23 Part 2 [Look at those analogue drop-outs!!!]

So we are back with part 2 of '23', which has the world's most blatant Miller's Crossing rip-off scene ever and some rather dodgy acting.

The shoot at the Humber Bridge [and yes, it is compulsory for every student film shot in Hull to have at least one scene take place here] was one of the worst days of my life. The crew were growing readily more disillusioned with the project, and plain pissed at how crap Uni was [It says a lot that none of the rest of the crew ever did any further work in the media, or as far as I know even pick up a video camera again] and things were starting to unravel at a rate of knots. The Humber Bridge location was scouted on a rainy monday morning, but the shoot was on a glorious saturday afternoon in June, so what had been an out-of-the-way and dull location on Hessle foreshore was suddenly a mecca for picnicking families, dog walkers and other people who enjoy fresh air [the big freaks].

So there we were, running around a crowded park with prop [and rather convincing] guns - oh, did I mention this was 3 days after the Dunblaine massacre? The one where some nutter walked into a school and killed loads of kids? Oh, well, it was, anyway. And even though we'd done the right thing and informed our local police station [who sent a squad car round every hour just to check on us], we still ended up having stand up, knock down arguments with at least three old ladies [it's always old ladies, isn't it?] who thought we were sick, insensitive perverts of the worst kind.

So even though we had technically done everything correct, we were still the victims of circumstance and bad timing. Grrrr

And that was before the mic conked out and the silent genny turned out to be about as silent as a heard of buffalo, and the actors forgot their lines, and the crew were all hung over, and I started to sulk.

Some days I wish I'd stayed in bed...

Everything Beautiful is Far Away

This is a test render of some animation done for us by the wonderful Mister Jeff Hobbs - part time animation genius, full time tinkerer and all round good egg. The reason it's up here today is twofold. One is that I just remembered I had a copy of it, and the other is to illustrate the point that we here at CheapAss HQ aren't always about the wallowing in past glories - heaven no, we, being thrusting and motivated young bucks of the media world are all about moving onward and upward...

To this end, the animation is part of the development work being done on my next magnificent octopus - Everything Beautiful is Far Away. The title [and the plot, come to think of it] is shamelessly ripped off from a Grandaddy song [but seeing as they split up [boo] a while ago, I'm hoping to dodge any low-flying law-suits]. Locations and script are locked, special effects are being done as we speak and we've even got some posters designed, like this one...

I'll keep you posted on any and all developments as they happen, plus I'll post up some more pre-production stuff as I feel like it.

[Thanks to Darren at X-GF Media for that poster image]

23 Part 1 [Kicking it Old Skool]

In honour of that new Jack Black movie [which Im hearing mixed reviews to, wich is a shame as Michel Gondry is a bit of a genius in my book], today we will be traveling back to the heady days of 1993, when Kurt Cobain still had a face and the internet was just a demented glint in some guy's eye, it was a time when VHS tapes ruled the planet and I spent a lot of time drinking cheap booze in student union bars. Plus, I still had a lot of hair back then, ah yes. my youth - where did you go?

Anyway, the point of that long and rather rambling sentence is to introduce us 23, a film I made as a student at the complete pile of shite known back then as The University of Humberside. So ashamed of it's past was this pale impression of a learning establishment that it changed it's name and slunk across a river to hide.

1993 was also the time when a young Quentin Tarantino held sway over the minds of young and impressionable media students, and naive as I was, I thought I could pull off some kind of homage to Resevoir Dogs, but the twist would be - it would have chicks in it. Yay me!!! No noe ever came up with that twist before. Pat on the head - go to the top of the class. So with a local heavy metal band cast as the bad guys [the Failed Lemmings, where are they now I wonder? Also, we mainly cast them 'cos they had a van], two local am-dram ladies on board as our principles and a dream in our hearts, we set out to make movie magic.

Oh how did it go wrong? We ended up falling out, nearly being arrested, equipment and brains malfunctioned, directors refused to direct and everyone else went and got very drunk. Everyday. For ever.

So that's the scene set - check out the first bit and tomorrow I'll tell you why its not a good idea to shoot blank firing guns in public just after one of the most horrific gun crimes committed on British soil

Poster Interlude Number 2

A poster I did for the screening of Disorder [which I'll write about in due course] I think that I was making this around the same time '28 Weeks Later' came out, as that film had similar posters to this one - warning posters and that kinda thing. If you look carefully [and I know you won't] you can still see the remains of this poster, and a few others, pasted up in tatters on lamp-posts in Hull.

