Rodriguez and Blair witch Myth Unravelled

[Chance1234]

bear with us on the slow load time on this, didnt realise the picutres were so big anyway

Right the more and more shoots I do, the more convinced that Rodriguez?s and the blair witch project and other low budget film books are all talking shite big time

And here how I reckon it works,

Right im a bout a 1/4 of the way through my first feature, and by this time next year the film should be well and truly in the can, and lets say ive taken it to a few places and low and behold cos its bloody excellent someone like MGM snap it up, they spend about a million quid on doing a transfer from DV to 35mm, give it a Dolby sound track, get the Mill boys on it to get the best quality for the transfer and low and behold it gets a theatrical release, at a drunken party someone from penguin books asks me to write a book on how I made the film for ?10?000 and I say in my drunken state yeap

First of all, they want to give it a qwerty title, I suggest Rebel with a Hang Over, but they don't like it they decide to stick to ripping off old movie titles and they call it something like ?Carry on Filming?

Anyway the first part of the book is a riot, read about how are cinematography team got involved in a 5 car pile up whule recciing one of the locations, how we nearly had all the finance in place but then me and jenifer lopez fell out, read how I got the money by making tea at the beeb and selling plots of land on the moon blah blah blah, a good yarn of a story, the it comes to the second part of the book tentatility titled ?Chance?s Low Budget Film school?

I start this bit of the book of with a scene from my film , the scene I choose is a scene in my film where the priest goes to his car and suddenly our equivalent of the devil appears next to him in the car and they have one of those evil plot setting convesations, all shot at night and it looks f*cking Fantastic, all the reflections in the right place on the car, moody atmorspehric lighting on the interior, no camera reflections in the car and no flare and heres where I make my Rodriguez type Claim

I tell you that scene was lit with A Chinese Lantern from B&Q and heres a piccy,



thats my lighting guy tony putting the Chinese Latern in the car, and I tell you that to light it cost only the bargain of ?10, the same way Rodriguez tells you all you need to light interiors is a coiple of tungsten bulbs, same way blair witch tell you how they lit the woods with lights from a DIY shop. For good Measure I throw in another picture of the chinese latern and theres a picture of the priest getting into the car; all good stuff.





You;?ve seen the film at the theatre or on DVD and seen the end result. So all it takes to light the interior of a car is a chinese latern and ?10 and theres the pictures for proof, after all I wouldnt be lying now would I ?

On your low budget shoot, you take my advice when filming a scene at night in a car, you buy the chinese latern and put it in the car. Looking through the monitor your getting an effect which is good , but its a million miles away from what I had, you go back look at the book and scratch your head, you take your rushes home and watch them again and watch my film and try and figure it out

Well heres why you didn?t get the same effect, the bigger picture.




Firstly what you cant see in that photograph is as well as having the chinese Latern, on the inside roof of the car is a giant gold reflector, also the Latern was covered in gels. And as you can see as well as the latern there were a few bigger lights, firstly there the Dado lights picking out the detail inside the car,



following on from that theres the spill from a couple of 2 ? K?s and three blonds lighting up the car itself, with a 8 ft by 4ft Polyboard killing the excess. On top of that the whole background is being lit by a couple of 5K?s






Going back to Rodriguez going on about his bulbs, the bigger picture he must of had reflectors there at least as well as other lights , also being a film student it sureley couldnt of been to hard for him to get his hands on at least a couple of redheads. That whole no crew business, guy who pushed wheel chair = crew member, the person who fired the pyro?s = crew member , guys who erected death slide = crew etc etc Blair witch as well slight problem with there DIY lighting, where the hell did they get there power from ? they must of had a generator up there
Going on to rodriguez ?7000 claim , well I told you that scene with the car cost a tenner, well on top of that tenner the rest of the lighting was about ?300 quid for that night, along with a ?100 quid for the hire of the car, plus we had to pay ?200 quid to an electrician to fit a distribution box along with 100 metres of 60 Amp cable and a 32 sub distirbution box adding about another ?100. On top of that there were 2 cast in that scene and about 10 crew all who I paid travel expensies plus provided accomodation and catered for adding easily another couple of hundred. Bit different from that tenner! I could go through my whole production like that saying this cost this etc exacltly like Rodriguez and blair wicth have done. On top of that theres always the ?millions that the distributors spend in post on these films.
Even though both books our good for a read and a little inspiration I wouldn?t take there claims to seriously just think of the bigger picture , remember theres a reason why big productions have so much kit and crew its not just to look pretty! As film making books both stink buy yourself a role of gaffer tape instead lot more useful !

As for the usbourne book on filmmaking that says all you need is to ask an adult If you can borrow there video camera, I ask you !

Chance





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[This message has been edited by Chance1234 (edited May 24, 2001).]

[miker]

fantastic, blow those myths apart that are sold to the glamour kids. that's an excellent example Chance.

anyhoo, aint you heard? the latest trend is to promote your film as *the most expensive film ever made* a la pearl harbour, or maybe budget dropping about Lord of the Rings (please be good, please be good)

I really hope (moot) that The Shadow Falls is excellent (some hope) and Lucas comes out and says it cost him $10m to make or something.

Like I say, if I make a film and pay myself $300,000,000,000,000,000,000+VAT then fuck me if I haven't made *the* most expensive film ever.

