As some may know, I've been working for years to come up with a screenplay I could shoot and produce myself. I retired in 2016 from a well-paying job in IT after decades and bought enough film equipment and a top-five video editing station to begin transliterating my fiction into screenplay format and shoot it myself. First up was a prequel to my 2012 published (written in 1983) short horror, true crime story, "
Gumdrop City".
Trailer with music by Andrea Fioravanti of the Italian band, Postvorta.
I just submitted footage of my interview by producer and director
Kelly Wayne Hughes this week to the
Trash Arts Portsmouth in the UK. They are gearing up to produce a documentary of interviews with horror writers and directors and for the first time in my life, I actually fit that definition for both designations.
I have now produced one short horror film in 2018 which won a small film festival and was a festival selection at another, The Midnight Film Festival in New York (and we're being reviewed in others until January 2020). I have high hopes, greater hopes for this now, my current production:
Gumdrop.
A little background.
I've spent the past few months working up a shootable script. I reviewed all my writings and ended up with the best choice being,
Gumdrop City.
It is based on a true crime story I first heard of in abnormal psychology class that affected the entire class that day so much that when class was over I walked out believing I had to fictionalize it into a horror story. That was the second story that originated in such a way. The other was a story Sarah, about an old woman with dementia that I turned into a Twilight Zone style story.
In the end, it became one of if not the favorite of my cover artist's,
Marvin Hayes. I had also reviewed my short screenplays. Of those screenplays I had one or two I would love to shoot. But for those, I would need more money. Too many characters and period scenes to do on no or little budget, if I want to do it up right.
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| Cover art by Marvin Hayes |
I'd LOVE to shoot "
Poor Lord Ritchie's Answer". But it is a medieval piece that descends into madness and surreality.
By the way, you can tell my older covers as they indicate, "by" JZ Murdock. Newer covers eliminate the "by".
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| Cover art by Marvin Hayes |
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"
Sarah" might be another which is the same in a way, albeit in modern times. Still, too many special effects are involved.
"Colorado Lobsters" screenplay might be fun to shoot, but that would take a far larger budget as it involved MIT and a nuclear power plant.
And so I chose "
Gumdrop City", a modern tale of a "specialized" serial murderer. But I did not want to shoot that story. Why? You'd have to read it to find out why. It's a rough subject. The ending is grisly and I'm just not ready for something quite so difficult to shoot. It was hard enough simply to write it as a horror story. The reveal and ending seemed to take forever to write. And that...should say a lot.
However, I came to realize if I shot it as a prequel to the short story, that just might work. The more I worked on that concept, the more it came together. Until finally, I had a completed short screenplay that I could shoot myself. I just needed actors. And some props.
For the past few years, I've been on sets involved with
Kelly Wayne Hughes' productions at his Lucky Charm Studio. I wanted to see how screenplays were translated into practical application and into a finished product.
The first set I was ever on was on the set for the pilot to TV's 1986
Starman series. I got to be on two external Seattle location sets. I saw them shooting up on Queen Anne Hill when on the way home. It was hard to miss. Semi trucks and trailers and people and cameras.
Apparently, the location manager noticed me hanging around. I was straining to hear everything, to see everything. I guess I was more obvious than I meant to be. But I heard them talking as they were wrapping things up at the end saying they'd meet at the Seattle Center later for a night shoot. I ran home, ate dinner and headed back out.
That night I was watching everything next to their night set at the Monorail terminal at the Seattle Center. Extras were milling about everywhere, sitting, waiting for a call to action. The location manager was walking by and talking on his handheld radio, having someone turn off and on the background amusement rides for the camera and giving others directions.
He noticed me again and walked up to me sitting on a low concrete wall. We talked a bit and he asked questions and I answered. I told him I'd studied screenwriting in college and had recently graduated and I just wanted to see what it's like to be on set. He smiled at me and said, "Follow me." And I did.
He placed me on set, right next to the director and camera while they set up shots and filmed the scene, which took hours. People were wondering who I was, some young producer, maybe. The stand-ins for Robert Hays and Erin Gray (who sadly, weren't around) before the camera at the open monorail doors, kept looking at me, confused.
It was a fun and fascinating first look into production. I was tired at work the next day, but it was worth it. Which just goes to show you, seek knowledge and it may be handed to you outright. You just have to put yourself out there where luck can happen to you. Keep doing it, sooner or later it will happen. Take a chance. Things happen.
Kelly's production company has produced many films since and through the 1990s. And he's also a good friend. We met online through
Stage32 and got together for the first time at Seattle Crypticon in 2015.
I had started studying cinema officially in college back in 1980. Though I had been a citizen student of cinema going back to childhood in the 1960s, thanks to PBS and the films of
auteurs they presented to America back then and decades prior.
Those auteurs like. Truffaut, Godard, Fellini, Renoir, Bergman, Kurosawa, Fritz Lang, Eisenstein, Bresson, Bunuel, Tarkovsky, Antonioni, Rossellini, Resnais. That led me on to others and our American auteurs. It gave me an orientation to pursue. Classic cinema to the avant-garde.
I became fascinated by many things in life with a cinematic orientation. I also grew up going to a drive-in theater my stepfather worked at when we were kids. My first job was there in 9th grade cleaning the field, My second job was there working in the snack bar where I became its manager in 12th grade. My sister's first job before me was there.
For some reason, I always wanted to look behind the scenes. I wasn't that kid who opened their Christmas presents secretly before Christmas, I like the surprise. And maybe that says something.
