynicism?

Futility. With Grace.

What makes an artist sympathetic is the same thing that makes his or her characters sympathetic. Empathy. Our hours of doubt. It's about rolling that rock up a hill like Sisyphus even though you know it's just gonna roll back down again. It's about doing your best in the face of utter futility.

It isn’t about delusion.

It isn’t about chanting a mantra until it becomes true.

Optimism.

Said Friend would probably say that he stands for optimism while I stand for cynicism. Yet Shadows in the Garden ends on an optimistic note in which the story has gone somewhere, something irreversible has happened, has been accomplished, that can never happen again. Something has been transcended.

By contrast, Said Friend’s short (which is excellent by anyone's standard and probably better than mine), one version of it anyway, ends on a note of complete and total futility. Everything is lost, nothing gained.

Significant? I doubt it. But it’s something to think about, you!

Delay.

Said Friend’s spiel: “So, are you going to wait until you're sixty-years-old to do it?”

Hey, I’m doing it now. I’m thinking it and working it and envisioning it now. All the time. Am I going to wait until I’m sixty to film it?

Yep. If that’s what it takes.

Education.

Sometimes Said Friend and others make fun of my long education. But education means realizing your Big Idea maybe ain’t that big, and has probably been done a thousand times before. Education means knowing that while “So what am I really trying to say here?” is, technically, a rhetorical question, it’s the stupidest one ever uttered.

Collaboration.

Collaboration is, indeed, the sine qua non of filmmaking. But if you’re going to collaborate, and expect others to be thick-skinned, you better fucking grow one, too.

Friendship.

Friends listen and encourage; they don’t plunder. They aren’t carpetbaggers. You are always at liberty to indulge your fancy with friends. Like being able to talk about your work freely, and have it remain your work. Then again, if a friend is inspired by something you said or wrote, and yes, even wants to expand upon it – maybe you should just feel bloody flattered and encourage him (hey, I’m agonizing over these things -- I’m the self doubt guy, remember?).

I think the main thing is when you’re at this point is to remember that you are, first and foremost, friends. The friendship goes on; the work goes on. One way -- or the other.

I placed a phone call to Said Friend before allowing this piece to go forward. It was a nice conversation, and yes, I felt guilty as hell for the things I'd written. And while I was irked a little at his occasional minimizing of my contributions to his -- yes, pretty much his now, it seemed, though I may have read him all wrong -- I was also startled by how many things he'd forgotten, things I'd told him about my ongoing sasquatch project, things he truly believed were his own invention. Hell, I was startled by how much I'd forgotten. Those things in the cave, for example (Indian artifacts in Said Friend's version) -- weren't those the shiny trinkets that, in yours, would connect the protagonist to his past? And this idea of the creature's facial expressions, of his ancient, ancient eyes -- wasn't that how you'd described (and written) Atatilla, when he'd rescued your hero from the chasm? When, staring at him through the rain, your hero finally learns just how wrong he's been about, well, everything?

And it made me wonder about how wrong I might be, fancying Said Friend, even in jest, a bandit. (Said Friend will surely pardon my metaphorizing him with bigfoot, commonly considered an animal. But don't you see, S.F.? That's precisely my point about the Indian/smallpox thing. Sure, it could be powerful. But I suggested it without realizing how offensive it could be!)

And yes, it made me wonder about how many of the things I've been ranting about here were ever on-purpose in Said Friend's mind -- or ever real outside my own.

Hypothetical Reader, I don't know. He is my friend, as I've made abundantly clear. Yet if he is genuinely unaware of what I've perceived over the years as a sort of carpet bagging; or if I am unaware of some delusory condition of my own -- that can only lead to a downer of a conclusion.

Which is that maybe one shouldn't discuss their works-in-progress with friends. Maybe that renders a disservice to you both.

And man, that sucks. For in my friend's own words: If you can't talk to a fellow filmmakers about filmmaking -- whom the hell can you talk to?

Ultimately, it boils down to people having different perceptions and different approaches to the creative process. I'm a private kind of person and my writing technique reflects that. I don't usually see the conception and/or the writing of something as collaborative; such collaborations usually result in a discombobulated mess. I like to save collaboration for where it is always needed most: Production.

In contrast, Said Friend sees everything as collaboration, and always has. I am not making fun of him for this; indeed, it is this very spirit which can make things happen, and often has. It's just that, again, we've got unique approaches.

Above all, once in collaboration, always try to recognize the value of the other's contribution. Equally important, you must try to make him see the value of your own. If you feel, for example (as I do regarding Ghosts of Saint Helens), that the monster needs remain mysterious for as long as possible, say so. If you feel that the aim of the middle act should be to terrify the viewer more than anything else (for we only fear what we do not understand, and understanding needs wait for Act Three, when the mask, so to speak, is torn off -- and we realize things aren't so unfathomable after all), say so. And if you ardently believe that, while the subtext is vital to the overall hegemony of the piece, its denouement must wait until the very end, like a cherry placed atop a summit of cream -- dude, you better say so.

The edit bay will be too late.

I reckon that, in the future, I'll just be more assertive about what's acceptable regarding collaborations and what's not. I reckon I'll be more succinct about which projects I'm willing to donate to the cause, and which ones I want bloody left alone (whether I ever complete them or not). And yes, I'll be extremely careful in what I say.

Again, it isn't about being petty and thwarting someone else. It's about securing a future for your own vision by pre-empting a take-over today.

It's about preventing your vision from becoming a ghost: lost, like mighty Atatilla, in time.

Post Script.

Said friend does not exist. He is a literary device I cooked up in order to unify my thesis. He is not based in whole or in part on any real person, living or dead.

The Art of Negotiating Nudity

2004-02-24T19:10:00.000-08:00

Submitted by Brad Paulson

This is not so much an article on how to get nudity for your low-budget movie as it is an article on how to completely fail on getting nudity for your low-budget movie.

As an example, I’ll go over all the mistakes I made on our last flick. If you do the opposite of everything I did, your chances of getting those luscious undergarments to hit the floor will increase significantly.

Before the casting began, my partners and I got together and formulated a tightly scripted verbal argument on how our nudity would only be for the sake of art, essential for the character and completely non-gratuitous. Of course, this was all bullshit. Using nudity was never intended to increase the artistic value of our movie. It was intended to get people to watch our movie. No one wants to admit that they just simply enjoy looking at cans. But let‘s face it, nudity and horror movies go together like peanut butter and chocolate. And it’s a hell of a lot better bang for your buck than any of those pricey computer generated shots that flood the movies nowadays. Besides, like some famous director once said and many others less famous have taken credit for, “a woman’s breasts are the best and cheapest special effect.”

Sorry about that. Got a little sidetracked there. Back to the article.

Our plan of attempting to negotiate for nudity failed miserably. All we got is a vague promise of partial nudity through a see through nightie. We were way too wishy-washy. If we just explained that the part required nudity up front, we would have been much better off. Lloyd Kaufman executes this technique perfectly in his Troma flicks. But no, we had to try and be all politically correct and look where that got us. Don’t even bother using the lame argument of how your subjects will be getting naked for the sake of art. This may have worked on a short film for your performance experiment class during those drunken days in college, but once everyone sobers up, it’s an entirely different story. Just be upfront about it. Embrace your sleaze.
I suppose it didn’t help that we cast at the local Starbucks either. This went over about as well as a greasy fart in church. Along with making us look completely unprofessional, we also revealed our true low-budget natures by casting at a place that only required a dollar ninety-nine cup of coffee as a deposit. People are much more likely to follow your lead if they think you have money. The trick is to never reveal how low-budget you are right away. If you‘re as low-budget as I am (and that‘s pretty low, I‘m telling you), do it the Hollywood way. Rent an expensive car, see if you can find a friend in the business, and ask them if they’re really getting treated fairly as the peons they are. After they agree to take the risk of getting fired, work out a deal to shoot at their glamorous locale when their bosses are out to lunch. Then, roll up in style to greet the ladies in your hip and trendy, yet very temporary vehicle. In other words, lie, lie, lie.
It’s a damn sad truth, but as far as getting what you want goes when you’re super low-budget, you’ll more often than not get cornholed for telling the truth. Let everyone slowly realize how broke you really are. Hopefully, they won’t piece everything together until the end of the shoot. By then, it’ll be too late. Heh-heh (insert your own evil laughter here).

When things came around to shooting the nudity, I fucked that up too. Things started off great. Everyone was drinking and having a good time. Our actress was damn near ready to give us full exposure. Then, what happened? We were all tired and rushed the scene. Fatigue took precedence over skin! If everyone would have kept partying who knows what would have happened? But, I had to go and wussy out. As a result, the scene turned out to be the exact kind I always protest in movies, the ones with the clothes on. We could have easily avoided this error by simply allowing enough time to shoot the scene. This would have let us milk the production value for all it’s worth (for the lack of a more tasteful term). But no, like dumb-asses we scheduled the scene as the very last one in the shoot. And on an independent movie this works out to be right around five thirty in the morning. Not a good idea. When you’re going for nudity, it must be treated with as much care and precision as an elaborate action sequence. Take the whole fraggin’ day if you have to. Hell, take a whole fraggin’ week! That’s what all those horny teens will be renting the movie for anyway.

Don’t hesitate to convey to your potential nude subject how much easier it will be to sell the movie once they’ve gotten naked. If they protest and call you a sleaze, ask if they’ll accept any money. If that changes their mind, ask them if it‘s a moral or a financial issue. If they say it‘s a financial one, ask them why they responded to an ad that said “no pay, copy and credit, meals provided?” Damn, I wish I would have thought of that argument when we were casting.

Okay, kiddies, let’s sum up all the mistakes I made.

Attempting to negotiate for nudity.

Not embracing my own sleaze (see above mistake).

Casting at Starbucks.

Telling the truth about my financial situation.

Not partying long enough.

Making sleep a priority over smut.

Okay, there it is. Your best bet at achieving nudity without a budget is to do exactly the opposite of what I did. Best of luck and may your casting couches feel the warmth of bare flesh, and hopefully not just yours.

The Ins and Outs of Short Ends

2003-12-03T19:47:00.000-08:00

Submitted by Scott Spears

So you’ve scraped together a few extra dollars to shoot film, but you’re still a bit tight on cash and somebody says, “Buy short ends!” Now, you’ve heard about them but aren’t sure you want to buy somebody else’s leftovers. Well, here’s the scoop on short ends. It’s film that was bought by a production that never got used, and to make some money it is being sold. It comes in four types; short ends, long ends, re-cans, and buy-backs.

Before we get into the details on these different categories you should first know where to buy short ends. My recommendation is to buy from a reputable dealer that deals in short ends and new film. There are many companies that sell short ends like; Dr. Rawstock, Media Distributors, and Short Endz, to name a few. Please note, I do not work for these companies, but have had good dealings with them. The advantage to going with an established company is they test the film they sell before it goes out the door. If you buy from somebody you don’t know, or from somebody on eBay, you don’t know if the film has been tested. For all your know it could have spent two long summer months baking in the trunk of some production assistant’s car who now wants to make some beer money by selling leftover film. Now, I’m not saying that all the film on eBay is bad film, but by going with a company that does this everyday and that lives by their long term reputation, you’ll most likely get good film stock.

Short Ends

Here’s where you save the big bucks, but there are always drawbacks to going the cheap route. Short ends are usually 250 feet and under. They are the cheapest derivative because they plentiful, but there’s less to them. On 16mm that’s about seven minutes of film which isn’t that bad, but on 35mm that’s three minutes which after a color chart, head slate, and regular slate isn’t a lot of film. If you go with a lot of short ends on 35mm, you better have a couple loaders ready to load magazines constantly. Short ends can be had for under twenty cents a foot. I once picked up some for six cents a foot.

I should add this, 16mm short ends are hard to come by because 16mm is the staple of independent filmmakers who tend to not buy more film than they need and use every inch of their film. 35mm is much more plentiful because studios and medium sized companies dump a lot of film on the market after principal photography has wrapped.

Long Ends

Long ends aren’t all that different than short ends except they are usually over 300 feet and in 35mm can be up to 980 feet. They are more expensive because they are rarer and have a longer running time, thus saving time by having less magazine changes. I like them, especially when shooting 35mm. These long loads are usually film that had been loaded and had a color chart and head slate shot on it, but never made it on set. They can run twenty-five cents a foot and up.
Re-cans

Re-cans are one of my favorites because they are usually full loads that were put in the camera, but were never exposed except maybe a foot or so for threading up. It’s almost like buying new film. They typically cost twenty cents a foot and up.

Buy-backs

These babies are rare and aren’t discounted a lot, but can save you a few pennies here and there. Buy-backs are film that was bought and never got out of the can. Often it’s the last batch of film ordered for a big picture or sometimes somebody gets excited and buys a batch of film, but then never gets anymore money to make the movie, so they are forced to call Kodak or Fuji saying they need to return the film. Usually the manufacturers say tough luck, but sometimes if it’s less than forty-eight hours or a long time client, they buy it back for a few dollars less than it was sold for in the first place. I shot a large part of feature with buy-backs with good results. Expect to pay ten to twenty percent off standard rates.

Under buy-backs, I also put just barely out of date film. Again, this is rare because the manufacturers don’t usually let film expire, but it does happen. When you start your search for film, you could call Kodak or Fuji directly and see of they have out of date film laying around.
An advantage of buy-backs is they will most likely come from the same emulsion batch which will make your cinematographer happy because they’ll be less variation in the stock. I should say, this isn’t that much of a problem today because the film manufacturing process is very consistent.

Closing Points

If you decide to try for short ends you should start buying them as soon as possible because assembling enough film, especially for a feature, will take some time. You never want to run out of film or be forced to pay through the nose for film at the last minute. If you need to though, Kodak does offer a last minute film ordering service, but you better be ready to break out the Visa gold card.

I’ve shot two features on 35mm with lots of short ends and one short on 16mm with primarily short ends, all with good results. On each of the features we did have one incident on each shoot even when dealing with reputable dealers. One time we had one roll that turned out to be two rolls that had been badly masking taped together in the middle. My guess is some tired loader was spooling up some film and didn’t even notice that he had one roll attach to another. The other incident was a mislabeled can and this is where having a good, heads up assistant camera person on crew can save you. My first AC noticed that a bit of film that was hanging out of a film magazine wasn’t the right color. Yes, unexposed film stocks of different ASA ratings have different colors. Some are lighter in color and others are darker. My AC caught this, told me, and I saw the problem. We put that roll aside.

If you do find a problem, contact the company that sold it to you as soon as possible and let them know. Most of the time they’ll replace the film immediately. Heck, sometimes if you gripe enough, you might get an extra roll or two.

The big thing to remember is short ends are a great way to save a few bucks, but if there are any questions about the film you’re using, don’t cheap out because for most occasions it will be far more costly to assemble all of the crew, cast, locations, and gear than the few dollars you saved with questionable short ends. Saying that, I’ve used short ends with great results and have helped the production values on some movies by upping the shooting ratio or getting a name actor in the cast with the savings. Final words of advice, do your research, have good a assistant cameraperson, and start buying film early.

Screenwriting Books

2003-12-03T19:41:00.000-08:00

Submitted by Richard Hogg

Looking up at my bookshelves recently I noticed how many books on screenwriting I had. A dozen at least. Cursing not only my stupidity at wasting over £100 (that’s a good four or five nights out after all) I ended up with a few sobering thoughts.

How much of the thousands of pages I had read had I actually digested and more importantly been able to use in my writing. Act structure. Climax. Peaks and troughs. Pacing. Tone. Characters versus Characterization. This is not a rant denouncing help books. I don’t believe they’re all useless. The usual suspects, i.e. Story and Screenwriters Bible are and were most useful when going back over those early drafts when I had, quite frankly, written novels in a script format.

The main point I came away with is actually the central message of this whole piece. Just write. Yes I know you’ve read it before and even if you haven’t, of course you’ve got to write. How bloody obvious can you get. But it isn’t. Recently I found myself looking back over the last week. I had been to screenwriting class on the Thursday night and had been given a assignment and I had several rough ideas for a short story or short script. What did I do? Turn on my PlayStation and play a few hours of football (soccer to our American friends, though really our sport came first). Why? I have come to realize that I work in fits and starts. Other writers seem to churn out work on a regular basis with a routine at the heart of it. One hour on a morning or between half nine and ten at night, but gradually it all builds up. Instead I find myself writing ten to twenty pages of script a day for a few weeks then nothing for a month. I’m not blocked. It’s just lethargy. Have I tired myself out? I doubt it. I just suddenly seemed to prioritize watching those West Wing episodes I taped.

Anyway back to the point. Do write regularly. It’s been said before and will be said countless times again but I can’t reinforce it enough. If you really want to do it, sitting down and thinking about the rewards at the end won’t do anything. It has to be practiced.

My second point is to read a lot. Not just scripts. Writing is writing. I know there’s a whole different craft when comparing prose and scripts but at the heart is story. You do have to think visually. You can’t have a inner monologue to reveal character but you still have to have a feel for that character. They must be real to you. You must be able to make the reader care for them, empathize with them. The plot must excite. It must be something that you would want to read or watch.

Stephen King in his book on writing says he’s a slow reader but gets through about eighty books a year. Do you read more than one a week? And no, large print or children’s books don’t count. I read fifty, maybe sixty. And I thought I read a lot. But why is it so important? It’s all to do with that little thing that all the books bang on about, your subconscious. That part of you brain that is supposedly ticking away, filing away ideas, which it decides to let you in on whenever you don’t have a pen and paper handy. I’m wasn’t sure about the whole notion but as I read more I began coming up with ideas that had a hint of a character from one novel, a plot strand from a film, along with ideas from other sources mixed in.

On top of all this, King is right when he says if you want to be a writer so you have to study writing. He’s renowned as being able to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. How does he do it? How much does he show? Is it because we like the character and don’t want anything bad to happen to them? Is it the language? The pacing? The only way you’ll ever know is to read. And make it varied. Harry Potter one week followed by a history book on the down fall of Berlin the next, followed the week after by a Booker Prize winner.

Stick to what you’re interested in sure, I tried to improve my scientific knowledge with a few popular books on black holes. It took me four weeks to get through a hundred pages. I actually found myself volunteering to do the house work rather than read this monster.

Looking back over this I’ve ranted on a bit (nothing new there) but back to the original premise. All the time I’ve spent reading how-to books, playing games, and watching reruns could have been better spent. I want to write for film and TV so I will watch film and TV, obviously. But the other activities I find myself engaging in, let’s face it, they’re not that important. If I want to be a writer, I have to read a lot and write a lot. Even if the vast majority of what I write is crap.
If it’s what you really want to do, then don’t put it off or come up with a list of excuses like I used to. Do it. A few years down the line the benefits will be obvious.

Should You Edit Your Own Movies?

2003-12-03T11:51:00.000-08:00

Submitted by Peter John Ross

Very rarely in the film industry does the filmmaker get to edit their own pieces. There are exceptions. The obvious ones are Robert Rodriguez and the Coen Brothers, who use the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes. But then there are the director’s who co-edit their movies with another editor, like Kevin Smith and his producer Scott Mosier, or James Cameron who always edits alongside other editors.

On the micro-budget level, where the funding for the DV short is in the tens of dollars, there is the mythology that you should edit your own movie. Hell anyone with a ten dollar firewire card and a home computer five years out of date can now edit, so obviously all you need to do is learn what button to push. And this is why most DV shorts suffer, especially in the editing.

I guess for newbies, which we all were at some point, it’s hard to hand over such a crucial part of the moviemaking process to someone else. And since the technology is so readily available, the newbie often does not. Now, some people have a natural knack for editing and this is not always bad. Then there are those who cannot separate the objectivity of the big picture and the minutiae of the script when it comes time to do the editing.

If you are one of those directors that can look at the raw footage, or even edit a scene together, look at it in the context of the movie and make a decision to cut out one of the best moments the actor gave because you realize that the scene is erroneous, then skip this article. Or if you have what you thought was one of the funniest jokes on paper, and even if it’s not a one-hundred percent great delivery, but you choose to use it anyway because it might be good, then please read on.

There exists a misconception that you just hand the movie over to the editor and then you sit and wait to see if they made it the way you want. The editor’s job is to work with the director and producer to shape the movie with the NLE chisel. An editor brings objectivity and a fresh perspective to the table that isn’t there with a one-man show.

Since this article is geared more towards the extremely low budget movie, the first concern is money. An option for us no-budget moviemakers is to help each other out. Find another no-budget filmmaker and edit each other’s movies, rather than taking it all on by yourself. Give each other that new opinion or fresh idea that might enhance the movie. Creating movies in a vacuum can hamper the outcome for the best possible movie.

Much like working with an actor to help shape a character, collaborating with an editor can help make a better movie. It may not be what you, the director, exactly intended, but movies are a team effort. It’s less about the director’s singular vision, and more about the story and the finished movie. Much like a character, the movie can take on a life of it’s own. I say let it breathe and give it some freedom, rather than choke on the ego of one individual.

Objectivity is difficult for a director when they go to edit. The director was on the set. He knows the actors and he remembers what happened on those days. This jades the viewing of the raw footage. An editor will look at the raw material and try to build something and not see it as the shoot, but rather the pieces of the puzzle that need to fit just right. Another, more basic concept is the job of the editor to orient the viewer. A director may not realize that the edit they did does not reveal the location or the positions of the characters, because the director was there. Whereas the editor was not there and will more easily recognize that you need an establishing shot or a wide angle to give the audience a sense of spatial relations.

Now some people learn through time and effort that they can be objective. Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier are two of the most brutal editors of their own work. They will chop scenes out that do not stand up in the editing room. James Cameron also attacks his movies with fervor. To bring a movie down to its essence, he will cut out whole subplots in the editing room, even ones that cost several million dollars to produce. Just take a look at The Abyss: Special Edition, if you don’t believe me. Please take note though, that on the big movies, even though a director supervises the edit, if there is a fight between the editor and director, the producer is the boss that has to settle the dispute.

Everyone should at least attempt to work with a separate editor once. You can find that a different approach or a new idea will only serve to enhance the story, which is all a movie is supposed to do, tell a story.

Making the Reality

2003-10-07T18:53:00.000-07:00

Submitted by James Cole

The Reality of Adding Special Effects to Your Low Budget Film

Too often I get producers and directors asking me to add an effect into their movie when the project is well into post-production and the deadline is all too close. Or else I’ll get asked to fix a shot where a do-it-yourself effect didn’t work. Most directors seem to think that with the advent of desktop computers and software like Photoshop and After Effects that anything is possible, and quite simply if you have unlimited time and money, almost anything is possible. Unfortunately, however, most of us do have limited time and very limited money. Many people seem to think that they can check out a book about special effects from the local library, learn what matte paintings and blue screens are, then go out and produce their own effects of equal quality to what George Lucas and Industrial Light & Magic seem to pull off. If you are incredibly gifted this may be so. But then you wouldn’t be reading this, would you?

So how do you achieve that great effect you imagined when you first wrote or read the script?
The first step is simple but most of you will hate it. Go through the script and make a list made up of all your dream shots. I can hear the cries already, “but I get a much better energy if I make the shots up on set,” and “I can’t do that, what if I see something on set I can use that I just can’t think off now?” Valid points, but putting together a shot list doesn’t mean you have to stick to it once you get on set. It’s just a guide, a road map of one way to get your finished movie. I find that it makes you think of all the little shots you need to get. Like the cutaways and close-ups that you usually run out of time to shoot cause you didn’t think of them before. A shot list will help in so many areas of planning your movie, not just the effects.

Once you have your shot list, go through it shot by shot and figure out how you are going to get each shot. At this point let me just ask the question you probably haven’t asked yourself. Why are you making this movie? There are many answers and all of them are personal. You could be making it to prove that you’re not a loser and that you can achieve something. You may want to be cool and say, “I am a film director” when all the people you meet ask what it is that you do. You may want to be a star and the only way you can get a lead role is to make the movie yourself. Or, and this is a wild one, you may just believe in the story you’re going to tell and want to share it with the world in the best way possible. What I’m getting at is, are you making this movie for the benefit of your own ego or is it to tell a story? If it’s for your ego go make your movie and don’t bother reading on. Oh yeah, and don’t invite me to the screening. If it’s to tell a story you must now swallow your pride and say the three magic words, “I don’t know.” Learn them, commit them to memory, get comfortable with them. Now as you are going through your shot list and you come to a shot you really want but aren’t sure how to get, can you guess what you are going to say? That’s it, ten points for the girl in the third row. I don’t know. It's simple isn’t it? Don’t be afraid of using these three words, no one will criticize you for not knowing something. Actually they will, but don’t listen to them.

