Writing/Filming What Excites You? Or What You're Able to Do?

T

tommygdawg

Well-known member
Hey all,


This question has been on my mind a lot lately, and I was wondering what you all think about this. I shot/directed a short recently that I wrote, and all throughout the process I realized that this film just did not excite me at all. Why might that be? It's a drama, and my favorite genres are sci-fi/action. Now, I finished the movie and am happy with the film, but it just got me to thinking...the only reason I did this film was because it was attainable, and sci-fi/action is often impossible or at best incredibly difficult to do on no budget. So, I'm wondering...do I continue to do films that I'm not passionate about, but am literally more able to accomplish? Or, do I do something that excites me and take a hit on quality? Does this make sense to anyone? How do you strike a balance between what you know is within your reach and what you know you're passionate about?
 
I think you just wait for the idea that both excites you and that you're passionate about. It doesn't have to be compromise.
 
That's true, but let me reframe the question. I have no shortage of ideas that I'm passionate about, but most if not all of them are very difficult to do well on no budget. So, do I go ahead and do them anyway? Or do I do the ones that I'm less passionate about but are more doable in light of budgetary concerns and lack of extended crew?
 
Make scifi but lower your expectations. If you're a scifi fan ask yourself how much have the omnipresent special effects of scifi in the last decade actually added. Lower your production value expectations and let the imagination rule. It doesn't have to be star wars. Scifi has a long tradition of low budget aesthetic, poor acting and cheese. I'm in the same boat in that the real world holds no interest to me. I'm drawn to fantastic, the thought provoking and that which stimulates the imagination. Many films have inspired me to want to make films but it was watching Dark Star and Be Kind, Rewind in the same weekend that inspired me to finally stop talking about it and buy a camera.

There are two ways to lower your production value, cheap sets or cheap cgi. Or tricks like having your characters describe your money shot rather than filming it. I can't think of an example offhand but there have been a few movies where they have done this and the described scene was more vivid than anything that could be committed to celluloid. Take Roy Batty's speech, could an image of 'attack ships on fire' competed with his emotive one-line description of them? A lower production value can be a stylistic choice. I love a tv series called Lexx. I don't know what the budget was but it looked seriously low budget and the aesthetic is a look I'd love to emulate. It's an example I hold up of how a great feat of imagination can transcend technical limitations. Scifi is a predominantly cult-orientated audience so you don't need to be star wars.

There's my take on it anyway. I'm so totally in the same boat as you, struggling to come up with ideas that are within my means. My main issue is lack of a space to build sets so I'm working up a couple of scripts where almost the entire film takes place in claustrophic environments that fit in a 10' square space (without remaking cube). I can't compete with hollywood so I don't intend to try. What I can do is make stories that hollywood wouldn't risk the money on. Plus I want to build sets. If my spaceship has to be built out of cardboard so be it! And I prefer models and greensceen to cgi anyway. Such was my golden age of scifi. It was better before it went mainstream.
 
Why waste time wishing you could make Star Wars when you could go make Primer or Pi instead. Start paying attention to succesful low/no budget sci fi stuff, (also TV shows like Twilight Zone???), and try to write something similar in scope and scale.

or do some wild greenscreen style filmaking.

theres no excuses anymore. im not saying its easy, but you can make a sci fi movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBHau4HeTZY
 
nycineaste swiped my answer!

I'd look at the sci-fi of *ideas* like TWILIGHT ZONE, or find a story that can be done with limited special effects. My favorite sci-fi movie are the ones that play games with my mind... or deal with issues and subjects seen through the prism of a future world. TWILIGHT ZONE and OUTER LIMITS did amazing sci-fi on almost no money. Look at how they did it.

I wrote a HBO World Premiere film that was science fiction - and we had a limited budget. Everything in that film was something that could be done on the cheap... it was about cloning the villains from video games. So it was just some actor - playing a video game character. There were some FX - but mostly small stuff.

I also wrote a script that I ended up buying back from the producer that is kind of like INVASION OF THE BODYSNATCHERS with android - they have "liquid skin technology" and can become anyone they touch. That's just an actor and a cheapo morphing program.

