While I've given some ideas on making independent film look less cheap, today I'm going to lay it on thick. Too many indie productions spend a lot of money making movies look like garbage out in the world. A Cleveland perspective, considering the scenery around us isn't exactly pristine L.A., California, is kind of bleak and weather isn't always nice. The camera equipment available to us at prices we can afford isn't exactly perfect, either. So, how can we minimize the damage of limited outdoors, equipment, tiny or non-existent crews, and no budgets? Here we go!
First off, the script should be checked over a few times and locations may have to influence the script writing or a budget to go shoot elsewhere must come into play. If neither are applicable, perhaps some greenscreen compositing magic can help, situation permitting. Assuming the script doesn't require climbing to Mount Everest, everything may be fine. Funny thing is, computer programs, such as Infinite Vue and other applications, can simulate environments that look photoreal. So, if you are good at greenscreen/ bluescreen compositing, your script may not need changing of the settings. Of course, some of these programs are gosh darned expensive or a few are free at promotional times.....if you need them. In any case, make sure your location matches the script or vice versa, or things could come out looking mediocre.
Camera equipment can be a concern. Back in the day, you would have to adjust camcorders to work like professional camera systems. This has now progressed into cellphones, which many have 4K high-end cinema, yet lack depth of field and other lenses. In order to make either work well, you have to get adaptors and other equipment to stabilize and alter what is filmed/recorded.
The style of shooting. Too many indie films have shakey camera work and flaws. Use a tripod whenever you can. If not, try rigging a steady cam setup, so you can smoothly move around with the camera attached. Minimize zooms, unless the shots call for them. You can always fake a slight zoom in post production to keep things in motion. Laying down smooth surfaces or creating a railroad style track can allow you to create a wheel based movement system for simulating dolly and other styles of shooting. For instance, if you had a tripod with wheels and a large enough platform for your actor to stand on with the camera setup, you could wheel the camera around your actor while the background is spinning. You can simulate a lot of these things with greenscreen setups too, but that's trickier than just going out and shooting it for real. You can buy, rent, or build a crane setup, so that you can lift the camera in a smooth motion up over the trees or down to your actors. These are all traditional styles and help make your movie look more professional. Beware that camcorders still have a problem with fast side-to-side movement, creating digital artifacting instead of smooth motion blur. Playback results of a shoot on set, then determine if you need to change anything to fix it.
Lighting impacts everything. One of my friends/ colleagues is a lighting nut, after many indie film experiences. I agree that creative lighting is important. Look at any large Hollywood production and you can tell they didn't just whip out a camera and shoot in front of them. They carefully placed lighting to create moods and highlight certain parts of the set. It's an art unto itself, and indie productions generally forget about it. While my first film, Blood Donors, was intended as a horrible spoof on indie horror films and their lack of quality, using minimal lighting helped prove the case in point. Also, don't forget to light your cast in different ways to get a desired look, aside from the background. If I'm correct, George Lucas uses a lot of "back lighting" techniques to get the classic film serial looks of the old days of motion pictures. Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and more are built on such styles. They wouldn't have that powerful feel without the lighting being what it is. You can change the color of your lights, using gels, and set a tone/ mood for your movie, on that alone. Just don't leave out lighting in making things look more professional.
Acting can be altered to make things a bit more professional, too! Let's assume your cast is what it is and can't act. You are wondering what you can do to enhance their performance within your production. Well, using all the other things mentioned will help, but there's more you can do. In post production, you can do slight zooms to back up the emotional context of what they are saying in the dialogue or facial expression. Also, quicker cuts can minimize audience agony. also, placement of edits can affect viewer perception. Be creative and use the acting performance as raw material to be manipulated, rather than totally important unto itself. Chances are, your cast is not as good as hiring A list stars, so you have to work within your means.