The next step now that you have created a list of “I don’t know” shots, is to find out how to get them. One of the best and cheapest sources for this kind of information in this modern day we live in, is to find a movie with a similar shot, rent the DVD, and listen to the director’s commentary. This approach may be a bit hit and miss as the director could be talking about something else at the time or the bimbo actress who’s also doing the commentary won’t shut up about how good she looked in that shower scene ten minutes earlier.

Another approach is to talk to people who know. The best way to handle your “I don’t know” shots is to hire a special effects coordinator, or at least talk to one. Now don’t go calling up the guys at Industrial Light & Magic for your mini digital video short. Be realistic. Find an effects company or person that supports and understands the style of moviemaking you want to pursue. If you are a guerrilla movie maker, you don’t want a coordinator who takes six weeks to set up a shot that, no doubt will look magnificent, but is way more than you need. On the other hand, you don’t want someone who says, “that’ll do, no one will notice,” because I guarantee they will.

Now you’re probably thinking, “I can’t afford to hire a special effects coordinator.” Now this is another time to swallow your pride. Tell them the truth. I guarantee everyone who has worked on more than one movie has heard the lame bit about how “I’m going to make a movie and then get it into festivals. It will be really good for your show reel. You should be able to get more work by showing it off. When it’s finished we’ll get funding to re-shoot it properly and then we can hire you at your full price.” This kind of hype may work when getting volunteers to help out, but not when you’re talking to industry professionals. Even if you truly believe any of the above lines are going to happen (and who am I to say they’re not), please don’t use them. Speak the truth. Say “Hey I’m making a movie, I haven’t got much money, and I really want it to turn out good, but I’m not sure how and I would really like some help.” If you’re honest in your approach, there are no surprises later and you’ll gain more respect. You’ll find that many professionals will be willing to talk to you and give you advice simply because they love the business they are in and enjoy talking about it whenever they find someone who is interested. Once you’ve spoken to them, if they seem interested in your project ask if they can help out. You may find that if you have a good script and they feel they’ll enjoy working with you, they may drop their ten million an hour rate to something more workable. I doubt that you’ll get a professional for free but you never know. I have never met a person in the movie industry who’s price wasn’t negotiable.

Essentially a movie has three types of effects shots. The one that’s written in the script, the one that’s thought of on set when you think of something you couldn’t have thought of before, and the shot that went wrong somehow and needs to be fixed. Every movie has a shot fix-up job somewhere. Even if it’s just having to edit around that close up you really wanted but the moron sound guy keeps getting the microphone in frame. Unfortunately you can’t avoid these fix-up shots, but you can avoid turning the other two types of effects shots into fix-up shots. Simple advice from actually talking to a professional can often lead you to shoot something slightly different that, in turn, can save you hours, maybe even days, of work in post-production. The advise may be as simple as put the camera on a tripod and film with a static shot then when the digital effect is added you can add a little camera movement and everything will be in sync. Or in one example I came across, a director wanted a building to explode. They couldn’t afford to do a real explosion, or even a miniature explosion, so they came up with the idea of only seeing the reflection of the flames in a shiny car. They went out and got a magnificent shot of the actor walking towards the car. If I was involved during the shooting of this scene I would have recommended igniting a gas flame bar behind the actor and out of frame so that you captured the reflection of real flames in the car as well as getting a real light source. It would have taken ten minutes to set up and been relatively cheap. Instead the shot took more than a day to rotoscope all the elements and add the flames and in the end it looked like a cheap shot and cost more to get done.

Another common effect shot I get asked to do is to add muzzle flashes from guns being fired or to add bullet wounds on people. Although they are fairly simple to add in a computer, it truly isn’t that expensive to have real guns firing blanks and have your actors loaded up with squibs. It’s much more effective and realistic and probably doesn’t cost any more than getting it done in a computer. Of course there are occasions when you just can’t fire guns for real. Like when they are too close to another actor or in public places and you don’t really have a permit.

In the end it all comes down to your own personal choice and how you want your movie to end up. Having an effects coordinator on set can be of great value and can even save time and money, but if your production is unorganized or you just don’t have any cash at all, you can still benefit from just asking for advice.

Rants and Rages

2003-09-23T19:32:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Martyn Finn

Ripping Slasher Flicks

I recently went to view the spectacle that is Freddy vs. Jason. Not having seen many of the predecessors, I wasn’t much bothered as I knew it would pretty much be a stand alone film. Sadly the only bright spark in the entire film was the opening, and then sadly the ending, for which I had to wait far too long for it to arrive. In between was some ridiculously condescending filmmaking from a classic sequence of slash horror movies. Whereas Nigthmare on Elm Street and the original Friday the 13th previously found cult success in simplistic gore and blood bathing beauties, today it seems abandoning that theme altogether would be the way to go to in the search for a new audience. How wrong this is, how very wrong. Trying to palm off some sort of intellectual intrigue by getting into the minds of the killers does nothing to attract the more advanced moviegoer, when from every scene has more blood and more gore than the one before. Why not be honest about the film you’re making? This is a film about death, violence, and topping the previous death scene. Why then would you try to flog us into believing it is something it is not? It’s hard work to watch and even harder to accept that this is anything but a fading franchise. With only one bright spark coming from the news that perhaps a prequel to Nightmare on Elm Street is in the works, this film promises nothing whatsoever. Yet such a bad film is light years ahead of anything the British film industry could ever dream of churning out, but that’s another article. I hope you enjoyed reading my vented frustration, and if you think I’m exaggerating, please be my guest, and go and bore yourself to death.

The State of the British Film Industry

Here’s a little tip for aspiring young British filmmakers. First, realize that Britain is a crap place to make films. No one likes the fact that you have a camera, and unlike Americans, hardly anyone wants to be on camera. People hardly ever let you film, even if you ask them. Lastly the weather is crap as are the available locations. I’ve seen the work of many amateur filmmakers, and their films all look terrible, simply because of the locations and weather. For God’s sake, if your interested in this sort of thing as a career at least care about the places that you shoot. Go out and take pictures of every angle. If it’s not right scrap it and move on. Make it look like a place only a movie would portray. For God’s sake think about lighting. That’s what sets us apart from the Americans these days. If the weather is crap then don’t shoot, wait for a nice day, because that's what puts people off watching British movies. They look dull and miserable so people won’t watch them, because we know what it’s like to be dull and miserable. We have windows. What we want to see is a glamorous view of Britain, America does it, why shouldn’t we? Why is it that we always make films about the poverty of Britain, or the crime, or the hatred of Britain? The reason, it’s easy. It’s easy to do because it’s easy to show something as it really is. The difficult thing, the thing we don’t want to do is try and make something its not. We all know how fake Hollywood is, that’s because they make the effort to create the sets and lighting to make us believe what is not really there. So pull your finger out Britain and make something worth watching, not something to slit your wrists over. To be honest, I haven’t even really started on the British film industry. I haven’t even begun to talk about acting, so look out for more tongue lashings from me.

Willy Opened My Eyes

It’s difficult to believe you can walk away from a Bruce Willis film these days and have something worthwhile to debate. Possible exceptions being his collaborations with M. Night Shyamalan. Coming out of Tears of the Sun recently with family by my side, a fierce deconstruction of the fabric of the last two hours began to churn. Looking at events all but abandoned in film these days, Tears of the Sun went on to graphically and gruesomely tell the story of what the world is really like today. Of course, the film also had elements of cheese and the hero factor was thrown in for all the die hard Willis fans. For someone less prone to tears of his own during a screening, I found myself charged with emotion when quite vividly the subject matter at times spelt out just how awful this world can be at times. This is just a quick note to thank Tears of the Sun for doing what so many other films should do. Tears of the Sun tackled difficult subject matter and themes and explored a number of issues that needed to be highlighted. After all, isn’t that what film is partly meant to do?

The Making New World, Reflections One Year Later

2003-09-23T19:17:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Peter John Ross

Where did I leave off? Oh yeah, one more scene to go. February 2002, for me it was infamous, Scene 41, which had more FX shots than the rest of the movie combined. It was grueling. Working freelance, and working on FX all the time, wore me down and fried my brain.

I would work out each FX shot in Adobe After Effects, then set all the shots I worked on to render, or compile all the FX together in a compatible video clip, and not find out for another nine to twelve hours if it worked. Some FX shots took as much as twenty-three hours to render for four seconds of footage.

Upon completion of the scene, I looked it over and put together my final rough cut with what I thought was all of my FX. The movie was bad. Real bad. It was nothing but a collection of sometimes good and sometimes awful scenes, and there was no flow, or any really good transitions. I came up with the idea of releasing it in five or six minute online “webisodes.” I felt this was my only salvation. I didn’t think I could make it work otherwise.

I started releasing the “chapters” online. There are pockets of people out there who love low budget, B-movie science-fiction, and it’s even better online. Within a couple weeks I got e-mails of praise and scorn, but mostly scorn. After some fairly scathing reviews, I decided the best two chapters that are short and to the point were chapters six and seven. So I focused on getting these out there more.

I did receive an e-mail invitation to submit to a science-fiction convention in Little Rock, Arkansas called “Roc*Kon.” I sent a tape of the best two chapters. Within a week I got a phone call from the lady that had invited me to submit New World, where she promptly ripped me a new orifice. She wanted it all, not a part, not a piece, but all of New World. She also said I should re-edit it and make it one long movie, the very thing I dreaded since I tried and it didn’t work. But her passion for the project invigorated my efforts, and terrified me as well.

I tried again, but there were definitely some moments where I needed something more. The 3D animator, Don Drennan, a local animation genius, agreed to contribute five shots. He did several matte paintings of a CGI “hive,” like a 30 story high alien beehive. It looked amazing. He went way over the top and delivered some top-notch FX work, and made me want to cry whenever I saw my own FX shots.

I now had a forty-nine minute version of New World.

In May 2002, we decided to screen it publicly for the first time in our hometown. I rented a theater with three other independent filmmakers. The intent was to screen our movies to the public and for the casts and crews. We didn’t sell out, but we had very good turn outs for two showings at a local multiplex, even though we digitally projected. Running mono and stereo independent movies through THX created audio problems, so for the second show, I volunteered to ride it out in the projection booth raising and lowering the volume manually.

Understand my pain. My sole reason for making movies is to eventually sit in a dark room with a bunch of strangers and experience the story. Well here I am, at one of the precious few times my movie plays in a dark room complete with strangers, and I’m in the projection booth. Immediately after the second screening, I am approached by Matthias Saunders, who caused so much disarray during the shoot, and his only words to me are “You made some editing choices I didn’t agree with.” Since he has never directed or really edited anything, I didn’t take too much offense.

Michael Evanichko, one of the other filmmakers with a movie playing, had the brilliant idea of handing out comment cards. We did and most people did take the time to fill them out. I learned a lot about my own movie from that. People can tell you what they really think unadulterated. Especially if they weren’t part of your cast and crew, they’ve got no reason to lie or hold back. And they didn’t. The results were still about seventy percent pro-New World, but even the positive cards had criticisms, and they were primarily valid.

I then made a decision. Based on the first screening, and sitting in the theater with an audience, the first twenty minutes of New World seemed to drag and drag on. I wanted to cut it out completely, but how do you cut it out completely and still have a coherent story? My girlfriend and I were driving along Interstate 270 one day discussing this, and she suggested a “previously on Buffy The Vampire Slayer” introduction with just clips. At first I told her that she was nuts because Buffy the Vampire Slayer footage wouldn’t work in our futuristic science-fiction movie. I then got slapped in the face, and then heard her say, “No idiot, make your own previously on New World.” Then the genius of her suggestion kicked in.

I edited together the footage of highlights from the first twenty minutes and cut it down to two minutes, added a professional voice-over saying “previously on New World,” and then I had a much tighter, much more fluid New World, that now runs at a scant twenty-eight minutes. I am now much more content about the status of New World.

I sent a VHS tape off to the lady in Little Rock, Arkansas, and then the idea of screening New World at science-fiction conventions as opposed to film festivals occurred to me. Film festivals with their black beret wearing latte sippers would never like New World anyway. It’s B-movie science-fiction, and not that good either. But I figured that if people still like the original Star Trek series, then I have a chance. I started submitting New World to science-fiction conventions around the country and it got around.

We screened the movie at several conventions here in Columbus, Ohio, as well as Cleveland, and as far as Fort Worth, and Baltimore. The new twenty-eight minute version plays much, much better now with audiences. I breathe easier, but I still notate every flaw and try to imagine what re-doing it will be.

Then I bagged the elephant, San Diego Comic-Con, the largest comic book and science-fiction convention in the world. This happened to be the first year of the Comic-Con Independent Film Festival and New World got accepted. We screened it for a decent sized audience there, and I got to do a Q & A afterwards. I even got to meet and have a conversation with Joss Whedon, my hero and creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in the green room.

What did I learn? A whole bunch, mostly what not to do. I learned to not bite off something this big and expect it to come off great. At least not until I’ve learned more about the basics of the craft. Moviemaking is a collaborative art, and planning is the key.

Be realistic.

The Making of In Memory of My Father

2003-09-23T18:56:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Chris Jaymes

In Memory of My Father was shot over a five day period using three cameras following a four week on-location rehearsal process where the script was further developed. One week after returning from Southeast Asia, where I had been for three months, I wrote the script in five days after David Austin, the executive producer, asked me to write a script to film in his house. Austin lives in one of Samuel Goldwyn’s old mansions, off Franklin and Camino Palmero in the Hollywood Hills, and was planning to sell the house and wanted to have it documented before doing so.

I had been planning to see the revival screening of Luis Bunuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie all week at the Fine Arts Theater and it was Thursday evening, the last night of its run. So I rushed over for the 10 p.m. screening. An hour into the film, I realized that I hadn’t seen a single frame of the film as my mind had been running through images of what soon would become In Memory of My Father. I immediately left the theater and started jotting down notes in my car.

Five days later the script was complete. I sculpted three story lines to unfold throughout the house using specific actors that are friends, including Judy Greer and Jeremy Sisto. I wrote each of the actor’s story lines in a manner that would cater to their specific personalities and set each actor’s story amongst their friends, partners, and families to enhance the intimacy and comfort levels of the performers. On the sixth day, I had all of the actors come to David’s house for a reading, without allowing anyone to look at the script beforehand.

Everyone seemingly loved it and we were set to go. I rewrote for the next week, as I began producing the film with the ever so miniscule budget I was given. At the end of that week, we had another reading, which confirmed the reality of the production that would begin four weeks later as a weeklong shoot. With the limited budget and the availability of the actors, I honed it down to a five day shoot. Taking the blue prints of the mansion, I mapped out the set-up for each scene with the blocking of the actors, the placement of the cameras, camera movement, and other details in order to move quickly and as smoothly as possible.

Over the next four weeks, I produced the film and prepped the house. Abe Levy, my friend and director of photography who I had worked with as an actor in two of his films, worked with me for the final week and a half, setting lights and shooting tests. The actors were made aware that I would be at house prepping for the film, and that they could have access to the house at any time. The majority of the cast took advantage of this situation and on a voluntary and improvised schedule would show up with their scene partners to rehearse and prepare. I would try to spend as much time as possible with each of them, and during these sessions I would constantly rewrite in an attempt to bring out what seemed more familiar to them. Knowing them all as well as I did, it was easier to nurture their natural instincts and help find the beauty and core of what I had loved about them as people. The cast brought so much more to the script than I could have imagined and really took advantage of the freedom that I had given. Since we were shooting the entire film at this one location we had the benefit of pre-setting the entire house, which is the only reason we were able to complete the task of capturing seventy hours of footage in five days of shooting. The house itself was already nearly perfect.

Aside from re-decorating two of the upstairs rooms, all that really had to happen was to light the house in an invisible manner. We had a bedroom transformed into a make-up room and the rest of the house served as a green room, which was pretty amazing, and no one ever wanted to leave. The house has a fifties retro-Hollywood sort of feel to it. Large balconies overlook a swimming pool that is neighbored by a jacuzzi room (something you don't see much of anymore), both of which are set into a brick floor. An overgrown south of France yard surrounds the house and the trees seem to give you a feeling of privacy, regardless of the fact that you’re just a few steps away from Franklin Boulevard.

Unfortunately, upon David selling the Goldwyn house, the buyers gutted it and completely redesigned every last detail of the property turning it into just another ostentatious looking mansion, where prior to that there was absolutely nothing ostentatious about it. At the risk of sounding a little pretentious, there was definitely a nurturing quality about the property. It did feel like another character to a certain degree, however not a character that wanted any attention as much as one that just liked being a part of something. Not one piece of furniture or any part of the house was damaged with well over a hundred bodies moving around it at any given time, and that is something that I've never seen happen.

There was definitely a sense of wonder in the back of my mind; occasional flashes of what may have happened here forty years ago, and curiosity of the glamour and the darkness that lived inside the history of the house. The footage that I have will be the last true documentation of the property as it was originally designed, which is fortunate and yet unfortunate at the same time.
We’re currently looking for distribution and some additional financing. A short cut sneak peak of the film is premiering at the IFP market on September 23 at the Angelika Theater in New York City.

Ten Things to Help You Prepare for a Film Festival

2003-09-09T19:26:00.000-07:00

Submitted by R. Dekker Dreyer

Just like every other starry-eyed young director in America I had ambitions of traveling to Park City, Utah in January and showing off one of my masterworks to a crowd of adoring sophisticates and landing that well-earned three picture deal. After you get into one of the well-known festivals, you might imagine everything comes together like magic. This is a pipe dream. The film industry is an industry, a job. From my own experiences at festivals around North America, and more specifically Sundance and Slamdance, I’ve compiled a list of ten things filmmakers need to know about festivals. When I was selected for Slamdance 2003 I found very little information online about what to do as a filmmaker at a festival and I wanted to provide this information to other directors who may be packing a bag and hitting the circuit. If you’re a serious filmmaker I suggest you study this list and take it for what it’s worth.

1) Nobody knows who you are. You have to be very outgoing and make friends quickly otherwise you’ll have wasted your time.

2) Your movie needs an audience and it is your sole responsibility to bring in that audience. Bring flyers, posters, post cards, a bull horn, and a giant panda suit, anything to attract attention to your film.

3) Celebrities are available to give you advice, make sure you ask good questions. I can’t stand people who ask things to the effect of, “How do make it as a director?” Truthfully, asking this will make you look like a fool in front of very important people. If you’re asking this kind of question you’ve ruined a great opportunity. Questions of that nature are greedy and give the impression that you don’t care about the craft, only yourself. Ask questions that matter, like, “When you’re directing do you...” or “I’ve seen you in ______, how did the scene where you escaped the mental hospital come together for you as an actor?” These types of questions are things you can learn from and they make the person being questioned feel good that you are interested in their work.

4) Be prepared at any moment to pitch ideas in a professional way. If your film is well received you may be asked about future ideas. Have handy, non-disclosure agreements, treatments, budgets, demographic information, comparables reports, and press clippings. Make well presented packages, nice folders and business cards are a must. The Movie Producer’s Toolbox from www.movie-producers.net is great tool for putting this package together.

5) Participate in roundtable discussions. There will be many chances to sit in on discussion panels on wide range of film topics. Sit in on as many of these as you can and ask intelligent questions while sharing your own experiences.

6) A word on parties. There are lots of them. There is a lot of free liquor. Do not abuse the free liquor. Parties are a casual environment to meet up with your contemporaries. They may be the first point of contact with some important people, so be careful to make a good impression. Dress to impress, and do not get drunk.

7) Bring a camera. Take as many photos as you can, they can be used in promotional materials about you and your film in print or online. Capture it all and let the world see how great you are.

8) Film festivals are expensive. Visiting one may cost you upwards of $800 on the low end. Make sure you can afford this by saving money from the time you submit your film. Even if you are not selected you may have financed your next short, so remember to save.

9) Many of the people you will encounter are professionals so be smart when you talk to them. Even if they are not the president of Universal you still may need them as a valuable contact. If you’re serious about making a living in the entertainment business then you need to respect the fact that everyone in the industry can help you in some capacity.

10) Leave your pride at the door. Don’t ever be afraid to ask for what you want or tell people about your goals. The only time you will look foolish doing this is if you haven’t really thought about your future as a filmmaker. If you’ve done your homework and know what you want and you’ve made your own plan on how to get it people will respect you and want to help.

Location, Location, Location: Scouting Tips

2003-09-09T18:46:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Scott Spears

Just like in real estate, when you leave the studio (if you were ever in one) one of the biggest factors to a good shoot, is location, location, location. I’ve been location scouting many times and have seen some great locations and some not so great locations. One of the biggest things when seeing what looks like a great location is you have to think will it work logistically. The factors to locations are cost, sound issues, power, and logistics. We’ll break those down in a minute.

First, who should go on the location scout? As many crew people as possible. It’s not feasible to take the entire crew to each location (unless you have a small crew), so you need to pick department heads, the director, cinematographer, first assistant director, art director, sound mixer, and production/location manager. I like to bring my gaffer if possible. These people all look at locations in different ways and will have different and valuable input. When all of these people aren’t there, then somebody on the scout should be looking out for them. Sometimes when it’s just me and the director out scouting, we both have to wear different production hats and not just consider picture needs.

Cost

This is the easy one, either you can afford the location or you can’t. A good producer might be able to wheel and deal a better price. Sometimes you have to use some imagination with a place that doesn’t quite work, but is affordable. This is where the director has to envision the shots he will need. There’s a famous story from Akira Kurosawa when he was asked how he achieved a “perfect” frame for a period film he directed and he said, if I had panned to the right there was a modern factory and if I panned to the left, there were power lines, so the frame was set. I’ve been on scouts where people have said the location wouldn’t work because of some factor, but after talking with the director, we realized that element would never be on camera.

Sound Issues

Here’s a line I like to use on sound mixers (please sound folks, don’t take a offense, I’m joking), “they’re called motion pictures, not motion sounds.” It usually gets them riled up, but seriously, you have to not just look at a location, you have to listen to it. Is it on a street with heavy traffic? Is there construction nearby or the potential for it? Is it in the path of an airport? Do a bunch of college party kids live next door who will throw the world’s biggest party ever in the middle of your intimate drama? If it’s a multi-story building, who lives upstairs? Somebody who stomps around in combat boots? There are hundreds of noise factors that can slow or grind your production to a halt, so be on the lookout.

If you start to like a location and think it will be high on your list, take a moment and stand silently. Listen for hums and buzzes. Find out if they can be eliminated. You should visit it again at a different time of day to make sure there isn’t some factor that changes. Say you visit an apartment that looks perfect in the morning, but it sits above a bar that at night cranks up the music, well that would be a sound killer. Some smaller airports cut back on night flights, but during the day your location will have a flight overhead every two minutes. In general, try to think when you’ll be shooting and seek out any sound factor which would slow or halt shooting. Sometimes these things can come out of nowhere and cannot be predicted, but you should do your homework.

As a side note, refrigerators are the bane of sound mixer’s life, humming back to life in the middle of takes thus ruining the sound. The solution is to turn them off during the shoot, but often times they don’t get turned back on after the shoot and the production gets a bill to replace the spoiled contents. Here’s a clever way to avoid that. The person that is assigned be the last person to leave the location, be that the assistant director, the location manager, or a production assistant, should put their car keys in the fridge, that way when they go to their car and pat their pockets for the keys they will remember they put them the fridge for a reason and will remember to turn it back on. This was taught to me by a wise assistant director. I love tricks like this.

