I Was a Teenage Filmmaker

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BijouBob8mm	I Was a Teenage Filmmaker	Lead	[-]
(02/09/06 4:21 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite	Tags : None I'm borrowing the title of a magazine article I did, since it chronicled my misadventures with a movie camera, and I'm sure there are others out there with their own tales to tell. Many of us here made our own 8mm epics. (I'm using 8mm in a generic way, so Super 8 is included. And hey, if you were shooting 16mm, all the better!) Does anyone have stories or tips to share from those glorious days of making your own movies? I'll start the ball rolling. While making a Frankenstein film on location in an old country cemetary, I had the good doctor disguised as the Grim Reaper, waiting to ambush an unwary victim. As we're filming, a deputy sheriff happened to drive by in time to see a group of teenagers running through a cemetary with a shovel, pick axe and saber. Needless to say, he stopped! I'm not sure which played a pivotal role in getting us off the hook, my explanation, or the presence of a camera and tripod.
TomWeaver999	Re: I Was a Teenage Filmmaker	#1	[-]
(02/10/06 9:44 AM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite	Equally oblivious to What People Will Think, my teenage brother and his friends once got their camera and plastic guns and ski masks and went to film a robbery scene -- on the top floor of the parking garage of a big local mall. Of course, somebody saw 'em at a distance and hollered cop, and about a half-dozen police cars soon converged on the scene.
blackbiped	Re: I Was a Teenage Filmmaker	#2	[-]
(02/11/06 12:05 AM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite	I made most of my Super 8mm epics in my yard or my house, and my neighbors knew I was weird anyway. So nobody seemed to mind even when we were running around with real guns, machetes, etc. And if I needed a desolate-looking location there were remote wooded areas and pastures nearby with not a building or telephone pole in sight. Legend, oh legend, the third wheel legend...always in the way.
HalLane	Re: I Was a Teenage Filmmaker	#3	[-]
(02/11/06 9:16 AM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite	I was a little past my teens, but only physically, so I'll throw this one in. Back in the eighties a friend, a real hardcore STAR WARS fan (he had a lightsaber made from part of a light stand, just like Luke's real one was), was making his own "Episode III", he just couldn't wait for Lucas to get around to it. He was a projectionist and I think he was filming in 16mm. He had Stormtroopers running around the SUNYAB campus, which kind of resembles Ape City in spots. I had built a Darth Vader suit with working lights and everything back in the fall of '77 (basically to go barhopping in for Halloween) so I got tapped to play 'Anakin Skywalker', tromping around the UB rooftops with cape flying. The script was kind of 'hush hush', but only from me, and I came to find out why. When it came time to film my 'transformation' as it were, I had to crawl from a hot volcano (just like in the real Episode III!), but the make-up budget didn't excede the food budget...in fact it was the food budget, as I found out when I was liberally applied with a mixture of mayonaisse and shoe polish! Surprisingly, it did look like volcano burns, but it was a warm summer's eve, and to this day I can't open a jar of Miracle Whip without just a twinge of queasiness.
Richard Harland Smith Esq	Re: I Was a Teenage Filmmaker	#4	[-]
(02/11/06 2:34 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite	Those of you who have seen DRACULA MUST BE DESTROYED on the great MONSTER KID HOME MOVIES DVD will note that there's a splice in the scene where I (as the Fat Vampire Hunter) drive the stake into Dracula's chest. That's because as I swung the hammer in the cramped confines of Dracula's garage, I connected first not with the stake but with the copper pipes overhead. Luckily I was in a weakened state from a childhood of indolence and fast food, or else I might've busted the pipe.