Sound is equally important in making a production seem good or bad. We'll assume you have audio connectors on your camcorder to capture sound with the video. There are different types of microphones and techniques for capturing your cast's dialogue. Hollywood has typically used Boom microphones, where a person holds a pole with a fuzzy coated mic over the cast and the camera keeps it out of frame. The fuzzy part keeps static noise and other outside noise down, while the microphone inside pretty much captures sound it is aimed at. For my latest film, Salvaging Outer Space, which was all greenscreen shot for computer generated backgrounds, I used clip-on microphones, which are generally used for interviewing. It helped me keep a very consistent dialogue volume level and reduced noise because the proximity of the mics to the mouths was closer. The only downfall of clip-ons is when the actor moves around and the clothing rubs against the microphone, creating a scratchy sound or popping sound. Wireless models allow for all types of shoots, but the clip-on problems have to be monitored at all times, but seems worth it to me for many reasons, including not having to worry about a boom mic operator.
Other sound improvements are done in post production. You have noise reduction tools in many Non Linear Editor software to reduce unwanted sound. Also, you can enhance the dialogue and I even know how to fix bad acting in dialogue, but that's my little secret. Sound effects are important and there are tons of free libraries to use for enhancing the audio experience for your audience. Sometimes, replacing bad sound effects, like bad car door closing sounds or crappy footsteps, and anything else you can think of....can all have a positive effect. If your actor has a part where they scream and it sounds like garbage or is distorted, you can replace it with a more professional one, whether you recorded it or someone else did. Always watch out for copyright infringement and don't use stuff that you haven't obtained rights for.
Music is very important. Get someone to score your movie or get the rights to some songs from local bands. Make it fit the scenes and mood. Music can enhance a mood or detract from it, depending on what you are doing with it. Always make sure you have the rights cleared, or you could be in a world of legal hurt on your project. You don't want problems like that and many productions have been stopped in their tracks. Distributors won't take a project they know is illegally using someone else's intellectual property.
Editing software is important. I recommend Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro, or Avid if you can afford it. I've worked on Premiere and it allows for doing tons of professional things you can only imagine. You want as many editing and effects tools at your fingertips, as possible. I'm sorry, but many of the generic programs out there that come with computers just don't cut it. While Microsoft's Movie Maker software has a few powerful features, it just can't do what these big boys can. Once you work on one of these other programs, working on a smaller platform seems almost impossible to do what you want it to. If you can't afford the full versions of the software, there may be free programs that are comparable. However, I would recommend you pony up some cash to get something like Adobe Premiere Elements, instead. Premiere Elements has most of the features to get you through a production, properly. The Pro version of Premiere will leave you drooling, and leave you satisfied.
Titles and credits are an area to work on. A rule of thumb is to limit the amount of text your audience has to sit through. I've worked with kids editing video at a daycare and noticed a trend that needs serious fixing. They would take the easy route and use text and title generators throughout the whole project, and the writing would stay on the screen for what seemed like an eternity. Adults have this tendency too, from a few projects I've seen. A few words can help set a scene up, but too much just gets in the way and pulls you away from that "suspension of disbelief" we are used to when watching something. Opening credits have to be interesting enough to captivate your audience, as well. How many times have you watched opening credits and wondered when it would all end and get into the movie, itself? Make them interesting and watchable!
Color correction can help make a mood for a production. By taking your final raw movie and filtering it's look through color correction, you are smoothing out all the shots and scenes by glazing the final footage as a whole or in segments. Every project's color correction needs are different, but just like sound, the video should be mastered in this way to finalize the story. Sound should go through a mastering process, as well, to keep all volume levels even and to compress things in a way that works well on any audio system it's played on.
I hope some of this helps make people's productions a bit better and future proof. The less quality your product is, the less chance you have in a saturated industry, which is right around the corner. It takes time to make a movie and every day brings changes all around us. No one ever said this stuff was easy, but once you adopt some of these principals, things will go smoother for you.