Power

A nightmare for gaffers is lack of power. If you need a shaft of sunlight pouring through a window that is created by lighting, not the sun, and the production can’t afford a generator, then you need lots of power. Older buildings should be given special inspections. I’ve shot in apartments that had only two twenty amp circuits which means if you plug in more than four lights, you’re going to start blowing breakers. We ended up borrowing power from an apartment two stories above and just dropped cables out the window to feed our lights. Not ideal, but it worked. Does the place have plenty of outlets? Where are the circuit breakers? You should know where they are so if you blow a breaker you can get at it to reset it. I’ve had hour-long production delays because a fuse box was locked in a closet and nobody could find a janitor to open it. Get to know whoever’s in charge of the keys to all the doors in a building and make them your best friend.

Another side note, here’s the Scott Spears lazy man math formula for calculating power needs for lights. Say you want to use three 1000 watts lights (1Ks for short) and a 500 watt light. You take the watts and add them up which makes 3500 watts, then you divide that by 100 (I know it should be 110, but that’s why I call it a lazy man formula) and that will give you the amps you’ll need, which in this case will be 35 amps. Most houses have 20 amp breakers, so you’ll need at least two dedicated breakers for your lights. Total watts divided by 100 is the number of amp you will need.

Logistics

Locations bring their own set of logistics, just like people. There are a lot of things you don’t think about as you walk around a cool location lining up shots and thinking how you’ll use the space, but there’s a lot more to a location than that.

Where the heck are the cast, crew, and equipment vehicles going to park? A film production takes up a lot of space so there better be parking. How do you get all the gear to the location? Are there elevators or is the crew going have to drag a ton of equipment up four flights of stairs? Exterior locations have these same concerns. I’ve had to hike about a mile uphill for a shoot with gear on my back and in each hand which isn’t fun, but you have to do what you have to do. Do that six times to start and end your day and you’ll think twice about that location.

Don’t forget about changing rooms for cast and a make-up area as well. Here’s a biggie, are there enough bathrooms? Nothing can get you booted from a location faster than having thirty people trying to use one bathroom and to have the toilet overflow.

Now that you and your stuff are on set, where do you put people and extra gear when they’re not working? All the grips and cast not on camera need someplace to hang out while shooting is underway.

Do you have a place for the cast and crew to eat? Is there a large space so everybody sit together and eat? That’s a great way to build camaraderie (as long as the food is good, but that’s a whole other topic). If you don’t feed people on site, are there restaurants nearby. Be careful letting cast and crew loose on the world because they’ll all come staggering in a few minutes late with the excuse that the waiters were slow or there was some other problem.

Some locations have special requirements, like no shoes, cover the floors, or be out at a certain time. Make sure everybody respects these rules or you may be looking for a new place. If a location throws on too many restrictions off the bat, you may want to look elsewhere because once you’re there, life may get even worse with more rules and complaints about even minor infractions.

Final Thoughts

I’ll close by saying my rule is to try to and leave a location better than you found it. Don’t leave a mess because eventually that reputation will catch up to you and you’ll start getting locked out of places.

Advice to First Time Writer/Directors

2003-08-26T19:03:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Scott Spears

Nothing is more horrifying to a first timer than realizing very early in your shoot that you're going way over schedule, over budget, and your crew is about to mutiny because of long shooting days. At this point, after shooting all day, you are forced to start cutting pages while trying to keep your film's story coherent and alive.

This little tidbit of advice is aimed at the beginning first time writer/director that is embarking on their first feature or even a long short. I hope this article can help you along in the scriptwriting and pre-production phase.

First, a little about my background; I have over seventeen years in film and video production, shooting over fourteen feature films, producing a couple of films and writing eight feature scripts, two of which have been produced. I have shot video features with tiny budgets and 35mm features.

Having worked with many first time writer/directors I've seen many great scripts and great plans and I've seen many of the pitfalls. I've seen writers who refused to cut scenes that were great little character asides, but bogged down the pacing and added very little to the plot. Many of the scenes were cut during editing because the film was running too long.

I've created an analogy for helping writer/directors gearing up for production. Think of your script as a wagon in the pioneer days preparing to make the trek across country. You have to carefully select what goes in your wagon before you start the long journey, just like with your script you have to select the scenes that are most important to your movie. Don't go loading that big old grandfather clock on the wagon and don't go adding a scene where a character goes to a bar and gets drunk with his friends that adds little or nothing to the story. You want to load on your meat and potatoes and the tools you'll need to set up your homestead. In your script, think of these as character development, sub-plots, motifs, plot points, and your major conflict. If your story is overloaded with extras (grandfather clocks and boxes of lace tablecloths), sometime during production, you're going to have to start throwing these items out and think of ways to patch your script back together. Doing this at the production phase is hard and can create plot headaches when you are cutting your script after a fourteen hour shooting day. Doing it at the editing stage is painful because you see all the expense and time that went into making those scenes land on the cutting room floor.

Here are a couple of stories from my rich life. A writer/director buddy of mine asked me to read his script. It was a long script and I recommended cuts. He made some of the cuts I recommended and some cuts recommended by others. It still came back a little long. He decided to stay with the length. As a side note, I did notice that his formatting was off and when he later formatted to the script into a shooting script is it ballooned to over 135 pages. On a low budget, that's huge. He ended up making cuts during production which he said were very painful because he was juggling shooting, prepping for the next day, and he was producing. Some were good and some muddied the plot. He regretted not making those cuts at the script stage.

On another film, the writer/director came in with huge sprawling script that he did cut after input. Again, he failed to format it into a shooting script and the thing exploded to 130 plus pages. So remember to get your formatting right. As a side note another friend just finished a first cut of his ninety pager and it ran only seventy-two minutes. So be aware of pacing and run time. I like to do a full cast read through with no stops so I can get timing. You can tape it to get pacing ideas.

So back to the sprawling epic, after the script grew to over 130 pages, he dug in his feet against any cuts saying that he didn't want to cut his poetry. We ended up shooting the script as written, but the days were long and nerves were frayed, but the director did adjust after some crewmembers did quit because of overwork.

Well, the first cut ran over 200 minutes. Over three hours. After much editing, they ended up with a ninety-one minute cut, so they effectively cut over half the work the crew did. It hurt because I think of all the wasted time we could have devoted to make those scenes that ended up in the final cut so much better.

What does all this mean? You have to focus on what is most important to your story. Only put in the wagon what you need, or in film speak only have in your script scenes that build your plot and streamline the story. Make those cuts before you start pre-production so you can focus your efforts on the scenes that matter, not the fluff which lands on the cutting room floor or, in today's editing room, being deleted off the hard drive.

My advice is to get as many people as possible to read your script and get a thick skin about criticism. Try to get people who have been through the process and understand filmmaking. Don't line up your close friends and family who love everything you do and aren't knowledgeable about filmmaking.

My final piece of wisdom is to raise a couple extra dollars and get yourself a producer. I know budgets are tight, but I highly recommend that you find yourself a friend, buddy, pal, right hand man or woman to help you because as writer/director you are already wearing some big hats. My friends who have tried it have said they wouldn't do it again. You'll spend too much of your time worrying about lunch, watching the clock, finding props, keeping the crew happy, setting up for the next day's shoot, and doing a multitude of other things that you'll hardly have the energy to direct and/or re-write if needed. Get somebody who's been there before, loves your project, and filmmaking in general. Some may work for free, but I always recommend that you try to pay them something. That makes them fiscally responsible to you. It doesn't have to be a fortune, but it will cover their time, any phone calls they make, and gas for the car.

In closing, during the writing process and even in the beginning stages of pre-production you must focus on what is essential to your story. You must be merciless and cut the scenes that don't help build or support your story goals. This makes you define the spine of the story, it saves you money because you don't shoot scenes you don't need, and it gives you more time to focus on the scenes that matter. Your crew will love you because they will not feel like they are wasting their time. You must FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS on story and do what's best for your screenplay.

Advice to First Time Writer/Directors

2003-08-26T12:03:00.000-07:00

Contracts and Low Budget Moviemaking

2003-08-19T12:10:00.000-07:00

Submitted by by Peter John Ross

Have you ever heard of success stories like Kevin Smith making Clerks, Edward Burns directing The Brothers McMullen, or Spike Lee shooting She's Gotta Have It? Well, what if they forgot to cross every “T” or dot every “I?” We might not have ever heard of them. It would have been very easy for an actor or the owner of a convenience store to screw them over if the filmmakers had not gotten signed contracts. If you do not have a signed release form for the actor, or a signed location agreement with the property owner, they might become the owner of your film, or at least ruin any chance you have of publicly playing your movie. By getting certain blanket legalities in order, you can maintain control and ownership of your movie. A lot of independent filmmakers forget the business half of the movie business. Contracts are a very serious aspect of making movies. All too often it's enticing to go out and shoot your movie with a camcorder and then put it out there.

Even putting your movie on your own personal website is considered a public performance and if you don't have written permission to use the likeness or performance of your actors they can change their minds and legally there is no recourse. Interestingly enough there were some producers in Texas who worked with an up and coming local actress, actually had contracts, and even used the SAG Experimental contract which everyone thinks is a safety net. There's one problem with that. There’s a big loophole for people that are actually SAG members. If you use the SAG Experimental contract and then land a video distribution deal, any SAG actors have the right to veto the sale. This particular young actress made it big in movies like Jerry Maguire, and then these really bad movies made several years earlier became valuable, and the producers lost the sale because she exercised this little loophole. Even if you do a non-union digital video short with your friends, GET THEM TO SIGN RELEASE FORMS. This allows you to send it and screen it at film festivals, and if you should be so lucky to get the movie broadcast on television or distributed in any way, you are protected. You never know if this actor might become famous ten years from now, and if you don’t have a signed release form, you can’t sell your movie with them in it.

Locations work differently. Each state, and even each city, will have different laws and complications. Private property needs signed location agreements pretty much without fail. I know in Ohio you do not need any permits to shoot on public property, but then certain cities and towns have made their own laws concerning that, so it's not one-hundred percent statewide. In California you almost ALWAYS need a permit to shoot anywhere. Building exteriors work a bit differently. Usually a building that is large, public, and unable to be obscured is fair game, but if there is a trademarked logo of a company visible, you enter into a different arena of legalities. Trademarks are similar to copyright laws, but these protect the image of the company much more so, and lean heavily toward the corporations.

Again, if you shoot at your friend's parent’s house, but you don't get written permission, and later they felt the use of their house in the finished movie portrays their neighborhood poorly, they can stop your movie from being released. However, they can't say much if you can present a signed location agreement where they gave you legal permission to use their house in your movie.

On the flip side of things, when working with friends, read the contracts carefully among yourselves. I have personally been screwed over by people that, at the time, I would never have believed would make things difficult. Now I have lost all the rights to two of my movies that I wrote, directed, produced, and edited. Whenever I put them on a short film site, shortly thereafter, a cease and desist order comes to the site from my former partners. No real reason, they just want to be annoying. Similarly, I know a filmmaker who had an idea for a movie and went to his friend and asked for help to turn his idea into a movie. Now he is legally entangled over who owns the character from the movie. In this case, the filmmaker did not get contracts signed beforehand, and never knew that his friend was going to screw him over until he presented the contracts after the movies were screened at film festivals and had some early buzz. Now he can't have any screenings without getting letters to his attorney about “alleged monies lost” for their client. We aren't Kevin McClory fighting over rights to Thunderball and James Bond, we're a bunch of morons who made some digital video shorts with a camcorder in four hours.

If your movie gets selected to play on television in Canada on the “Moviola Channel for Shorts,” or the Sky Network's “Short Film Channel” in the United Kingdom, or the “Sundance Channel” or “IFC” in the United States, they will be unable to play your movie without signed contracts. There's this thing big budget movies have listed called “Errors and Omissions” that deal with this kind of thing. Since most filmmakers are on the low end of the financial scale, simple contracts for locations and actors can be found for free online. Use them. Always.

Protect yourself and get it all in writing, that way if your movie is a success, you can grab on and enjoy the ride. Otherwise you may become one of the “almost got famous, but I forgot to get the contracts signed.”

The Truth About Robert Rodriguez

2003-08-12T19:36:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Peter John Ross

It's been ten years since El Mariachi burst onto the scene and it's still as prevalent in the filmmaking community as ever. How many independent filmmakers have been affected by reading Rebel Without a Crew or by watching the DVD extra Ten Minute Film School? Hundreds? Thousands? I know I was. I remember renting the laserdisc back in 1994 and seeing the movie made for $7,000 and even listening to the rare pre-DVD commentary track, which Robert himself dubbed “how to make a feature film for under $10,000.” I can say that without a doubt, I felt empowered by the commentary and everything I read about Rodriguez and how he became a major Hollywood player with a movie that was meant to be a Spanish language video release.

After having been down the path of making my own movies now for a little over four years, I recently re-read the book Rebel Without a Crew and went back and watched Ten minute Film School with a new set of experienced eyes. Let's just say that a few clarifications are in order.

1) $7,000 was only kinda-sorta the budget. Rodriguez never hid it, but Columbia Pictures and ICM Talent did. The $7,000 got Rodriguez a ¾” master tape of the movie and that's it. Columbia spent a hell of a lot more money to get a 35mm print made that they could screen at festivals. The $7,000 bought 16mm film stock, processing, transfer to video, and a few dollars worth of props. This is important to note because there is a misconception about what the movie cost and what that means. It means saying that the movie cost $7,000 is a great marketing ploy that paid off well.

2) One of the only reasons you, me, or anyone has ever heard of Robert Rodriguez is because the state film commissioner of Texas gave him a referral to International Creative Management. The dichotomy of Hollywood is that you cannot get in unless you know someone. It's an insider’s club, and Rodriguez got a free pass. This is underplayed by the book, Rebel Without a Crew, but it's crucial to understand that the second largest talent agency in the world can manipulate the studios. I do not mean to denigrate Rodriguez’s obvious talents, but based on seeing movies like Glitter and From Justin to Kelly, there is evidence that talent is not a prerequisite for getting a movie made. Rodriguez was lucky that he had the talent and the skills to back up the promise that El Mariachi displayed.

3) No one seems to remember that Rodriguez had made well over 200 movies on video from the time he was nine years old. How many other filmmakers, even in our cheap DV 1394, non-linear world, can claim to have made over 200 movies? I've been making movies for four years, and I'm barely over thirty movies. Let's just say that Rodriguez had a distinct advantage when he decided to make El Mariachi. It’s called experience and it's highly undervalued if you went solely by the descriptions made in Rebel Without a Crew and in the Ten Minute Film School.

4) “All you need to know about filmmaking, you can learn in about ten minutes.” I have never heard anything more dishonest in my entire life. This coming from a guy who had been making movies, and honing his skills, and mastering his craft for over ten years, not ten minutes. I think if Robert had never made a movie before, and this was his first or second effort, then maybe I could take this at face value. Instead we get a lot of alleged “rebels” that have no clue how to tell a story with a camera or even the slightest concept of editing. Too many people feel like they can do as good their first time out. Try making 200 movies first and then maybe you can pull off El Mariachi.

5) Rodriguez suggests to not use a film crew. A film crew, specifically a cinematographer, is not a bad thing. Yes, Hollywood big budget movies spend too much money, but honestly having a sound guy or a camera man who has a clue can enhance your movie. A good production assistant can save serious money when you need something fast. Rodriguez preaches not to use a crew at all if you can help it (a notion which caused him serious union problems on From Dusk to Dawn) and I think that is a filmmaker’s choice, although not usually the right one. A good crew can add a lot of support to a director's vision, not detract from it. Shooting your own movies can also shut down the input from someone who can offer options you never considered. Again, a bit misleading is that fact that Rodriguez shot all of his own movies and knew more about framing a shot than most NYU film grads. A wise friend of mine constantly reminds us all that filmmaking is a collaborative art, and it takes several people to make a movie. Even Rodriguez had actors. They are collaborators and bring something different to the table than a one man show. Also note, Rodriguez has never made a movie without a crew since El Mariachi.

When I watched the Ten Minute Film School all I could think was how this guy really, really knew what the hell he was doing. When he made his choices of shots and describes how he would edit it all together, I was in awe. There is no way in hell a person who has never shot a film before would have a clue as to what he was really doing. It's taken me nine years to start to get a grasp on the genius of what Rodriguez pulled off. Rodriguez barely had a 1.5:1 shooting ratio (if you don't know what a shooting ratio is, then you need to take more than ten minutes to learn). The kind of risk that shooting on 16mm presented was only viable because he had a great deal of pre-planning and experience. Not everyone, I daresay hardly anyone could have done what Rodriguez did and had results that good.

I am not saying that everything that Rodriguez advises is bad. The idea of writing a script for the locations and props that are already available to you is very true. There is a lot of wisdom in what he writes and says, but be aware that this came from someone who already learned what not to do from making 200 movies before he wrote and directed El Mariachi. Don't expect the same quality results if you've never made a movie before.

I don't dislike or disrespect Robert Rodriguez. As a matter of fact, I have met him twice and found him to be the most unpretentious and modest filmmaker on Earth. But I lost count of how many filmmakers quote his book or El Mariachi as the inspiration for kick starting a digital video endeavor. It's just that he has started a trend of “anyone can direct” and it's misleading. Everyone can direct, but not many people can direct well. The inspirational words from Ten Minute Film School and Rebel Without a Crew are great, but you have to read between the lines. There was a lot more to it than the way it is presented. I still believe everyone should go out and make their movie, I just think a more realistic approach is required.

Music and Independent Film

2003-07-29T19:03:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Peter John Ross

The Problem

One of the things that can make or break a movie is the music. Can you imagine Jaws without the John Williams music? What about the techno music in The Matrix? As no-budget filmmakers, we often times forget that sound is fifty-percent of the experience of seeing a movie, whether it be a thirty second joke, or a four hour Lord of the Rings DVD. Thanks to technology, we can physically add any music we can get our hands on into our movies. Since we can take an audio CD from any musician, put it in a CD-ROM drive and quickly load that digitally mastered song into the timeline of our handy editing program, temptation has an all-new meaning. It's like having a piece of forbidden fruit on every tray at a buffet.

Let's talk about why you should not do this. First and foremost it's illegal, as in against federal law. Maybe you've heard the term copyright. Everyone already knows this, but dirt poor, no budget filmmakers think this law doesn't apply to them. Popular music costs a lot of money to use in your movies. That's probably why most people steal music and use it without permission.
Secondly, you have to consider another point of view other than our own selfish, “I'm the filmmaker” point of view. If you can take their music without paying for it, then why should anyone ever pay for any aspect of your movie? Music is intellectual property, just like your movie will be. If you can steal their music without paying, then someone at a television station or a website should have equal rights to steal your movie and never have to pay for it.

On a moral and ethical level it's wrong to use music without permission. I am quite sure if you saw someone selling copies of your movie without paying you, it'd be like restraining Chris Farley at an all you can eat lunch special. What is the difference between stealing your movie or stealing someone else's music? Nothing. What kind of arrogance makes us think we are more important than musicians?

I remember being on a filmmakers panel at a science-fiction convention in May of 2002 and an audience member asked us all what our opinion was on using copyrighted music. I said I was against it. Another no-budget company piped in with a speech about how it's okay to steal copyrighted music.

They even said, and I have to preserve the accuracy in quotes, “If someone catches you using copyrighted music in your movies that's a good thing. That means someone important saw your movie.”

That is another perspective, and they have the right to think that. Although I do think it's important to note that they recently lost over half of their hundred movies online for copyright violations.

Who am I to preach? Have I ever put copyrighted music into my projects? Of course. Virtually every first time filmmaker puts music that's copyrighted into their movies. I did it a lot when I first started. Since then I have made every effort to get original music into my projects or I make actual arrangements for obtaining the rights and pay the necessary royalties.

The Solution

There are struggling musicians and songwriters just as there are struggling independent filmmakers. Make a connection. Help each other out. You can get their music played in a venue previously unavailable to them, and you can have original music that doesn't make you nervous to play at every film festival. It's also much classier to have your own music. It differentiates your movie from the dozens of others using the same songs.

You can also get cheap loop programs like Fruity Loops or Sonic Foundry's ACID. You can quickly and cheaply create music from loops and customize the speed, tempo, and pitch to make the music fit your exact needs. It's better than a “cease and desist” letter from an attorney and it's legal to use once you buy the program. Illegally copying software is a whole other article.

Stock music libraries are another option. These cost money, but in the end it's much cheaper than popular music. Music ranges from the low end where you buy a CD of music for $250, then use it any time you want for free. This is also known as “royalty free” music because you buy it once and own the right to use it anytime. Then there is the top of the line, which is very expensive, but incredibly good. They charge a “per needle drop,” meaning you pay for each usage of the music. If you use it online there's one fee, and if you use it on television, there is a different price, etc.

If you are dead set on obtaining a popular song, secure the rights. Go to ASCAP or BMI and find out how to get the proper licensing. “Internet Only” rights are cheap, and they invented something for no-budget filmmakers with “Festival Only” rights to songs to make this more affordable to independent filmmakers like us. Try to do it legally, because if the RIAA is going after individual users that download a John Mayer song on Kazaa, then what do you think they'll do to a filmmaker trying to make money from using a song in their movie? It's not a slap on the wrist anymore. It's a lawsuit.

In Summary

Will you get caught? Probably not, but lately the risk is going up. I recently got a letter from an attorney for music I used in a movie I did in February 2000 that still lingered on a short film website. It wasn’t even a popular site. I have since removed the movie from the site and I’m re-editing the film to add original music.

And because I am a former musician myself, let me say that I am not unsympathetic to the plight of independent musicians. Resist the temptation to steal music. I am giving away nine songs for free to be used by any independent filmmaker completely free or charge with full rights. These aren't the best songs, but they're free. You can download them at www.sonnyboo.com/music/music.htm.

Some other completely free music resources available online for independent filmmakers are www.freeplaymusic.com and www.compositeur-arrangeur.com. I hope this helps.

Basic Editing Advice

2003-06-03T11:48:00.000-07:00

Submitted by by Peter John Ross

Just because it's digital video doesn't mean you shouldn't log your shots during principal photography.

Logging details about the takes, the camera angles, and all the basic information can make your edit session more economical and timely. If you know there are only two good takes on an entire digital video tape and you know from a log sheet where on the tape the good takes begin and end, you can just type that into the batch capture mode of most non-linear editing systems.
Then you can be creative with the footage at hand, and not waste time looking for the good shots, or filling up valuable hard drive real estate with gigabytes of unusable takes.

For myself, I edit the whole piece together, not necessarily in sequential order, but from the most obvious scenes and takes and then assemble a rough cut. From the rough cut, I then chisel away at the unnecessary lines and scenes to get to the final edit.

Check out my previous Timecode Burns article to help you become more efficient. You may find using a dedicated script supervisor incredibly helpful in familiarizing yourself with the footage so that you are aware of your options.

After working as an editor, I am always shooting for the edit. I will start or end a scene with push-ins or pull-outs of something like a light bulb or the dark part of a painting or wall for natural transitions. Pre-planning these kinds of shots and storyboarding before shooting helps focus on what to shoot and how it will tie into the editing later.

You should always be aware that for every scene, you should try to cover the two C's, coverage and cutaways. These are the things that make editing possible. Finding something relevant to enhance the story as a cutaway is essential to shooting for the edit. What is coverage? Coverage is getting multiple angles of the same scene. Coverage allows someone to edit out unwanted dialogue and also tap into reactions, not just people speaking.

If you are one of the new digital video filmmakers that write, direct, produce, shoot, and edit your own movies then prepare yourself for a completely different mindset as an editor. This job is very different than the other aspects of filmmaking. This job is about telling a story with the raw footage. If you were there when it was shot, you have a bias in that you know what the geography was, and how the ambience felt. As an editor, it's your job to orient the viewer who has never been to the set and didn't see anything. It's your job as editor to give the viewer a sense of the location, and tie it into the acting, the costumes, the set design, and most importantly the story the director is trying to tell.

Of course, if it was not shot with anything other than close-ups, you can't really edit much, so it's a team effort. The director needs to shoot for the edit, making sure all aspects of the scene are shot so that editing can help shape the story in post-production.

Timecode Burns

2003-05-20T20:50:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Peter John Ross

Want to know a trick to save your expensive digital video camera from getting editorial wear and tear? Especially all you Canon GL1 owners, or people trying to pay off their cameras.

