The LOOP Reality

(FYI: Despite the above date of December 8, 2008. This blog was posted January 2nd, 2009. December 8th is when I started it...)

In the year 2000, after being a filmmaker for over 15 years, I retired from filmmaking. I had worked in a lot of genres - features, television, documentaries, music videos -- but I am best remembered for the feature film REDNECK ZOMBIES. In 1985, with my partner Ed Bishop producing, I directed Redneck Zombies which was picked up for distribution by Troma. Troma, incidentally, will be releasing the 20th Anniversary Edition DVD on January 27th, 2009.

REDNECK ZOMBIES was unique back then as we had the bright idea to shoot the feature on video. Not on the mobile friendly DV cameras of today, but with the two-piece workhorse of news gathering in the eighties - 3/4" video.

This is the tape recorder we used, it is the BVU-15o U-Matic. The BV-150 was connected to this mechanical beast by a camera cable. It weighed 20 pounds or so, and was the size of a small carry-on piece of luggage.

I could not find an image of the exact camera (Sony M3) but it was something like this Ikegami, it was about 30 pounds.

So as we trundled around in backwoods garb with a red pick-up truck full of prop radioactive green moonshine, pork chitterlings, and 260 pounds of video equipment, the locals of the Delmarva Peninsula thought we were insane. They would laugh at our shenanigans and talk about us at the barber shop and bowling alley. However, in a month of Sundays, REDNECK ZOMBIES was completed and has gone on to infamy as a micro-icon of American pop culture.

REDNECK ZOMBIES was even a question in the 1980s version of "Trivial Pursuit." The card read:

Q: What movie's tagline was "Tobacco Chewing, Gut Chomping, Cannibal Kinfolk from Hell"?

A: REDNECK ZOMBIES

But believe it or not, this is not a blog about REDNECK ZOMBIES. This is about my new "homebrew" no-budget feature - LOOP.

Sort of...

It's really about the new paradigm of independent filmmaking and how it is possible that an old dog (Me) will learn new tricks. LOOP is a movie that I want people to see, but it is different. It has it's own rules, it's own reality. The LOOP reality is a mindbender and tough on an audience. It's been very hard for film festival organizers to program.

After spinning my wheels for a while, I have found sanctuary and information in a community which I believe will turn into a movement in independent film: Truly Free Film. I will do my best to be concise but this first post has a lot of moving parts and I have a tendency to stray. I will do my best to tie it all up at the end. I promise.

As I said, I retired, or at least I thought I retired from filmmaking in 2000 after taking an editing job in broadcast news at the Washington DC Bureau of a major news service. When my job was eliminated in 2002, I began working as a contractor, still in news, editing packages for international consumption.

It was the process of news that I could never wrap my mind around. It was both troubling and fascinating. First there was the shaping of the raw news that flowed from the "Big Pipe," condensing it and sending out into smaller pipes to outlets that shaped it some more to meet the needs of their "target audience." Despite the fact that many of the story packages ended up editorialized and cherry picked at their final destination, they influenced many people. Needless to say, Marshall McLuhan's phrase, "The medium is the message" became crystal clear as I watched a story's progression each day.

I wasn't able to shut off my brain like many of my colleagues. Instead, I began to collect images that stored themselves in a dark place, and from that dark place came the idea of LOOP. It was my Redneck Zombies experience that made me think I could perhaps pull off another no-budget feature.

LOOP was made from pocket change by my wife Lisa and I. It took us three years and it is a homebrew for sure, but it ended up being the movie I wanted to make. It definitely seems to have some kind of impact. When an audience sees it, it creates a commotion. People ask about my well being, if the movie is a "cry for help," or if I had thoughts of suicide. Many tell me it makes them think, some have told me it scared them. People seem to like it, but I never know. However one thing is for sure: LOOP disturbs some people. It disturbs them like an Italian cannibal flick, but LOOP has no blood, no gore, scant violence -- just plenty of angst.