Best, Kenny
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
Greenscreen Film Making
Most of you have heard what a greenscreen is. Still many have not! Whether it's greenscreen, bluescreen, or chromakey, they all have the same thing in common. They all use a solid color that gets "cut out" to reveal a background image or video/film backdrop. Almost all movies that have special effects use this method to give you fantastic illusions. If you are still not understanding how it works, let me give you another way of looking at it.
Imagine you have two pictures. One is of a friend against a solid green or blue wall. Sounds kind of boring, doesn't it? The other picture is of the ocean crashing on the shore of a nice sandy beach. Wouldn't it be nice to cut the solid color from around your friend out and place him/her overtop the image of the beach? That's all you are doing with greenscreen. Solid blue background is used for when you have earth tones on your friend and want a clean cut, because earth tones blend too much with the greenscreen. Chromakey is a general term for using any solid color you want to do this.
Okay, so it's cool to do that thing with the friend in Photoshop or some picture program, or even using actual pictures, but how does this affect our movies and the independent scene? While Hollywood is using the very best technology and greenscreen setups to make awesome backgrounds and to pull of stunts we only imagine, even indie film in Cleveland, Ohio is benefitting from this form of filmmaking. I made an entire feature film using greenscreen, filming my cast separately, then putting them together into a "virtual set". A virtual set is a series of images or video backgrounds where you insert your cast and make them look like they are in that environment for any given scene you need. Since my movie was set in outer space and I didn't have the budget to make physical backgrounds, I created virtual sets in the computer and placed my cast into them. Here is an episode extracted from the film to show you...
Hollywood movies like "The Matrix", "Journey To The Center Of The Earth", "Starwars episodes I, II, III", and tons more use this technique to give you whatever the director wants you to see! What's even more interesting is that this technique is one of the oldest film tricks out there. It just was different in black & white movies, using black on film to cut through to another image. Black is actually transparent on traditional film, allowing light to pass through, and this feature can be selected in most editing software once on the computer. Its called an "alpha channel". The term channel, however, is used for color too, kinda allowing you to make the connection that black is used like a color for screening, although they don't call it black screen. Try some greenscreening today! Note: Basic cheap or free editors may not have keying or screening capability.
Best Regards, Kenny
Imagine you have two pictures. One is of a friend against a solid green or blue wall. Sounds kind of boring, doesn't it? The other picture is of the ocean crashing on the shore of a nice sandy beach. Wouldn't it be nice to cut the solid color from around your friend out and place him/her overtop the image of the beach? That's all you are doing with greenscreen. Solid blue background is used for when you have earth tones on your friend and want a clean cut, because earth tones blend too much with the greenscreen. Chromakey is a general term for using any solid color you want to do this.
Okay, so it's cool to do that thing with the friend in Photoshop or some picture program, or even using actual pictures, but how does this affect our movies and the independent scene? While Hollywood is using the very best technology and greenscreen setups to make awesome backgrounds and to pull of stunts we only imagine, even indie film in Cleveland, Ohio is benefitting from this form of filmmaking. I made an entire feature film using greenscreen, filming my cast separately, then putting them together into a "virtual set". A virtual set is a series of images or video backgrounds where you insert your cast and make them look like they are in that environment for any given scene you need. Since my movie was set in outer space and I didn't have the budget to make physical backgrounds, I created virtual sets in the computer and placed my cast into them. Here is an episode extracted from the film to show you...
Hollywood movies like "The Matrix", "Journey To The Center Of The Earth", "Starwars episodes I, II, III", and tons more use this technique to give you whatever the director wants you to see! What's even more interesting is that this technique is one of the oldest film tricks out there. It just was different in black & white movies, using black on film to cut through to another image. Black is actually transparent on traditional film, allowing light to pass through, and this feature can be selected in most editing software once on the computer. Its called an "alpha channel". The term channel, however, is used for color too, kinda allowing you to make the connection that black is used like a color for screening, although they don't call it black screen. Try some greenscreening today! Note: Basic cheap or free editors may not have keying or screening capability.