It wasn't us that put them up, however, as fly-posting is illegal, it must have been someone else entirely.

And on a more serious note, as we just found out, flyposting really doesn't work, so we embraced the internet and other telecommunications devices to publicise screenings from now on - it's cheaper and it's kinder to the environment kids - remember the polar bears*

* Although Polar bears are cute and endangered because of global warming, they would still bite your face off as soon as look at you - don't be fooled by David Attenborough's propaganda

The Terror of the Behemoth...

Being a big fan of 50's B-movies, I always had an idea to to some kind of homage / pastiche, and this is my second attempt, I guess [after Revenge of the Mutant Ants - which I haven't uploaded yet] I was initially going to cut together loads of scenes from various B-movies, with my own special effects, reasoning that all these films had interchangable plots and characters, but then I decided that was too much like hard work, and just cut together a trailer for a film that never existed.

In true B-movie style, it is mostly stock footage [from trailers for War of the Worlds and When Worlds Collide], with another stirling hand puppet courtesy of Ms Wendy Richards [see also the dinosaur in "Idiots in Time"] The puppet is based on the monster from "The Giant Claw" - possibly a candidate for worst movie of all time, if only it were a bit more famous - it has the same shonky charm as and Ed Wood movie, plus it has a giant radioactive space monster that's as big as a battleship. So this is my little tribute to that film

The effects are mostly basic AfterEffects things, which I was just starting to learn at the time. Im rather pleased with the thing, and the death-ray eyes look awesome

How to make me squeal like a girl...

1. Make 3 of my favorite films

2. Wait for years until I've almost given up hope [and until The Phantom Menace destroyed all hopes that revived franchises could be any good again]

3.



And prepare yourself for the girlish squeals of geek-gasms, and 2 days of wandering around the Cheapassfilm office humming that theme tune [and yes, we have offices, and a phone and everything]

Roll on May 22, that's all I can say. Consider me stoked...

Eddie Rex - The Man, The Myth Part 1

The world of low budget filmmaking is populated by a lot of odd characters [especially in Hull - which someone once told me has one of the highest levels of inbreeding in the country, although I've never been able to ascertain the veracity of this claim]

When we set out to make a short documentary about this scene, it was inevitable that we would unearth some of these eccentrics, but after we found Mr Eddie Rex, we decided to dump the rest and just concentrate on him. Now, a lot of people, on seeing the film, assumed Eddie to be a character, played by an actor, but I assure you that he is real [just google him if you want, and I'm sure that you'll find some linkage to his films too, if you're brave enough]

Eddie is the only person who's films have silenced a normally liberal audience with shock, especially 'My struggle' which seems to equate Eddie's views with those of a certain Mr A Hitler, and ends with him reading passages from Mine Kampf in an apparently non-ironic fashion. No-one knew quite what to make of it, or him.

We were a bit worried that the finished edit was needlessly vicious and could be seen as a character assassination, but after showing the rough cut to Eddie, he loved it, so we felt no qualms about showing it to a wider audience. Also, we felt even less inclined to portray Eddie in a positive light after finding out that he had been passing some of our films off as his own [Indeed, if you look hard enough, somewhere on-line, Eddie Rex - The Man, The Myth appears with a Directed by Eddie Rex Tag]

The point of all this is that now the equipment and software are so cheap and easily avalable, anyone and everyone thinks they are good filmmakers. Some are good filmmakers, some are naturally gifted, some are awful, pretentious and misguided, and then there is Eddie Rex

Cheapassfilms presents the internet sensation...

Since I discovered how to put things on youtube, I've become a bit obsessed with seeing how many hits our films have had [yes, I know, my mother didn't give me enough attention or something, what can I do?]

One interesting find what this site Tube Mogul which gives you statistics and some lovely graphs [although not a venn diagram] to show how many of your films have been watched - I recommend checking it out - it's free and it can do some other stuff which I can't be bothered to go into right now [plus they aint paying me, so I'm not giving them too much of a free plug]

Anyway, that was a rather long and rambling introduction to the puzzle that is "Just why is Blood Sucking She-Freaks of Satan so popular?"

Blood Sucking She-Freaks is a film directed by Ed Hunter, and can be found in 2 parts on our youtube channel [you know the url by now people] and its basically an extended trailer for a vampire film that was never made - lots of pretty cool cheap blood, pretty girls and weird backwards shit that Ed is known for. Yet it's got the second highest viewing figures on our site [for the highest, check the UFO film entry below]

Why is that?

Is it the name? The Tags people search in youtube? Does Ed have a lot of Goth friends? Check out the film and see if you can figure out exactly why people love this, rather than some of the more elaborate, well scripted and crafted films up on the site?