But even a space opera is doable now - John Carpenter's first film was made for pocket change at a time when there was no CGI and everything had to be done practical - which you can still do with a schufftan rig (a friend of mine made one for a couple of bucks so that we could marry actors and miniatures in camera). On DARK STAR they kept most ofthe story on the space ship (a set they built) and then did model FX work for exterior of the ship and the space walk (and surfing) scenes. I know filmmakers who have built their own space ship sets that look as good as anything Hollywood could make. Remember - those Hollywood sets are just built by someone. If you aren't good at CGI, do things practical. Green screen, cool locations that exist (Valley Of Fire park in Nevada is all *red* stones - like Mars) and just good-old creativity (that speeder in STAR WARS had wheels - covered by mirrors that reflected the sky so it looked like it was hovering) can do amazing things.

OUTER LIMITS could take Robert Culp and the Bradbury Building and turn it into an amazing story that would spawn THE TERMINATOR.

- Bill

You are only limited by your imagination and creativity.
 
1976: My friend and I built this bridge set in his basement. (Our very first live action project.)
me1.jpgme2.jpgme3.jpgme4.jpgme5.jpg
We were shooting on 16mm film and had $500 for the entire project. You be surprised the people and help we had AFTER we did this. A national network did a show on what we were trying to do, gave us all the equipment we needed and gave us money for the interviews they did with us. Never looked back. Never once ever thought we should do something within our means. Yech!
 
Interesting responses, all. I have to say, that "Manborg" trailer is exactly what I'm trying to avoid here. Not to be mean or crass about these people and all the hard work that's gone into it, but it looks very much like no-budget trying to be big budget. I don't want to go for that feel. Anything is "doable" now, but the question is, how well can you do it? I don't want to do a sci-fi film if it's going to look incredibly cheesy. That said, lately I'm wondering if I shouldn't just go ahead and do it anyway.

Craig, I'd kill to have that set even today! Sadly I wouldn't have the space nor the resources to build something like that. The story behind it and where it took you is very cool though, it gives all of us hope :)
 
Tommy, it sounds like you need to focus your energies on acquiring financing more-so than anything else. If the scope of the stories you want to tell demands it - then acquiring the money for decent art direction, props, and SFX is really the only way to go about it.
 
It's obviously best if you work on projects you are passionate about, but you have to be smart about it. I've seen plenty of people try to make epic sci-fi without the money or people to pull it off, and it almost always ends up being forced and the crap production value all but kills the film.

Ultimately the most important thing is that you create good work, because if you don't no one will ever give you the money to make your dream projects.
 
Have you seen Timecrimes? That’s a sci-fi done more as a mystery/thriller.
You have to accept that you’re not going to wow them with the intense epic special effects, and play to strengths. But, if you are one of those master fx post-production guys, then the Monsters route is perhaps the way to go.

Another recent sci-fi, not too expensive was Sleep Dealer.

In The Adjustment Bureau, the big trick was – of all things – wearing the right hat while turning a doorknob the wrong way. And you cut to an entirely new location when they enter the doorway. These ideas can be pulled off for very little money, but it helps if you have world-class actors selling the reality of it. Scenes where people are frozen in time, also done again in the Adjustment Bureau, are very cheaply done. A lot of these classic tricks are available.

It starts with the right brainstorming and epiphany. Think of some new visual trick that you can actually pull off and craft a story around it. Easier said than done.
 
tommygdawg said:
... Sadly I wouldn't have the space nor the resources to build something like that. ...
Click to expand...

1. I didn't have the space. That's why that set was built in a friends basement. In his parent's rec room no less.
2. The set was built for less than 300 dollars.

The mindset isn't whether or not resources, space or anything else are currently present. They never are. The mindset to have is ... what's needed and what steps can I take to change that. There is actually a methodology and it does actually work. However, if you decide ahead of time something can't be done, then it takes absolutely no effort on your part to ensure you will achieve that goal of it not happening.
 
tommygdawg said:
that "Manborg" trailer is exactly what I'm trying to avoid here. :)
Click to expand...


yeah, that's made to be INTENTIONALLY cheesy, so I guess it doesnt help you if you don't want to look cheesy at all (WTF is wrong with cheesy anyway? Irrational fear of cheese is why every superhero movie is trying too hard to be dark, even the ones with not-dark characters).

does this look cheesy? Maybe a little, it was done a long time ago. Imagine what someone who wanted to do something similar could do NOW. It spawned a movie with Angelina Jolie (that tanked and ruined the guys career, but thats only cause the story/script didnt work):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqRvdm8jHz4

Does this look cheesy? It got the guy wisked over to hollywood (literally)- hes working on the Evil Dead remake with Sam Raimi as we speak. This was done on a home computer prolly not much different from the one youre looking at this post with:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dadPWhEhVk

Stop crying like a whiny baby youre in the age of computers, the technology to do special fx is in your hands, right now, literally. You need me to tell you this? Go get some freeware 3D software , build some models from broken toys and green screen em, start futzing around.