Best Regards, Kenny
Corporations Think They Are Helping Indie Film
When a member of our film community commented on my segment about Withoutabox, an Amazon owned company, a small debate went off inside my head. How much do these corporations help or hinder us. Netflix doesn't help out, as I was told, because they buy small wholesale amounts and then rent it out from one location forever, gaining an audience perhaps, but not money for recouping or future production costs.
So, today we look at pros and cons of corporate help or exploitation. Starting with www.Withoutabox.com , which gives access to tons of festivals and connects you directly to www.Imdb.com to set up a title page, once you've submitted to a qualifying fest. Okay, it was mentioned that Withoutabox is out to get your money by throwing festivals down our throats. Sounds correct, but it is the mandate of any corporation doing business to find the most annoying way of getting our money, first and foremost. That addresses the comment, and acknowledges that there is some business greed in even the most seemingly pure setup to help us poor artists. However, there is a flipside. They do give you a free project page for your films and allow you to search for all the cheap free festivals out there to submit to. Some even qualify to allow you to smoothly get your project into the Internet Movie Data Base, or IMdb. From personal experience, I know this alone is hard enough to accomplish if even just one tiny flag pops up when submitting and needs approval from the IMdb editors. Yes, Withoutabox crams all their promotional "buy this and buy that" stuff down our throats, but they aren't doing everything soley from the bottom of their hearts, especially when any corporation is made up of a "collective" of people that are out to make money for themselves and stock holders.
Now, we've got www.Amazon.com to look at. They own Withoutabox and IMdb. That's kind of nifty, isn't it? They also own www.createspace.com , formerly Customflix, a company that manufacturers DVD-R's on demand with full printing and processing. Amazon, as once mentioned, seems like a good idea for the independents, but unfortunately, their whole business model revolves around "a sale here, and a sale there" all throughout the world. When you, the filmmaker with a product, sell through them just as a DIY entity, you in essence echo that model and become a number that isn't really marketed, unless you do that successfully with lots of exposure. You will sell one or two copies a year that way, without marketing, if lucky! To Amazon, it's the group collective as a whole of one to two per year that brings them money. Their business storefront is purely internet based, so overhead is much lower. They connect you to your customer, but only when that customer is searching for you or stumbles upon you. I've said it before, that they cut out the storefront on Createspace to bring sales through their Amazon web ads, instead. This is because they get more money out of your sale through that, than just through the shop leading into your Createspace hosted webpage. I've lost my bonus customers from the shop, because of this, forcing me to look at other options to sell DVDs. In their defense, they do let you keep your hosted webpage to bring customers directly to, but it's totally on you. They claim to now act as your distributor for DIY models, linking between the Withoutabox and IMdb, but that is little comfort when you lose some of the only sales you got, due to their changes. Also, fyi, many distributors see using createspace as a red flag, and don't understand why you use it, or what the rights issues are. That's something to think about!
Then, we've got www.IMdb.com , the famous Internet Movie Data Base! They've become big! They've always been big! So, now you've got your festival model through Withoutabox, you are using Createspace to make some dvds, and you've gotten your own IMdb title page with a fancy trailer up and your cast linked to all the other projects and IMdb offerings. Just because there are millions of visitors to the main site per day does not mean you will get hardly any of them. They all want to see the next Twilight and Star Trek information and who's in it. Perhaps most visitors don't even want to do that, but want to see who's doing the voiceovers to a direct to home video animated sequel when it's not listed at the beginning and your cellphone has internet., all whilst you are in mixed company and can't skip to end credits.
