Rodriguez and Blair witch Myth Unravelled

[no_one119]

Here we go again. I'm gettin into this. I think chance an I should meet up in a pub, we'd have great evening, arguing all night long. I'm a touch opinionated, as you may have guessed.

Anyhow, to business. Firstly I'd like to say that I'm tired of the GFMH too. But there are probably two books that 90% of this board owns and that and Rebel, are it. Besides it's one of the only low budget film books about people in the UK, the US is completely different. I do agree though, I'm not sure Chris and Genevieve would know a good film idea from a bad one if it came up and bit them on the behind (sorry but it's true, maybe they should stick to book writing). Although with Gen directing it does look like they might be going somewhere other than bank managers to beg for more money.

Now I realise that the film business is just that, A BUSINESS. I am, however, prepared to cut someone some slack and say that they may not be in it just for the money. Having never met Rodriguez I'm willing to go on his word until I can PROVE otherwise. I doubt very much that chance has met him or that he can PROVE that Rodrguez didn't do exactly what he says. Until that time, chance and I will just have to differ.

How much did your film cost you chance? To get it in the can? Wasn't it supposed to be about ?10k. What'd you spend it on? Where's your budget. I'm just interested to see what you believe to be the minimum you can shoot a film for?

Ah, but the orginal question was about whether he could shoot with (specifically) two crappy lamps and a couple of practical light bulbs. He must have borrowed some more from film school right? Why not? It's easy, simple, cheap. Well, on my film course you couldn't use the equipment over the summer because all the tutors used it to shoot their own stuff (perks of the job).

Luck? Okay call it fate then. It exists and it can't be made. Trust me, it flows to you. You can't make it come.

One last thing, I, like I see you have don't chance, intend on keeping a diary for each film I make and hope that one day I can turn that into a book to, hopefully, inspire someone else to believe they too can become a filmmaker. Fanciful I know, but hey, I can dream.

Gotta go, I need the phone line, if I ring now I get ?10 off a hoover noise eliminator on QVC. Apparently I can't live without one!

[This message has been edited by no_one119 (edited June 21, 2001).]

[no_one119]

To clear up a couple of seperate points.

Mikey babes - Cleopatra, still (I think) the most expensive film in history when you figure inflation. Nobody gives a rats ass.

Evil Dead, Texas Chainsaw Massacre - household names.

Middle of the road budgets - Star Wars, Godfather, Usual Suspects, LA Confidential.

Just cos you ain't heard of it don't mean it aint good though. I hate to think Die Hard and Terminator are going to be the only films people remember in 50 years time.

Chance - what is the web address for your new/current project as that looking glass address don't do nothing but through up not found errors?

[Chance1234]

You wouldnt let it lie,


Lol this post is turning into a book ! as for meeting in a pub ill stick with my capitalistic ways and you can try and get a drink for 70p

Ok another deep breath,

Ok glad we don't have to dwell into GFMH, and your right 90 % of people on this board problerly do own one or the other.

Lol ? If rodriguez was not in it for the money how come he was trying to sell his film ? anyway thats a crucible question I know, but condsidering how powerful studios are I very much doubt he had much influence on what happened to the book and the film. After it past in there hands. After all a studio arent going to put money into a book because some little unknown wants to tell the truth, no they want a book that sells and a book that sells the film and the director. Hence PR marketing!!!!!!!!

How much did my film cost ? get down to the bottom of the post and ill go into my film,


{Quote} Ah, but the orginal question was about whether he could shoot with (specifically) two crappy lamps and a couple of practical light bulbs. He must have borrowed some more from film school right? Why not? {end quote}

I never said he couldnt and thats not the original question, In fact I never made any qeusrions in my original post I don't think bar rheotrical ones. What I'm saying is to get the effect he got that wasn't all he used, the bigger picture there were properly other lamps like red heads for example and being a film student it wouldnt of been too hard ot borrow. Maybe noit from the school itself but! Fellow film makers after all isnt that how he got the camera ?

Hoover noise eliminator , you cant beat them, talking about conspiracys for a second ?Geri Halliwel? the worlds first succesful gene combining of a stick insect and a women, whats more theyve still done a half decent job of hiding the fact that she is a 57 year old spincter. Well now a 57 year old stick insect women.