After the shoot, when you have all your footage, and your tapes all numbered, most people log their footage as they go using their non-linear editing program (Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro, or Avid). Which is really cool because you can mark in and out points and you can make a digital log of your footage on each tape.

But you are running a master tape in a deck or camcorder, rewinding, fast forwarding, and playing the footage multiple times. That’s wear and tear on your equipment, your irreplaceable master tapes, and it’s also extra time.

Here’s the not so secret tip, but surprisingly most people don’t know about it.

Make a VHS tape with the timecode showing onscreen. Most camcorders will allow you to select data or timecode output in the menu or on the remote.

Now you can rewind, fast forward, and play over and over again your raw footage and not risk your master tapes or add mileage to your camcorder.

The next step is to watch and log your footage and write down on a piece of paper the timecode of the in and out points of only the footage you need. An important step when logging is to think about the filename for each clip. The official name for your sheets of paper is an EDL (Edit Decision List). You can basically edit your whole piece using the paper edit selecting angles and takes. You use your EDL’s to make the editing decisions and make an offline edit.

All of this while only wearing out the heads of your twenty-nine dollar VCR as opposed to your $2,000 GL1, which some people are still making payments on. Not to mention watching the footage again, making yourself more familiar with the raw, unedited takes.

At this stage you can then use your non-linear software to type in the in and out points you wrote down and use the filenames you made up for each clip and then tell the computer to capture the footage and it will record all the footage from the whole tape, or even multiple tapes if you like, to your hard drive.

Make sure to save the batch capture list. It can be handy later on, such as after you edit your masterpiece, delete all the raw footage and want to make changes a year or two later. If you save the list you can easily use it to recapture the raw footage. On my first few projects I can’t do this because I don’t have a capture list or even a paper EDL to refer to, so I can’t re-edit unless I start from scratch, but I’m only a little bit bitter.

Please note the other benefit – hard drive space. If you do an offline, paper edit from your EDL’s, you are only capturing the footage you need, as opposed to capturing takes and footage you do not need, and filling your hard drives with large video files that you don’t use.
So by copying your raw footage to a VHS tape with timecode you get to:

Preserve the life of your camcorder.
Preserve the life of your master tapes.
Have the safety of being able to easily recapture your footage.
Become more familiar with your footage.
Save valuable hard drive space.

Timecode burning – this is an old, but very effective technique.

Independent Film Clichés: An Opinion

2003-05-13T18:41:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Peter John Ross

From the Actor’s Point of View

The Casting Call

Here's a story that will probably sound familiar. You hear about an audition. Someone posted a flyer that said something about a short film that's in the Sundance Film Festival. This sounds interesting.

You, the actors, and aspiring actors go to a cattle call for a no budget digital video short. You wait in line, although the group pf people sitting around at the public library is hardly organized enough to be called a line. You get asked to read sides and the first time director doesn't know what a slate is, but he isn't taping the auditions anyway. You leave wondering what kind of movie this could possibly be given that you read a fragment of a script that had dialog as interesting as an insurance actuarial table. After your call back a week or two later, you read the lines again, and talk about other stuff with the director including your dreams an aspirations.

The Call Back

At this point, they tell you the game plan for this incredible movie. It's a twenty minute opus about an everyman that is in some kind of struggle and it's completely original. The goal is to shoot the movie on digital video, send it to film festivals, and then get the money to re-shoot it on film. Of course there's no pay. They can't afford it. But this is a unique opportunity because the script and idea are just that good. You ask about distribution and you are assured that after the film plays at several festivals it will have a distribution deal. At that point everyone will get paid. They say this with such conviction that you buy into it.

The Shoot

You work twelve hour days on your weekend off, the first time director is giving you line readings, and there is barely any craft services to munch on while everyone stands around. Eventually you finish, and you can’t wait to see the movie. Over the next few months you try calling, then e-mailing the director to get a status report. It's still being edited. Eventually you may or may not ever see a finished product, but waiting for that film festival screening seems to be as likely as finding weapons of mass destruction in the filmmaker’s basement.

If this has happened to you more than five times, then you are an ideal candidate to attend an Amway meeting with me. I have just the right opportunity for you.

And now for the flipside...

The Filmmaker’s Point of View

You rent movies all the time. You go to the movies all the time. You have always loved movies, and you just saw the latest Steven Seagal movie that went direct to video on Showtime and you say to yourself, “I can do better than this piece of garbage!” and you have this idea that has been brewing for at least ten minutes. You download the latest freeware screenwriting plug-in for Word and start banging away. The story unfolds and the dialog sounds really good in your head.

Now what?

You read about Soderbergh and George Lucas using home camcorders to make their movies, so all you need is a Sony Handicam and you can become the next Kevin Smith! Because it's a camcorder all you need to do is point and shoot. There’s no need to know anything about lighting or cameras. You remember seeing something about Kevin Smith and the Sundance Film Festival, so when you finish the movie, you'll just send it there, it will be accepted, and you'll get signed to my three picture deal at that point. It should take about three months.

Now you need to get people to be in the movie, your masterpiece. You can hold a casting call. The casting notice reads “Actors Needed for Short Film for the Sundance Film Festival.”

The Casting Call

You can't believe these people want to be in my movie. Look at all of them. You want to savor this moment and see each actor one at a time. Then you see her and she looks really good, so forget first come first serve, get that girl Jennifer in here now! You want someone to look and act exactly as you pictured the movie in your head. With sixteen people waiting to see you at least five of them should be perfect.

The Call Back

Why isn't anyone exactly as you pictured in your head? Jennifer was really good looking and she really seemed to like you. Should you cast her solely based on looks? She can't act her way out of a paper bag.

The Shoot

Nothing is as good as you thought it would be. The actors aren't doing exactly what you want and you even tell them how to deliver the lines. You know you wanted to do more camera angles, but you were running late. Everybody is mad at you and you can't seem to get it right. You can fix it all in the editing. You can't afford to buy another pizza, so whoever is late, is just out of luck. No food for them.

The Edit – Day 2

This is fantastic, this is great. Sure there are warts, but the core of this, the idea, it's so good. You can't believe you made a movie!

The Edit – Day 30

You don't feel like editing today. You just worked a full shift at the store and you’re tired. Instead you see which re-run of Seinfeld is on.

The Edit - Day 66

You’re finally finished. You can't believe you edited the whole thing yourself on a home computer with your bootleg copy of Adobe Premiere. Every word of the script is included and it's perfect. You show it to your friends and family and maybe the cast. They'll tell you if anything's wrong because they are completely unbiased.

Screening Day

You can't believe it! Your mom, your best friend, and the lead actor loved the movie! You were right. This is a masterpiece. You wonder what time the limo will be here to pick you up. Hollywood can just somehow smell talent and no doubt they'll find you. When they do, you'll hire all your friends and all these actors to work with you and Tom Cruise and make Mission Impossible 4.

After the Screening – 11 Days Later

It's been almost two weeks and still no limo. Maybe the people who smell talent have a head cold or there was a flight delay in Chicago for the connecting flight.

After the Screening – 17 Days Later

You get an e-mail today from one of the bit-part actors, what's-her-name, and she has the gall to ask if you had submitted the film to any festivals yet. She doesn't understand that you are an artist and that you have a day job too. You'll get on it soon.

After the Screening – 24 Days Later

You looked into submitting the film to Sundance and it costs twenty-five dollars. Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick, all of these film festivals want money. What kind of sick bastards charge filmmakers money to submit their movies? How many submissions can they possibly have? You can only afford two, so you will definitely send your film to Sundance because that's the big one. For some reason you were under the assumption that either the film festivals were free or that the entry fees wouldn't apply to you. You guess you should have done the math. Twenty-five dollars by eighteen film festivals equals $450. That's more than your Sony Handicam camcorder.

Rejection Day - Late November Every Year

You get a letter in the mail. You can't believe they didn't pick your movie. You went to the Sundance page and looked at the movies that did make it. Why would they pick movies directed by Matthew Modine or Danny Glover? What’s this? Kevin Smith got in too? I thought these people were already famous. Why are they premiering these Hollywood movies? Why didn't hey pick my mediocre movie with no stars shot on digital video? I better avoid all contact with anyone associated with the movie. I'd rather them not know than have to tell them.
I guess I won't be able to make another movie...

How to Avoid This Very Common Scenario

Actors

When you audition, ask about the plan and the distribution. If they can't afford to pay you but plan on sending the film to several film festivals then something is wrong. Do the math. Each film festival costs at least twenty-five dollars whether the film makes it in or not, and because of simple odds (thousands of submissions, tens of slots) the movie won't get into a lot of film festivals. If the filmmakers can't afford to pay for decent meals, how in the hell can they afford to submit the film to festivals?

Now I'm not saying you shouldn't do the movie. That's not my point at all. I guess my point is just BE REALISTIC. Know that you are doing it for the experience. There are pearl's in the clams occasionally, and you won't find them if you don't look. There are some good movies and good directors, but it may take time and a few movies before a first time filmmaker becomes one.

There are other options that can make the experience and the work worthwhile. Don't be afraid to suggest...

Filmmakers

Plan for the entire movie. Budget for the entire movie. That includes money to market the movie. The common mistake is that you spend all of your money making the movie, and then it sits and collects dust because you find out that everything costs more than you thought. Plan for it. Whatever you think it will cost, have double the money. Did you really think that because you shot your film on digital video that it would be that much cheaper? That's insane.

BE REALISTIC. The chances of getting into Sundance are slim, and winning anything, or getting distribution is a pipe dream. First of all, digital video shorts with no stars are generally as valuable as rat feces. There is no real distribution and short films, even with stars, have very few outlets for display, and even more rare are places that pay for them.

Film festivals are great but they are expensive. Plan ahead for the money you will spend submitting your film to festivals and know that you may not get in. They don't refund your money when you don't get in. Also for your information, audiences at a regular film festival range from twelve to seventy-five people, and most of them are the filmmakers and actors of the other films that got accepted. Unless your movie is about filmmaking, this may not be the best audience to judge your work.

Make movies for the experience to start. Don't be delusional. Do you want to help yourself, your film, and the actors who starred in it? Get some exposure. Get your work seen by as many people as possible. Put your film on the internet, public access television, and anywhere else you possibly can. Get your actors seen by as many people as possible. That's the least you can do.

You have to ask yourself why you made the movie or why you got involved in the first place. Was it to get famous or make money? You're better off buying lottery tickets. You'll have much better odds in a casino. Did you make your movie to tell a story? Great, now share it with people in as many venues as possible. Film festivals are good but expensive. Have other options available.

Dreamcatcher and William Goldman

2003-05-06T11:49:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Richard Hogg

In my previous article I wrote a brief piece about the William Goldman quote “nobody knows anything.” As a great admirer of his work I decided to go and see Dreamcatcher when it was released.

Looking down the credits it was hard not to take each name as a benchmark of quality. Surely with this many names, this many years, and so many movies between them they might be able to do justice to a book written by one of the, if not the best selling fiction writer of modern times.
But Mr. Goldman’s quote came back to bite him on the ass, and if you’ve seen the movie you’ll get the little joke. If you haven’t seen the movie some of this article may pass you by.

WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP. In a lot of films the script gets the bad press as a lot of people who know nothing about script work start throwing about words like poor structure and loose characterization. Here the common complaint from critics was that the plot was incoherent. If this means they spent more time looking at their watch than the screen as I did, then I agree.
Forget the three act structure and all the other supposed requirements of a script. The simple fact was that the story on screen was about as appealing as a holiday package to Iraq.

To sum it up. Aliens crash land-telepathic friends get caught up-insane special alien task force general goes insane-friend taken over by alien entity-other friends killed-alien tries to escape to spawn and infect others-remaining friends collect other strange friend-strange friend and alien do battle-humans win-hooray–the end. At this point most would be cursing the two hours they’ll never see again, but for a scriptwriter watching something this bad has proved to be more useful to me than watching something of real quality and I’ll tell you why.

The day after deciding I wanted to give this screenwriting thing a real go, my mum rented out The Shawshank Redemption. That night I lay awake, distraught, a broken fourteen year-old boy. I was convinced I would never be able to write something that good. What the hell did I know about the power of hope above all things, desire for freedom, and life inside an American prison (the other prison films I’d seen up to that point involved women only, but those films were altogether different). Two days later I went to see Street Fighter with Jean-Claude Van Damme. With my confidence restored I set about writing down some ideas for my first film.
The lesson I learned and stick to to this day, is never to compare my work to that of others. Learn from it sure, but don’t get depressed and give up if you see some hotshot twenty year-old write an amazing script. By the same token don’t get all cocky if you see something that’s not as good as your own.

The second thing I came away with was the limitations of the writer. I’d never really given it that much thought before, especially when writing. When I write I can see a clear picture in my head. Not only the action takes place but also the expression on the character’s faces. In Dreamcatcher we have some excellent actors and a few mediocre ones. Morgan Freeman is my first example as he seems to be the one with highest pedigree. Such talent, presence, and charisma, and yet here he delivers lines where his expression doesn’t change for the entire film. Does he hate the dialog (not Goldman’s best, for example take “the shit has hit the interplanetary fan”), or is it simply him putting his own take on the character, whereas Goldman was picturing something completely different. He just seemed empty, as if there was nothing to him. He may shoot a guy through the hand for disobeying orders, but I always felt as if I was grasping at thin air when trying to get inside this guy’s head.

Then there’s Damien Lewis (the ginger one). Outstanding in Band Of Brothers and the BBC dramas he’s been in. Here he appears to be underplaying the role, as he seems deadpan for the most part with the only meaty bit being when he’s taken over by the aliens. Here he has to change mannerisms and accents. Surprise, surprise, the epitome of evil has a upper class English accent. We’re not all bastards you know.

I hate to criticize a fellow Brit but the criticism is lessened by the fact that he’s still better than most of his companions. I won’t give a rundown but the one thing that stood out for me was that for a group of friends who are so close, they hardly react when bad things start to happen. Military quarantine-rant a bit; best friend dies-take a moment, wince, and then go about your business.

The lesson from this film was one I still find hard to do. You must know you’re characters. Instead of writing lists of favorite foods and colors as the books suggest, I try to get inside their skin when I’m just going about my day. I think to myself how a certain character would act in this situation. Another tool I have found to be very useful is to write short stories involving the main characters. This helps set up the world in my head as well as give me story ideas, and because it’s prose I can describe what they’re thinking. I recommend you try this.
Lastly, read you’re script out loud. That includes the descriptions. If Goldman and Kasdan had done this and still gone “Yep, this sounds good,” then I refer you back to Goldman’s famous quote.

Going to see bad films made by talented people can be enormously helpful. You may recognize similarities between the film and a script you’re working on. For example, do all of the characters speak in the same way? For me though, the benefit is much less practical and far more superficial. I come out thinking if that script which was deemed good enough to get passed through dozens of money men, as well as those with creativity, and all the changes that were supposed to make it better resulted in what I’ve just seen, then maybe the odds of my making it aren’t as bad as I thought.

Why I Don’t Participate in Cable Access Programming

2003-04-29T12:05:00.000-07:00

Submitted by by Christina Hazelwood

Although the village of Downers Grove, where I am a resident, has a fully functioning public access television station, I have been unable to get access to it. In spite of federal and local laws that specify a resident’s right to participate, in spite of the contribution that, I, as a resident make to the village in the form of taxes and cable fees, in spite of my efforts to exercise my rights, the village refuses to provide access.

The Federal Communications Commission, which regulates cable companies, gives franchising authorities like the village of Downers Grove, the right to require cable companies to set aside channels for local Public, Educational, or Governmental (PEG) use, as well as services, facilities, or equipment. Although cities and villages have this right, not all of them exercise it. The franchising authority, in this case the village of Downers Grove, is not allowed to control the content of programming on PEG stations, other than enforcement of obscenity restrictions.

Governing authorities, like the village, establish franchise agreements that specify their relationship with their cable provider. Cable companies pay the local authority, a percent of fees collected, typically from 5% to 5.5% for the privilege of providing its population with service. In its franchise agreement, the village of Downers Grove requires the cable company to provide three PEG channels, but only one is active (Channel 6). Legally, anyone who lives in the village of Downers Grove is allowed to create programming and have access to the village's television station, its equipment, and the airwaves for which the residents pay through their tax dollars and cable fees.

Downers Grove village law (Resolution 96-13) establishes rules under which residents may exercise their right to participate in the PEG station for which they pay. The intent of the resolution is to provide a method through which residents may make their voices heard. But instead the village uses the provisions of the resolution to restrict access and thereby prevent any undesirable information about the village or its activities from reaching residents.

How the village gets around the law is by putting in a clause that requires residents to take classes before they are “qualified” to have access to the station. This sounds reasonable in theory, but here’s the catch. The village then does not offer any classes, assuring that the public does not get access to the equipment, station or airwaves for which it pays.

By not providing classes, no residents become “qualified” to produce programs and all dissenting voices are squashed. In this way the village is able to eliminate public discourse and crush the rights imbued upon its citizens by law. No information or issues that may reflect poorly on the village or its activities is made public. In other countries this is called censorship. The village’s strategy insures that residents are unable to share any knowledge, information, or creative endeavors they have to offer the community at large. Programming that may potentially benefit the residents and the village is thereby made mute and void.

Not only does the village not offer classes, thereby insuring that no dissenting voices are heard, it also makes sure that the taxpaying, cable fee contributing residents are unaware that these rights to express themselves exist at all. The village flaunts its own laws of public access and takes over the station and airwaves for which the residents pay, using it as a pulpit to show a continuous stream of programming about how wonderful the village of Downers Grove and its associated governments are.

If the village was truly interested in allowing residents to exercise their public access rights, lawfully given to them and for which they pay, Downers Grove would offer classes on a regular basis, and post the dates, times, and locations of the classes on their web site, in the village newsletter, in local newspapers, and on the public access television station that it has commandeered. Instead, the village colludes to prevent its residents from knowing about their rights and gaining access to them.

The village and its representatives provide lip service about what an open, wonderful community Downers Grove is and then take measures to assure that the status quo is maintained. The few programs that get aired in which residents participate (to my knowledge there are three of them) are done in the studio under the watchful eye of village employees.
Neighboring communities such as Wheaton and Glen Ellyn, who have similar local laws, manage to provide regular open classes to their residents, allowing them to be “qualified” as producers and share valuable information in the form of programming. These villages seek out the participation of their residents and actually demonstrate an interest in hearing what their taxpaying, cable fee providing residents have to say.

In Downers Grove if a resident wants to take the required classes in order become qualified, the resident is placed on a “list” and is told that the village will be in contact when it decides to have a class. I requested to be placed on this list four years ago, have made several follow up telephone calls, and have yet to be contacted about a class. And further, although I've made movies, videos, and commercials, in the eyes of the village I am not qualified to produce cable access programming. This is in spite of village law which states that persons already familiar with equipment may be waived from taking the village's nonexistent classes.

In America, as well as in the rest of the world, just because we, the people, have both inalienable and lawfully provided rights, there is no assurance that they will be honored. Bullies who trample and disregard the rights of its citizens do not only exist only in other countries, but may be right in your own backyard.

Why I Made A Film

2003-04-15T20:58:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Christina Hazelwood

”You’re going to undergo some type of training or study,” the psychic said.

I rolled my eyes and figured the woman had a bad connection or something. Having recently graduated from college, I was happily working in my chosen profession and had no intention of going back to school. Nay, I knew I wasn't going back.

“You’re going to study...” she paused, apparently re-tuning. “...film. Film scripts. You’re going to become very interested in scripts and scriptwriting.”

This woman must be picking up vibes from the last guy that was in here, I thought. But the woman turned out to be right. It just took another ten years to happen.

At the time I was working as a reporter for a regional newspaper and had my life mapped out. Eventually I’d join the staff of the Chicago Tribune and become a salty dog, hobnobbing with police detectives and political insiders, uncovering truth, justice and fighting for the American way. But I took a series of wrong turns, uncovered numerous dead ends, and wound up, just where she said, absorbing any information I could find about scriptwriting and making films.

It’s as though the thing got under my skin, like some nasty filmmaker virus that I couldn't shake. I searched out books, magazines, seminars, every tidbit of information. I even managed to get a few non-gratis (hang-around-the-set-and-we’ll-call-you-if-we-need-you) positions on some films. But I had to face facts. I was not, and had never been, a fresh-scrubbed UCLA film school grad. So if I ever did actually manage to slog my way through the Hollywood jungle (of course I’d have to move there first) and make something of myself, success would not occur prior to the age of ninety-three. And at that point I would no longer be able to see or hear the movie I'd just made.

There was only one possible way for me to become a filmmaker - make a film. Needless to say, this was an utterly horrifying thought to my loved ones. The sheer audacity and utter folly, of believing such a thing was in the realm of the possible, was in itself a shock. Not to mention the financial burden, overwhelming responsibility, logistics, technical demands, people issues, and all else. But being the lone lemming that I am, I decided to jump off the cliff.

I looked at it this way. If I wind up flipping burgers at the local diner, looking at another twenty to thrity years before I pay off that last credit card bill, at least I could say, “I did it.” As opposed to spending the rest of my life wishing I had.

Nobody Knows Anything, The Golden Nugget of Hope

2003-04-15T19:21:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Richard Hogg

It seems that a lot of wannabe screenwriters daydream about getting up to accept an Oscar. This is the pinnacle of all the effort and creativity they pour out onto the page. For me, the end goal is to sit down at the screening, doubters at my side, and have the 20th Century Fox fanfare blast out announcing to myself more than anyone else that I should never have doubted myself.

Looking at the endless amount of screenwriting information, articles, script services available there seemed to be a lot of information to take in order to guarantee success. A word which is rarely whispered over here in Britain.

But do we need all of this. If on average I take in less than five percent of what I read (no I’m not irretrievably stupid, this is a average for most people) then think of all that wasted time spent on act structures, plot lines, climaxes, and dialog do’s and don’ts.

One day I began reading William Goldman’s now renowned “Adventures in the Screen Trade.” And in it’s pages I found a voice that gave me more hope than any of the other books on the market. Here I wasn’t being told the rules that I could learn then break, a phrase that has proved to me to be as useful as a chocolate teapot. Here I discovered a truth I still believe in today and one which I had probably read before but had been lost with the other ninety-five percent. Goldman says “nobody knows anything” and then goes onto include himself in that phrase. HE HAS NO IDEA OF HOW HE DOES WHAT HE DOES. This from the man who gave us Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid.

I looked up at a shelf groaning under the weight of other how-to books and heavyweight texts like “Story” or a Syd Field volume. Now I didn’t have to struggle with the feeling that I couldn’t be a writer because I didn’t fit the type. I never got so into my writing that I stayed up all night like they did. In fact, I seemed to self-destruct and in the middle of a creative burst of pure inspiration would find myself pacing the house just to get away from the keyboard. Was I afraid that I would mess it up? That I couldn’t get down on the page what was in my head?

I never used the techniques they mentioned and their logical train of thought seemed lost on me as I spent time writing.

Even writing this very short article I am struggling to think of things to say. Is my point valid? Do I have a point or am I just writing for the sake of writing? Why do I always end up raising more questions than I answer? But how can there be any answers if Goldman is right?

If you have read this little rant (it would be wrong to call this thought fart an article) then well done. Reading it again I realize that it will not solve any script problems or provide any inspiration. Perhaps the only thing to glean is that you either have it or you don’t. Or maybe that there are others who do what they do but not in the way they’re supposed to.

Do you write knowing that it’s not really up to standard but that it’s what you always wanted to do? Maybe you are talented enough but haven’t quite got to grips with business side of things. All I know is I get a sense of total satisfaction when I write something that I would pay to see. So I guess what I’m saying is JUST WRITE. Your imagination is the key, the books just help tidy things up.

War, Sex, Spiders, Singing, and the Culkin Spawn

2003-04-15T12:13:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Melinda Murphy

Well, the annual Hollywood self-congratulation convention is over and, aside from Michael Moore’s passionate rant, the Oscars were duller than usual. No terrorist attacks on “America’s royalty.” Who cares whether Joan Rivers gets a whiff of sarin gas anyway?

A movie adaptation of a dated Broadway musical, Chicago, rolled off with most of the little gold-plated men. And a long-suspected child rapist, who made yet another movie about the Holocaust, scored brownie points with the decrepit white men who run the Biz.