Another thing to consider is manufacturing your DVDs and future BluRays through companies like www.Discmakers.com and selling through companies like www.Filmbaby.com , where you still may have a chance, but not too much with that alone. This model works if you spend only $1,000 to make your film, $1,000 to get the DVDs, sell 200 of them at $10 a piece, having cast and crew selling a handful to each of their family and friends, while doing the filmbaby model. You'd probably have to have a few showings, charging for tickets or mandatory dvds upon entry, too. Tha can be a fun way to do it, but I personally don't like having family and friends buying what a true audience should be out in the real world. You can't make a living off of this model, unless you have mad skill!
Let's face it, unless you've got some major festival buzz and marketing, it's simply an uphill climb. Your best bet is to go to the American Film Market to sell your film off, find a good sales representative, or make an output deal with a distributor, if you can! It's all about niches and finding your paying audience. Even if you could find a non-profit organization to fund your filmmaking to give to a captive niche audience, that would be something. These last three models may help make a small career, but it's not likely to ever make you rich unless the Hollywood studios see potential from this. Hating to be a downer, but it's a very rough world out there, anymore. Doing films for the fun of it, seems to be the only thing we can do without some serious financial help from the front and the back. There is satisfaction in creating either short or feature films that have substance and enough quality to be put on your movie shelf. The experience is worth a try for the bold and you definitely learn something in that process.
Till we find better solutions, may we proceed with our art.
Best, Kenny
So, today we look at pros and cons of corporate help or exploitation. Starting with www.Withoutabox.com , which gives access to tons of festivals and connects you directly to www.Imdb.com to set up a title page, once you've submitted to a qualifying fest. Okay, it was mentioned that Withoutabox is out to get your money by throwing festivals down our throats. Sounds correct, but it is the mandate of any corporation doing business to find the most annoying way of getting our money, first and foremost. That addresses the comment, and acknowledges that there is some business greed in even the most seemingly pure setup to help us poor artists. However, there is a flipside. They do give you a free project page for your films and allow you to search for all the cheap free festivals out there to submit to. Some even qualify to allow you to smoothly get your project into the Internet Movie Data Base, or IMdb. From personal experience, I know this alone is hard enough to accomplish if even just one tiny flag pops up when submitting and needs approval from the IMdb editors. Yes, Withoutabox crams all their promotional "buy this and buy that" stuff down our throats, but they aren't doing everything soley from the bottom of their hearts, especially when any corporation is made up of a "collective" of people that are out to make money for themselves and stock holders.
Now, we've got www.Amazon.com to look at. They own Withoutabox and IMdb. That's kind of nifty, isn't it? They also own www.createspace.com , formerly Customflix, a company that manufacturers DVD-R's on demand with full printing and processing. Amazon, as once mentioned, seems like a good idea for the independents, but unfortunately, their whole business model revolves around "a sale here, and a sale there" all throughout the world. When you, the filmmaker with a product, sell through them just as a DIY entity, you in essence echo that model and become a number that isn't really marketed, unless you do that successfully with lots of exposure. You will sell one or two copies a year that way, without marketing, if lucky! To Amazon, it's the group collective as a whole of one to two per year that brings them money. Their business storefront is purely internet based, so overhead is much lower. They connect you to your customer, but only when that customer is searching for you or stumbles upon you. I've said it before, that they cut out the storefront on Createspace to bring sales through their Amazon web ads, instead. This is because they get more money out of your sale through that, than just through the shop leading into your Createspace hosted webpage. I've lost my bonus customers from the shop, because of this, forcing me to look at other options to sell DVDs. In their defense, they do let you keep your hosted webpage to bring customers directly to, but it's totally on you. They claim to now act as your distributor for DIY models, linking between the Withoutabox and IMdb, but that is little comfort when you lose some of the only sales you got, due to their changes. Also, fyi, many distributors see using createspace as a red flag, and don't understand why you use it, or what the rights issues are. That's something to think about!
