The Only (Pulp) Filmmaking Advice You'll Ever Need

Occasionally good buddy Jim Henshaw will send me an email... well, that's not quite right.  It's not quite mail. It's more like a signpost pointing the way to something good, or a simple question that usually takes me several paragraphs to answer fully.  There's often no "How ya doin?" No Chatty Cathy aspect to his email - just the pulp. 

He cuts straight to the bone that Mr. Henshaw - yes, he does.

So when I get an email from Jim - I know it's something important, useful and often profound in its elegant simplicity.  The following hit my Inbox a few minutes ago and the article linked pretty much sums up my philosophy of indie/pulp/low budget film making - hell, media making - and is...

The only film making advice you really need

Print it.

Learn it.

Live it.

Edit to add:  I almost missed this portion of the web page scrolling through the comments. The author of the article - Matt - sums it all up quite nicely as to why he wrote this article in the first place:

 So why do I really post this information? Mostly because I get really aggravated working for people who don’t know this stuff already. I get alot of jobs from people who go on and on about nebulous “film theory” concepts. Those are usually the jobs that turn into 18 hour days, go over budget, run out of money, and I get short changed.

Those are the jobs where the AD and Script Supervisor stop the whole production for 4 hours because they aren’t sure that the layout of the beer bottles on the table matches the last scene .

Those are the people who feel like a $1000 leather coat is the only way to express the lead characters personality (but sorry, we had to blow the catering budget for the next two days to buy it).
Those people are the “noise” you are talking about…it’s the noise I’m trying to get rid of.

I probably have half a dozen films that I can’t put on my resume. They’ve never been finished. They’ve all went so over budget, they went into post and never came out.

On the other hand….television and commercial are a dream to work with. They always finish the project. Maybe there is a hard shadow on the wall in a shot or two, or the lighting color temp is a little off. But at the end of the day there is a finished product.

For digital filmmakers on low budgets, thinking like a “filmmaker” when it comes to production is only going to lead to failure. My goal is to get people to think more like a commercial producer. Do the best you can, but nothing is sacred except the budget and the deadline.

Monkey Business

I took a short respite from bloggery and told all of you to take a moment and throw up some short fiction based on this pic. Details here.

We have several links to stories in the comments of that post, but good pal Jim Henshaw of The Legion of Decency sent this over via email so I had to post this up to share:



Cheetah had never been to Amsterdam. He had never eaten a Royale with Cheese. Hell, he'd never even been in a MacDonald's. On either side of the ocean. Why would he? His body was his temple. No meat. No dairy. Maybe one beer with Crabbe or Weissmuller after wrap. But just one. Those guys took care of themselves too. That's how you stayed on top in those days. You stayed fit. You stayed focused. You worked at your craft. Not like the kids in the business these days.

He had almost cold-cocked the whiny, fast-jabbering kid who'd accosted him in the Video store, claiming he was a director. What kind of director went out in public without a crisp Brooks Brothers shirt and a tie? It would never have been tolerated at MGM. But amid all the slack-jawed yammering the kid had swore he'd seen all of his movies, even "Tarzan and the Mermaids". God, how he wished they'd let him do his own swimming in that one. He'd almost flipped him a signed glossy and walked away. But then the kid told him he'd been ignored too long. His star deserved to shine once more.

While you're shooting 85 features and 300 TV episodes, you think it's never going to end. And when it does, and then the weeks turn to years of low-fat banana shakes, afternoons at the gym and improv classes in Glendale, having somebody say he can put you back on top again can't help but push your buttons. So here he was. His first screen test since 1931. It was between him and some bloated nobody who'd been half a dancer and shot his wad in less than a decade.

Piece of cake.

Psychotronica

It pays to have low friends in high places (Wait, is that right? Yes) as Jim Henshaw sent me a link from Boing Boing listing a ton of cult movies that are chronicled in Michael Weldon's PSYCHOTRONIC VIDEO GUIDE and available for free download from the Internet Archive. Well worth watching to study how they did pulp filmmaking back in the good old days.

It helps to bring a six-pack to your computer if you are going to watch these movies as they are all definitely "psychotronic."


The list includes (copied from Boing-Boing):

The Amazing Mr. X
The Amazing Transparent Man
The Ape
Assignment: Outer Space
Atom Age Vampire
The Atomic Brain
Attack of the Giant Leeches
Attack From Space
The Beast of Hollow Mountain
The Beatniks
Bloody Pit of Horror
The Brain That Wouldn't Die
Bride of the Gorilla
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Carnival of Souls
The Corpse Vanishes
Creature From the Haunted Sea
Daughter of Horror
The Day the Sky Exploded
Dead Men Walk
Dementia 13
Detour
The Devil of the Desert Against the Son of Hercules
Doomed To Die
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920) That's just A-D. For E-Z, with the links to the videos, visit Mr. Bali Hai's blog, Eye of the Goof. Link

A Clear and Simple Message...

To all of the politicians in Canada who ever even entertained the notion of listening to the good Rev. Charles McVety and passing Bill C-10:

Take this message from an America that is twisting and turning because we didn't stand up and say, "No, thanks. That's against the constitution, and besides that -- it's just not right."

If you give in once, dismiss the McVety's of the world as harmless, then they're just going to keep coming back with more demands and threats. Their kind doesn't like the fact they can't control everything around them or that their way isn't the only way to live life. It makes them feel powerless, and frankly no one likes feeling that way.

So please, for the sake of your country, your pride and for the good of all your citizens - show them the door. Let them find their own way -- but leave the rest of you alone. Their truth isn't the truth.

And if that doesn't work then tell them that God is A Fat, Black Dyke.

Your pal,

Bill

Ps. To all of you who are writing letters, posting news, writing columns and making phone calls to oppose Bill C10, I just want to say that you fight the good fight. Hold your head high. You fight not just for yourselves, but for all of us, and we appreciate your effort on our behalf.