gugon	Re: I Was a Teenage Filmmaker	#5	[-]
(02/11/06 11:20 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite	Back then my friend and I didn't have the patience to do an actual "story", so we just filmed a bunch of scenes we thought would be cool. In one of them, he played the part of a body hanging from a Dead End sign. We put a pillowcase with blood spots on it over his head, tied a rope around his neck and the other end to the top of the sign. Then he kind of rocked back and forth to look like he was hanging (the camera never showed his feet which were firmly planted on the ground). I don't know if anyone saw us but there we were in the middle of the neighborhood for all to see. In another film I was tied to a chain link fence, with a rope around my hands, legs and neck. My friend had a machete and he was going to pretend to hack away at me. I told him the rope around my neck was a little too tight. He said, "Just hang in there, let's do the shot first. You'll be fine." It seemed to take forever for him to get the camera set up, while I kept telling him to hurry up. We did the shot, and I did my best to struggle and act horrified, even as the black spots began forming in front of my eyes. I don't remember finishing the shot or him turning off the camera. I don't know how long it took him to realize I wasn't faking as I hung there by my wrists and neck from the fence. When I woke up I was laying in the field next to the fence, with my friend shaking my shoulders saying, "Come on, man. You okay? Come on, wake up." He looked scared sh**less. Believe it or not, he used the machete to saw through the ropes to get me down. So the weapon of my cinematic demise became the instrument of my salvation (or at least it saved us the embarrassment of having to call 911 and explain THAT away).
Rick	Re: I Was a Teenage Filmmaker	#6	[-]
(02/13/06 3:35 AM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite	We shot a FRANKENSTEIN, then an unfinished sequel which was to be called FRANKENSTEIN VS. DRACULA, or some such, then MABA! (MAn-BAt, get it?) Then, Steve, our fearless leader, went all Jerry Warren on us, chopped up our three 8mm opuses (opi?) and refashioned them into a nonsensical thing he called LIFE, DEATH, AND REBIRTH. It had everything: two different guys playing the same monster, Dracula rising from the grave in the dark and standing up in broad daylight, a MAn-BAt with white linen bedsheet wings, and a hunchback who anticipated Marty Feldman with his ever-shifting hump. Oddly enough, everybody else enjoyed this process much more than I did. Shooting those movies just bored me to tears. I loved to watch them, hated to make them. So, of course, I'm the one in our little band who has made his career as an actor.
BijouBob8mm	Re: I Was a Teenage Filmmaker	#7	[-]
(02/13/06 2:25 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite	For the Frankenstein film I mentioned in my initial post, there is a scene where Baron Frankenstein decapitates someone. I sculpted a severed neck out of clay, then cast it in rubber for filming. After we'd shot the sequence out in the woods, I threw the torso (basically a stuffed shirt with fake headless neck attached) into the trunk of my car and moved on to the next location and shot and pretty much forgot about the prop. Later in the week, mom sent me to pick up some groceries. At this particular store, they had guys who sacked up and took your groceries out for you. We get out to my car, I pop open the trunk, and hear this horrified gasp from the kid. I quickly told, and showed, him it was fake and explained what it was and why. (I don't think I ever had quite as many misadventures with any film as I did with the Frankenstein film. It ran a half hour, and was shot throughout the year so that I could show the change of seasons to indicate extended passages of time. One winter scene was shot during a blizzard, when we had a snow day from school. How we kept from getting the car hung up in a drift is still something of a mystery/miracle.)
Doctor 1313	Re: I Was a Teenage Filmmaker	#8	[-]
(02/17/06 3:03 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite	*Quote:* We shot a FRANKENSTEIN, then an unfinished sequel which was to be called FRANKENSTEIN VS. DRACULA Most of my Super 8 dabblings were unfinished: DRACULA VS. THE WEREBAT, THE PSYCHOSYMPTONIC RAY, THE MONSTER LEAGUE VS. THE UFOS, THE KIDS BRIGADE MEET DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, NUTS TO YOU, GRAVES... I could go on. DOCTOR 13
BijouBob8mm	Re: I Was a Teenage Filmmaker	#9	[-]
(02/17/06 3:44 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite	I think all of us had a number of unfinished films, for whatever reason. But hey, even Ray Harryhausen had unused test footage and abandoned film projects. If TORTOISE AND THE HARE was finally completed 50 years after he started it, we may yet have a chance to thrill to DRACULA VS. THE WEREBAT! After moving into my house a few Novembers back, I spent one wintery weekend looking through some of the film cans at unfinished films, test footage, and stuff we shot just because we thought it would look cool or wanted to see if an idea would work out onscreen. Because this footage was not part of any completed project, it never got shown to our friends like the finished films did. (Which, occasionally, still get screened for pals.) While looking at the stuff, it occurred to me that at least some of it could be put together in a projectable form by turning the footage into "trailers." Dust off the camera, shoot a few titles and taglines, and put together an instant reel of "coming attractions."
