Before Texas-born film director Robert Rodriguez rose to fame with his tale of a vengeful vigilante, slithering around sun-smoked Mexico with a guitar case full of guns, he sat in a Medical Research Hospital whilst they took chunks of skin out of his arms, giving him $2000 for his troubles. Here was a young 20-year-old who didn't just dream of filmmaking – he bled for it. Checking himself into the clinic to undergo testing for a quick healing drug, he was intentionally wounded and then patched up with the medication, left walking around the hospital for seven days to see how it worked. After the pain was over and two scars were forever left on his arms, he took his money and made the award-winning short film 'Bedhead'. The rest as they say, is history…  | | Daniel |
I certainly wasn't going to go to such extreme measures. Perhaps that means I'll never make a $45 million movie, get Salma Hayek to dance half-naked on table tops whilst Quentin Tarantino licks her toes, or live in a house that has its own editing room, sound mixing stage, and cinema. At least, though, I can say I had a good time making my first short film, and that the results were fulfilling if a little underwhelming. There was certainly a moment when freezing my butt off at a reservoir we were shooting at in Barnsley, I began to wonder why we were bothering. Then I remembered what had inspired me in the first place – Rodriguez's maniacal passion for the art. 'Get your a**e out there and make a movie because I'm telling you,' he says in his book Rebel Without A Crew. 'There are so many creative people out there itching to make something, but they're too negative in thinking they'll never get anywhere or it'll never happen.' It suddenly became clear – freeze myself to near death today, but tomorrow reap the benefits of unrelenting riches, a mansion in the Hollywood Hills, a black Ferrari, and a sex scandal on 'The Daily Show with Jon Stewart'. Hang on, back track - you're still freezing your butt off, you're losing light and your actors still don't know their lines. Kevin Smith, director of the critically acclaimed 'Clerks' thinks it's quite amusing when people tell him his low-budget film made them want to make movies. "I know what that means," he says, "your movie looks so terrible, if you can do it then I can!" I prefer Rodriguez's take that if you think you're a filmmaker then you are one, and you should go make yourself a business card. It's better than maxing out ten credit cards like Smith did on 'Clerks'. To make our short, however, we didn't need any unsubstantiated promises from the likes of Mr American Express. In all, we must have spent less than £50 using a borrowed camera, microphone and editing equipment. The only things we paid for were petrol and some garden lights from the local DIY superstore. I guess that's why my actors – friends Tony Avino and Nick Tinker – didn't learn their lines until about ten seconds to 'ACTION'. What can I say? I wasn't paying them but they might become famous, and when they did, they could stick this film on one of their DVDs as a special feature. Of course, it helps if both friends have some acting experience. Tony had just finished a stage play in Bolton, and Nick's claim to fame was a walk-on part in 'There's Only One Jimmy Grimble'. It also helps if your girlfriend is willing to give up her car to drive you to locations (in return for a Production Manager credit, or so I told her) and your lead actor can play both guitar and piano, and can wriggle his way into the Music Department at the University to record the soundtrack. One of the things that bugged us early in pre-production was what we were going to do with it after it was completed. We knew we were making it because we loved movies, wanted to break into the business and wanted to get some experience of low-cost filmmaking, but would anyone see it? Luckily, Huddersfield has its very own outlet for local filmmakers in the form of 'Short Circuits', which was created in 1999 by Andrew Wilson and Lisa Roberts, whose main aim was to provide a platform for local filmmakers to showcase their work in the town and throughout the region. Andrew says: "We wanted to give filmmakers the chance to screen their films, gauge audience reaction, learn from their peers and be jealous of them, and have a drink at the same time to calm their nerves." Andrew thinks new filmmakers should take themselves more seriously. "There are a lot of media courses, and students on them need to make films, watch other people's films and take the time to submit their work." He says: "Hit it and hope, then fail better next time. If you stick at it and be brave, you'll get there in the end."  | | Sundown, a film by Daniel Stephens |