This was another year when filmmakers seemed torn between playing it safe and some sense of originality. Because they are so scatter-shot across the crap-o-meter dial, I left a lot out. I haven’t seen several of the blockbusters. Here’s my take, roughly in order of quality but mostly just in order of what I had to say about them.

One-Hour Photo: Robin Williams finally let his wife stop picking his roles for him and it shows. Along with Insomnia, this was his ode to weirdos. ER Honcho, and one-time WGA president, John Wells exec-produced. Williams played a tight-lipped, terribly dysfunctional loner. Still, there’s something a bit art school about this; maybe it’s the terrifying lighting in the Wal-Martesque scenes.

Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers: Swashing, buckling, and then more swashing! Gollum is the creepiest CGI ever. Repetitious beautiful shots of New Zealand had me asking if Peter Jackson is working for the tourism commission? I think so. And then giant talking trees beat Saruman to a pulp! I’m holding out for the Treebeard coffee mugs.

Possession: A great romantic drama from the unlikeliest director, Neil LaBute. Two different couples from two different eras struggle to love one another within a sub-plot about historical letters and an attempt to steal them. Aaron Eckhart is an affable grad student, Jeremy Northam is typically intense as a fictional Victorian poet, and Jennifer Ehle is his fiery and sensuous lover. Gwyneth Paltrow is...Christ, why do people keep making movies with HER in them? How long before a London bus doing sixty miles per hour takes out this whiney anorexic?

About A Boy: Damn funny. Hugh Grant found a part to follow up his demonic turn in Bridget Jones’ Diary and he’s equally hilarious in this. Toni Collette is a screamingly funny London hippie who feeds her boy “Ancient Grains” cereal, dresses him in dorky organic wool and then tells him, “You’re not a sheep.” I laughed out loud the first time Grant’s character zeros in on the flier for SPAT, Single Parents Alone Together.

Igby Goes Down: I liked this! It’s about The Rich, but give it a chance. Get past the polo shirts and blazers and it’s Susan Sarandon being wonderfully evil. Ryan Phillippe does his best I’m-bored-now accent and that Caulkin kid does all right. I even liked Amanda Peet, another model-turned-actress, except she can actually emote, so I can’t really bag on her except to say anorexics really should keep their clothes on in movies. The ending is good! Give it a spin on the DVD player.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: He’s back and he’s driving without a learner’s permit! This one is an improvement; we aren’t dragged through the long list of who’s who. However, the elf engaging in a sadomasochism kind of freaked me out. If a CGI-generated character ever needed a Valium, it’s that one. He makes Gollum look calm. Oh, and there’s S-P-I-D-E-R-S!

The Hours: Heavy-handed chamber music, Nicole Kidman dons a fake nose, Julianne Moore smiles in a skeletal, grimacing way and Meryl Steep enters stage left. Ed Harris is a tortured writer/artist again. But what zapped me was the little kid, Jack Rovello. The boy who acts opposite Moore in the 1950’s scenes was mesmerizing. I haven’t seen a pre-teen that intent on industry recognition since Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense.

Insomnia: Another gutsy, mainstream-pretending-to-be-indie flick from the man who brought us Memento. Al Pacino had me twitching in a way he hasn’t since Dog Day Afternoon. Robin William’s voice drones away on the voiceover, driving Pacino and the audience nuts.

Y tu Mama Tabien (And Your Mother Too): Funnily enough, the male critics who gushed about Mulholland Drive last year mightily dissed this Mexican art house flick. Gael Bernal and Diego Luna are flaky, rich Mexican teens who set off on a road trip to impress their companion, a stunning older woman from Spain, who’s harboring several painful secrets. Of course, the MPAA had no problem with the almost pornographic Mulholland Drive (hot lesbian action!) but they put the smack down on this (possible man-on-man action) and the version I saw was severely edited. Ironically, it just took Best Foreign Language Film at the BAFTAs.

Orange County: Sooo cute. I don’t care if this was a send up of all the “inherited” talent in Hollywood. There’s good comedic delivery and even better lines, like “Hello coyote ugly!” and “If it weren’t for your step-father, we’d be living in a condo eating processed cold cuts!”

The Salton Sea: This missed broader distribution, which is too bad given the appalling crystal-meth boom sweeping America. Val Kilmer is appealing as a broken man on a revenge crusade and his sidekick, Peter Sarsgaard, is amazing as the most naive junkie ever. ER’s Eric LaSalle produced and the movie has a wide ethnic cast, which is ironic given the long-time penchant for meth among bikers and skinheads (it was Hitler’s drug of choice). Vivid imagery and a little plot twist makes this a good video rental.

Rabbit-Proof Fence: Australia does a nice send up of the true story of three girls who escape an Aboriginal boarding school in 1931 and walk 1,500 miles through the outback to find their mother. The school is run by a racist creep, Kenneth Branagh, who wants to breed the black out of the Abo kids, a la the U.S. and Canada’s domesticating of the American Indian. Just like Indian kids, they’re beaten if they speak their own language and when they’re trained, they’re farmed out to white families as domestic help. What’s more amazing is, Aborigines didn’t even have the right to vote in Australia until just a few decades ago.

Minority Report: Stephen Spielberg FINALLY gets dirty. Some scenes in this pricey, slow-to-finish-production are seedy and unsavory - and that’s good! I was beginning to think the Peter Pan of Cinema didn’t know what sex was.

The Bourne Identity: Matt Damon dices, slices, and - ouch! - stabs people with ballpoint pens. Franke Potente does well as his sort-of romantic interest but doesn’t scream enough when they’re driving the Euro-beatermobile through France on one wheel and no brakes. Plenty of white-knuckle fun.

Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys: That Caulkin kid wrestles with puberty and, in this case, a nun played by Jody Foster who he perceives as Satan. Literally. Large chunks of the film are played out Saturday cartoon style as a comic book story. It’s a little disjointed but has a nice indie feel.

Enigma: (2001 but came here in 2002) A very Brit production, complete with backing from Mick Jagger, about England’s race to crack Nazi Germany’s enigma code. Loosely based on real events. Dougray Scott decided that math geek meant he shouldn’t wash his hair and then stare slack-jawed into space a lot. Uber model Saffron Burrows does a brief turn as an amorous femme fatale and Kate Winslet (who was preggers at the time) is carefully dressed down to look ugly next to statuesque Burrows. But cool Jeremy Northam’s weasely secret agent man is the only real reason to watch this made-by-a-rock-star film.

Signs: M. Night Shyamalan follows up Unbreakable and trades in Bruce Willis for Mel Gibson as a lapsed minister who lives on a Pennsylvania farm when this War of the Worlds scenario unfolds. Gibson’s minister is the ONLY person in all of America who doesn’t own a gun! Shyamalan spends a lot of time building his characters and letting them drive the bus, which works, especially in the scene where Joaquin Pheonix is watching TV. There’s some laughs too, with the kids, including another Caulkin spawn.

Blue Crush: A girls-have-fun-too flick with a tired old plot, but the actors, the setting, and the photography almost make you forget you know exactly how it will end. Michelle Rodriguez and company make the most of bikini bathing suits, gettin’ loaded and hangin’ with the howlies. I like this because I have a thing for surfer movies. There’s something far more mystical about surfing versus mountain climbing or pogoing off a cliff on a mountain bike. Any boy can do that.

Full Frontal: Over-blown indie look-alike by Soderbergh. A vanity project where he dazzled us with namedropping. Julia Roberts acts confused, and so was I. Blair Underwood is...well, uh...he’s no Denzel. He’s certainly no Jeffrey Wright, either. He’s pretty but, well...David Hyde Pierce is a writer who’s marriage is floundering. He doesn’t pull a Whiney Niles thanks to hashish brownies. David Duchovny is ultra-sleazy as a movie exec who misses his own party for unsavory reasons. I’m wondering if Duchovny and Soderbergh didn’t create this character deliberately after the gossip about Duchovny and massage parlors while he was still in Vancouver waving flashlights around for Chris Carter?

The Pianist: I haven’t seen this and here’s why - Roman Polanski. I just don’t like him and I like his writing and filmmaking even less. Remember Johnny Depp and The Ninth Gate? How about Tess? Rosemary’s Baby? “Hail Satan! Hail Satan!” Please! I know he co-wrote Chinatown but I’m still not impressed, maybe because of what he allegedly did to a pre-teen all those years ago. Once again Hollywood has proven that it is still run by very old, white Jewish men who reward subject matter first, quality second. The Holocaust was a terrible tragedy and one of the cruelest periods in Western history. Society will never be the same, but how many times can you shove extras into bread ovens and not have it become trite?

Lovely & Amazing: Catherine Keener is a screwed-up daughter in a family of screwed-up women who are, really, like everybody else. They’re obsessed with their weight, so much so that the matriarch, British actress Brenda Blethyn, gets liposuction. She ends up in the hospital in critical condition. Dermot Mulroney is the narcissistic, befuddled Hollywood actor who beds one of the dysfunctionals. Turns out, he’s just as concerned about his physical appearance as she is. Blethyn’s matriarch has an adopted daughter. The daughter is African-American and obese. The film asks hard questions about the objectification of women, stereotypes, race, age, etc. and tries to answer some of them. Guys will hate this flick.

Unfaithful: One of my favorite actresses, Diane Lane, who has certainly aged better than me (we’re both 37), has sex with a dangerous Frenchie on the stairs, in a public toilet, on a table, under a table...let’s see...anyhow, yoga can help anyone except Richard Gere’s character. But I did like the ending.

Reign of Fire: The British Isles get eaten by dragons. Matthew McConaughey must save everyone because he’s the ‘Merikun; thereby, tougher and more macho. The lizards are great! The plot - what plot? I heard two guys wrote this as a spec script submission. Get crackin’ on those soulless, plotless action-packed stories.

The Rules of Attraction: In the beginning, Shannyn Sossamon’s character gets viciously date raped...or does she? James Van Der Beek is a misunderstood, impoverished drug dealer. Ian Somerhalder is the hot gay guy who’s moping after Van Der Beek. Kip Pardue is unconvincing as a recently-returned-from-fucking-everything-in-Europe ex-boyfriend. Why would anyone line up to fuck Pardue? He looks like he asks customers if they want fries with that order. Russell Sams is underused and a standout as Dick, Somerhalder’s occasional lover. Sams acts drunk and obnoxious better than anybody else and drunk and obnoxious is the main theme! Roger Ebert was gushing on his television show that “no college boys on Earth would ignore half-naked coeds making out in a lesbian fashion.” Obviously, this is going on Ebert’s top shelf right next to Mulholland Drive. In fact, there’s so many stark nekid girlies in this, I’m guessing Avary went to a strip club and asked everybody to come be in his movie. I have faith most real coeds aren’t this stupid despite what slimy creep Brett Easton Ellis pens.

Kissing Jessica Stein: All aboard the silly Greed Train for $elling Lesbian $tereotypes to $traight Men! Our conductor is Howard Stern.

The Ring: I don’t know what Jane Alexander or Brian Cox were doing in this - making a house payment? Naomi Watts manages to keep some of her clothes on. Renting videos can kill you and the “new” formula for horror flicks is to flash gross and unsettling images. Here’s the plot: BLOOD, SCARY FACE, BUGS!

We Were Soldiers: God help us, writer/filmmaker Randall Wallace is at it again. Mel Gibson gives one of his sloppiest performances as a stalwart commando who leads his “boys” into Vietnam. Since HBO hit the ball out of the park with Band of Brothers, these war pictures are just pathetic. And I’m a girl who likes war movies! Just buy Band of Brothers on DVD.

Black Hawk Down: Ridley Scott is Bruckheimer’s new bitch?! The man who made Alien and Thelma and Louise, spews out a celluloid mess about heat, dust, and bad lighting. See above.

Bollywood 101

2003-04-01T11:55:00.000-08:00

Submitted by by Mark Leeper, originally written for the MT VOID

A reader wrote to me about my review of Devdas, a Hindi film. In the resulting discussion I talked a little about Hindi films in general. It occurred to me that I haven't said much about the rising popularity of so-called Bollywood films. These days fairly frequently you can see a Hindi film playing at some local theater. I am told that Hindi films are even bigger in Britain than in the United States, and that they are starting to make inroads with a non-Indian audience even here. I am a non-Indian and they are making inroads with me. Some Bollywood filmmakers are now even making films with an international audience in mind. I am not talking about art filmmakers like the late Satyajit Ray. His films were always made for international release. But the neighborhood films, which can be a lot of fun, are now also frequently made for international audiences and some get released over here. This article will probably seem naïve to Indians, but it is an American perspective on Bollywood films.

First of all what am I talking about? Does India even have a film industry? You bet they do. For those who are unaware it is the biggest film industry in the world. They output about 800 feature films a year, two films for every film released by Hollywood. And these are longer films. Most are in the 160-minute range. The center of the Hindi film industry is Bombay or “Mumbai” as insiders call it. Bombay is their equivalent to Hollywood and the “Bombay Hollywood” is called “Bollywood.” They sell tickets to 14 million movie patrons in an average day. That is considerably more people than live in Pennsylvania. That is just the Hindi film industry. There are lower-profile film industries making films in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Gujarati, Marathi, and Bengali. But the Hindi films have the widest audience within India and so the filmmakers can afford to mount opulent productions to recover costs.

For many Indians, films are the only forms of entertainment. Movie theaters range in quality from little neighborhood ramshackle affairs to some pretty impressive movie palaces. The most fabulous movie palace I have ever seen is the exquisite Raj Mandhir in Jaipur. In my India trip log, I say “The Raj Mandir is an impressive building, with mirrored interiors, pink decor, and rounded rampways to higher floors. It might even rival Radio City Music Hall. It's a combination of art deco and Hindu statues (well, mandir does mean temple), with lots of pink glass thrown in. With a capacity of about 1300 people, and a screen about twenty-five feet high and fifty feet wide, this is the big screen experience, this is not your local movie theater the size of your living room.”

Are the Hindi movies any good? That is a very interesting question. Certainly some are. The vast majority are made purely for entertainment. They are a way for Indians to shed their troubles and have a good time. Indians love musical production numbers and just about every film regardless of subject matter will have at least three production numbers and most will have as many as six or seven. The plot stops cold and instead they have a knock-your-socks-off dance number. And these are rarely just two people standing still and singing. There will be extravagant costumes and maybe several dancers.

Nearly every film will have comic elements, though a few filmmakers will try to keep those to a minimum. The music and the comedy are elements that Indians look for and expect. Bombay is a serious film about the Bombay riots. There are some fairly harrowing violent scenes toward the end of the film. Yet it starts out as a comedy and a musical with a Hindu boy dressing up as a girl to woo a Muslim girl. The musical comedy is part of the artistic form of the Bombay film. You might as well write a four-line limerick as make a Bombay film without songs and jokes.

Another factor is differences in taste between Indians and non-Indians. What is good for an Indian audience is not necessarily what plays well with an American audience. While some Hindi films may look like they are aimed at children, Indian audiences will just eat them up. There are just differences in predisposition. On the other hand, when I saw Asoka at a film festival, I was much impressed with the expensive look of the picture and the historical adventure. Asoka was an Indian conqueror who did much to spread the faith of Buddhism in India. This was sort of a melodrama based on history. Some of the dance numbers seem a little modern for the period, but the film is glossy and a lot of fun. The film did not play nearly as well with Indian audiences, most of whom knew the history and knew this wasn't it. Incidentally, the film starred Shahrukh Khan who seems to be very popular at the moment. I suppose he looks something like Tony Curtis did in his youth. His acting is on par with Curtis but his looks do sell tickets. Khan is currently in something like five new films a year. If you go to Indian video stores it is hard to avoid his face on boxes and posters. Khan is also the star of Devdas as well has having an important role in Hey Ram.

Bollywood filmmakers tend to shun science-fiction and horror for melodramas. While Indians love science-fiction, they have to import most of the science-fiction films they get. In large part this is because Indian filmmakers cannot really match Western counterparts for providing special effects. Occasionally an enterprising filmmaker will go into those fields, but not a lot do. I have on tape The Jungle, a 1952 Hindi science fiction film that required little in the way of effects. The idea is that animal disturbances are being caused by something strange in the Indian jungle. In the final reel we discover that it is prehistoric mammoths living deep in the Indian jungle. More recently I am told that there is an Indian film patterned on The Matrix. While horror has been rare in India, an article I have just read indicates that it is in vogue right now and many Hindi supernatural horror films are being made.

That brings us to one of the negative aspects of Bollywood films. Several borrow rather shamelessly from already-popular Western films. Khal-Naaikaa, the film we saw at the Raj Mandhir is almost a scene-for-scene remake of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (with music and comedy added). As I understand it, there was no permission given to reuse the story. Other films certainly show a strong influence of Western plots. China Gate has a strong influence of The Magnificent Seven. Several other films are also strongly influenced by Westerns. Another negative aspect, by the way, is that India's organized crime syndicates do a great deal of the funding of some Hindi films.

Budgets in India are much smaller than those in the United States, but a little money goes a very long way in that country. Devdas cost about $15 million. But that makes it the most expensive Bollywood film of all time. And you see that money on the screen. Lavish does not begin to cover the sets. Much of the film takes place in extravagant mansions that are virtual palaces and more than look it. Budget money goes a very long way in India. The story, on the other hand, may be a little melodramatic for newcomers to the genre. The title character returns to India from a decade of studying in Britain. He falls in love with his neighbor, a childhood sweetheart but a woman of lesser caste played by Aishwarya Rai, a former Miss World. Of course there are pressures on the couple not to be together and this leads to problems and eventually to tragedy.

Another thing about Bollywood films is their wholesomeness. Indian censors are extremely strict. Nudity is non-existent and even kissing is rare for fear of the censors’ ire. Lovers rarely get beyond the handholding stage on-screen. On the other hand, water scenes are quite popular. The female lead will remain fully clothed, but with her clothing all wet a certain amount of human anatomy is discernable.

At the moment there is a large market for Bollywood films outside of India, particularly in places like Britain. Curiously it was cricket that brought India and Britain together in 2002. They faced off in an important tournament. It happened there was a Bollywood film at the same time, Lagaan, on the subject of British facing Indians in a cricket match. Between the cricket match and the film, many Britons became interested in Indian culture and especially the strange films the Indians make. And wherever there are non-resident Indians there will be a market for films from home. Whether this current international interest is part of a longer trend or just a bubble that will soon burst nobody knows. But Bollywood films are a good deal of fun and well worth a film buff's attention.

Boy Meets Shit Weasels

2003-03-11T11:57:00.000-08:00

Submitted by by Melinda Murphy

I gave up on script writing last summer. While setting a personal record on unemployment insurance, I went nuts and decided to become a novelist. This was probably a good career move. I’ve got something new to put down on the welfare form under “occupation.”

I remember living with my brother in central Washington state in the late seventies when he went through the first of many novelist periods. He said, “Kid, you can write your tome, smoke pot, buy a big house, pass out drunk in your own pool, and everyone will think you’re a genius. And then you can just fuck off for five years between books because you’re blocked.”

It seemed like an agreeable lifestyle and not too different from what my brother was doing right then, minus the big house and the pool. He had a medium-sized shack in a crappy suburb and the only large body of water was the mosquito-infested Yakima River three blocks away.

So in the relentless heat of August 2002, I ploughed through what turned into a 230-page (single-spaced) contemporary romantic drama. Mind you, there’s a whole lot of classical literary references, a la Bridget Jones’ Diary and Jane Austen, I have yet to work into the novel - about thirty pages worth of Shakespeare. Every time I crack a copy of Shakespeare, I have a sophomore English class flashback where my teacher is yelling because none of us read Brutus’ speech the night before. I set another personal record - I cranked out the first rough draft in about twenty-three days. That’s right, not months or years, but days. Psychologically, the whole thing quickly turned into the same creative experience I had when I wrote the spec script, My Island, in the summer of 1998. I’ll try and explain.

First, it helps greatly in fiction writing if you’re deranged, depressed, or preferably, have split personality disorder. A good dose of abuse during childhood always helps. I became the characters. I felt what they felt, struggled with their obstacles, fell in love, perished, and got second chances just like them. It’s sort of like a psych student empathy lab without the other people. It was exhausting. I’d stop writing between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. and go to bed with unwritten dialogue ringing in my head. I forgot to videotape re-runs of Buffy. I forgot to comb my hair.

When it was done, I gave the mess to a half dozen friends. I got mixed reviews that I’m still dealing with in therapy. Overall, everybody thought it was good but rough. There was this weird separation anxiety afterward, like I’d had a relationship with the novel and it had come to an abrupt end. The novel had skipped town, darted out the door when I’d gone to sleep, gotten on a bus, Gus. I couldn’t even have a successful relationship with imaginary people.
So it’s interesting that this last movie season seemed to pick up the cumbersome idea of writers and their inner demons and run with it...for about three feet.

One of my favorites was Neil LaBute’s Possession, which was based on the Booker-winning novel by A.S. Byatt about a fictitious Victorian novelist with fluttering lamb chop sideburns who has an affair with a lesbian (okay, people person) poet. LaBute (who used to be an indie film darling before he actually started making a living as a filmmaker) once again waded deep into unfamiliar water and, despite what those sniping prigs at The Guardian newspaper said, did a bang-up job. I like his work. I hated, hated, hated In the Company of Men simply because no deaf woman alive is that stupid, but I liked his other flicks. Your Friends and Neighbors was flawless in an ferocious sort of Harmony Korine way and Nurse Betty pushed and pulled at stereotypes.
In Possession, smoldering Jeremy Northam and elfish Jennifer Ehle struggle with writing but mostly just sex and the fairytale idea that two writers can live and love together without heaving typewriters or pitching ink bottles at each other. Oh, and they totally skip the whole Victorians-didn’t-bathe-much issue. I heard rumors that guys dragged to this film on dates actually stayed awake through two-thirds of it, but those were only rumors.

A few weeks back, The Hours premiered, trumpeting the arrival of a movie that looks at women writers and how they deal with sex, the heaving of typewriters, and that whole split personality thing I was talking about earlier. This was sort of an update on Julia, the film where Jane Fonda wandered around with a bottle of gutrot under one arm and complained to Jason Robards, “I need to write!” Nicole Kidman put on an impressive prosthesis, Julianne Moore became even more manic-depressive than she was in either of those P.T. Anderson’s films, and Meryl Streep was a freaked out New Yorker who shopped a lot. Half the characters smoked like chimneys (apparently that’s what writers do when they’re not pinning those inner demons to the mat, they’re becoming emphysemic) and Virginia Woolfe became just another apprehensive suburbanite who missed the smog of London. The Hours will probably roll off with a wheelbarrow of Oscars.

Of course, not just writers, but the novels they create have been the fodder for films good, bad, and mediocre for ages.

After watching these films I read two books by contemporary, pulp fiction writers; both extremely successful. One is one of the most successful fiction writers of all time. The first was Clive Barker’s twisted horror-erotica Coldheart Canyon and the second was Stephen King’s Dreamcatcher. Barker is so determined to see his made into a film, he dropped enough names in the book to fill the Shrine Auditorium. In Coldheart Canyon, all the A-list stars from the thirties are sexual deviants and both Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt are “present” when the lead character has a meltdown at a Malibu party. There’s the obligatory asshole studio exec, the morally lost talent agent, ad naseaum. There’s also some good character description, although the book is cumbersome and the lead, Todd, steps out of character halfway through without so much as a backward glance at his motivations. I’m certain Barker, another ex-pat Brit now ensconced in balmy Hollyweird, has already had his first sit-down with someone at Fox or Universal about Coldheart Canyon. So I’m thinking now the whole novelist thing is probably a good idea. Not really the back door into filmmaking, but not quite so thoroughly beaten a path as spec scripts and the whole script contest merry-go-round.

King’s Dreamcatcher surprised me. He was back to his “aw shucks” Maine roots again and the tried-but-true buddy story. He eternally takes us all down memory lane, ever since River Phoenix and company brought the short story The Body to life in Stand By Me. In King’s literary memory, the music was better, the soda was sweeter, and the friendships were always true, a la the maudlin Hearts in Atlantis. This must really hit a nerve with baby boomers; he’s worth something like thirty-five million and, as my college writing professor said years ago, “King never misses a house payment, ever.”