blackbiped	Re: I Was a Teenage Filmmaker	#10	[-]
(02/17/06 4:17 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite	*Quote:* I think all of us had a number of unfinished films, for whatever reason. Back in the 70s, my older brother and his friends shot some out-of-sequence stuff for a home movie they were planning on editing together called IN COLD DUH. The story was simple: two rednecks come upon a hippy sitting on a stump by a pond, playing a banjo. He shoots them the "peace sign", and they shoot him with their shotguns. Later my brother drives up on his motorcycle and leaps off to check on the hippy. He's dead, so my brother looks around, steals the hippie's boots, and then peels out all over him. Ten or fifteen years later I had a bunch of home movies transferred to video, and since I had two VCRs, it struck me that I could finally edit this footage together as it was intended and set it to music ("Foggy Mountain Breakdown"), and the result was a big hit at parties and get-togethers for quite awhile. Legend, oh legend, the third wheel legend...always in the way.
BijouBob8mm	Re: I Was a Teenage Filmmaker	#11	[-]
(02/17/06 6:43 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite	You had better luck with film-to-video restoration than I did. A friend of mine who was more into music than film, but helped out with our films (and went on to do music professionally) decided he wanted to make his own film (circa 1977), about a rock group, and asked me to help him. At the time, none of us owned Super 8 sound equipment, so we shot it silent with the soundtrack on a cassette. (Fortunately, we had a projector with a rheostat control to allow us to gradually speed up or slow down the film to keep things in synch. A pain to project, but it did work!) When the music industry eventually beckoned, and my pal moved to New York after getting out of college, he got hold of me and asked if I was interested in the film (and outtakes), as he would probably never look at them, again. By this point, home video was with us and I jumped at the chance to take the film off his hands, thinking I could have it transfered to tape with synched soundtrack. Unfortunately, the soundtrack tape was no longer to be found. (He thinks he used it for one of his band's demo tapes.) So, I may have co-produced, co-directed (and currently own) the world's only silent musical!
HalLane	WWEWD?	#12	[-]
(02/18/06 12:23 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite	*Quote:* ...stuff we shot just because we thought it would look cool or wanted to see if an idea would work out onscreen. Because this footage was not part of any completed project, it never got shown... It may be time to ask ourselves: What Would Ed Wood Do?
gugon	Re: WWEWD?	#13	[-]
(02/18/06 11:06 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite	*Quote:* and stuff we shot just because we thought it would look cool or wanted to see if an idea would work out onscreen My friend Dave and I had a whole short film of nothing but random gore effects. I got Dick Smith's recipe for blood from a magazine. Since there were only two of us (and one had to work the camera), they were mostly shots of us doing horrible things to ourselves (suicides due to technical restrictions). I can imagine what our parents must have been thinking. My gunshot to the head was pretty good but Dave almost popped a bloodvessel trying to blow the Karo syrup blood through the tube. Then we figured out that if you hold a garden hose to the end of the tube, the pressure would force the blood through. Dave's throat slitting was a great effect. We had the tube taped to his neck just beneath the shirt. I turned on the camera. He grinned cheesily at the camera for a few seconds, giving me time to run over to the hose. Then he ran the knife across his neck and I turned on the hose and there was this terrific spray of blood. After the effects shots we would always follow-up with a shot of the body. And the body always had to twitch a little. That was sort of an automatic rule of thumb: the body must always twitch. http://www.necromerica.blogspot.com
BijouBob8mm	Re: WWEWD?	#14	[-]
(02/20/06 3:32 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite	*Quote:* It may be time to ask ourselves: What Would Ed Wood Do? He would have called Tor Johnson and the film would already be playing on the late show!