I think it's the angst.

I think there has been a lot of social and political angst as of late and "the LOOP reality" captures that mood. It's no romantic comedy.

Another filmmaker took me aside after a screening and she looked at me earnestly, straight into my eyes, and said, " I loved it. You know while I was watching, I actually felt crazy, I mean, really, like I was crazy."

I liked that - A LOT. But, as I said, it's not an ideal movie for most festival programmers.

To be completely honest, and my wife wants to kill me every time I say this, I don't care about selling it. When I finished it though, I wanted it to be seen.

Would I like to make some money from it? Of course. But I didn't make LOOP to cash in -- that would be foolish because it's a deeply personal movie and was never geared to be "commercial." I made LOOP, warts and all, because I HAD to make it.

Since then, I have been working the festival circuit and have received plenty of rejection. I am not entirely surprised since LOOP is a difficult movie to program, but the few festivals that have accepted it gave it awards. LOOP won "Best Visual Effects" at IndieFest/FAIF, "Best Narrative Feature" at the Great Lakes Independent Film Festival, and a special jury prize at the Flyway Film Festival. But LOOP has had a hard time finding an audience and it's been discouraging. I have done my best to market it, getting quality artwork done by talented friends, getting a website, setting up a MySpace, but I've had a hard time bringing everything together.

But now there is Hope. Ted Hope, in fact. When I finished LOOP I began looking for old friends and colleagues to send it to, in what was a grass roots effort to promote the finished film. I met Ted Hope while working on a television series called MONSTERS, where he was the first assistant director. This was in back in the "old skool" NYC Indie days of the late 80s and early 90s. Ted was already a force in independent film when I met him. He was just one of those guys -- he had the "shine" as Stephen King would put it. I just knew he was going to be a great success, and he is. You can read Ted's wiki here.

So, in October of 2007, I started to search on the internet for Ted, and I actually couldn't find him. I found his work, his legacy, his legend, but no contact information. I was finally able to locate him through listings at the 2008 Cannes Marché du Film and through the good graces of his colleague Anne Carey, and sent him a message.

Although it was tough finding Ted, at the end of 2007, this has changed drastically. Ted Hope, a few months ago, saw the need for a revolution. An independent filmmaking revolution, and being the visionary he is, he has fired the first shot. He has started a blog - TRULY FREE FILM which he updates frequently with links and information on how independent filmmakers can work together to get their movies seen, discussed, and promoted. There is information about finding a distributor, or distributing yourself. TRULY FREE FILM is dedicated to bring filmmakers together to create a new infrastructure which will support the new distribution opportunities afforded by the always emerging technology of Web 2.0.

But there are no free lunches. For truly independent film to survive, there has to be work -- hard work -- and there has to be a movement. Finishing your film is the beginning of the process and if you decide to follow the blog and check out the links at TRULY FREE FILM you will see opportunities for screenings, financing, and joining a community dedicated to adapting emerging technologies to keep the art of the indie alive.

Even though it has taken me nearly three weeks to finish this blog, TRULY FREE FILM has energized me.

I have a LOOP website, YouTube site, MySpace site, Twitter, this blog, and probably something I am forgetting. But I could never quite find a way to stitch these disparate promotional vehicles together. Now, TRULY FREE FILM has turned me on to new concepts and promotional strategies.

Are you aware of the Art House Convergence in Salt Lake City, where indie venues are looking to organize and find ways to get independent films -- perhaps your film -- in front of an audience? Are you familiar with Brave New Theaters? The Workbook Project? Hammer to Nail? Indie a Go-Go? I wasn't either.

If you are an indie filmmaker, film lover, or a venue looking to showcase the independent spirit of filmmaking, click right over to the TRULY FREE FILM blog right now and subscribe as a follower. You can't afford not to.

If you subscribe here, you will see the path LOOP takes as it dives into the future.

See ya in the movies! ; )