Anyway moving onto my film, which is a lot more interesting than Rodriguez 

Firstly the deadlights site is no more , they started charging for hosting, so my two write ups on that have now vanished into the computer equivilant of thin air. For my feature Mortus illumina , I would of loved to have done a write up similiar but! The first shoot was a 9 day shoot, I started out doing 18 hour days at the begining of the week and was on something daft like 30 at the end of the week, the highlight of my sleep was 3 hours keep in a fire place and a couple of hours under a red head. Also looking back it is veyr hard ot remmebr when certain things happened as a lot of time on the interiors we were shooting day for night and night for day, bloody spookey when you be in a room for 12 hours with 5ks lamps simulating sunlight coming through the windows then you step outside and its pitch black. I did keep a diary for most of pre-produciton but it became to personal and I havent got the guts to post it up as it mentions a lot of stuff I really think of some of my cast crew, some who have now gone to mention ! maybe one day it will appear.

Though saying all that for MI I am making a documentary of the making including footage of the rehearsals, auditions, meetings, on set interviews, behind the scenes, making off, and of course yours truly. Got some great stuff already and we got some real stories from the first shoot done of your borrowing mexican villagers crap. Stuff like how the majority of the crew and cast broke into Norwich university to get a shower then sercurity turned up etc etc. also when the film is finished I'm going to get someone to go through the hundreds of photographs and pick a 101 out, I'm then going to write commentary on each photo and tentavily title it ?Mortus Illumina in a 101 Pictures? at the moment nothing is up on the web, but stuff will be appearing shortly main reason for the delay is I'm in talks with financers for funding the rest of the film so I'm being very controlled in what people see and don't see. For the while.

The films a long way from finished yet, so far 9 days of shooting have happened(some stats below) there is still minimum of a three day shoot on a beach, a four day shoot at a chapel and a 8 day shoot at sheperton studios to come.

Originally my budget for the film was ?10?000 and by now 80 % of it should of been completed but on the second day of shooting, we were getting such a high quality that I decided to slow everything down and concentrate on keeping that quality, I'm now also putting in extra money and time to make sure we keep that qualityso the film wont proberly finish in the can until the end of the year, then post will properly take it up to May next year. By then the budget would of hit ?20?000 +

Now I'm not saying you cant make a film for less, but my film contains a lot of big locations, heavily costumed base and SFX wise. As far as I'm concerned most other low budget seriously lack any imagination in costume or location. Just take a look at the photographs on the link I gave a million posts ago. Also I want the best I can get lighting wise on my budget and it makes a hell of a lot of difference.

Anyway here some MI pop trivia

6.10 hours of footage shot (not including Documentary stuff)
3.49 hours of footage Usable (being uploaded for edit, inlcuding run in run out times) 57%
95 Set-ups apx uploaded
6 Average number of takes per a set-up
3 most common take used in Edit
16 highest number of takes (Refecotry Meal Master and Car Master)
17 Scenes
They are; (Nb names given for easier editing)
Bible Reading
Car
Chaos Refectory
Convent Cutaways
Convent Escape Mary
Evil dude & Rico Arriving
Mary and garden
Mary and Judith by lake
Mary and Tree
Paper Boat
Priest and Piano
Refecotry Meal
Rico 1st Arrival
Sleep Refecotry
Street
Vampire Nun Part 1
5 Average number of set-ups being uploaded for each scene
2 Average number of takes being uploaded for each setup
13 Highest number of set-ups for a scene(street)
3 minutes Average per a Set-up being uploaded
38.09 Highest number of minutes being uplaodeded for one scene (Car)
30-35 Minutes APX of uploaded footage will see it into the film
12:1 APX shooting Ratio

[no_one119]

"What I'm saying is to get the effect he got that wasn't all he used, the bigger picture there were properly other lamps like red heads for example and being a film student it wouldnt of been too hard ot borrow."