Subtitle Man	Super 8 3-D	#15	[-]
(02/21/06 9:49 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite	Wanna hear crazy? Before I ever shot one foot of sound film, I was shooting two-strip Super 8 3-D in the backyard. "The Freak" and "The Minotaur" were the names of the two films I shot this way, and together they had a total runtime of 12 minutes...which is probably a mercy for the audience, seeing as the cameras were not actually synchronized, strictly speaking. I turned 'em on at the same time and turned 'em off at the same time, then did my best to match up frame counts and whatnot in the editing stage. Synchronizing the two projectors was a >huge< problem, and there was a lot of illumination asymmetry--the left image was slightly dimmer than the right. I was trying to make do with whatever camera and projection equipment I had on hand. But when it worked, it impressed people--largely because it was the work of a 13-year-old. I ultimately decided that single-strip was the way to go, so a few years after "The Freak" and "The Minotaur," I rigged up two mirrors in front of one camera to capture two images side by side (.67:1 aspect ratio). This meant having to shoot with the camera at right angles to the subject. Projection had to be handled the same way. My synchronization problem was licked, but now I had to contend with diminished screen size and brightness. The single-strip material my buddy and I shot didn't really have a subject or a title. It was just scenes of my buddy walking along and gradually fading away like a ghost, since we were also testing out the "lap dissolve" feature on my latest camera. We rounded things off with a lovely 3-D knife fight. Since there were only two of us, and one guy had to operate the camera, we were never both onscreen at the same time. But, come to think of it, if you're working with a .67:1 aspect ratio, we couldn't have had two guys onscreen at the same time anyway! Shortly after this latest effort, my mom gave me her '79 Monte Carlo. Horrible car, lots of maintenance costs. I could not afford to be both a "movie mogul" and an "automobile magnate" at the same time, so my Super 8 filmmaking career more or less came to an end.
BijouBob8mm	Re: Super 8 3-D	#16	[-]
(02/22/06 2:06 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite	Your filmmaking may have been short, but it sounds sweet. 3D...very cool!
HalLane	Re: Super 8 3-D	#17	[-]
(02/22/06 2:41 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite	Those 3-D adventures sound very creative and resourceful! Y'know, with today's video editing capabilities, I shouldn't think it would be too hard to combine two separate films without using mirrors. Or at the very least, to boost the brightness, etc. to make 'em easier to watch. Hmmm.........
Dr Shatterhand	Re: Super 8 3-D	#18	[-]
(07/26/07 9:49 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite	I was able to transfer my 8mm films to video back in the late 80s and early 90s. These 8mm productions were made in the late 70s. The bulk of them were spy films with a 37 minute epic made based on Ian Fleming's OO7 novel MOONRAKER. There is one film that was made with a Hitchcock flair. It is called NEMESIS. I have since uploaded all of my amateur films to YouTube which you can check out by typing in RaftCoveProductions in the search window at You Tube. Please leave a comment after you have viewed any of the videos. My 16 year old son is starting to make his films now and are also uploaded under this account name.
BijouBob8mm	Re: Super 8 3-D	#19	[-]
(07/27/07 11:16 AM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite	Thanks for sharing, Shatterhand. Looking forward to seeing your version of Fleming's MOONRAKER! Just came across a poor attempt at transferring my half hour Super 8 Frankenstein film to video from years ago. (Just aimed a video camera at the movie screen. The resulting image could be better, could be worse.) Have also been digging out the various stored away reels of film clips (test footage, unfinished films, etc.), with an eye toward putting the stuff together in some way. (Every time I start this, something comes up and it all gets shelved away again. Hopefully this time finds me getting some cutting done.)
Lenny Sparx	Making Movies	#20	[-]
(08/30/07 2:22 PM) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite	My biggest problems as a Junior Spielberg, was people quitting in the middle of production so you couldn't finish. It was either that or people who didn't have your vision so they didn't take the movie very seriously as it was being made and therefore it shows in the final product. I was never surrounded by people who saw "The big picture" if you know what I mean. I was probably the only big thinker in the area so people thought my grand ideas were just ridiculous. To this day, the film I made a couple of years ago about Lenny Sparx gets treated like we slapped it together in a day when it actually took 2 years to make because I had to work around my cancer treatments to get it done plus I was recording the soundtrack CD at the same time. It was a huge project for someone with my illness and the fact I hadn't made a film in many years much less a rock'n roll movie that's kinda like one huge music video.

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