It is without a doubt comforting to note there our people in the region willing to help and exhibit creative work like Short Circuits. There are plenty of film festivals including those in Bradford, Leeds, and Hull, as well as the Sheffield Documentary Festival and other smaller events. Short Circuits distributes films through their partners Slack Video, Interruption and Monitor, as well as providing screenings throughout the year at various locations around Yorkshire. Andrew told me about Screen Yorkshire's four schemes which include a £2000 grant; Caught Short Focus which is an intensive week long production and Digital Awards which includes a £10,000 production fund, or a £20,000 production budget for serious and more experienced filmmakers. We filmed over a two month period, neglecting our study in many ways to concentrate on the script and getting the most out of our limited technical capabilities. The story which I had been chopping and changing for some time eventually became two different films stuck together. Originally I had wanted to make something about what one experiences when losing a very close relative – a mother or father. I wanted to see this person on the lowest ebb of their psyche, contemplating suicide. I wanted to sneak a peak at how someone can become so low they decide to end their life and have the same fate as their loved one. But then, I got all caught up in the ethical and religious debates that would surround such an act, so I moved on. I had seen a film called 'Near Dark' which was basically a vampire movie that lost all its gothic roots and ran like a hot-blooded Western, set in the dry, sandy pastures of America's south. I liked the idea of making a horror movie that wasn't really a horror movie – it's only fantasy based on the viewer's own experiences of the macabre. What I decided upon were two friends who hadn't seen each other for a few months, meeting at a crossroads in their lives. One, the character from my previous idea, had just lost his mother and couldn't see any reason to live. The other claimed he had been bitten by a vampire and that he could now live forever. He could taste the fruits of the world for eternity. The dynamic I tried to instill in the story was that one friend thought this life was too hard, he wanted to give up, and the other was just beginning an adventure of lifelong eternal youth. What you didn't know was whether the vampire bite was a figment of his imagination, a by-product of his over-indulgence with alcohol and drugs. Likewise, it never became clear who was the sane one of the two, who was the grounded one – both were as unhappy as each other, and while they thought they knew the answer to their dilemma, neither was right.  | | Still frame: Tony in Sundown |
I directed the film, Nick produced it, and we edited it together. We shot on-location in Barnsley, just on the border where Derbyshire and Yorkshire meet. The first time we went location scouting we knew we wanted to film there because it was such a beautiful location with its panoramic views of the surrounding countryside. Partly because of the brilliant location, and partly due to the problem of lighting, we decided to film there during the day and not at night, as was originally scripted. The night shoot would occur back at Nick's house on Leeds Road in Huddersfield. Here we would film the interior and exterior shots – the back of the house, shot in the right way, was made to look like a location 100 yards from the reservoir, but was actually over 30 miles away. Our only major problem was with lighting the exterior night shots. We didn't have the silent generator needed to power the lights because we couldn't afford one, so the only thing we could do was get the longest power cable possible, attach it to the security lights, and hook it up to the power outlets in the kitchen. That way, we could light an exterior scene, as long as it was within 25 yards of the back door of the house. Luckily, the downtrodden posterior of Leeds Road's student residencies look as bedraggled and neglected as the script called for. We devised a cunning way to make rain for added ambience in the exterior scenes by using a broken water pipe from the house which ran every time you used the water tap in the bathroom. We simply ran the water, stuck a board under the dripping pipe, and aimed it where we wanted. It was actually very realistic but if there had been a water shortage, I don't think the Water Board would have been too happy. Of course, we then had to prevent the power leads from getting wet and electrocuting everyone which was quite a task. We were guerilla filmmaking at its most basic, that's for sure. We created what was to look like vampire bites on Nick's neck using a mixture of flour and water, coupled with mascara and red pen. Believe it or not, it actually looked quite authentic but I only shot it using a wide angled lens. We fashioned reflectors for the lights to create shadow and provide more depth to the cinematography using turkey-foil wrapped around a 6x4 board we found in the garage. We did everything as cheaply and efficiently as possible. Certainly there were some liberties taken in script development to account for this, but I didn't feel we lost any of the impact from the story. It would have been great to shoot at night on-location but it wasn't feasible at the time. We're just thankful that a six figure budget is not what is required to break into the industry. "The quality of equipment has nothing to do with it," says Andrew at Short Circuits, "We just look for films that show hard work, thoughtfulness, and a willingness to learn. It's important for new filmmakers to feel part of the scene, where their hard work and talent will be recognised." |