Then, we've got www.IMdb.com , the famous Internet Movie Data Base! They've become big! They've always been big! So, now you've got your festival model through Withoutabox, you are using Createspace to make some dvds, and you've gotten your own IMdb title page with a fancy trailer up and your cast linked to all the other projects and IMdb offerings. Just because there are millions of visitors to the main site per day does not mean you will get hardly any of them. They all want to see the next Twilight and Star Trek information and who's in it. Perhaps most visitors don't even want to do that, but want to see who's doing the voiceovers to a direct to home video animated sequel when it's not listed at the beginning and your cellphone has internet., all whilst you are in mixed company and can't skip to end credits.
Another thing to consider is manufacturing your DVDs and future BluRays through companies like www.Discmakers.com and selling through companies like www.Filmbaby.com , where you still may have a chance, but not too much with that alone. This model works if you spend only $1,000 to make your film, $1,000 to get the DVDs, sell 200 of them at $10 a piece, having cast and crew selling a handful to each of their family and friends, while doing the filmbaby model. You'd probably have to have a few showings, charging for tickets or mandatory dvds upon entry, too. Tha can be a fun way to do it, but I personally don't like having family and friends buying what a true audience should be out in the real world. You can't make a living off of this model, unless you have mad skill!
Let's face it, unless you've got some major festival buzz and marketing, it's simply an uphill climb. Your best bet is to go to the American Film Market to sell your film off, find a good sales representative, or make an output deal with a distributor, if you can! It's all about niches and finding your paying audience. Even if you could find a non-profit organization to fund your filmmaking to give to a captive niche audience, that would be something. These last three models may help make a small career, but it's not likely to ever make you rich unless the Hollywood studios see potential from this. Hating to be a downer, but it's a very rough world out there, anymore. Doing films for the fun of it, seems to be the only thing we can do without some serious financial help from the front and the back. There is satisfaction in creating either short or feature films that have substance and enough quality to be put on your movie shelf. The experience is worth a try for the bold and you definitely learn something in that process.
Till we find better solutions, may we proceed with our art.
Best, Kenny
My Name Is Bruce review
My Name Is Bruce is an indie film, indeed, although it automatically gets distribution considering it's a Bruce Campbell movie. As a filmmaker, I've been itching to review this one, as I am not only a fan of this actor's work, but always study people I'd like to potentially cast in a film if I had the budget and pull. Being a genre filmmaker makes this guy almost a given!
At around $1.5 Million joked around budget, mentioned by using many different amounts in various contexts, Darkhorse Indie (Mark Verheiden) wrote this film for Bruce Campbell and somehow got him to film the majority of the flick on his own property. The story is quite funny, albiet over the top, which is Bruce's typical typecast character. Yes, this is indeed indie, and almost every indie filmmaker would applaud this decision for both budgetary and controlled environment, although that doesn't mean that everything is actually controlled within the production, which they point out. Before I get into the plot, I must say this movie has some of the best behind the scenes you could ever ask for in an indie production at almost more than the actual movie's runtime. Just plain fun, and definitely made for the fans!
Okay, So the movie is about a washed up B actor named, you guessed it, Bruce Campbell, but is rather a fictionalized version or alter ego that is an ultra jerk and lives out of the worst possible old silver camping trailer. He gets sucked into the worst C-D grade movies like "Cave Alien", or rather...Cavahlyen as the "director" of Cave Alien calls it. This is a complete spoof of Bruce and monster movies. When a couple kids unwittingly unleash the Chinese god of bean curd, Guan-D, to wreck havoc on an old mining town called Goldlick, the surviving kid kidnaps Mr. Campbell from his drunken state to vanquish the demon and save the poor town. Bruce thinks that the kidnapping is all a birthday setup from his shady agent and plays along, cutting his jerk behavior to mischiefness and antics as he macks on the kid's mom. Ted Raimi plays 3 characters, being Bruce's agent sleeping with his ex, the town's italian population sign painter, and the old chinaman that gives all the senile warnings about Guan-Di. Ted is quite excellent, as usual, and I don't know why he doesn't get higher lead roles as much as he should, as again he's quite good and versatile. Perhaps I've been looking in the wrong places.