I cant believe I have to explain to a modern filmaker about the ease and availability of CGI technology. Robert Rodriguez is doing a face palm as we speak.

THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A BETTER TIME TO BE YOU.

and heres the big secret you didnt want to hear:

theres no magic "NOT CHEESY" button you can press to make you automatically good at it and avoid it looking cheesy. Its how well you do it, how you pull it off.

EDIT: if there was a magic "NOT CHEESY" button, Syfy channel and Roger Corman (my idol!) would've found it already.

SHARKTOPUS. ROCKS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN2CFKmfOY0
 
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Craig - ***AWESOME*** set! Shows what can be done when you put your mind to it.

TIMECRIMES is a great little film - and if you watch the behind the scenes stuff you can see their huge military building being blown over in the wind.

The cool backstory on A BOY AND HIS DOG has the producers buying a piece of land, then spending their days off hauling junk out to the land to create a post-apocalyptic landscape. Took then months and months to do that! That same film has one of my favorite *imagination* FX tricks - when they find the skylight in the dirt, and climb down into a huge high school gymnasium... in the underground city.

If you don't have money, you have to use creativity.

- Bill
 
I think the issue is not that of genre but the ideas that you vibe within it. It really has less to do with your film being a drama then that you haven't really decided what it is that REALLY attract you. For instance i used to be HUGE sci-fi fan but not anymore. Something changed within me. The wonderment of seeing another world in context of some inconsequential story is not something that attracts me anymore. I still collect images and references to awesome characters, spaces, art direction etc but have no patience for banality of sci-fi film stories. Thus my answer to your dilemma is are you still living in the sentimental past of watching "Star Wars" or "Blade Runner" as child and the wondrous experience that you had while watching those films? Do you really believe that you can replicate that wonderment within yourself now that you are a grown man? My guess is that you've evolved and the same films have no power over you other then sentimental value. And if that is the case you need to find out what it is that attracts you now.
 
Honestly, in this day and time it's hard to find an excuse to not shoot the type of films you want to. I'm not saying you can make something that looks exactly like Lord of the Rings, but get creative within your limitations. Find out what areas of production value you can build your production around. I shot a script around a post apocalyptic premise someone else wrote. I was terrified at how to shoot it inexpensively. Fortunately, I ended up getting an old military base to shoot on for cheap. I also had a terrific production designer who found cheap, but detailed ways to bring the film to life. Lastly, I opened the film with quick shots I stole at places I could never afford to shoot.

I saw a short at a festival that the filmmaker said cost him $3,000 out of his pocket but had extensive VFX in it. He said that short should've cost around $30,000. It looked like it did.

Do you have anything you can barter with people who can bring high production value to your ideas? Can you limit your ideas around one sexy set setpiece like Craig did? Can you use creative shorthand to create your sci-fi world without needing millions of dollars? Can you create the illusion of a world, show us enough to have us believe in it, and then build a film around people hiding from that world? Can you shoot guerilla at locations that bring viability to your film? For example, a place like the Salten Sea - http://www.editingluke.net/2010/12/bombay-beach-california.html
 
If you are not excited about it AND feel like a project will not benefit you in any way, I say don't do it. I don't think this is the case considering you are doing projects that you have written, and something must have motivated you to do the drama, no? If it feels like a chore and fantasize about sitting on your couch as you're making the film, it's probably not worth it. My teachers always said that you can gain something from any project, but I have had some horrible, painful experiences on films that were a complete waste of time and energy.

If you have to pay the bills or work on your craft, do it. If not, you may be better off waiting tables.
 
Do not fall in the trap of oversimplifying things.
I like Blade Runner > Blade Runner is a sci-fi film > thus to make a movie i like i need to make a sci-fi film. This argument only make sense on the surface.

Better way to go about it would be:
I like Blade Runner > why do i like it? > I like BL because it's about lost hope, solitude, insignificance of being etc... > BL is also a sci-fi film > do i need to make sci-fi film to deal with the ideas i like?
 
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