Eat my shorts -
why short films are
a waste of time and money

Indie Film producer Peter Broderick talks tough

 

" When film makers call me up and say 'We've got 30 thousand to make a short', I usually say
is there any way you could make it 70 minutes long. Because if it's 70 minutes long,
it can go to film festivals, critics can see it, it can win awards, it could get distribution, and all those things.
I think shorts can be great as a learning experience, but sometimes, the difference between making a short and making a feature isn't that great in terms of effort, but the opportunities are so much better."


US Indie film producer Peter Broderick is a return visitor to our shores.
"Last time I was here I went on the Milford and Routeburn tracks, and this time I'm not going to have that great experience again, I'm sorry to say."
Broderick was here late last year as a guest speaker at the SPADA (Screen Producers and Directors Association) annual conference. His area of expertise is the ultra-low budget feature film, currently a hot topic within the New Zealand film industry. He wrote a series of ground breaking articles for Film Maker magazine in 1993, focussing on Law of Gravity, The Living End and El Mariachi, Clerks, and a number of other films.
"We printed the production budgets of those films and did detailed production histories of them. Those articles were the catalyst for a wave of no budget production in the US. When I wrote the second series of articles I called up film makers and said we're going to do a follow-up, and did they see the first series. and they aid 'Seen the first series? We decided to make our film based on reading the first series.'
One thing that I want to say about how things have changed; in the late 70s and 80s, David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch, John Sayles, Gus Van Sant, Wayne Wang, Victor Nunez all started making very low budget films, but because it was only a film every two years or maybe every year, people thought this was just an abberration, that it wasn't a model that anyone can follow. The thing that changed in the 90's, people said well, listen, El Mariachi, Laws Of Gravity, Living End, all made in one year, all made for under $45,000, all got festival response, national and international distribution, and the film makers were able to make movies following that.

I think that's the change, that the ultra low budget thing has been there for a while, but it just hasn't been quite recognised as a serious alternative for people. With these three or four films, people saw the budgets, and said, yeh, we get the parameters. if we go out and say what resources do we have? With El Mariachi Robert Rodrieguiz said he had a school bus, a dog, a small town, a few other things, and within the framework of those resources, he wrote the script, and I think that's one of the things that's unique about a lot of these no budget projects. They start with their resources and then they write the script."

Broderick also has a close association with the Sundance Film Festival, the leading American festival devoted to Independent film making. He has recently been involved in setting up Next Wave Films, to distribute finishing funds to indie film makers with partially complete films. It's not just focussed on the US, however.

"Peter Jackson is one of our advisors, along with Atom Egoyan, Neil Jordan, Kevin Smith, and so on. With Next Wave, the idea was not to have a US indie support network, but to find the most talented new film makers from around the world, working in English, so I really hope that in the first group of films, there'll be a film from New Zealand, a film from Canada, a film from Australia. I'm very optimistic, as i see ultra low budget film making spread around the world. Love and Other Catastrophies is one of the more recent Australian examples. Peter Jackson's first film Bad Taste, it's origins were very low budget, outside the conventional structures of support. I think that impulse is out there"

What are the pros and cons of the low budget feature?
"It's very hard work. The idea of making a film for no money, which is essentially what this is, is a daunting prospect. One of the differences between the US and Canada, Australia, and New Zealand is that there is no funding available for first time film makers to make a movie, so they don't have a government alternative, and as hard as it might be to do it this way, it may be the only way for them. In the case of a country where there is support from government funding, I think there are pros and cons, in that certain movies that ultra low budget film makers might want to make might not be acceptable in terms of their content, they might be too outrageous or too provocative for normal funding bodies. When you're making a movie for $25,000, you have total creative freedom. You don't have any money, but there's nobody you're answering to, there's no one you've promised to make a movie a certain way. You're just creating it.

In the US this year (1997), by my estimate, there will be about a thousand indie films will be made. I mean truly independent, just financed out of nowhere, and of those movies, I guess that 80% of them are being made for under $200,000. I've seen films in the last few months made for $15,000. What's happening more and more, and I see this as quite encouraging, is people are starting on video, and transferring to film later, and the opportunity that creates for film makers is if they haven't had a lot of experience working with actors, they can shoot 15 or 30 takes of a scene, they could use improvisation, they could use lots of things that they couldn't possibly afford to do on film. So I think starting on video, because it lowers the costs from the front end, is exciting because it gives more people access to the possibility of making a movie. And if the thing is good enough, one way or another, they're gonna find the resources to finish it eventually."

In New Zealand, our feature films may end up looking very good, thanks to our skilled technicians, but can often be let down in other areas I asked Peter what should we be concentrating on.

"I think good production values are not the key. I think good stories and unique movies and good acting and some passion for making the movie; to me no budget films that succeed feel original, they don't feel like a genre film made on a lower budget. In many cases they come out of peoples personal experience, for movies that people have to make, not just pragmatically make. If that's true, then production values don't matter very much.

My friend Amy Taubin, who's a critic for the Village Voice, when we watched Clerks on the big screen, said 'gee this is the first independent film I can hear better that I can see', and I think that's true. I think you're going to see more and more cases where there will be lower production values,and more emphasis on story and risk taking. In a situation where somebody will write a script and they will go to a film commission, (and I'm not criticising government funding here) and the film commission will say no we don't want to fund that script, and that person will go away and write another script and come back.

In the US, where there is nowhere to go for funding, people write a script and say we're going to do this either on a Cadillac budget or a Volkswagen budget, but one way or another we're going to do it. And I think that determination to make that movie, particularly if it's a movie that people feel some kind of passionate connection to themselves makes a huge difference. So, when people are writing first features, because they think it's marketable, or there is an audience out there for it. I think those movies have a much harder time than someone who makes a movie about a part of the world that they know and experiences that they've had that are new to people. That theres an authenticity, a strong voice there. To me, that's way more important than production values."

"I have very strong views about short films. I think that shorts are a great way for people to practise their film making and get better at it, but I think in most cases they're not great ways for people to be discovered and have opportunities to make more movies. So, when film makers call me up and say 'We've got 30 thousand to make a short', I usually say is there any way you could make it 70 minutes long. Because if it's 70 minutes long, it can go to film festivals, critics can see it, it can win awards, it could get distribution, and all those things."

Keep in mind here, that short films funded by the NZ Film Commission currently come in at around $100,000.

"With shorts, you can win first prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and have just as much trouble the following year raising money to do your feature, as you would if you'd never made your short. So, I think shorts can be great as a learning experience, but sometimes, the difference between making a short and making a feature isn't that great in terms of effort, but the opportunities are so much better."
Peter McLennan


contact Next Wave Films, 2510 7th Street, Suite E, Santa Monica, California 90405, USA
or paradigm@earthlink.net
Try The Next Wave Films website which has lots of useful information and advice.
On the local front, check out Larry Parr's no budget feature scheme, www.kahukura.co.nz

This interview was done in 1998 for Pavement but was never published, due to space restrictions.