By Chance Shirley
July 22, 2004
Low-Budget Summer
Ah... summertime in Birmingham, Alabama. The heat. The humidity. The seemingly unending days. Looking forward to autumn, a time of hopefully less heat and less humidity and our town's beloved Sidewalk Film Festival. Dreading autumn, because the flick you're hoping to show at the Sidewalk fest is far from finished.
There are other movies, the ones other people made. Big, expensive movies where the hero is quick with a wisecrack, lots of stuff blows up, and the fate of the world hangs in the balance. But the multiplex is air conditioned, so we're quick to forgive these films if they come up short in the subtlety department.
Amidst all the big-Hollywood movies, marketing, and chaos, though, a few low-budget indie films manage to sneak their way onto a screen or two. I mean, they can only make so many prints of the SHREK and SPIDER-MAN sequels, right? And, as much as I enjoy some of the big extravaganzas, I'm always on the lookout for the smaller films. I like to take a break from my own low-budget work and see how other filmmakers are spending the money they worked hard to earn, beg, borrow, or steal.
With that in mind, I thought I'd write about a few indie movies that should be coming this summer to a theater near you. I'm listing the budgets for the movies, just to give all you producers out there an idea of what folks are spending on indies -- at least indies that get pretty good distribution.
These are all films with production budgets of less than a million dollars. I was disappointed I couldn't find more movies in this price range, and especially disappointed I only found one film with a budget of less than ten thousand. If there are any relatively inexpensive indies that you're hoping to catch this summer that I missed, please drop me a line and fill me in.
NAPOLEON DYNAMITE
Budget: $400,000
From what I've read, the plot of NAPOLEON DYNAMITE is pretty simple, focusing on a group of high school outcasts and their struggles to maintain some level of dignity while being berated by the "cool" kids. These outcasts are apparently even more offbeat than usual movie outcasts, though. I'm expecting John Hughes by way of Wes Anderson, which sounds like a fine idea to me.
NAPOLEON is based on a $500 black and white short film called PELUCA. Some of my pals saw it at last year's Sidewalk fest and loved it. I managed to miss PELUCA, probably due to a little too much partying the night before.
The reviews on NAPOLEON DYNAMITE have been all over the place, so I'm getting the feeling it's one of those love it or hate it kind of flicks. I think the trailer is pretty good, and I heard a clip on NPR recently that was hilarious, so I'm hoping for the best.
OPEN WATER
Budget: $300,000
They're already calling this one "BLAIR WITCH in the water," because:
- It was shot with a relatively inexpensive digital video camera (though everybody forgets that parts of BLAIR WITCH were shot on glorious black and white 16mm film);
- It's supposed to be scary;
- The reality angle (it's "based on actual events" while BLAIR WITCH pretended to be a documentary).
Whether "BLAIR WITCH in the water" is a good or bad thing depends on your opinion of BLAIR WITCH and... well, water. I personally thought BLAIR WITCH was fine, especially considering the budget, but it doesn't hold up as a "scary movie" as well as ALIEN or John Carpenter's THE THING. Other than the BLAIR WITCH angle, people are excited about OPEN WATER because of the sharks. The movie tells the story of two scuba divers abandoned (accidentally?) at sea. The movie's low budget didn't allow for any CGI or animatronics, so the actors did all the shark scenes with... real sharks. Cue John Williams' JAWS score.
Speaking of JAWS, one critic said OPEN WATER is the best shark movie since Spielberg's blockbuster. The trailer didn't do much for me, but I'm looking forward to this one. The sharks are a factor, but the low-budget filmmaker in me wants to see how the movie works on a technical level and, also, how the video looks blown up to 35mm film.
SUPER SIZE ME
Budget: $65,000
SUPER SIZE ME is a documentary, one that happens to be more fun than a lot of the fiction stuff I've seen this year. It's put together a bit like BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, but it's a lot less controversial.
See, the guy who made the movie, Morgan Spurlock, decided he was going to eat only McDonald's food for a month and see how it affected his health. Big shock -- he discovers that 30 days of fast food is not good for you.
But the movie's not about the ending, it's about the journey. And Spurlock doesn't limit the story to his personal McOdyssey. He interviews other people about the effects fast food has on the physicial, social, and economic health of society. And he manages to keep it entertaining.
THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA
Budget: $40,000
I love old 1950s science-fiction movies, so I was excited about THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA, which had a small theatrical run a while back and was recently released on DVD.
The guys who made SKELETON tried to approach it just like actual B-movie filmmakers from the old days. The story features aliens, the living skeleton of the title, and a scientist whose scientific knowledge is questionable at best. It was shot on the cheap on a very short schedule, and the "special" effects include a rocket that looks to have been made from a cardboard paper towel tube.
Though the SKELETON cast and crew definitely had their hearts in the right place, I was disappointed by the end result. Parts of the script seemed a little over-the-top, even for a cheesy sci-fi flick, and it's hard to sustain the "it's funny because it's bad" thing for 90 minutes.
But my biggest beef is with the filmmakers' choice of medium. The movie was shot on digital video and later transferred (in old-school black and white) to film. Even after the transfer to film, though, SKELETON still retains a video look. It just seems to me that if you can come up with 40 grand for a black and white video production, you can find another five grand to shoot it on black and white film. Which I think is especially important when you're trying to emulate the look of the classic B-movies. All that said, though, the SKELETON DVD is worth a rental, especially for fans of the genre. The disc also includes some nice behind-the-scenes extras which, as an indie shooter, I found interesting.
PRIMER
Budget: $7,000
Now this is what I'm talking about. First-time filmmaker gets $7,000 together, shoots a feature on 16mm, gets into Sundance, and wins the big prize. Gets picked up by a nice-sized indie studio (ThinkFilm) and shown in more festivals, with a theatrical run to follow.
This is a classic filmmaking Cinderella story, right up there with Kevin Smith's CLERKS and Robert Rodriguez's EL MARIACHI. Hopefully, PRIMER director Shane Carruth will be able to turn his successful first film into a career the same way Smith and Rodriguez did.
It's this behind-the-scenes story that is the main reason I want to see PRIMER. I don't really know what it's about, though I think it might be some kind of science fiction thing. The trailer at the PRIMER web site looks cool, but it's very vague, and Carruth has made it a point to avoid discussing the movie's plot. Which is nice, considering that most studios give away all a movie's surprises during the course of a two minute trailer.