Don't yer just love the Goebbels mentality. Except nowadays it's called spin, not right-wing Nazism.

tsk. who the fuck cares how much a film costs to make anyway (apart from bloodsucking shareholders?) - as long as it is a good yarn?!!

sad truth is that the average persion is stupid. that means 50% of the population are more stupid than that. which means they lap all this crap up instead of learning life's lessons. I guess their souls will be doing the rounds down here a few more times.

1984, anyone...

[Vertino]

true true - ya hit the nail on the head!

[hairbrain]

Chance,

Great post. Thanks for sharing your experiences and generating a feeling of generosity. Respect.

Hairbrain

(can't wait to see the movie. If you want any advice/opinions on digital effects drop a post)

[no_one119]

Now I'm a big fan of Rodriguez and the book. The idea of which was to show the world that it was possible to make a film for less than $100,000.

Now eliminating the fact that he was working in Mexico and America where the costs are less. He very clearly explains (especially if you've got the El Mariachi/Desperado DVD with the extra film making guide)what he spends money on and what he doesn't.

Now I think its feasible, he only spends money on stock and developing (not a full print which costs lots). He doesn't have a crew (nobody seems to get this). He doesn't have a member of the crew to help out, he has a member of the cast that's standing about. The cast are people they grab off the street and friends, they don't feed them, or cloth them, or put them up. This started at the script stage where they only wrote in what they could get hold of. Even then the machine guns don't work properly, as they're not prop guns so with some clever shot repetition and sound it looks like it fire continously.

You get to see the light set up on the DVD, two cheap looking aluminium lamps that are used carefully. Not to mention he doesn't shoot at night.

Look at that film carefully and it looks terrible in my opinion, it looks like a $7000 film.

Now with DV technology you should be able to shoot it for even less. Il postino and I are looking at shooting a short film and including buying some additional hardware I reckon it's going to cost a couple of hundred quid. Even this expenditure should be reusable on future ventures.

I understand you're trying to say don't believe everything you read but come on guys, I think you're missing the point. It's to say that film making doesn't have to mean extortinate amounts of money!

[Chance1234]

SMOKE AND MIRRORS !
the point that a film can be made for less than a ?100'000 is lame, that is fact people have known that for decades, so nothing ground breaking there

even if he grabbed someone of the street, or sued an actor to perform a job on set , technically thats crew, if he had pushed the wheelchair himself and done everything then true it would be no crew. also his sound claims dont bare up to much , buts that another story.

going to the lighting set-up, thats the point im trying to make above, thats is what he is telling you, its bullshit ! after all know one wants to give away all there secrets. think how much light is needed to light Video and film is ten times more, now tell me he lit that scene like he claims. ill put money on it that he had a few red heads and reflectors down there.

id reckon the true budget to el-mariachi was around $30'000 to 40'000 plus the odd million spent on post.

remeber hes had a massive hollywood spin machine behind him as well,

smoke and mirrors!

[Chance1234]

PS.

Take a look at the below, not one of the better qulity pictures but, that what was we were using to light that hall, light wise for Day time and thats not all of it




Chance

more pictures at http://public.fotki.com/chance1234/

[no_one119]

I'm obviously not getting through. He admits to spending millions on post. The $7,000 was in the can costs.

He edited on 1/4" in a free cable access station NOT on film. He didn't pay for the final print, the blow up, the sound mix, none of it.

He constantly says that no one can believe he shot it for that much money so he carries a videotape and when they sit there and he shows them they finally understand it. My advice is buy, rent or borrow a copy of the DVD (El Mariachi/Desperado one disk) and listen to the commentary and the ten-minute film schools, you'll see it's possible.

As for the lighting, I don't know whether you know but most of the scenes rely on light from windows, that's why you get that funny look, the film is balanced for tungsten and half the light in the scene is daylight! The way I understood it was that he used practical bulbs to replace some of the normal bulbs in the scene.

Everyone seems to forget this book was written in '93 and at the time low budget film making still meant 100k+.

I stil find the book inspiring as a story that shows that hard work and ingenuity will often overcome a problem even money can't solve.

[Kowalski]

Why is it that because Rodriguez is actually honest about how he made Mariachi, that people figure he can't be telling the truth?

I've shot 16mm with a similar lighting method as on Mariachi and it's really no big deal. You simply use faster stock and move in tight on your subject.

If you watch Mariachi, you'll notice most indoor-daylight scenes are very grainy in places, and the color balance is all mixed up. Also in most dialogue scenes the camera is tight on the actors, rarely showing a 2-shot, this is because the 2 lights (with diffusers) are just off screen!, and is why the surrounding is almost in total darkness.

Film is very forgiving (Much more so than video) and is really not that hard to light, you just gotta be a little more comprimising with your shots. If you want big wide angles in a dark interior you'll probably need bigger lights, but 2 practicals will do the job if you're pushed.

Of course if you do everything 'properly' and get in redheads etc., it's gonna cost you more, but as Mariachi shows, if you're willing to comprimise it can be done cheaper.

[miker]

There is still no doubt in my mind that Rodders is *not* a great film-maker. Not yet. But you have to admire him, because he obviously has an understanding of 'the machine' and like all good directors knows exactly what he can get away with - in all contexts!

But the guys who made the Matrix - WTF did they spring from!!! (comics was it?)