The nice thing about Dreamcatcher was I got caught up in it in a chilly winter night, fat pulpy novel kind of way. You root for the flawed heroes from the get go and the bad guys are nicely over the top, though a few are just average Joes who’ve gone astray.

Of course, the movie rights to Dreamcatcher were optioned before the ink on the front cover was dry. Lawrence Kasdan filmed it in British Columbia last winter and it’s slated to hit American theatres at the end of March 2003. (British Columbia in January? Kinda like sending the cast and crew of The Mummy to Tunis in July.) And - this was a thrill to those who read the book - there will be special effects bad guys. That’s right, America’s favorite author has envisioned the ultimate movie baddy - shit weasels from outer space. No vamps, no demons, no E.T., just full-on shit weasels.

King has inspired me. I’m no longer snubbing mainstream movies or novels. Now if I can just incorporate a few shit weasels into my romantic drama...maybe boy meets girl, boy meets...shit weasel?

An Insider's View of Triggerstreet.com

2002-12-10T20:53:00.000-08:00

Submitted by Peter John Ross

I have just uploaded my fourteenth movie to Triggerstreet.com, Kevin Spacey's attempt to imitate Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's highly successful Project Greenlight, which recently completed it's second run. I've been to countless film festivals, screenings, and networking events. I have submitted my films to every short film site on the web, but I have never experienced anything like Triggerstreet.com.

It costs nothing, and in a strange ironic twist, Budweiser is picking up the tab for once. You can upload and review short films for free. Similar to Project Greenlight's recently completed Director's Contest, you must review two other shorts before you can upload one. You can upload RealMedia or QuickTime files. They also accept feature length screenplays in addition to short films. Short films must be less than ten minutes long, in RealMedia or QuickTime format, and under 15MB in size.

So far every single one of my movies has been universally panned. Sometimes I got slammed and complimented for the exact same thing. For instance, on the same short I heard comments like "your actors are so horrible" in one review, while the next reviewer says "the only thing redeeming is the performances from the actors who outclass your pathetic script." Even worse is when I get a review like "you suck... you suck... you suck..." This is repeated until there are fifty words, the minimum requirement for a review. If you have never lived in Los Angeles or New York, Triggerstreet.com is the next best thing. You'll get slammed by anonymous reviewers with screen names like "Dogmatic Carl" and "Digital Bonzai," and believe me, anonymity can bring out brutal honesty. In one review of my movie Friend or Foe, I even had someone claiming they would seek out my characters and attempt to strangle them. I would file assault charges except for the fact that they are fictional characters.

Having reviewed twenty-eight movies and viewed even more, I can say the quality ranges from high end 35mm shorts that are well shot with great scripts and performances to some of the crappiest digital video shorts ever conceived. Apparently, those are mine.

Unlike Project Greenlight, the only reward a filmmaker or screenwriter can receive for exposing their work to potential theft is getting your work included on a DVD. Big deal, I can do that at home with a two-dollar DVD-R, but I like getting my work seen, even if every bit of it gets slammed by other wannabe filmmakers with a chip on our collective shoulders. The real goal is to become "discovered" by getting your work seen by Hollywood bigwigs and/or agents with some clout. Since the highest rated shorts are the ones that draw the most attention, the urge to critique and nit-pick suddenly turns into a need to draw blood.

Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one. Apparently opinions and assholes alike have found a home on the internet at Triggerstreet.com.

There is a series of shorts on the site called Cap'n Ken's Corner that is driving me mad with laughter. It's a spoof of a series like Blue's Clues, but with a very dark edge. After reviewing a lot of movies on the site thus far, it's the best thing on there by a long shot, including my own movies. I am really rooting for their production team to make it because both the concepts and execution are brilliant. It's worth registering just to see. They call themselves "Twisted Mojo." They have other shorts that are good too, but the Cap'n Ken series stands out. There's something about that ultra cheery guy looking through the "reality scope" and seeing a doctor trying to convince him he is not the host of a children's show. Even though I should be cynical as hell of any competitor on the same playing field with me, I can't help but applaud these guys and send out happy thoughts that they will be whisked away from obscurity and into the limelight where they belong. Best of luck and kudos the "Twisted Mojo" team. Overall, their movies are getting good reviews, but there are also some severe criticisms as well.

Overall, the Triggerstreet.com site is a slick idea. It's an eye opener to every slack ass with a camcorder that fancies themselves the next Kevin Smith. Stop getting compliments from your friends and family and let a few film school brats take a crack at reviewing your short, then see if you still want to be a filmmaker. My mom once told me "if you can't stand the heat, then get out of the kitchen." She also told me that I was neither planned nor wanted, so maybe my confidence is not what it should be. But at least I can look in the mirror and still call myself a filmmaker after every one of my flicks gets a horrible review on Triggerstreet.com. If you think you'll win the contest, don't bother submitting. If you want to have your movie seen and probably ripped apart, then this is the site for you. I guess I view it as looking into the abyss and finding out why I really made the movies.

Filters

2002-11-12T12:00:00.000-08:00

Submitted by Peter John Ross

I have used several filters on my Canon GL1 but the main one used for New World was an enhancing filter from Tiffen. This particular filter brings out flesh tones and the gradation of the color of leaves in the fall, namely oranges, yellows, and browns. We also used neutral density filters to soften the video look, but it darkened the image, so be sure and open up your iris on the camera.

For other projects, unrelated to New World, I have used red, yellow, and blue filters to get a look similar to Steven Soderbergh's film Traffic. Using filters during the shoot saves time in post if you already know what look you want ahead of time. I also use an 80A filter when I know I am going to convert the footage to black and white. In the title sequence for a short film called Concupiscence (www.sonnyboo.com/othershort.htm) I used a horizon filter, often employed by Tony Scott and Michael Bay in their commercials and feature films to make the horizon line look a gradient colored sky. I used it for an effect I wanted on the titles. Shooting this way saved me hours of Adobe After Effects render time.

Filters may say "for daylight use" or "black and white still photography use," but experiment and try them anyway with color video. One filter can have multiple uses and give numerous looks. A circular polarizer filter is made for two things. One, it kills reflections on glass surfaces shot at an angle. You can rotate the filter until the reflections are cancelled out. A second use for a polarizing filter, which is why I bought one, is to get the richest, most realistic blue skies from whatever camera you use. I used a polarizing filter on my Super-8 film camera for a thirty second commercial I did (www.thecfc.org/movies/PSA33B.mov). Shooting in July, aiming at the sky, the filter brought out so much blue that the sky looked perfect, without compromising the other colors.

If you can't afford the cost of numerous filters for your lenses, you can use your camera's manual white balance to achieve filter-like effects. If you white balance to colors or even gray sheets of paper, you can get some really wild results and cool looks if you need something a bit more radical. If you want something subtle, try using soft yellow or off-white colors to set the white balance. Tinker around and find what works and what doesn't.

Too many digital video shooters don't study cinematography in general or bother to learn some basic techniques borrowed from still photography. Filters work on digital video lenses and come in a variety of sizes, and can be used with even the cheapest cameras. I learned about filters from Emmy Award winning director of photography Scott Spears. He taught me a lot about filters and affecting the image with light, the cinematographers best friend, even when shooting digital video. Too many people take the nearly automated process of digital video for granted and forget that the use of focus, light, filters, and zoom are brushes in the hands of artists, not buttons on a machine.

For additional information on filters check out the Tiffen page at www.tiffen.com/filters.htm.
A sampling of what the Tiffen site has to offer:

Ultraviolet Protector - Protects lens from dust, moisture, scratches, and breakage.

Sky 1A - Popular general use protection filter. Absorbs a significant amount of ultraviolet light. Slightly warm-tinted for better colors. Useful when shooting outdoors in the shade and on overcast days.

Haze 1 - Reduces excessive blue haze caused by ultraviolet light by absorbing 71% of ultraviolet radiation. Great all-around ultraviolet control.

Haze 2 - Absorbs all ultraviolet light. Reduces haze and maintains color and image clarity. Best for high altitude and marine scenes.

Polarizer and Circular Polarizer - Essential for outdoor photography. Deepens intensity of blue skies and reduces or eliminates glare. Use circular polarizers for auto-focus cameras as recommended by the camera manufacturer.

Warm Polarizer - For color imaging, a combination of an 812 filter and polarizing filter. Warms skin tones and scenics.

Neutral Density - For all film types, color or black and white. Absorbs varying degrees of light. Provides balanced exposures and depth-of-field control. Eliminates overly bright, washed out images. Great for video.

Soft - Ideal portrait filter. Softens and minimizes facial imperfections while retaining overall clarity.

Warm Soft - Combines a soft and an 812 warming filter. Smoothes facial details while adding warmth to skin tones for color imaging.

Center Spot - Clear central area for dramatic focus, surrounded by ring of moderate diffusion to minimize distracting background detail.

Warm Center Spot - Combines a center spot filter with an 812 warming filter. Clear central area for dramatic focus, surrounded by ring of moderate diffusion to minimize distracting background detail. Warms image for more vibrant results.

Pro-Mist - Most popular motion picture effect. Creates special "atmosphere" by softening excess sharpness and contrast. Creates a soft glow around highlights. Great for portraits and landscapes.

Warm Pro-Mist - Combination of a Pro-Mist filter and an 812 warming filter. Warms and softens image giving skin a healthy, natural glow.

Black Pro-Mist - Similar characteristics to the Pro-Mist filter, but providing a more subtle effect. Less lightening of shadows and a reduction of contrast.

Ultra Contrast - Recognized by an Academy Award for Technical Achievement, this filter series redistributes ambient light to capture details that would be lost in shadows. Lowers contrast evenly throughout image with no flare or halation.

Low Contrast - Spreads light from highlights to darker areas and leaves bright areas bright, lowering contrast and muting colors. Makes videos look more like film.

Star - Achieve dazzling star effects from any direct or reflected point light source. Add sparkle to water scenes, candle flames, product shots, and more.

Fog - Adds drama to your scene by producing a misty atmosphere. Lights flare while softening contrast and sharpness.

Double Fog - Creates the natural look of fog, especially on overcast days.

Sepia - Creates a warm brown tone for that old time feeling.

Grad - Half color, half clear with a graduated density transition for a smooth blending of color. The perfect solution to transform a pallid sunrise or sunset into something spectacular. Available in a rainbow array of useful colors.

80 Series - Use with daylight film to shoot indoors with tungsten lighting to achieve the correct color in your image.

85 Series - For shooting tungsten corrected film outdoors. Produces natural colors in your images.

FL-D and FL-B - Provide pleasing skin tones and corrects color under fluorescent lighting. Use the FL-D with daylight-corrected media and the FL-B with tungsten-corrected media.
812 Color Warming - Improves color of all skin tones. Absorbs blue cast often caused by electronic flash or outdoor shade. Adds warmth to pale, washed-out flesh tones. Ideal for portraits.

Enhancing - Creates brighter, more saturated reds, browns, and oranges with minimal effect to other colors. Ideal for fall foliage, earth tone rock formations, and rustic barns.

Magenta - Balance excessive green cast and produce creative effects. Great for early morning tint.

Independent Films on Public Access

2002-10-29T19:30:00.000-08:00

Submitted by Peter John Ross

Take Advantage. Independent filmmakers should put their movies on public access television.

Be realistic and question the motive for why you made your movie. Very few theaters can exhibit your movie unless you have a 35mm film print. If your movie was shot on digital video, then chances are you couldn't afford 16mm film, never mind 35mm film, and you surely can't afford to get a 35mm film print made of your digital video movie at $375 to $450 a minute, and even if you did, it wouldn't look very good. If you made your movie to be seen, put it where people can see it. Public access television offers a chance for your film to be seen. A lot.

Cable public access is an untapped gold mine. It's piped into 1.2 million homes here in central Ohio and it's free. It's the channel that no one watches, but everyone sees. Ever notice how no one talks about what they saw on public access like it was Alias, but mention the cheesiest show and you'll find that everyone knows what it is and have at least seen it.

Why? People are channel surfers. Most people flip by every channel on their way too see Seinfeld re-runs or a Charlie's Angels marathon on TNN. Most people don't know what channel the TV is on when they start going up or down. If something good or different is on, people will stop and check it out. Good god, even if it's bad people tend to stop to at least give it a look.

The connotation for public access or cable access (same thing) is that everything on it is bad. A lot of what is on cable access is horrid and amateurish. Well, put your own movies on there. For some reason, people believe that they cannot put their stuff on cable access because everything on the channel is bad, and somehow, like a bad magic trick, if they put their good movie on public access television, it will transform into a bad movie. If you truly believe what you are making is good, then you should have no fear.

There is a flip side for independent filmmakers too, which is this fanciful belief that their movie is such a prized intellectual property that is so in demand, they don't want anyone but the highest studio executives to see it. We're talking about a movie written by amateurs (like you and me) who shoot with a camcorder over a weekend or two with no name stars. Something happens and delusions of grandeur permeate and make the director, writers, and producers of such digital video shorts think that this is a hot property and has some intrinsic value. The thought that putting it on cable access might disqualify them for Sundance scares them. Sundance is a pipe dream from hell. Do some homework. You think you have a chance at Sundance? The Sundance Film Festival features shorts shot on 35mm film written and directed by Danny Glover and Gary Oldman and they have to compete for the same slots. These guys kiss ass in person at Sundance to get selected. Where do you think Slamdance came from? And then No Dance? People couldn't get into Sundance.

For most markets, there is a public access station, and they accept tapes of your movies on VHS, or ¾" tape, and at some of the more sophisticated places, digital video. You can submit your short films as filler, meant to round out the half hour or full hour shows submitted. Or work with others and put together a thirty or sixty minute show of compiled short films. Or wait until you have thirty to sixty minutes of your own material and make a show. Find out the unadulterated opinion of the public about your movies. If they talk about your movies in the same way they do about the guy who's show is thirty minutes or staring at a yacht, then maybe you need to rethink your once burgeoning movie career. Or maybe people might become fans of your work. You won't know until you try.

Get the exposure. Get your movie seen by people. Don't live in a dreamland where you think film festivals with their $30 to $200 entry fees are your only option. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, if you want to be discovered you have to be somewhere they can find you.

Movies on the Internet

2002-07-30T19:00:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Peter John Ross

Two years ago, the word on the street said that all the undiscovered talent was on the internet. Sites like ifilm.com and atomfilms.com were getting unknown talents onto A-list movies. Lately, we aren't hearing anything like that. Is the internet dead for distribution? Hardly. Broadband and other faster internet connections are making it even more viable to get your movie seen. Everyday more people get faster internet connections which means you can put higher quality movies on the net and generate an audience.

Movies like 405 The Movie, Troops, and George Lucas In Love, showed that the internet can elevate unknown filmmakers into the stratosphere. All of those filmmakers landed feature movie deals. And the bmwfilm.com lot starring Madonna, Clive Owen, and Mickey Rourke showed that Hollywood bigwigs, like directors Ang Lee, John Frankenheimer, (R.I.P.), and Guy Ritchie are willing to do short films for the internet in style.

Is the internet good for feature films? Not yet. There are already some sites such as movieflix.com and cinemanow.com streaming feature length films, but the quality is dreadful. Both sites do buy the distribution rights to independent films, but the price is so low it's not going to reimburse your craft services bill.

The internet is ripe for short films, even movies shot on digital video. Since they are shorter, you can make a manageable, easy-to-download size file that even people with a 56K modem (you know, the Amish) can download. Virtually every single editing software package now includes some kind of output for the web feature.

Why put movies on the internet?

No, you won't get rich, at least that isn't likely. People are leery of the pay sites, unless it's a porn site. If there is a site offering you money for your movie, that's cool, but it won't be much. Most offer a "revenue sharing" program which means with each paid viewing, you get a percentage. That means you have to share that five dollars a month with that company and their overhead. Don't lose any sleep waiting for the check.

So where is the power you ask? The power is in getting exposure. You need to be visible to be discovered. If you have that magical talent that Hollywood is looking for, you need to be somewhere they can see you. Even if they don't see your work online in horrible real video quality, there is a validation that someone, somewhere liked your work enough to host it on the internet for you.

It's not the same when you host all your own movies on your own web page. Any moron can do that. To get "selected" to have your movie played makes a movie executive or an investor think, "someone else liked their movie too," and that means they are more likely to consider your work.

Will putting the movie on the internet instantly make you a star? Hell no. Getting your movie on the internet is only the half-way mark. Getting people to know it's there is the other half.
At the very least, you will get unadulterated feedback. It's funny how the internet can empower people. Some little weasel of a guy in Iowa who's never been assertive in his life will make up a screen name like "BUBBA_BAD_MUTHA" and rip apart your movie because he can safely hide behind anonymity. Get used to bad reviews. Not everyone will love your movie. But you might learn something from these relentlessly honest viewers.

There is also a benefit of ownership. If some other site, other than your own, hosts your movie and someone else rips off the idea, or steals elements, you have an unbiased third party that can prove when you had your movie online. It establishes your idea and date and time.

What are the pitfalls?

Some sites, like ifilm.com, want to get you to buy your exhibition package. It's only $150 for three months of hosting. What a scam. Since several other short film sites went under, and they had exclusive rights on 405 The Movie, they started charging everyone to host their movies. You are a filmmaker, and you should never pay someone else to host your movie.

The other thing to be careful of are the web sites with exclusive contracts. Be sure and read all contracts carefully. Some of them want all rights to your movie (like atomfilms.com, who wants DVD rights, television rights, theatrical rights, everything). If you are willing to give these up because it was something simple you did in the backyard with a camcorder, then go for it, but be aware of the consequence. You just gave away all rights to a movie you wrote and directed. Read the contracts on their web sites carefully before signing. Each site is different with different needs and wants.

Why wouldn't you want to get your movies online?

You increase your exposure, you get honest reviews, and have an excuse to let the media know you have a movie, and virtually every site lets you submit your film for free.

List of Sites

http://sho.com/alt - Showtime's Alternative Media Festival.

http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/af/home - Atom Films.

http://www.bijouflix.com - Bijou Flix , also does a "Best Of" DVD.

http://www.thebitscreen.com - The Bit Screen.

http://craptv.com/co_info/submissions.html - Crap TV.

http://www.ifilm.com - The big baddy of short film sites, ifilm.com boasts the most shorts and the best success ratio of filmmakers going from rags to riches. You can see their "success stories" articles on the site. It's also the most annoying with horrendous pop up screens.

http://www.inetfilm.com - Internet Film Community.

http://www.movieflix.com - Movieflix is one of the coolest new sites and has a broad range of titles of royalty free old movies and new independent short films.

http://www.neokino.com - NeoKino.

http://www.pepper-view.com/en - A French run web site.

http://www.reelscreen.com - The British web site run by the magazine Total Movie and Total Film. Several submissions wind up on their monthly DVD that goes out with the magazine.

http://www.rewindvideo.com/artman/publish/index.shtml - Rewind Video Magazine reviews and links to movies online.

http://www.robofilms.com - Robofilms is silly but fun. Check out the "robo-manifesto."

http://www.shorttv.com - Short TV out of New York also has a TV show counterpart in New York City.

http://studiocities.net - Studiocities has a ton of movies and a great layout.

http://indie.hollywood.com/submitfilm.asp - Indie Film from Hollywood.com, anyone who's been in an AMC theater in the last eighteen months will recognize the name, Hollywood.com, which has theater listings and showtimes. They bought a small formerly Cincinnati based short film site called "alwasyi.com" and converted it to their own.

http://www.undergroundfilm.com - Saving the best for last, Underground Film was recently purchased and will soon be run by the University of Southern California. Underground Film is one of the best independent film sites in the world.

Cinedictum: Self-Interview

2002-07-16T12:07:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Shavkat Karimov

What in the hell is Cinedictum?

Cinedictum is a witty child, conceived in love by philosophy and art. From philosophy it has a manner to ask, and from art, a manner to answer.

Cinedictum is a new word in cinema. It's a short dictum stated in a figurative style by the film medium.

In other words, Cinedictum is a film-aphorism. It's a very short film (usually, no more than three minutes) whose concise narrative holds both entertainment and moral value, while addressing universal themes.

So what?

Cinedictum, like aphorism in literature, has very strong attraction. This occurs because ideas are expressed in bright form with precision. Some aphorisms are fundamentally wrong and unjust. Nevertheless, as a result of their ability to influence, they are often used as arguments in disputes.

Cinedicta are violence-free movies. We are opposed to scenes with violence, sex, drugs, use of weapons, cruel fighting, and the promotion of extreme ideologies such as terrorism and fascism. We can entertain and impress without showing violence on the screen.

Humor is our main power and it makes us live longer. Most of our films are comedies. And comedy is the world's most popular genre.

Cinedicta have wide audience. Kids, teenagers, young professionals, parents, and senior citizens will all find something for themselves in these movies. Any social group will accept them, as very common themes are explored in Cinedicta. We have also concentrated on making the movies silent in order to make it possible for anyone in the world understand them. We made them universal.

These films will never get old. They will stay forever young because they are made in classic style.

Cinedicta are great, precisely because they are so short. Their strength lies in their weakness. As William Shakespeare said, "Brevity is the soul of wit." So, we keep them short.

In this new millennium the tempo of our lives is continually accelerating. We don't have extra time, and sometimes people just don't want to spend two hours watching a feature, even if they love movies. We are short of leisure time, a trend that works to the advantage of cinedictum. You need only a few minutes to watch a cinedictum. And if you have twenty minutes of free time, you can stimulate your mind and enjoy watching ten cinedicta all at once.

Okay, how can I use it?

Cinedicta can be aired on television either in addition to other programming (lead-ins, infomercials, promos, visuals, fillers before and after programs) or independently, as a compilation of cinedicta made available to air together. Also, cinedictum can be used to fill in the gaps between programs. When the program ends a few minutes early, the television networks need something to help bring them to the top of the hour.

Cinedicta can also be used as in-flight programming or be shown in waiting areas at airports, hotels, supermarkets, and sports stadiums. For more ideas where cinedictum can be shown check out the list available at www.cinedictum.com/films/use.phtml

Despite language barriers cinedicta can be shown in numerous countries because their sense, and especially their humor is visual rather than verbal. Often there are no words at all in the films which gives them a timeless quality.

That's interesting. What do you propose?

We have thoroughly studied the best of the planet's short stories, world and ethnic literature, and national epics. We have explored the entire experience of humanity and used it in cinedictum. Today, we have fifteen-hundred screenplays selected for cinedicta in our database. However, we continue to replenish our list by adding more stories to our database daily.
The first batch consists of ten cinedicta and because of the considerable public interest in these brand new movies, we plan to create many more cinedicta in the future.

We invite everyone to take part.

Our films are absolutely independent. No one tells us what kind of cinedicta to create, or how to do it. We are an independent company and we are proud of it.

Cinedictum has a distinctive excellence. Viewers will always watch until the end.
I believe that Cinedictum will soon find its niche in the world of cinema.

Where can I find out more?

You're always welcome to visit the cinedictum home page at www.cinedictum.com.

The Story of Donald and Dot Clock

2002-06-18T11:47:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Roger DeBris

John Edmund Parcher wanted to make his own damn movie. A decade of work as a part-time audition actor (entertaining casting directors who called him in to read for hundreds upon hundreds of roles) led him to realize that waiting on anyone to open doors for him would not work, and that the few times he was actually hired would not do. Several short film projects with a variety of aspiring directors gave him the where-with-all to finally make a feature film. The only problem was, what would the film be about?

Sometime in the mid-nineties, somewhere in the Midwest, was a daily newspaper with a tiny blurb proclaiming, "Donald and Dot Clock Found Dead in their Home." The story went on to state that the cause of death was not known, that the police did not suspect foul play and that there was no evidence of suicide. What happened to Donald and Dot Clock? This was the burning question that brought forth the idea for John Edmund Parcher's first feature film and transformed Parcher into "Donald Clock" for the silver screen. However, the "Dot" character was still missing.