I won't spoil everything here, but want to mention some things that stood out and made me think. The Guan-Di outfit actually works, but it seems based off a shiny stage mask, which you might typically see in a live theatre performance. So, if you are looking for realistic gory monster, it may not work for you. It's perception based and once you see where and why it all comes together, it is very good design for this particular movie. It's facial expressions change and can be quite amusing!
Another thing that stood out is how Bruce Campbell was shot cinematically! Sam Raimi had the best way to capture every nuance of Bruce's gifts of entertaining. This movie only did about 40% of that. Let me expain! There's a scene in Bruce's trailer where he's getting totally drunk and going off on a whole schtick of antics with his dog and his life being trash. For me, the acting was totally fine, but fell weak in how it was captured. The delivery basically fell through where it could have shined. I realize the trailer was probably cramped and limited, but here's what they could have done to pimp Bruce to full force, like Sam Raimi or his cinematographer did. When Bruce makes a crazed facial expression and voice, the camera itself should have followed him in on the moment. I'm referring to zooms, rotating of the camera, and pans/ swoops, etc. Bruce Campbell's best stuff seems not only to be delivering tacky lines, but to actually have the camera be his shadow. Do you remember that Warner Brother's cartoon with the tough dog "Spike", being followed around by the pesky smaller other dog that constantly pestered him? That smaller dog has to be the camera to get the full "Campbell" effect. This doesn't really affect the movie, because it it's very entertaining, but man could it have been maximized through such in camera tricks.
The director was actually Bruce Campbell himself, which is hard to be in two places at once and especially with this being an indie flick. That could affect how he was shot. High Definition cameras were used and I believe is the new super 8 or 16mm when you are talking prosumer grade models. I don't know what they used, but they did have to deal with lens issues as mentioned in behind the scenes, so I'd guess it was a bit better than that. Many past cast from movies that Bruce was in have been imported into this flick, such as the blacksmith from Army of Darkness and the overalls-wearing guy from Evil Dead II, which play gay lovers, whether true or not in real life. It's funny and pleasant to see them, as Army of Darkness/ Evil Dead II are some of my favorite movies.
Joseph LoDuca actually does the music for this film. That's impressive! A side note, Robert Kurtzman has a studio a couple hours away from Cleveland, and he's the one who did a lot of the practical effects and props for Army of Darkness. You should check out and rent/ buy his movie "The Rage".
Gag after gag, My Name Is Bruce keeps delivering. I always come back to Ted Raimi as stealing the stage, especially in makeup, but it's just great to see everything that they put into this movie. I've seen the movie about 6 times already, showing to friends and colleagues. Shot in Oregon, this movie is worth the rent. Hey, they built the front of buildings of Goldlick to make a fake town, right on Bruce's property! Totally cool in my book! He had a great team of people working with him and it looks like it was not only hard work, but a lot of fun! Oh, did I mention that the good angel and devil on Bruce's shoulders was absolutely fantastic and classic Bruce? Totally pimpin!
Best, Kenny
At around $1.5 Million joked around budget, mentioned by using many different amounts in various contexts, Darkhorse Indie (Mark Verheiden) wrote this film for Bruce Campbell and somehow got him to film the majority of the flick on his own property. The story is quite funny, albiet over the top, which is Bruce's typical typecast character. Yes, this is indeed indie, and almost every indie filmmaker would applaud this decision for both budgetary and controlled environment, although that doesn't mean that everything is actually controlled within the production, which they point out. Before I get into the plot, I must say this movie has some of the best behind the scenes you could ever ask for in an indie production at almost more than the actual movie's runtime. Just plain fun, and definitely made for the fans!