You've just said it again. It wasn't possible with two lamps. Why lie? Why isn't it possible that he didn?t? Short of either A) asking Rodriguez (and believing him) or B) time travelling to be on the set when he shot. Neither of us can PROVE either way. So lets drop it.

In your opinion (and that's all it is) it couldn't be done. In my opinion (and that's all that is) it could and was.

Have you got a budget we can see? I for one would be interested and I believe that many people on this board would gain from seeing just where the money goes on a film. I was under the misapprehension that you'd finished filming.

If you're in need of web space in the future let me know, I've probably got some spare somewhere and I'll even the design the site for you.

I agree that quality rules. As a low budget filmmaker the two things you have are passion and control. These can come through to the film and can make all the difference even against a hollywood blockbuster.

Disclaimer - please remember that the views expressed above are my opinion, not fact. If you have different opinions, yippee, the world would be boring if we all agreed.

[Chance1234]

OK heres a simplified breakdown of where the moneys been spent so far


?500 on pre-rpoduction, that included meeting and rehearsal space, phone calls, duplication of scripts and other documents etc, Vehicle hire for some reason which escapes me at the moment, plenty of beers and curly fries for all crew and cast leading up to the first part of production.

A whopping ?1400 crew and cast expensies (30 people), this was travel to and from meetings, rehearsals, travel to the location (my crew are all over the UK and we filmed in norflok) also that was accomodation costs on the shoot, and catering. plus theres cost for recces is also in that figure. btw by cinemtaography guys were involved in a 5 car pile up on there way to recce the original location! plus vehicle hire for equimpent

?1500 on Production,
Costume, Make up, Special Effects, props. also we had radio communictaions on set as well
vehicles


?3000 on lighting and camera kit for 9 days, plus tape stock, plus consumables i can give a full breakdown on the kit if you want, for reference our original quotes for just the camera kit and lighitng was near ?7500

?1500 on location fees Deffered payment

Finally

?1000 quid on miscelanoious stuff, like Per diems, Insurance (?500 as we didnt claim we are now totally insured for the whole year for any production) Electricaian costs etc etc

Thats jsut a rougth breakdown of the top of my head

[Chance1234]

PS ! and a big BUT !!!!!!


to fully understand what we did with what we had your going ot have to wait till the film is finished, and in somewhat those figures are slightly misleading for example on production side, there were some points like costume which when you hear the story behind(any female family member in the vicinty was forced to work on my habit and wimple sweat shop) puts in into perspective.

The photographs on the link show only a very small part.

[Chance1234]

We managed to get a slight discount on the camera kit, but the company were right arseholes VMI btw. in hindsight i could of got the cost of the camera kit down by a further 30 to 40 %. the biggest saving came from the lighting company. there were really cool and the guy looked like George Lucas.

They went through out list of needs and said tell you what will chuck in one of these and one of these. also they gave us lots of cut-offs of Polyboard, scraps of gels etc for free. they knew we were on a low budget but were more than happy to help to us, the kit they lent us was properly not what they let out to there usual customers, it was mainly all the stuff which had taken its fair share of weather, and wear damage. but at the end of the day, they did the important thing which was, they worked!

Thing that makes be always laugh is, you pick up the kit in your transit, and they have it all on a couple of big trolleys ready to load, then a massive Juggernaut pulls up beside you to pick up kit for one of the big films. there loading shit loads of stuff. for every light you have they have plus ten more, plus ten more powerful, plus things that you could only dream of hiring as rthe cost of one of them a day is the rest of yoru lighting budget put together

one day


Chance

[no_one119]

how the hell did you get them down from ?7500 to ?3000? Let me guess, guns!

I'll wait until I see the finished film for a full breakdown.

[Chance1234]

I just watched the ten minute film school again and i cant believe how much crap is in there

its almost as bad as the saving private ryan featurette where they go "steven tilted the camera when the plane was meant to bank" and they say it like hes jsut turn lead into gold.

the whole thing with the doing 5 camera set-ups in one take , the slide , the sound, this is not a nag at the money side, but i jsut cant believe how much front rodriguez has.

[DanielJohnson]

Chance used to work for the BBC. No wonder he finds it so hard to believe that it's possible to shoot an low-budget feature for $7,000.