And remember - Beware of the Vampires - LESBIAN VAMPIRES!!!!

R.I.P. Chief Brody

I don't normally get upset when famous people die - after all, it's like I knew them personally, plus what with the being dead inside and everything, but this morning I heard that Roy Scheider had died, it brought a little lump to my throat, and yes, I think I got some dirt in my eye or something, no, it's not a tear, honestly...

Anyway, Jaws is my favourite film of all time [yes, even higher in my estimation than Breakdance Two (The Electric Boogaloo)] A perfect blend of character driven drama and blockbuster style action which remains peerless even these 30 years after it first opened.

So let's have a little pause on a grey Monday morning and say goodbye to Chief Brody of Amity Island.

Here's to swiming with bow-legged women...

Idiots in Time Part 6 [The Stunning Conclusion]

The end, finish, weren't we all happy when it was over? Even if filming did end with a whimper rather than a bang, standing in a clod car-park on a Saturday morning, dressed in poundshop costumes and freezing our tits off waiting for people to turn up - although the fight scene looks alright, for something I made up as I went along, and the robot hand scene is probably my favourite bit of the film.

The ending was slightly more problematic, as it was initially intended to be a massive, Benny Hill style chase, if I recall, which needed at least 20 extras [whom, by the way we were sure would turn out, as after last year [Acoustic Warriors - which I'll probably write about soonish] everyone was fired up and eager to help out the Cracktown boys, apart from, it turned out, they weren't, especially cos it was a bit nippy and too early and they all had stuff to do...] So anyway, we pretty much made it up as we went along, which is okay, but narratively, it shows a stunning contempt for the audience [which, to be fair is Cracktown's stock-in-trade] but also, I had to appear on camera - which I hate...

Anyway, thats about it for Idiots in Time. I'll write more about some other stuff next week, maybe even some old, old stuff...

Idiots in Time Part 5

This scene was written especially for one of Cracktown's friends, and illustrates perfectly one of the dangers of no-budget filmmaking, namely, if you use your friends as actors, there is a good chance they will suck.

The case in point being Mr Smith, super villain, fake moustache wearer and part time drunkard. He is normally very outgoing, loud and shameless, yet stick a camera in his face and he suddenly clams up, and could only get through the scene with a liberal application of brandy laced tea. At 1.30pm!

Hence why Mr Smith's accent is even more wobbly than the rest of the accents in the film and why it took forever to get through what is essentially a pretty straight forward scene. That and the fact that all Santa's Close-ups were filmed at a different time as Julian [who plays Santa] had to get back to his day-job.

At least the ever professional Cracktown [and mainly King Rat and his eccentric hat] delivered their lines on time and mostly on cue and gave me something to cut around to salvage something. I do like the chase scene at the end, despite the rather lame electrical cord gag.

Poster Interlude Number 1

I just thought I'd show off some of the posters I've done for screenings, every now and then. The first one is obviously for Disorder [find is elsewhere on my youtube site]. The problem I always have with doing posters is, because I'm un-organized, I never have a stills photographer on set with me, and have to work from low resolution stills grabbed from the film. This can work out okay when I'm doing black and white posters (as above) for photocopying and fly posting, but for colour posters and images, not so good. Anyway, enjoy Disorder poster number one.

Idiots in Time Part 4

Never film on a sunday morning. Anywhere. Ever. Even if it is raining.

Because we were using friends and volunteers and people who had been otherwise press-ganged, bribed and black-mailed into appearing in the film, and because a goodly percentage of them are if not actual alcoholics, then they are certainly doing a good impression on being one, we ended up shooting most of Idiots in Time on a succession of Sunday mornings.

This had two consequences - 1. nearly everyone involved was hung-over (n.b. this might have actually improved one or two performances) and 2. wherever we went to shoot, there were dog walkers, families out for a stroll and even paragliders buzzing us at every occassion, which meant that it became increasingly frustrating and difficult to get a good take that wasn't ruined by the buzzing of engines, barking of dogs or inquisitive cries of 'what yer doin? Am I gonna be on the telly mate?'

Having said that, these petty annoyances were balanced by the sheer look of horror and incomprehension at seeing grown men dressed as Nazis, Santa, romans and emperors, wandering round a forest with a guy with a video camera at 9am on a Sunday morning.

If there is a lesson here, it's probably that you need to have security guards or something, or a very think skin...