Okay, So the movie is about a washed up B actor named, you guessed it, Bruce Campbell, but is rather a fictionalized version or alter ego that is an ultra jerk and lives out of the worst possible old silver camping trailer. He gets sucked into the worst C-D grade movies like "Cave Alien", or rather...Cavahlyen as the "director" of Cave Alien calls it. This is a complete spoof of Bruce and monster movies. When a couple kids unwittingly unleash the Chinese god of bean curd, Guan-D, to wreck havoc on an old mining town called Goldlick, the surviving kid kidnaps Mr. Campbell from his drunken state to vanquish the demon and save the poor town. Bruce thinks that the kidnapping is all a birthday setup from his shady agent and plays along, cutting his jerk behavior to mischiefness and antics as he macks on the kid's mom. Ted Raimi plays 3 characters, being Bruce's agent sleeping with his ex, the town's italian population sign painter, and the old chinaman that gives all the senile warnings about Guan-Di. Ted is quite excellent, as usual, and I don't know why he doesn't get higher lead roles as much as he should, as again he's quite good and versatile. Perhaps I've been looking in the wrong places.
I won't spoil everything here, but want to mention some things that stood out and made me think. The Guan-Di outfit actually works, but it seems based off a shiny stage mask, which you might typically see in a live theatre performance. So, if you are looking for realistic gory monster, it may not work for you. It's perception based and once you see where and why it all comes together, it is very good design for this particular movie. It's facial expressions change and can be quite amusing!
Another thing that stood out is how Bruce Campbell was shot cinematically! Sam Raimi had the best way to capture every nuance of Bruce's gifts of entertaining. This movie only did about 40% of that. Let me expain! There's a scene in Bruce's trailer where he's getting totally drunk and going off on a whole schtick of antics with his dog and his life being trash. For me, the acting was totally fine, but fell weak in how it was captured. The delivery basically fell through where it could have shined. I realize the trailer was probably cramped and limited, but here's what they could have done to pimp Bruce to full force, like Sam Raimi or his cinematographer did. When Bruce makes a crazed facial expression and voice, the camera itself should have followed him in on the moment. I'm referring to zooms, rotating of the camera, and pans/ swoops, etc. Bruce Campbell's best stuff seems not only to be delivering tacky lines, but to actually have the camera be his shadow. Do you remember that Warner Brother's cartoon with the tough dog "Spike", being followed around by the pesky smaller other dog that constantly pestered him? That smaller dog has to be the camera to get the full "Campbell" effect. This doesn't really affect the movie, because it it's very entertaining, but man could it have been maximized through such in camera tricks.
The director was actually Bruce Campbell himself, which is hard to be in two places at once and especially with this being an indie flick. That could affect how he was shot. High Definition cameras were used and I believe is the new super 8 or 16mm when you are talking prosumer grade models. I don't know what they used, but they did have to deal with lens issues as mentioned in behind the scenes, so I'd guess it was a bit better than that. Many past cast from movies that Bruce was in have been imported into this flick, such as the blacksmith from Army of Darkness and the overalls-wearing guy from Evil Dead II, which play gay lovers, whether true or not in real life. It's funny and pleasant to see them, as Army of Darkness/ Evil Dead II are some of my favorite movies.
Joseph LoDuca actually does the music for this film. That's impressive! A side note, Robert Kurtzman has a studio a couple hours away from Cleveland, and he's the one who did a lot of the practical effects and props for Army of Darkness. You should check out and rent/ buy his movie "The Rage".
Gag after gag, My Name Is Bruce keeps delivering. I always come back to Ted Raimi as stealing the stage, especially in makeup, but it's just great to see everything that they put into this movie. I've seen the movie about 6 times already, showing to friends and colleagues. Shot in Oregon, this movie is worth the rent. Hey, they built the front of buildings of Goldlick to make a fake town, right on Bruce's property! Totally cool in my book! He had a great team of people working with him and it looks like it was not only hard work, but a lot of fun! Oh, did I mention that the good angel and devil on Bruce's shoulders was absolutely fantastic and classic Bruce? Totally pimpin!
Best, Kenny
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