In 2001 I enrolled in a local film school, interested in pursuing the industry. Because I was a native to Michigan, I wasn't sure how serious I was in making it a full-time career. Back then, Michigan wasn't the bustling movie scene it's somewhat turning into. However, artists such as Kid Rock and Eminem were in town, shooting a music video and feature film respectively, and the school was giving grads a chance to work on these projects.
I knew very little about the industry or the craft itself, but I was intrigued by the promise of hands-on training; being able to use professional film equipment and editing tools to tell a more polished story. MPI offered a one-year tech program that taught the ins-and-outs of every aspect of production, from planning to distribution. At the end of the year, each student would be given roughly 12 minutes of motion picture film to go out and shoot a student narrative - a short film, utilizing the skills they learned.
Originally, I wanted to pursue a more meaningful subject, and do a heartfelt drama in the vain of Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy. When I realized how costly and time consuming those projects would be, I decided to do something simpler, but also something that I had always had great interest in - a horror film.
Attack of the B Movies was inspired by the slasher flicks I watched growing up, namely the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street films. It was a story of a guy who falls asleep one night watching some late night television, wakes up, and finds himself in the middle of a horror movie. Because my house was the primary location, it would be easier to shoot, and I had met some classmates who knew a thing or two about make-up and special effects.
I had dressed up as Jason Voorhees almost every year for Halloween. I didn't want to act and direct simultaneously (as I had done in my prior films), but no one else seemed available to do the role. Effects guy Mark Feldman and I raided a nearby Party City, bought some fake blood and liquid latex, and then he transformed me into Jason. He used spirit gum to attach a skullcap to my head, and then used liquid latex to give my skin that rotted look around my eyes. He used a green oil-based make-up for my skin, and I designed the mask myself. It generally took about 90 minutes to apply, and I wore it all day, even when I wasn't involved in a scene, in case we decided to shoot on the spur of the moment.
MPI held an open casting call for all the students, so we could experience the casting process. Hundreds of local actors showed up at a local bar and grill, while we gave them all sides and shot close-ups of their performances. The script I wrote for the occasion had nothing to do with the actual film. As I recall, it was based in a grocery store, and dealt with a pregnant woman who was being verbally assaulted by the cashier. It had a lot of bad language, because I wanted to see how far a lot of the actors would go in their performances. At the end of the night, I had about two hours containing some of the most colorful dialogue uttered at a local audition.
Eventually, I cast Devin McPherson in the lead role, mainly because I had seen him in other projects and thought it would be interesting to work with experienced talent. Anton Holloway was acting as my assistant director, and he was casting little Kerry Banish in his film, so I decided to go with her, as well. It was a valuable learning experience to work with a young actor, because I learned how limited a child's time is when working on a set. Kerry was always involved with something, and at the time she was also doing a school play that detracted from how much we could use her.
For the first time, I had an actual crew. There was a sound department, a make-up and effects department, a lighting department, and camera operators. Shooting on motion picture film was a jarring experience, because it's such an involved process. Before, I could just load an 8mm cassette tape into the camcorder and push record. The film had to be threaded in a magazine, in pitch darkness, and then loaded onto a heavy film camera. Film is also extremely light sensitive, so it takes forever to light a scene. Every object in the frame has to be properly lit, which means someone has to go around and take light readings, a measurement of how much light is being exposed to the film.
Film also tends to be expensive. Out of all the independent productions I've worked on, I hardly ever see someone shoot on film - it's simply too cost prohibitive for low budget filmmakers. A lot of people don't realize this, but film houses charge by the foot. When you consider that film is shot at 24 frames per second, that adds up pretty quick. Everyone was finding in a relatively short amount of time that it was very easy to burn through all of their free film stock, especially if you were a perfectionist doing several takes of everything. The only part of the film that I spent serious money on was buying extra film stock, because aside from purchasing the film, you also have to set money aside for lab costs, which includes actually developing the negative, and prepping it for video.
On more than one occasion, I lost a whole day of shooting because someone loaded the camera improperly. There was an incident where we were shooting a complex scene, and somewhere along the line we ran out of film. Rather than tell me, the camera operators continued to roll until the day was out. Because of this, I shot the remainder of the film on digital video.
Jeremy Stefanski was the effects artist. We needed a shot of Jason being shot with a shotgun, and he devised a way to make it work. He cut several slits in my wardrobe, and inserted a garden hose up through my pant leg and just behind my shirt. The hose was connected to an ordinary garden pump, which was loaded with fake blood that Jeremy and Mark had conjured using things like ketchup and food coloring. Off camera, Jeremy would pump the blood while I fell backward. It was a quirky shot, and no one seemed to take notice of it in the final film, but I always liked how it turned out.
My brothers, Jack and Glenn, offered to lend their acting talents as a couple of zombies. Mark and I picked up a few packages of fake scars, which were pre-made molds you could spirit gum to someone's face. Jack's make-up was a severely slit throat, while Glenn's consisted of little metal spikes poking out of his neck. Because we shot those elements on digital video, with low light, the effect didn't come out too well. Jack was a real trooper during the whole thing, considering he spent a whole day in the make-up despite not being filmed until the wee hours of the night. Glenn, on the other hand, was getting restless by the hour. By the end of the night, he got so frustrated that he tore off his make-up, leaving a noticeable red mark on his skin for the next week.
The last scene has Devin looking on as he witnesses a lightsaber fight between two kids portraying Star Wars characters. Aside from my passion for the saga, people always ask what grounds I had for filming the fight, given the film's title. According to George Lucas, part of the inspiration for doing Star Wars came from the old serials of the 30s and 40s, where often times an unknown actor portraying a hero would rush in and save the damsel in distress. He often refers to those films as B movies, which many mistake as low budget films; the term originally described a popcorn movie, and usually had little story with a lot of action. Despite arguments from film goers, I've always liked this final scene of the film.
When I was shooting the film, I still didn't have a lot of knowledge regarding special effects. The original cut had the actors fighting with a pair of toy lightsabers, and aside from sound effects that I added in during post production, it looks like a fake fight. More recently, I learned how to use certain effects tools. This was the first film I directed that I didn't actually edit, because I was so new to the process. In 2007, I finally obtained the original footage from MPI and recut a minute of footage back into the film. I also added in the lightsaber visuals, making it look like a more authentic fight.
I learned a lot about editing during this process. Originally, I didn't think I had enough footage to tell a story. I had cut roughly half my script out of the original film because of time and money constraints. Jim Newport edited the film on Avid, and showed me how I could re-use footage for a purpose I hadn't intended. I owe him a great debt, because he was able to fit the pieces together in ways that I wasn't aware of.
The finished film was screened at the Emagine theater in Novi, in front of 200 people as part of MPI's student film festival. It received applause, which I was relieved by, but I was somewhat taken aback by how good a lot of the other projects turned out. At a certain point, I felt my film was lacking in the creative department because it borrowed from a lot of existing properties. At the same time, I felt my film was one of the more fun to watch because there were elements of familiarity. I didn't necessarily have to reintroduce characters, because the audience already knew most of them from past films.
Attack of the B Movies was a unique learning experience, because it was a more realistic approach to the filmmaking process. It also showed me the reality behind filmmaking. As professional as the final project turned out, it was probably the least fun one to shoot; it was actually pretty stressful, and more tedious than anything. It was the first film I made that I felt successfully told a story, but it also made me reconsider whether or not it was an industry I really wanted to grasp with open arms.