Idiots in Time Part 3

Part 3 of Idiots in Time is a special effects masterclass, if I do say so myself. When the film was first screened, admittedly to an audience who were both film illiterate and too drunk to care, the biggest impression seemed to be caused by the time machine fading in and out as Cracktown travelled thru space. Obviously, a pretty easy effect to achieve, even shooting hand held (I was to lazy to drag a tripod around everywhere, it took too long to do each set-up and time was running out, plus the hand held thing gives the film a bit of energy)

The space-time continuum effect was done using a chromatte studio I blagged for 30 minutes - chromatte, for anyone that doesn't know, is a sort of blue screen process which uses reflectiive lights, glass beads and a chicken sacrificed to the Gods to get the compositing effect working properly. The big blue swirly thing is just a pre-set effect from Apple's LiveType software. I did ask someone to do me something a little more hi-tech but they took too long and this works just as good. After all, we only needed a swirly thing...

The volcano matte was ripped directly from Google Image Search and then the bottom half was made transparent in photoshop, with another Magic Bullet filter to make it look hot - although it was actually snowing the day we short the pre-history scene. I knew vaguely that I wanted this shot to look like it did, but I wasn't sure it would work so well, It's a good job I shot the nice wide shot with the volcano effect in mind (Did I mention, the film wasn't story-boarded, I just made it up as I went along?)

And finally for this scene, Cranford the dinosaur. We asked the fantastic Wendy [AKA Timmy Lives in my House] to make a dinosaur puppet, expecting her to come back with (and in keeping with the spirit of the production) a glorified sock puppet . However, after some months of work, she turned up with an AWESOME glorified sock puppet, which everyone agreed would have made Ray Harryhausen cough up his coffee if he ever saw it. The only dilemma then was how much to show of said puppet - after all, a lot of work had gone into it, but to show it too many times would be to reduce it's impact and thaat of the gag. So only two shots, plus a few later on, which we'll talk about next time...

The Power of Youtube (or why people still think 'The X-Files" is telling the truth)

Okay, watch this film and tell me what you see.

Come back when you've watched it, because the next bit is a spoiler.

Watched it?

Good.

To me, its a slightly sleep deprived guy (and possibly drunk) guy who shall remain nameless for reasons of national security who got a bit confused and mistook a TV ariel reflecting car headlights for a UFO mothership. It's a bit of found footage edited together into what basically amounts to a cheap (and slightly embarrassing) gag.

However, when I uploaded it to youtube, I added the tag 'UFO' and now it's got the highest number of hits on my channel (yes, even more than the film with the cat eating a dead bird, if you can believe that...). I'm even getting emails from people who want to see the original footage, to see if they can spot anything else and possibly identify what the object is.

Didn't these people (who I'm guessing happened on the film after searching for 'UFO' tagged films) even watch it to the end, to the reveal? To the bit where we see that it is a TV ARIEL???

And people wonder how conspiracy theories start...

Repeat after me - "I want to believe, I want to believe..."

How d'ya like them apples, Apple...

Another choice quote from the man Lynch

David Lynch is my hero

I think this clip speaks for itself

Filmmaking 101 - Always Tidy Up (The Nazi Water Incident)

Sometimes, a stupid joke, or a mistake can really screw up a shoot, or even end up with the crew almost losing their job. Such an incident occurred during the shooting of 'Idiots in Time' and I think there is a lesson there that we can all learn from.

The scene in Part 1 [as seen below] called for a Nazi DNA bottle (which, in true low-budget stylee was played by a soft drink bottle filled with red water and a swastika crudely drawn on it). At the end of the day's shooting, someone (well, me actually) thought it would be a fine jape to leave said prop in the office where we had been filming. The next day, I came into work and was confronted by a furious receptionist who held out the bottle like it was a soiled nappy. With a stern voice, she said (with no small amount of disdain) "Is this yours?" I obviously had to admit to it, as it was my name on the office booking form, but I couldn't understand exactly why the offending article could cause so much offence.

It turned out that the office we had been filming in was being used the next morning for a marketing seminar in - you guessed it - marketing bottled water. I don't know if the organizers had thought that the bottle was left there to sabotage their event, or by someone making a political statement about the evils of selling something that basically comes through the tap for free, but they weren't happy.

Visions of being arrested for hate crimes, or at the very least getting kicked out of my office flashed before my eyes, but as it turned out, disaster was averted with the offer of buying them a new bottle of soft drink.

It's a good job there wasn't a meeting of holocaust survivors, or worse, the BNP taking place instead, and that no-one saw the Time traveling Nazi Robot in full effect. Then I really would have had some explaining to do.

So in conclusion - tidy up and don't be a jerk.