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This
blog is will take you through my feature filmmaking adventure, from
the first auditions, through production, to the completion of my no-budget,
guerrilla epic.
Now
that digital technology can streamline production down to essential
filmmaking skills, you can see how it's possible to produce an epic
scope feature film when all of the cards in the deck are stacked against
you; when you're not in Hollywood; when you don't own any equipment
or have any money; when all you have to work with is chutzpah, creativity
and know-how.
Fifteen
years ago, I wrote The
GUIDE BOOK For Guerrilla Filmmakers when I was teaching filmmaking
classes at LTU's Chatsworth Campus in Los Angeles, California. Back
then, I had just finished filming my adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's
THE
TELL-TALE HEART, shot on 16mm and finished it for just $350.00
US Dollars, that went on to win a Silver Award at Worldfest. Everyone
was stunned by how much could be done with so little. But getting a
feature film funded in L.A. was still not going to happen.
After
moving from Los Angeles to Tucson, Arizona, I partnered up with a short
film Producer named Gabriele Andres who shared my drive and vision to
make low-budget, yet marketable feature films with a built-in profit
margin, designed to show an audience things they may have never seen
before, break clichés with the unexpected, and show them a fun
time while working with whatever we had to work with, until we could
[one day] raise a budget.
Together,
we made a thirty minute featurette called JUST
ANOTHER BOX with aircraft, a working airport and over 80
visual effects for just $1,200.00 US Dollars. That was our "pilot"
project where we successfully put our plans to the test, proving the
feasibility of producing a two hour epic under the same no-budget principles.
By
the time we wrapped production on Mary Shelley's THE LAST MAN,
seven prestigious Distributors who found our website online had contacted
us to see a rough-cut or trailer as soon as it becomes available. Considering
that we had not done any serious promotion or attended A.F.M. yet, that
validated all of our foundational marketing assumptions about the universal
branding of Mary Shelley.
What
made all of this possible was having a producer and talented people
around me who trusted my plan and judgment, however far it deviated
from the misconceptions of "Hollywood" filmmaking. There were
no director chairs, no mandatory baseball cap for the director (although
I always carried a large caliber pistol, being responsible for the safety
of all my people when out on remote or potentially dangerous locations),
no production assistants, no "lights, camera, action!" - just
solid, old-school filmmaking at its leanest, most efficient form possible,
using new-school, digital equipment for lightning-fast mobility.
No
one would have found my film buried on MySpace or YouTube if I would
have followed the herd. There's nothing maverick, innovative or even
interesting about following the herd anywhere, that's the definition
of mediocrity. I did everything "wrong" by conventional wisdom
yet this whole movie has been a success story from day one. That's because
I followed Frank Sinatra's advice and did it my way.
Even
though you may not have been on set with my cast and crew, you can still
follow along with the adventure from behind the scenes, making one of
the biggest no-budget, guerrilla films ever made: Mary Shelley's THE
LAST MAN by clicking on the "more" links of any of my
blog articles.
Photography
by Gabriele Andres
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