At a reception after a random Sundance screening, John Edmund saw a tall, wiry, striking female figure, with a unique aura about her. He approached her and introduced her to the idea of Donald Clock and the part of Dot. Her name was Eugenie Bondurant, and she originally hailed from New Orleans. She said yes and several years later the first day of shooting began.

First time director, Michael Kowalski, was studying film in the Anthropological Department of the University of California. He had made a few short documentaries, including his final graduate thesis project. John Edmund had met Michael on a Greyhound bus ride from back east to Los Angeles. Michael expressed interest in the "Donald and Dot Clock" project and brought along a writer who came up with a loose outline of the story. The initial script played around with elements from "Marty" and "Ben," a shy loser and a rat. Since John Edmund was a strict Vegan for the past twenty-five years, the writer created several scenes as a dark satire, including a beating with dead rabbits, skinning rabbits, as well as a talking skinned rabbit.

The filming itself lasted twenty-three days and was spread out over four years. The first rough cut was shot over thirteen days and was cut on a Light Works system at Disney Studios. The editor of a Disney feature allowed Michael and John Edmund to sneak in and cut "Donald and Dot Clock" on the sly. The editor had dated Eugenie in years past. The first rough cut spanned two hours and needed a lot of work.

The director would spend the next eight months or so figuring out what to do. Finally, a crew was gathered and additional scenes were shot, and others were re-shot. Between film shoots, numerous ideas were shot on video in order to test out various plot developments. The footage was then plugged into the film on a Mac Final Cut Pro system Michael had set up in his home, the Disney show having been completed.

A dedicated group of professionals donated their time and showed up time and again; camera operator, gaffers, grips, and the actors who performed in a variety of roles. The director of photography, Mary Beth Bresolin was Michael¹s girlfriend and they had gone through an ugly breakup just after the principle photography. Despite this, she came and shot the film every time she was needed over the course of the four years it took to reach completion.

The filming took place in each participant's homes (actors, director, and producer) and all over Los Angeles without permits. One of the big "special effects" in the film took place when Donald throws himself into the La Brea Tar Pits. After he climbs over the fence and jumps towards the tar pits, the close up insert is that of John Edmund as Donald sinking into a kiddy pool filled with molasses, soy oil, and some dirt, to duplicate the tar pit look. This same mix was covered all over John Edmund when "Donald" finds himself in the afterlife, walking through the Los Angeles sewer system where he greets Dot, who had been mourning his death at the spot where she commiserates with rats earlier in the film.

When the film was fashioned into a presentable form, it was left in the hands of the person who got the whole thing started, pulled the train out of the station on the adventure bound for glory. John Edmund Parcher faced the daunting task of launching the film to the viewing public utterly alone.

Through the hundreds of rejections from film festivals including, Sundance, Slamdance, Nodance, Digidance, Slamdunk, Tromadance, and more, John Edmund felt lost, but not without hope, for he was finally found by the Lost Film Fest. The little film festival that could expressed true love for Donald and Dot Clock Found Dead in their Home and has screened the film out of their home base in West Philadelphia and all around the world.

Get Lucas a Cattle Prod

2002-05-29T18:48:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Melinda Murphy

God help us, the annual summer blockbuster season is here. Have you noticed it comes earlier and earlier?

In the stalwart tradition of an ex-movie critic, I decided to see a few of the new releases. I'm way too fond of my VCR - the relationship is becoming obsessive. So, I returned to big, dark places full of sticky floors and strangers who will not shut up.

It being May '02, I had to get the juggernaut out of the way. Juggernaut is what my favorite comic, Denis Leary, called Titanic. And he was right. Mainstream films are so bloated, so expensive and so over-done, they need a company logo, a dozen lawyers and good lighting just for the press junket. So I gave in and saw Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones.

The ass-numbing effort reminded me of carnie show rides. When I was 12, I got on a ride, liked it for about five minutes; but when it speeded up, things started swinging at my head and I started sliding out of my seat and then - I just wanted to get off.

The special effects in Attack of the Clones are like that. Things fly at your face and after awhile you just want it to stop before the headache starts. There's either a mechanical whatsit or an enraged creature lunging at the audience every five minutes for two hours and twelve minutes.
I'm not sure if Lucas' mid-life crisis, a hidden drug problem, or enough money to roll around in built the foundation for this film and its depressing predecessor, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.

The dialogue? God, what happened, George? Where are the memorable one-liners like "Well excuse me, your worshipfulness?" I had no idea that Ewan McGregor and Samuel L. Jackson could be that boring. They do voice-overs on car commercials with more verve.

Character development? There isn't any. I was so annoyed by C3P0 and R2D2 that I hoped one of the angry grasshopper critters would finish them off. C3P0 was cute in the earlier films, but now his plumy Brit accent and incessant whining had me fantasizing about him getting stomped into the stadium ground by an angry whatsit. Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen were no better, but it's not their fault. Everybody is wooden and dull; even the computer-generated characters have poor line delivery.

Plot? It's even worse than I feared. While in the first one, it turned out our heroes' struggles were precipitated by a trade dispute (NAFTA in space), this story stumbles from point to point. Politicians vie for power and somebody's lying, though it's easy to forget exactly who (think Watergate). The characters blather on in monotone; an assistant director should have randomly zapped the actors with a cattle prod just to get a screech out of them!

The romantic sub-plot is butt awful. Pull two socks out of a dryer and rub them together - they will have more energy between them than Anikan and the former-Queen-turned-Senator. At one point, they're frolicking - on I forget which planet - running in alpine meadows. For a second I thought I was watching The Sound of Music. Most of the time, Anikan utters forgettable, awkward lines that might as well have been written by one of Lucas' adopted kids; kind of how a fourteen year-old would imagine great love.

The only up side to this mess, is one of the last scenes where Yoda - that's right - Yoda takes on one of the heavies in a light saber duel. I don't think Lucas intended this response, but it was like watching Kermit the Frog do Kung Fu. The kids in the front row were howling with laughter.
Lucas decided that good writing and editing are needless details that would only hinder a story better suited to the Sci-Fi Channel on a Sunday night. Speaking of cable television, one of the characters even makes mention of "spice mining" - is Lucas scamming the venerable Frank Herbert?

Thank God I saw something coherent before I saw Attack of the Clones - the new Hugh Grant vehicle, About a Boy, which is a wonderful surprise, like a torte that tastes as good as it looks. Yeah, it's fluffy but it was fun, not an ordeal that you don't want to run out of water during.
Grant plays a useless, wealthy cad who has frittered away his life chasing chicks and shopping for compact discs. He meets a kid and the kid gradually weasels his way into the cad's life, changing him forever, and helping him develop empathy for someone other than himself. Grant's dead-on in this role, just like he was in Bridget Jones' Diary, and maybe that's not a compliment.

The plot and character development are good. Aussie Toni Collette is brilliant as a screwball London hippie who feeds her kid soymilk and "Ancient Grains" cereal for breakfast, tells him he's "not a sheep" and then sends him off to school in enough wool and organic fiber to make him look like a rainbow-colored lamb. Grant's character meets her through a self-help group that made me laugh out loud - S.P.A.T. or Single Parents Alone Together. The subtle pokes at contemporary life, which earn giggles and some serious laughs, are reminiscent of Fight Club. When Grant's character is doing a voice-over about a frightening ride to an emergency room, he doesn't hesitate to say it was scary "but driving really fast behind the ambulance was fun!" It's exactly this sort of black, poking-at-political-correctness humor that made flicks like The Opposite of Sex a classic.

It's sad that the entertainment biz continually disappoints with warring egos spewing crap like Attack of the Clones, when you consider that the movie's budget was bigger than Zaire's gross national product. Or, better yet - and this has been said before - for what it costs to make one summer blockbuster, Hollywood could produce two dozen independent films.

Filming What We Know

2002-05-07T11:55:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Joseph Gaines

I'll start by saying that I am not a filmmaker. Rather, I am someone who finds himself in the right place at the right time with a story that tells itself. I am lucky enough to have all the resources I need to let this story be retold on film. I don't have to spend a dime on props, the sets are already built and the characters have no need to rehearse their parts. It's just myself, a circle of friends (who know far more about the nuts and bolts of film than I do) and a story that is screaming to be told.

It begins with an accident.

In the fall of 1989, something happens which surprises pretty much everyone in the entire world, especially those who are right in the middle of it. A series of nation-wide demonstrations to change one government's oppressive policies seem certain to provoke a violent response from the military and state police. If this were Tiennamen Square in Beijing, then the story ends here. The government brings the resistance to a bloody and indisputably final end. However, it is not Beijing.

A political and economic system which posited itself as the only viable alternative to fascism disintegrates rather suddenly under the weight of its own dysfunction. The Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic), the socialist dictatorship which had governed east Germany for the last forty years, collapses seemingly overnight. A "peaceful revolution" takes place, without one shot fired or one drop of blood spilled.

Perhaps "overnight" is an exaggeration. For weeks, protests and prayer vigils have been precipitating just such a collapse. But in one night the Berlin Wall, the ruling Socialist Unity Party's greatest symbol of its real and lasting power, is opened. And blood really is shed; by the time the border opens, three party chiefs have committed suicide. More will do so before the dust settles.

As I said, it begins with an accident. Towards the end of a press conference on November 9, Guenther Schabowski, a DDR Politburo member, lets slip a press briefing which should have been released the next day, announcing a relaxing of the DDR's stringent travel restrictions. Word spreads among DDR citizens even faster than it does to the state police. Hundreds of thousands cram border crossings and the border guards have no choice but to let them through.
And so it goes. More protests, revelations of wide-spread corruption, families and friends reunited - the beginnings of a real public dialog. All of this leads to the eventual reunification of east and west Germany in the following year.

This story is nothing new for Germans. They have talked and written this topic to death.
Why then would anyone want to make a documentary film about it? Who would even watch it?
People will watch this film for the same reason why, when I moved to Leipzig, I thought that the DDR was really just a puppet state of the Soviets and therefore really not very interesting in and of itself - I just didn't know what had really happened here.

I didn't know that many people here had forged a strong sense of independence, of a national identity independent of west German capitalism, of pride in the socialist ideal of equality and support for all citizens, however flawed that reality ultimately proved to be.

I didn't know that there were actually significant ideological differences between the Soviet Union and the DDR, some of which led to blunt political strife in the public arena.

I didn't know that, even though the socialist experiment failed, it wasn't all bad. Many people just lived their lives, left alone by the Stasi (the DDR secret police, often used by the government to terrorize its own citizens), confident that they would always have education, always have a job, and would be cared for from cradle to grave. In the end, everyone knew that the DDR had to clean house, that the ruling party had to go, and that the border had to be opened. Practically nobody expected the whole thing to cave in.

My trade and training is that of a classical musician. I am in Leipzig on a fellowship from the Rotary Foundation to study at the oldest music conservatory in Germany, the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy College of Music and Drama in Leipzig. I confess that I'm a news junkie and I have a serious love for the study of politics and history, but I have no formal training as a filmmaker. More accurately, I have no formal training to interview and translate for a film, which are my tasks in this project.

I have the good fortune to have already begun interviewing my subjects without even knowing it. All I had to do was ask my speech and vocal diction teacher here about what it was like to work as an artist in the DDR and the stories just came. I cautiously experimented with other local artists of various trades, casually asking what was it like back then? I just had to ask the questions. They did all the talking.

It's said that, as a writer, you should write what you know. I'm hoping the same is true of filmmaking, that you should film what you know. I speak the language of actors, musicians, and artists in general. I know them, so I will retell the stories of the DDR through their eyes. Most Germans have seen some kind of documentary film about the DDR, but they have never seen one told in the words of the artists who lived through it.

Who will watch it?

During my first few weeks in Leipzig last fall, I had the good fortune of being able to attend many screenings and events for the 44th Annual Leipzig International Festival for Documentary and Animated Film. I saw dozens of animated shorts, full-length features, and documentaries of all shapes and sizes. Our film being about the history of the DDR as experienced by Leipzig-area artists, this festival seems a logical first venue and a worthy goal. We hope to have wrapped up post-production by July of 2003, in time for submission to the Leipzig "Dok-Festival" in October.

We will keep the original audio (i.e., the interviewees speaking in German) but add English subtitles. On a practical level, this format will serve both English and German-speaking audiences well. Germans are accustomed to hearing films in their own language (virtually all American films shown here are dubbed), so this will be nothing unusual for them. Americans are used to seeing most foreign films in the original language but with subtitles, so we will be accommodating them as well.

Love, betrayal, innocence, violence, corruption, espionage, you name it, the DDR had it all. All I have to do is ask the questions. I don't even have to worry about a script. As the producer, I have to make sure I get my non-German-speaking crew flown here from across the Atlantic, housed, fed, and kept out of trouble for at least a week. I have to make sure all the interviewees will be in town and available, that we have the right camera and that we stick to a relatively tight production schedule.

In the interviews, people will say what they want to, what they need to, but thankfully I don't need to plan that.

Besides, like I said, it all began with an accident anyway.

The Horror, The Whore

2002-04-30T12:18:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Bill the Rake

A new poster in Los Angeles. "Your kids never think of you as a rock god, but Gwen Stefani does! E!"

The Rosie O'Donell sequel to The Firm. Flabber.

Lee Majors gets a lobotomy and ends up on Son of the Beach mumbling "Farah, Farah."
Anson Williams thinks he's going to see a lotta chicks but ends up charming fifty Hannibal Lecter orange jump suits.

The Rake gets kicked out of LA's posh Westside like a Palestinian from the West Bank but debuts in Nudity Required disrobing and aiming his gun and is featured in the Son of the Beach episode "House of the Prostitution" with promo gal Bobbie.

Sabre Tooth gets more lines than in X-Men by becoming Notch Johnson's beach man.
Marsha from the Brady Bunch, Maureen McCormick tries to put a notch in her lipstick case by prosecuting Notch Johnson for pre-marital relations in the Scarlett Burka.

The biggest and best thing to come out of this town besides Charmed is Son of the Beach. Though on the FX channel like The Shield, co-producer, writer, and star, Tim Stack tells Anson Williams he can get the show on HBO! Sex in the City will be on hiatus until the lovely skinny blond lady has her baby. So maybe there's the chance. Otherwise the new Son of the Beach episodes will air starting this summer. You don't want to miss episodes like the "Gaytrix" or "Penetration Island." I appear in "House of the Prostitution" and "Penetration Island." Son of the Beach has gone from bad high school theater production to, now with three able-bodied directors, the status of feature film action. Imagine duplicating The Matrix for low budget television.

Son of the Beach is rated in the top 100 for television shows like Sports Night, now on Comedy Central, but that had the weight of ABC, William Macy and that black actor guy who played Benson, also known as Robert Guillome.

Anson Williams, Potsy from Happy Days, was so excited about being on Son of the Beach that he invited his business associates to the Los Angeles city jail set for the spoofing of Gladiator scenes and donned a suit he hadn't worn in six years.

They missed Lee Majors' lines of "the horror, the whore" taken from Marlon Brando's character in Apocalypse Now. Lee Majors did perform with his pure "method" acting like Robert Redford in The Last Castle. His method was so strong that the Aussie director had to say, "Lee, don't you remember me, I met you the other day?" He was playing Robert Redford's character and would not respond to Lee. Maybe he was acting like Marlon Brando in A Street Car Named Desire and instead of exuding "Stella, Stella," he was thinking "Farah, Farah." Oh the horror, the whore who kicked me out of the Westside to suffer the heat of Van Nuys. Short of getting beat down by Israeli Defense Force Nazi storm-troopers in the occupied territories, I remain a fan of Howard Stern's Son of the Beach.

The Holy Grail of LaLa Land

2002-03-19T12:13:00.000-08:00

Submitted by Melinda Murphy

Before Christmas, I decided to vacate Draino, Nevada. I spent the holidays packing and chucking anything I wouldn't absolutely need in Los Angeles. I'm part gypsy and creative minimalism comes easily. I even toyed with the idea of eighty-sixing my thermal underwear - for good.
Of course, I couldn't attempt this wild escape without hearing "The Word" on L.A. over and over.

"You think the people here are rude? You have no idea!" fumed my friend and former San Diegoian, Jen. She is another frustrated writer, mother of three who lives in a cluster of tract homes and trailers seventeen miles north of Reno, where the shakedowns on meth labs are continuous.

"The Final Word" on L.A. came from a woman I met while at a gas station.

"I used to live in West Hollywood," she said, smiling sadly. "But I had to leave. I was into some bad shit."

She then regaled me with tales of buying and dealing rock cocaine amongst a backdrop of gay prostitutes, teen runaways, and former television stars.

"Besides," she added, "I really missed winter. I missed the bundle-up weather you have here."
It was eighteen degrees Fahrenheit and the latest winter storm was hanging fatly over the rim of the eastern Sierra like a thundercloud over Dracula's castle.

"But I'm better off now," she finished, "At least here if you want crack, it's more expensive and the rocks are a lot smaller."

Yet another reason to hate Reno. It's hard to get decent crack.

I spent New Year's Eve sitting on the bare oak floor of my frigid rental, watching television. I downed a Valium and some Tuaca and went to bed, intent on avoiding anything Auld Langsyne.
I jerked awake at 7:30 a.m. with a heavy feeling in my stomach. I started stuffing, cramming, and squeezing everything into my thirteen year-old compact car. My aunt pulled up at 11:30 a.m. pealing with laughter.

"My God, it's the Beverly Hillbillies!" she chortled.

She snagged my furniture and the miscellaneous items that wouldn't fit inside the car and hauled them off to storage.

For the uninitiated, the best way to pack a beatermobile for urban invisibility is this - always put the vitals - VCRs, computers, stereos - underneath the clothes, Tupperware, and other priceless heirlooms. Make the thieves dig for the electronics.

I drove off with orders to call on my cellular as soon as I hit the Motel 6 in Mojave, a truck stop about two hours north of L.A.

I cruised smoothly past Mono Lake, favorite brine-fly-covered destination of celebrity Ed Begley, Jr.

In Bishop, California it was dusk and the gun-metal sky was spitting rain. The greatest sandwich shop in the world, Schatt's Bakery, was inundated with Yuppie skiers on their way back to L.A. from a weekend in Mammoth Lakes. It was a sea of ugly sweaters, cell phones, and pushy bimbos with that reverse liposuction in their drooping Mick Jagger lips. I clawed my way to the front of the line and bought a sandwich.

At the Motel 6 in Mojave, there is a minor incident. I open the right front door of the Hyundai and a box of See's candy given to me for Xmas flies out of the car like it's spring loaded. The next morning, I hear the maids arguing over who has to pick up the chocolate strewn across the parking lot like little brown anti-personnel mines. They hate me now. I can never go back.

In the late morning sunlight I climb a ridge of rolling red hills and catch a glimpse of Santa Clarita to the west. The hills are so red, I keep expecting Mister Spock to pop out behind one with a phaser, or maybe see Jack Palance come trotting onto the asphalt on a nice Spanish pony.
The traffic gets tense. The slow lane is suddenly the eighty mile-per-hour lane and semi-trucks and Mercedes in the far left lane bomb past me at ninety-five.

I make some frantic lane changes and I get off in 'Weird and work my way through perpetually heavy traffic to a Trader Joe's on Santa Monica Boulevard, because it has public potties and the other shops want you to pay to pee.

I spend twenty minutes sitting in the humid parking lot studying a 1998 Thomas Guide. My former actress friend, Veronica, gave it to me. Her exact words were: "This is your bible. Keep it with you at all times." I map out the first six of three-dozen rental listings I'd gotten from one of two sketchy "renter referral" sites on the 'Net. They are sketchy because they want you to shell out money just to get the names and numbers of realtors who might have listings.

I drive up Santa Monica and make a right on Poinsettia. Bang, the first listing. It's a two-story blue building with a big fat FOR RENT sign. I call on my cell. "Oh, we just rented that bachelor unit," the realtor/slumlord/gopher tells me, but they have another, even nicer for $300 more near Hollywood High. This is a part of the world where bait-n-switch was invented.

I lean out my car window and ask a nice sort-of-unemployed-probably-gay-actor type what the Poinsettia rentals are like. He laughs and says that same sign has been in front of the building since he moved in two years prior. He thinks his landlord keeps it up to intimidate the tenants and suck potential renters into his other hovels.

I cruise over to the ones near Hollywood High, which looks like a fearsome inner-city P.S. Near by, the apartment buildings are varying shades of dirty yellow, with iron fences and bars on everything -- sort of like county jail if the inmates all had private rooms. The slumlord tells me over the phone that the units don't have actual kitchens, just a hot plate and a dormitory fridge and that they require first and last month's rent, a deposit, and a $35 non-refundable credit check. They're going for $800 a unit and there are about thirty apartments per three-story building. Someone is sooo rich, and it's not me.

I drive to Silver Lake. It's another G.G. (Gay Ghetto) I've heard so much about, renovated 1930's bungalows, impressive stands of eucalyptus tress, and tiered rose gardens. Friends neglected to tell me that Silver Lake is directly up hill from Echo Park, right up hill from Rampart, the infamous street where the L.A.P.D. meted out corruption and brutality. Scenes for Training Day were filmed near Echo Park. I am literally the only white person for ten blocks in any direction, even the sales signs in the store window are in Spanish. Occasionally, someone points and giggles at my wheezing car stuffed to the gills with boxes and bearing the ultimate goober plates, Nevada The Silver State. I head up Silver Lake and up and up. The neighborhood defies gravity. Duplexes and parked cars perch on the edge of streets that make San Francisco look flat. After a half hour, I find one of the listed rentals. The FOR RENT sign is gone and there's a filthy Toyota Pathfinder parked out front with New Jersey license plates. Shit.

I coast back down to Sunset and Santa Monica and spend the rest of the afternoon wandering between Melrose, West Hollywood, and the Hollywood Hills, where all the Mexican landscape crews drive nicer cars than mine. I see one FOR RENT sign in Melrose, for condos at $1,300 a month.

I make the long commute down to Torrance and the familiar Ramada Inn where I'd stayed just before Christmas on my "Looking Around Trip."

The next day, I stupidly check out of the motel, re-stuff the car and head back to 'Weird. I find a "studio" in Hollywood. The real estate agent has his on-sight person wander over in his flip-flops to show me the place. It's actually an up-stairs room with a private bath and a tiny "pantry" with a mini-fridge and a microwave. There's a full-size kitchen on the ground floor that I would technically share with five other strangers in the building. It is nicely renovated but noisy with bare hardwood floors and is just a scant six blocks north of Korea Town and some ugly gang graffiti. The current tenant hasn't moved out yet. They want $835 a month for the room plus an $800 deposit, a one-year lease and the ol' $35 non-refundable credit check.

I call my former actress friend, Veronica. She screams, "TAKE IT!" I call the real estate agent back. He tells me he rented it at 4:30 p.m. to a new tenant who already paid him cash. He says he told the current tenant he has forty-eight hours to move his furniture out. Just like that.

This time, I make it as far as LAX on the Pacific Coast Highway. I'm whipped. I check into a Budget Motel. Los Angeles International Airport is a city unto itself. There are hotels, condos, restaurants, lounges, and an entire mall somewhere in the innards of the parking garages and terminals straddling the highway for more than two miles.

The front desk guy at Budget is the rudest person I meet in L.A. Judging by his accent, he's probably from New York. He slaps my card key down on the front counter and then turns his back on me and the Asian tourists with five-hundred pounds of luggage to yell at someone on his cell phone. He does a good imitation of some freak on The Sopranos. I hate that show.

I go to a hamburger joint a few yards down PCH from the motel. It's called Woody's Smorgasburger. It's the best hamburger I've ever had in my life. Dazed tourists sit at tables around a fireplace and sip microbrews as a light fog drifts in from the coast. It's fantastic. I go back to the motel and listen to the steady stream of traffic all night.

The next few days, I spend trying vainly to find the "nice" part of Long Beach where fabled affordable rentals exist. In San Pedro, I call on a one bedroom partially overlooking Long Beach Harbor, which really isn't worth looking at. It's $950 a month, first and last.