Still, perhaps seeing Wizard of OZ at a young age prompted some of that. Once I realized, was surprised that there was one, I wanted to see who the "man behind the curtain" was. HOW were things done? How do you make, "movie magic"? I was fascinated by "King Kong" at a young age. The original. When I later saw a piece on TV in the 1960s about who animated him and how King King was brought to life, I was initially disappointed, but then I became enraptured.
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| Willis O’Brien onset of King Kong |
Willis O’Brien animated the original King Kong and then Mighty Joe Young. I loved those films as a kid. Then, Ray Harryhausen came on the scene. I loved those films too. But I didn't want to be one of those geniuses.
Then I went through many of the British Hammer Films, until...the very American "Night of the Living Dead" came on the scene. My mother had always loved vampire and horror films, and Hollywood overall. They were America's royalty for us.
Later I came to know more about behind the scenes of these films. In fact, that became an industry until itself. First film magazines. Then documentaries and eventually entire TV shows on the making of shows and films.
I grew up loving "movie magic" in all its varied forms. I locked onto people like Tom Savini and finally got to meet him. I loved John Carpenter films and his stable of actors, not unlike Woody Allen in another genre whose films I also loved since the 1960s.
In college and then at university, I studied cinema while getting a degree in psychology. But also found time for classes and getting a minor in writing, cinema and screenwriting. I chose to study my favorite directors, Hitchcock, Woody Allen, and Stanley Kubrick. I took a series of film production seminars from the famous (some say notorious) producer and director, Stanley Kramer.
But when it came down to it I loved how John Carpenter went about his filmmaking. He tried to do it all, to have control of his final product. And I loved the products he shared with us. That led me to others of this genre. Canadian David Cronenberg, Dutch Paul Verhoeven, and eventually ever newer horror directors. Eventually even Japanese and South Korean, Thai, Australian filmmakers and those from other countries.
So when I decided to start my own horror film production (as I had done with my first film in college in the early 1980s and my first documentary on cable TV in 1994), to write and direct my own production, I was about as intellectually and educationally prepared. As ready as I could be, I suppose.
I just had to be personally and emotionally ready. But are we ever? As with having children. You mostly have to have the child and raise it, and in that, you "become". You grow into being a parent. And you become a better human being because of it.
At some point, you simply have to just "Do It" to become it. Perhaps the shortest and greatest two-word admonition we have: Do It!
And today, you CAN just Do It. IF you had never seen a film before, you can now get online and follow videos and even online schools of film production like
No Film School,
Full Time Filmmaker. Or videos on how to with one of my favorites,
Filmmaker IQ, also available on streaming site Amazon Prime.
You can also buy fairly inexpensive equipment of high quality. Then find some friends, nonactors even. And just do it. I'm using a Canon 70D I bought in 2015. Now they have a newer model in the 80D but it turns out great looking footage and incredible photos. Learn to shoot on the manual setting.
Learn to adjust your three basic functions on manual. Sooner the better. It can be intimidating, but it's worth it. Some shoot films on auto settings, using a zoom in every shot and it can indeed look pretty great. But the more you learn, the more options you have, and the better your films will become over time. Push yourself. Challenge yourself. On every level. And if you don't make it, at least hopefully you've done more and better than you would have.
Or, just get a good cameraman who understands cinematography (or also get a good cinematographer, though many of us are acting in the beginning as cameraman, cinematographer, writer, director, editor, lighting specialist/key grip, and so on).
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| Actor as Mermaid Miranda, Aura Stiers on set |
I started shooting
stills (you can see some of my best stills on Flickr from this link, but ignore my first photo, look down at all the others and you'll see some amazing shots from an amateur, me...my eagle shots are some of my favorites I shot from my from porch at home). I shot stills for a while to get used to the camera and learn its functions.
Eventually, I started shooting videos. I also believe in using prime (non zoom) lenses and the right lens for the shot or scene.
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| Actors on Gumdrop, Aura Stiers (Miranda - victim) and Stan Wankowski (Manz - hitman) |
A good screenplay properly written, can carry poor film production, even poor acting talents into a viable and watchable movie. But the more you know entering the production, and the more help you have (a crew and... talent, that is actors) and the more fundamental a screenplay you have, the better your chances of anyone ever wanting to watch your product.
Or to get viewed at, or even in or to win, a film festival.
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| Actor Tom Remick as the frightening Sampson, in Gumdrop |
To sum up...
I luckily had grown up through cinema and a fascination in the bones of filmmaking, and writing. I have been a writer for many years now. I finally just got up the nerve to do what I was setting myself up to do all my life, never really believing I'd ever get around to it.
Below is a shot of actor Stan Wankowski in a scene of the death of his character, Manz.
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| A dead "Manz" (actor Stan Wankowski) Production Still |
Below is a shot of the talent on set taking advantage of actor Stan in his final scene.
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| Crew/Talent taking shots of Stan's final scene as Manz |
Until I did it. And I was pleasantly surprised to find that, if you do it, it might just work. Kind of on the theory of, "If you build it, they will come." If you shoot it, they may watch it.
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| Stan Wankowski as Manz |
I'll offer you one last link. EFS, the
Experimental Film Society. Check out their 19 points on filmmaking. Very inspiring but I have issues with the point on screenplays. On the other hand for some films, is it sage advice.
IF you do want to act, or to produce, to write or to direct?
Then? Just do it!
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