SEX MACHINE - $8,000 DVX feature

asphaltplanet

asphaltplanet

Member
I used to hang around these boards a lot back in the early days, but I kind of drifted away when I got ultra-busy working on SEX MACHINE and subsequent projects. I noticed I was getting a lot of traffic from this thread and Jack suggested I started a thread over here. So here it is.

The backstory:

I had been making short films with a group of friends in Oklahoma City. I was running a small advertising/design agency at the time and was basically feeling unfulfilled. I decided I was going to make a feature - no matter what. I wanted to make it as good as it could be, but mainly it was designed to be proof that we could pull off a feature length project. We hoped it would possibly open some doors and serve as a nice portfolio piece.

We shot nights and weekends with a DVX100 bought for cheap off some gray market website. I roped my friends into working as cast and crew and we basically made every mistake in the book. But over time, things started to gel. It took about a year of shooting and 6 months of editing.

So the movie is done now and we have had a pretty good reaction to it. The people that like it, really love it. We've played at a few festivals, picked up a few awards and are inking distribution stuff right now... working out details... etc. Considering we premiered it last December, this is the project that seems like it will never go away... from my perspective anyway.

But I am really proud of the movie and wouldn't trade the experience for anything in the world. So, if you're interested about any aspect of how we made SEX MACHINE, just ask. I have learned a lot from these forums and I won't keep any secrets.
 
Sounds good. By the way, do the rights to the film return to you at a certain point? Just wondering. I'm wary of giving up too many rights to a distributor.

I'm not sure of the exact details, but I think Lance Weiler has a deal where DVD rights return to him after 3 years on his new film. :thumbup:

http://lanceweiler.com/
 
You said "we basically made every mistake in the book". Could you give us the top 10 ones and the way you overcome them?

Thanks for sharing your experience.

Regards,
Laurent
 
I've been following this film for about a year and I agree with everyone here that the trailer looks really nice.

In fact, before I shot anything with my DVX I use to show the trailer to people when I was putting a project together and say ... look ... see ... this is how good it will look :cheesy:

I think, like a similarly priced infamous feature out of austin, this looks like an ideal candidate for the midnight spot at Sundance, should at least be able to get some overseas distribution with guns, science gone wrong, thugs, and strippers.


Its got a like a cool Reanimator or Sam Raimi meets Tarantino vibe.

Hope I get to see it soon!
 
Thanks for the feedback everybody. I just logged on to check it out before work. Let me get back to you a little later today with my list of top 10 mistakes.
 
Jack - glad you were able to use the trailer to get people involved in your projects. I'm sure people are doing the same thing with your short projects nowadays.
 
I love that picture, too. We spent about a day with a Stickypod just shooting driving footage - almost none of which made it into the movie. But we got some really cool stuff.
 
Thanks for the comments. Let me try to answer the questions...

Budget - was actually $8,016. But $1,000 of that was absconded with by the makeup artists. We tried to do it for $7K, the legendary EL MARIACHI budget, but we went over. Budget went to the camera, locations, special effects and food. Everybody worked for free.

Insurance - we didnt' have any. Although, everybody involved could have probably made a lot of money if we had insurance, because we all got wounded to one degree or another.

Dolly - This was just a basic doorway dolly that we rented. Some weekends we couldn't afford to rent it, so midway through the shoot we really started planning around whether we could afford to rent the dolly or not. We tried making one, but it was more hassle than it was worth. We could get the doorway dolly for $75 a weekend so we just went with it. Some weekends we couldn't even afford the tracks.
 
As promised, here are some of the top mistakes we made...

1. TOO MANY LOCATIONS.
I was determined not to make a slasher/zombie/vampire flick that was all set in one location. I was determined to flesh out the "world" of the film. Unfortunately, that included way too many locations. Some of these were really difficult locations to film in. We got behind schedule, we got tired, we got discouraged, we elimated scenes, we changed things. It's not a good idea to change things when you are tired and discouraged. So, the final movie is missing some chunks that I really wanted in there, but it works and we got it done. Time for the next one.

2. UNRELIABLE STRIPPERS
Strippers do not show up on time, or early in the day, or sometimes at all. In our case, they didn't show up at all even though we had rented out a strip club for the day. We ended up talking a few "real" girls into performing, but this drastically cut down on the number of breasts on display in the movie. Lesson to be learned: don't trust strippers.

3. DISAPPEARING MAKE-UP EFFECTS ARTISTS
Our make-up guys were terrible and creepy. They were the only people getting paid. But we couldn't get them under control and they creeped out the girls - another thing that cut down on the number of breasts on display. They showed up at some of our overnight shoots without the necessary supplies. This cut down on the amount of gore on display in the movie. Once they got their final check, they disappeared. We overcame this by having our production designer take over make up chores. Even though we weren't trained in effects, we used off the shelf materials and got pretty good results. It's better than the stuff we paid money for. But, it would have been nice to have more gore.

Sorry this isn't a full list of 10... I'm sure I'll think of more...
 
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