I go through northwest Long Beach - terrifying during the day - because I'd found an ad in the paper for an "artist's loft." It's a studio upstairs in what looks like a crack house. I don't even stop. The agent wanted $625 for it, which is comparable to Reno's housing prices. I keep thinking if they'd just do an episode of Fear Factor where the contestants had forty-eight hours to find a place to live in L.A. it might be worth watching. Ditch the eat-a-cockroach episodes.
Finally, on Thursday, I start hunting around Harbor City and Coloma, which are sort of south of Torrance and north of Long Beach. The price is right. Most of the rentals are around $600.

I meet Mister Slumlord at a one bedroom in Harbor City. He's driving a Lexus. It's not even Good Block, Bad Block country. It's more Okay Building, Over-priced Building, and Rat-Infested Tree House. The unit is on the ground floor of a two-story, 1970's concrete box with a security gate. The rooms are large and fairly clean. The view is of a parking lot and the loathsome federal housing building next door where kids run wild through broken glass and the boom-boom of gangster rap never stops. We go back to his office six blocks away. Slumlord demands a copy of my last paycheck stub, my bank statement, and a half-dozen other things. I dutifully dig it all out of my car. Twenty minutes later, he sits reading the credit application and taping his pen on his desk.

"So you haven't actually started this waitress job yet?"

No, I say, I have to have a place to live first.

He tells me my check stub is "totally unusable" in the credit check because there's no actual dates on it. I tell him I was with the U.S. Postal Service in Reno for six months and that's how they print their check stubs. The stub reveals that I was averaging two grand a month in a town where $1,100 a month is considered a lot of money. I pay $35 for a non-refundable credit check with my Visa debit card, which Slumlord sneers at because it's not an actual credit card. He tells me it will take three to four days to run the credit check. It's Thursday, and I'm supposed to have a place by Sunday at the latest and start my new job the following Monday.

I go back to the Ramada and pay up from Thursday night through Saturday night. The rates go up on the weekends. The room is running me $60 to $80 a night. That night, my plan starts to unravel and reality starts to creep in.

I talk to a friend-of-a-friend of my former actress friend, Veronica. Ted is a producer and real estate agent who lives in Bel Air. He has a sound editing business out in San Fernando Valley and a dozen rentals he inherited from his rich parents who were also in The Biz. Ted tells me he has condos and duplexes in Melrose, Culver City (a 'burb that exists entirely under freeway overpasses so it's sort of always twilight), another in Hermosa Beach and several in Santa Monica. For wannabe writers, Santa Monica is the Holy Grail of Housing. I'd sell myself, take a bullet, and steal if I thought any of it would get me a lead on a rental in Santa Monica. His rentals, all two bedrooms, start at $3,000 a month and he hasn't had a vacancy in over a year.

"Landlords have it made right now," he cheerfully tells me, adding that since an earthquake (didn't say which one) awhile back, the constant tide of Mexicans, and an apparent moratorium on building new rentals - L.A. is experiencing the greatest housing shortage ever. When homes and rentals in Orange County rose outrageously in the 1990's, any incentive people had for living outside Los Angeles County disappeared.

"The big trend for the last ten years has been to move back into the city proper because some of the highest paying jobs in California are in L.A.," Ted says. And they're not just in the entertainment industry. Most are in the banking sector, in advertising, and e-commerce.

"Oh," I say.

Friday evening, I get a call from the woman I'd planned to go to work for, an assistant manager with a chain of Denny's-like restaurants. She tells me that she can't wait any longer to actually hire me and doesn't mind continuing to lie for me and say "yeah, she works here" but doubts there will be an actual position by next week.

Saturday, I drift tiredly up to an internet rental referral agency in Redondo Beach. I plunk down $60 for two months membership. I get fifty pages of printouts, this time for roommate situations. Back at the motel, I call fifteen answering machines and leave fifteen separate messages.

On Sunday, I add the third quart of oil to my car in as many days. My Hyundai is bad. I call my aunt in Reno and tell her I'm throwing in the towel, mostly because even if I find a place, the odds of the car dying are good. I don't want to test my survival instincts with a beatermobile meltdown on the fearway at six in the evening returning from a temp job.

I head up the 110 on a misty, balmy Sunday morning. In light traffic, I drive past downtown and catch my first look at the Library Building glinting in the hazy sunlight. It's now the fifth tallest building in the U.S. Last fall it was the seventh. As I get above Hollywood, I see the turn off for Griffith Observatory and the L.A. Zoo. In my seven days of apartment hunting, I never even made it to the park, and now it will be closed for a month for renovations. I'm practically in tears. I pass Glendale and Burbank, where the real studios and celebs haunt. I see a sign for a sports bar where I know a Project Greenlight writers group meets every Wednesday evening.

North of Santa Clarita, I take a county road and jog east until Mojave and then back up to highway 395 and Owens Valley. I stop in Bishop near midnight and it's twenty degrees. My car blows oil and overheats twice between L.A. and Reno, so I spend quality time waiting for the festering heap to calm down enough for me to pop the radiator cap and add water and radiator fluid. I make it up Sherwin Grade to the turn-off for Mammoth Lakes. By the time I hit Mono Lake, the wind is howling and the snow is splatting against the window. At 3 a.m., I fall into my aunt's dusty spare bedroom and defeat.

The next morning, at a local repair shop, the mechanic tells me the car's engine is going - camshaft, piston rings, cylinders - everything.

"You're not planning on making any road trips in this, are you?" he asks.

Fourteen Essentials of a Good Press Kit

2002-02-26T19:28:00.000-08:00

Submitted by Melissa Puch de Fripp

With the outgrowth of independent films in the marketplace, from micro-budget to larger budget features, it's more essential than ever to "outclass" the competition when it comes to marketing the film product. With that in mind, the first impression a filmmaker creates when sending materials to distributors, festival directors, reviewers, and media sources is more important than ever.

With the reality of independent features often going over budget, many new filmmakers find themselves in a position where they cannot afford a professional publicist. If you find you must create your own publicity kit, then you may simply follow this simple formula to create the right amount of "sizzle" and professionalism.

Keep in mind that busy news editors and film editors are inundated with requests for publicity, interviews, reviews, and photo opportunities, and they may literally only have sixty seconds to determine whether or not you go into the "A" pile or the circular file (i.e., the trash). Make your first impression count, and be sure to have trusted friends review your written material for typos, dropped words, and grammar.

The fourteen essentials are:

1) Glossy two pocket folders with cuts on one inside pocket for a business card. These are available at any office supply store.

2) Story Synopsis. Keep it short and simple and never longer than one page. The shorter the synopsis is, the better off you are, because a long synopsis can be edited down to something that doesn't even resemble your film once ninety-percent of your description is eliminated by an editor. Another trick is to provide two synopses. One a quarter page long, and one a half page long.

3) Cast List. Only integral cast, not minor roles and extras. The cast list should only be one page, and again the shorter the better.

4) Director's Biography. One page only.

5) Producer's Biography. One page only.

6) One Sheet of Mini-bios. Keep it to three paragraphs, one paragraph for your director of photography, one for your composer, and the third for another member you consider integral. Be sure to include awards and honors your key people have been given, if applicable. Note: If you have co-producers or associate producers, give them a one sheet of mini-bios, exactly like the one for director of photography, composer, etc.

7) Still Photographs. Black and white 8" x 10" glossies are the norm, but many filmmakers are also including color slides, which are good for magazines that include color in their pages or for cover stories. Be sure to either have a printed caption on the front of the photograph, or a typed label with the caption stuck on the back along with contact details. For slides, be sure to number the slides and place them in a professional one page slide holder (available at camera specialty stores) and attach one page with captions that correspond to the slide numbers.

8) Tip Sheet. This sheet should be nothing but the simplest facts, including genre, running time, what medium the film was shot in (35mm, 16mm, super 16, digital), locations used, and who your legal representation or producer's representative is, if applicable.

9) Action Photo of You. If you're the director, include a director's photo of you on the set, or stage one if you didn't have any decent shots of yourself taken during the film shoot. If you need to stage one, see if a camera rental facility will let you come in with your director of photography and take a shot next to the camera. If you're the producer, then it's recommended that you have a shot taken with the director. Thus you won't be left out of the publicity loop. Editors typically choose director's photographs over producer's photographs. Cover your bases.

10) Trailer. If you have a trailer, don't hesitate to duplicate it on ½" VHS tape. If you're dubbing your own trailers and they wind up looking too "second generation," either don't use it or spend the money to go to professional dubbing house to get cleaner looking copies. You're better off having no trailer or film clip enclosed than having a grainy looking one.

11) Articles. If you've already received any print media, be sure to get clean copies and enclose them in the press kit. If articles were printed with color photos, then be sure to get color copies to keep the visual impact alive.

12) An invitation to your latest screening.

13) Your business card.

14) A personalized memo or hand-written note to the editor who will be receiving your press kit, thanking them for taking the time to review your materials.

Optional. If there is something unique about your production which you want known, then by all means, write a one to three page "story" about your production and title it, "About the Production." On the upside, this helps an editor. On the downside, it may take some of the mystique and questions away from the reader. If you choose to write about your production, then do not include any horror stories of broken equipment, squabbles that you miraculously fixed, or how your relatives didn't come through with the cash, but you still made it without them. Save your war stories, and pull them out of your hat once your reputation is established and you're a big hit. For now, you want to seem like nothing less than a fabulous filmmaker with an aura of positive energy surrounding you.

Abajo Sur

2002-02-26T11:46:00.000-08:00

Submitted by Melinda Murphy

I have lived in Reno, Nevada, for about twelve years, off and on. And it has been more on than off. There was the reporter gig in Bishop and Mammoth Lakes, California, hacking for a newspaper chain nobody has ever heard of and then the stint as a wild land firefighter up in Plumas County, California in 1996, but aside from that, there were endless summers working menial jobs and costly winters getting a half-assed schooling at the University of Nevada, Reno - my almost alma mater. I'm the most daring sort of writer. I'm a college dropout.

A few years prior to getting the gypsy itch to blow this truck stop, I'd taken up the futile hobby of spec script writing. Between all the weekends I'd blown on rewrites, the contest entry fees, the on-line screaming matches with other wannabes, and trying to explain to an office supply store clerk just exactly what a brad was (no, not Mr. Pitt), I gave it all up for Lent.

I had been chewing the scenery in this burg telling all my patient friends, "Screw these pod people! I want out!"

Then, one night, ensconced on my friend Sarina's couch (she had cable television, I didn't) I'd watched as the winner of HBO's Project Greenlight huffed and stomped like an angry twelve year-old runner up in a spelling bee. He wrote a script about an Irish Catholic kid who decides to convert a kosher friend - and this won? And then it hit me. Why not just move to LaLa Land? Oh yes, I could live out the fantasy so beautifully envisioned in Kevin Smith's Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. I would find the three So Cal twits who had critiqued my script during the Project Greenlight fiasco with astute comments like "I no likey u story" and "Man, I just don't get it" and BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF THEM!

I didn't really have second thoughts on the scouting around trip down south until I neared the exit for Whittier on Interstate 5 and realized there's no air here and I didn't bring any.

Metropolitan Los Angeles and Orange County combined is massive, like an angry three-hundred pound hooker sprawled out on a curb, dead drunk. Her right fist is Long Beach, her left hand is Pasadena, her head - covered in a dirty wig - is Hollywood, her sagging breasts include the downtown banking district with its pompous high rises and her ass and thighs enclose Inglewood, Anaheim, Carson, and all things in between. Los Angeles County counts some eleven million souls as its residents and Orange County ups the ante another two to five million, making Southern California a humbling metropolis.

Cruising on Katella Avenue, Pacific Coast Highway, and then Santa Monica Boulevard, I felt like a hillbilly ant in a dilapidated Hyundai, alone in a sea of angry legal secretaries and other impatient locals gunning their sleek BMW's and Acura's for the next stoplight. Everyone knew where he or she was going and I didn't have a clue. The smog from eleven million cars and the typical California flat-as-a-pancake geography makes it impossible to see the downtown skyline. There was a Ramada Inn in Torrance. It was expensive, it was safe, and it was quiet. When you are a guppy in an ocean of humanity, you stick to what you know, you stick to the reefs, to places like Trader Joe's, El Pollo Loco, and the nearest well-lit parking lot of an AMC movie theater.

In my plush motel room, I channel surfed and watched the evening news. Most of the random violence occurred in Long Beach, which was also one of the most racially and economically mixed areas. There was another shoot out between a black gang and a chollo gang and a Brinks security guard got shot in the face in a full parking lot in Anaheim at five in the evening and nobody saw anything. Outside the motel, I watched tiny grade-school kids get off city buses in the their daily journey home from public schools on the other side of the concrete jungle.

The next morning, I made a quick shot up Crenshaw through Torrance and then back on to the Pacific Coast Highway and Redondo Beach. Perusing the endless strip malls, taquerios, and coffee shops, I thought this ain't so bad.

I stop at the Redondo Beach Pier. The dewy mid-morning air was somewhere between phosphorescent and bronze. I kept taking my shades off and putting them back on. The light in this place of endless contradictions cast everyone in a soft movie star glow. It was about sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit and it bumped all the way to seventy-three before I left the valley. Three hours away, in the southern Sierra Nevada, the wind is howling and the snow is blinding. At the pier, everything was polluted. It was heartbreaking. This would have been such a nice place to live if people would just turn off their cars and never flush their toilets again. And this was the same crowd of blancos who point the finger of accusation at the mining on the Baja coast.

And what was up with the whites and the Chicanos in Los Angeles? I try and ask several of my friends in Reno, who are ex-Angelinos, but they all change the subject. Racism in Los Angeles is like the giant, cervasa swilling, cheeseburger-sucking elephant in the middle of the living room nobody wants to talk about. Reno is more than thirty percent Hispanic and, yeah, we have issues, but generally we take after Rodney King and get along.
In Los Angeles, the Spanish-English divide was wider than the Grand Canyon, it was a gaping wound that leached life out of the arts and culture scene and made for cold stares at intersections. When I was in Orange at a convenience store, the clerk, a Latina, made a point of helping several Hispanics in line behind me, before she helped me. Later, in downtown Beverly Hills, near Wiltshire and Santa Monica I sat in a Starbuck's and watched a middle-aged Hispanic woman try vainly for ten minutes to get anybody to give her directions to some mansion where she had an interview. I would have helped her but I couldn't even remember where I parked my car.
All the way home from my foray to the Southland, I kept thinking back on the Hispanic friends and foes I'd had. Nevada, like California, has been drawing Spanish speakers, especially campesinos and vaqueros, for centuries. There were a lot of Spanish Basques where I grew up, along with actual Spanish immigrants and Mexicans, and Dias help you on the playground if you confused the three.

Back in high school, a friend of mine, who was Italian-American, once stood overlooking the parking lot of our high school and said, "There's way too many spicks in our school." She was and still is, regularly mistaken for a Latina with her black hair, olive skin, and green eyes. Mexicans come up to her on the streets of Stockton, California, (where she now lives) and start speaking Spanish. In her defense, she has since taken a few Spanish classes and now tries to mumble a response. She wants to go back to the Mother Church, wants to become a confirmed Catholic, but the services are rarely held in English and so she leans toward Protestantism and her family leans perilously towards white supremacy.

A few years back, in the midst of a day job, I asked a co-worker - who was a young California dude from tiny Grass Valley - why he was so determined to finish his minor in Spanish literature and go back to Peru. He said, "If you ever make it to San Diego and you look south over the border, just remember, for as far as you can see, for as far as the land mass extends all the way to Antarctica, the whole world is Spanish."

FilmPlayLinks is Coming!

2002-02-12T11:59:00.000-08:00

Submitted by Patte Ardizzoni

Isn't this a kooky business? And how did we get here? If you've got an answer for that one you're a far wiser person than I. And yet, here I am, putting fingers to my keyboard and waving my virtual pom-poms as I cheer the evolution of independent film and why it's the best thing to happen to home theater since the fast rewind button on the VCR.

I'm proud to be a part of the independent film club, having worked on a seventy-five thousand dollar shoestring, co-producing a suspense thriller. I've finally lost that dazed expression, I'm happy to say. But the experience made me realize how difficult it is to pull off a film of any size. It got me to wonder how many films are floating around out there, and although they're excellent and definitely worth seeing, they just haven't lucked out in terms of interested distributors.

We wanted to change that.

So here I am. In the middle of executing an independent film catalog, complete with fifty film trailers, behind-the-scenes footage, as well as a short film. You're shaking your collective heads wondering, "How in the world can a catalog do all that?" The secret is in the medium. Instead of paper, we're putting all those goodies onto DVD.

Stick with me here. Imagine sitting in front of your television browsing through fifty trailers, all chosen because of their excellence. You get a glimpse of the process as you listen to the people who have made the films. And here's the best part - you're given the opportunity to actually buy one the films on our web site or via a toll-free number. And by doing that you'll be giving back to the filmmaker in the form of income for a film that is finally getting a chance to be seen. What a concept.

The DVD is supported by sponsors, PBS style, which alleviates the problem of specific product advertising and the eventual state of product obsolescence. The catalog can now remain timeless, making it a perfect DVD to archive. The unique part of this formula for advertisers is that we're putting their name into over a million homes, coupled with consumers who match a definitive buyer profile suited to sponsor's targets.

If you buy trade magazines like Home Theater, MovieMaker, Variety, or Guerrilla Filmmaker, you shouldn't be surprised to find a DVD full of everything I've mentioned above. What a great way to get the filmmaker out to the people who most appreciate what they're creating! What a perfect way to deliver a sponsor's name into the home! What a simple way to get alternatives in entertainment out to the people who are scarfing up all those DVD players and home theater systems!

The catch is finding those films. It's not easy. So I'm calling on the loyalty of all independent filmmakers to help spread the word. The company is FilmPlayLinks. The goal is to make independent film more accessible and expand the ways in which films are distributed. The benefit is visibility and income for the filmmaker and a way for consumers to enjoy their home theater experience to the fullest.

Visit the website at www.filmplaylinks.com or send me a note at p.ardizzoni@filmplaylinks.com with your feedback, comments, or suggestions. This isn't lip service. We want to hear your thoughts. In the meantime, I'll continue doing my best impersonation of Paul Revere galloping around the internet and film festivals shouting, "FilmPlayLinks is coming! FilmPlayLinks is coming!"

The Ten Best Films of 2001 I Saw in General Release

2002-01-28T20:47:00.000-08:00

Submitted by Mark R. Leeper

Every year I dread making out my list of the top ten films of the previous year. It seems like it should be an easy matter to choose since I rate most of the films I see. Except for ratings ties for the last few places, the ratings should actually choose most of the films. The truth is that my list is usually a bit of an embarrassment. You would expect that there would be some obscure films on the list.

The truth is I see mostly just the films that have made it to central New Jersey and what I see at film festivals. I do see some very good films at the festivals, but people do not want to read recommendations for films they never hear of and will have little chance to see. If such a film gets a release, I will treat it as if I had just seen it. As remarkable as it was that I had a +4 film on my list this year - I very rarely use the +4 rating because so few films are that good - even it was not the best film of this year. The Grey Zone was in my opinion the better film but may not get much of a release.

So there are better films that I have seen but which are not generally available. And there have been better films that are generally available but which I have not seen. That compromises this list somewhat. The films are listed best first. So much for suspense. Each one has the ranking and what I would rate the film on the 0 to 10 and the -4 to +4 scale.

My major hobbies include travel and film. Both can take me to places I have not been to before in different ways. Sadly, the films that do that are films that may have been popular, but perhaps not much public respect. But what impresses me the most about The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (#1, 10, +4) is the effort that was required to bring it to the screen. Tolkien's Middle Earth has been portrayed on the screen before and those representations only go to show how hard it is to do it well. This I did think was done well and in a visualization that repeatedly created a sense of awe. Peter Jackson has created the definitive visualization of a modern classic story.

Memento (#2, 9, +3) is a clever and intelligent idea for a film. In telling its narrative in reverse order, it is a film in which we all know how the story ends, but the mystery is how it began and really who is who. The reverse structure also gives the viewer a simulation of the actual mental dysfunction, a form of amnesia, the character is suffering. This is a film that some viewers have found very taxing, and perhaps it should be seen more than once, but it is probably the most original film of 2001.

A Beautiful Mind did not get released in my area until 2002, but it makes an interesting companion piece to 2001's The Luzhin Defence (#3, 9, +3). Both films are about geniuses who are social misfits and gives the audience a window into how these people think as well as the price each pays for his genius. John Turturro stars as Alexandre Luzhin, a chess grand master who is nearly an idiot savant. In this adaptation of a story by Vladimir Nabokov the strange Luzhin falls in love at an important chess match. John Turturro stars as the brilliant but extremely eccentric chess master.

If Memento was disorienting in its story told backward-style, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (#4, 9 +3) disoriented the viewer by telling its story in three parts of very different styles. In a sense this is a sort of dual of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. That film suggested that we would be able to create feeling beings, but their life span would not be long enough for their purposes. Its replicants are haunted by how short and transitory life is. The film planned by Stanley Kubrick and completed by Steven Spielberg looks at a created human with a life span far longer than his purpose. Programmed to love and be loved by one human, the robot goes on living pointlessly, his whole reason for living taken away. Some almost magical future intelligence gives him one last contact with his purpose in life and the film asks us, "Is he better or worse for it?" Is it like giving a reformed alcoholic one last drink? Many did not like the sentimentality of the last part of the film, but I found the film to be rich in ideas throughout.

Several times now I have included on my top ten list films that have been made for cable. I have never seen that with anybody else's published top ten list. I do not know if other reviewers just do not consider them to be good enough or do not consider them at all. In any case, this year no less a critic than Roger Ebert and I both agree Wit (#5, 8, low +3) is among the best of the year. The film has Emma Thompson as a professor of 17th century poetry who is dying of cancer. It is based on Margaret Edson's Pulitzer Prize winning play. With wit and intelligence she tells us about the dying experience. This is an extremely moving film.

There was a time when the best art films were horror films. German expressionism gave us The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu, M, The Golem, Waxworks, and Metropolis. Their legacy gave us films like Dracula, The Black Cat, and The Bride of Frankenstein. But since that time few horror films have had substantial merit. The films produced by Val Lewton and some made by David Cronenberg and perhaps one or two films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers were interesting artistically. The best modern director of artistic horror films is Mexican director Guillermo del Toro. This year he followed up Cronos and Mimic with The Devil's Backbone (#6, 8, high +2) which combines generally non-horror sub-genre of the boys school story with a story featuring a ghost and a stalking villain. As always, del Toro's visual compositions are absolutely beautiful. In the final analysis this is more of a murder film than a ghost story, but it nonetheless is hypnotically told. Del Toro actually has done (three times out of three) what Romero, Craven, and Carpenter should be doing.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (#7, 8, high +2) is faithful to the book and at the same time entertaining, not an easy balance. Like The Lord of the Rings it is a marvelous visualization of the book. There is some violence that may bother some parents, but kids are turning out in legions to see the film. And for many this will be one of the tamer films they are going to see. If the film limits the imagination they need in reading the modern classic Potter series, it will show them how it is done and open their imaginations when reading other books. Most of the weaknesses in the film, things like plot improbabilities, I found track back to the book.

Two good crime stories come next on my list. The Man Who Wasn't There (#8, 8, high +2) is a crisp black-and-white murder tale with a twisted plot that becomes clear in the end. The story is about a personal failure, a second chair barber in a tiny barbershop. When Ed enters a room with three other people in it, he makes it approximately three people in the room. In desperation to change his condition he tries blackmail and that makes things start to happen. The stark black and white images actually are the result of filming in color and then making black and white prints from that. Heist (#9, 8, high +2), written and directed by David Mamet, boasts two very clever robberies and a fairly good story of a brilliant criminal in the process of retiring. The script is not perfect, but is intriguing and has fewer holes than Mamet's The Spanish Prisoner. David Mamet's dialog may not be realistic, but it is artistic, like Shakespeare's was.

Then there's Shrek (#10, 8, high +2). What can I say? It has great animation and I laugh every time I see it. Robin Williams's genie in Aladdin leaves me cold. Rosie O'Donnell's Terk in Tarzan went all the way to irritating. Eddie Murphy's donkey in Shrek cracks me up every time. The film stands as a story on its own, but it is also a merciless rank-out of every Disney convention in reach.

© 2002 Mark R. Leeper