How to Make a Short, Indie, Post-Apocalyptic Thiller

A friend I've never met, Josh Oakhurst, let me in on his latest project and gave me some behind-the-scenes details on how he pulled it off.

A brief backstory: "Six months from now, two North American Union Armored Guard Personnel and an electrician find out what it's like to be trapped in a rolling coffin in unfriendly territory. Inspired by a photography project on abandoned homes."

Here's the film:


Chimera from Josh Oakhurst on Vimeo.

And here's how he pulled it off, shared with me after I asked stupid questions like, "How'd you pull that off?"

Josh said finding people to help out, not just actors, was by far the hardest part.

Aside from his wife (the female cop), all of the other actors and crew were just people he knew from the neighborhood.

He catered lunch over two days and tried to pay everyone something, even if it was just a little bit.

My wife obviously worked for free. She was a trooper and I definitely tested her patience.

The Male Cop was a dude from the neighborhood I know. I liked him, he was great.

The electrician guy was a Turkish engineer I befriended in my building. He was awesome, no one ever asked him to do something like this. His wife was so proud.

The kid I found through a post on Craigslist. His mom volunteered him. He was really great as well.

I paid this big Jamaican dude to run security for us on both days. We were in some sketchy neighborhoods.

When we were shooting inside that abandoned drug house, the actual drug dealing (not hyperbole) neighbors next door thought that we were a SWAT team or something. I guess between the car, the uniforms, the big dude with a SECURITY t-shirt and some prop guns, they thought we were raiding the place.

The rest of the people on screen, and the "crew" were all a bunch of drunken, fellow artists from the metal studio who had a free afternoon.

All told, I think if I'm honest I'm in this thing about $7G, including all the metal work and learning how to weld. I think it was worth it, because no one else has ever spent that much money on anything else I've shot. I needed to do it for me, if nothing else.

Nice work. And even though Josh is a creative director at a digital shop in North Carolina, this supports what I've always said about working in our industry; you've got to keep a side project that you have total control over. You're never going to satisfy your need to create by working for clients.

Film Festival time for Josh, I think.

Taken (for an Implausible Ride)

Sometimes you just want to see a movie. And sometimes the showtimes and your schedule only allow you to see one of two. You don't want to see some throwaway Steve Martin crap, so you go with Liam Neeson. He used to be a Jedi Knight, so it should be OK.

A few things wrong with the Liam Neeson film "Taken."

• Overt attempts to fan racial hatred. I now look at all Albanians with deep suspicion. And French people. And anyone who has the word "Sheik" in front of their name.
• The girl playing Neeson's daughter. She is supposed to be 17, but bounces around like a 6-year old in every scene, spastic, uncoordinated and way overdoing the "Daddy's little girl" thing.
• Mr. Neeson's hair. It is that odd mixture of chocolate and rust that is not found in nature. Why is it that men, even rich men with professional hair and make-up artists, can't get a good dye-job? At one point in the film, Liam's temples are grey, then they go back to Hershey's Special Dark in the next scene.
• The idea that two 17-year-old girls are going to follow U2 around Europe for a summer is so ridiculous it is laughable. U2? Seriously? Does ANY 17-year old girl give two shits about U2? I'll bet the teenage daughters of the members of U2 don't even listen to U2.
• The car chases and fight scenes are shot in that super-close, rapid-cut, blurred-out way that makes the action impossible to follow. All the director wants you to understand is that Liam is kicking asses and they were on a tight budget.
• Mr. Neeson's endless supply of costumes, fake IDs, weapons and whatnot is very extensive for a guy who packed some cash and a passport as he raced out of his dingy and sad divorced dad apartment in LA.
• After dispatching everyone on the Sheik's luxury barge at the end, Liam and his daughter reunite in a teary, touching embrace as the pilotless barge continues to sail smoothly down the Seine.
  

I won't give away the ending, but OK, I just did. Here's more wrap-up: As you now know, Neeson gets his daughter back from the evil slave-trading Albanians and earns the respect and gratitude of his hateful ex-wife who married some rich dick who owns all kinds of stuff. He also takes his daughter (who wants to be a singer) to meet "Sheerah," a pop diva whom Liam rescued early in the film from some knife-wielding psycho backstage. You see, Liam was hired by his old CIA pals to provide security, even though Sheerah already had her own Uzi-wielding security force.

"Taken" - Coming to DVD by the end of the week.

I Take it Back - Music Video Isn't Dead Yet

This one, from Keb Mo, took some prizes recently at a film festival.



Thanks to Every Sandwich for tweeting about Keb Mo and prompting me to look this up.

From Kintore East to Yuendumu

Stan, as well as the Monkey Messiah, both alert me to a new campaign from Australian film director Baz Lurhmann for Australia tourism. In this spot (a likely never-to-be-aired :90) the harried NYC executive gets the news from her guy that “we need to take a break.” You’re not sure if that means, “Let’s go on vacation” or “Let’s start seeing other people.” But when she gets back to her apartment, he calls again, this time saying, “You’re not the same person I fell in love with.” Ouch.

So the darling Aboriginal child sneaks into her apartment and sprinkles her with magic red sand from the Australian desert, whispering the solution to her life and love woes: Walkabout!

Dissolve to snake-infested billabong somewhere in the fly-infested desert, where harried executive and her guy are getting ready to make love by moonlight, complete with the magical red sand infesting the crevices of their bodies. Would’ve been much cheaper to just get a cabin in the Adirondacks if "rejuvenation" is the only selling point of Australia.



It’s pretty. It tells a story. It’s engaging. But as someone who actually plans to visit (perhaps live in) Australia some day, it seems a bit of a cliché. Mystical Aboriginal girl, the whole Walkabout thing, the buzzing, cold and dark city versus the calm country contrasts already done to death in the Squatsi trilogy. Why not throw in Steve Irwin for good measure? Oh, that’s right. Sorry.

I guess I want the actual Australia I’m going to see, not the fabled Outback Steakhouse version. Avoid the Opera House and Ayers Rock, of course, but maybe make Australia a little more tangible and real. I have an image of Australia that doesn't involve billabongs. It's about sunny beaches and vibrant cities, verdant valleys and cool people.

Then again, that cliché may have been done to death already as well.

If You Don't Laugh, You're Likely Dead

Or maybe your humor is just not as juvenile as mine and about two million other fans of this stuff. If I'm late to this, I blame a coworker who sent it around the office today.

I love weird ideas. This one had to have been hatched spontaneously when some drunk guy was rambling to his buddies about history.

The concept: get people drunk and have them tell you what they know about history, then have the scenes being told acted out hilariously by the moderately famous and the pretty famous. This is the fourth installment from Drunk History, a YouTube creation of Derek Waters. This one has around 55K views after only a week. The first one (uploaded last Christmas) has been viewed nearly 1.7 million times.

Low Tech Super Creative

As I'm fond of pointing out, it doesn't always take a giant budget and a huge rack of servers to create some of the best stuff. This is very good.



Seen at.