MicroCinema Scene

By Gary Lumpp, John Oak Dalton, Jason Santo

After a busy Holiday season of watching and reviewing many a Microcinema offering, MicrocinemaScene’s review team has gathered together again for another Reviewer’s Roundtable.  The discussion this time centers around what kind of movies our reviewers would like to see more of on the no-budget scene scene.

GARY:  I’ve always wondered why members of the micro cinema scene don’t take more chances.  While many claim to love the scene, and even stay in it after given a chance to move on to bigger budgets, few seem to want to stretch the boundaries.  Unfortunately all too often if you see a drama, it’ll be about college kids coming to grips with being adults.  Horror movies will most likely feature zombies, vampires, or a guy in a mask killing co-eds.  Micro action flicks won’t have much action, but a lot of Tarantino-esque dialogue.  My question to the other reviewers:  what kind of movies would you like to see micro filmmakers tackle, and in what ways?  For example, I would love to see a horror flick without a serial killer (and yes, I realize I’m guilty of that very offense with my own first project).

JASON:  Gary, I totally see your point in one way, but I do think that if you look hard enough – and that’s if you look really, REALLY hard – you’ll find most genres being covered in decent fashion by a couple producers out there.  Looking for actually funny comedy?  Try some of the Rigged Productions stuff or check out Breakfast With the Colonel.  Looking for real action?  I know the guys at Divergent Thinking and Pirahna Pictures that did Lethal Force would be offended if you said it didn’t deliver in that area.  And horror flicks without serial killers?  I’d say check out Mike Prosser’s The Dividing Hour or Scooter McCrae’s Shatter Dead (which is available at many a Best Buy store).

Alas, yes… these writers and directors are often the exception to the rule because their movies have a lot of soul.  That, more than any one thing that can be categorized, is what is missing from Microcinema work.  Soul.  It’s one thing to love movies and love making movies.  It’s another thing completely to have enough passion to tell a story that others will care about.  Passion informs the efforts of a creative artist.  And most of what we see is the work of people just kind of doing this because it’ll get them somewhere, and not because they actually care about the work.

All this said, I do wonder why more no-budget writer/directors aren’t treating sex with more respect.  T&A is about the extent of which sex is brought up in Microcinema, but it’s one of the most primal instincts we have and it powers so much of what we do.  I’m amazed more people haven’t done some serious work with the subject.

JOHN:  “Serious work on the subject?”  Ah, so many one-liners, so little time.  I think the short answer is you need people willing, at this level, to get naked and also be able to act.  It’s tough, but not impossible.  And although you’ve offered up some good examples, it’s more often harder to take the road less traveled.

JASON: A movie about sex doesn’t even necessarily have to be gratuitous.  A few evenings ago I watched a movie called Exit in Red starring Carre Otis and Mickey Rourke, whose last teaming was in the Zalman King shag-fest Wild Orchid.  The movie was God-awful… just terrible.  But the love scenes were very nicely choreographed and non-exploitive.  They were sexy without showing any flesh.

There seems to be a very American attitude regarding sexual content in Microcinema.  People don’t want to put it in a serious context. Most of what we see in Microcinema are actors and actresses who just drop their gear for a scene and that’s all they were hired for.  Look at the amount of strippers who get cast in these flicks!

GARY:  I agree with what Jason is saying. Even without nudity, sexuality usually gets the short end of the stick (so to speak) on the micro level.  Certain roles tend to exist only because the actor will get naked, and sex is something couples do right before they get killed or go off to the final showdown.  It would be interesting to see a micro producer tackle real relationships - sex included - and see what they bring to the table. 

JOHN:  Myself, I’d like to see more sci-fi movies.  The knock is that you can’t do it at the micro level, but look at Doctor Who; they would take what looked like old detergent bottles spray-painted silver and dangle them on a string in front of a velvet background, and that was about as fancy as it got. Think about it, that show was beloved by people on both sides of the pond and was on for what, thirty years?

JASON: Or look at Mike Conway’s Terrarium.  The majority of that movie is very clever sci-fi and it was done quite on the cheap. Shot on 16mm for about $12, 000, I think.

GARY:  I think both science fiction and horror are two genres that could benefit from new perspectives.  I remember reading on a message board that a director was looking for a way to shoot Hell - the actual place - on no budget.  There were plenty of suggestions, from paper mache’ in the garage to hanging chains from the support beams in the basement.  I wrote in that Hell doesn’t have to be smoke and red stones and torture devices - Hell means lots of different things to different people.  Your grandmother’s broom closet, where she’d lock you in if you were bad.  The attic upstairs where you’d go to hide from The Boogeyman.  The waiting line at the DMV.  So I guess what I’m saying is that I’d like to see someone take the scene in a less literal direction, and maybe explore some new territory instead of covering the same ground we’ve seen over and over already.

JASON: Again, The Dividing Hour offered up a great representation of a kind of purgatory without resorting to cheeseball sets and special effects.  Well… at least until the very end…  Gary’s right on about this. 

JOHN:  I’m kind of sorry Westerns have died out as a genre, after being so huge for so long.  Those sure are cheap to make, but I wonder if people could even connect to that kind of black and white storytelling today since the revisionist Western of the 60s.  And speaking of black and white, good noirs are in short supply.  They have to be as inexpensive costume-wise and FX-wise as most horror, but one thing they do need is a well-plotted script.  And I think that goes back to what Jason has said about effort, passion, and soul.

JASON: Too many producers seem to think film noir is just about shooting in the black and white mode on a camcorder.  They don’t pay any attention to interplay of light and dark either in their visuals or in their written material.  Film noir to a novice moviemaker is nothing but a selling point – an excuse to have a detective as the lead character, to shoot in black and white, and spout chinsy dialogue that’s supposed to be “clever” but comes off as hackneyed and ludicrous. I would love to see someone do something more fun and daring with film noir – something that harkens back to the real tone of that genre and not just something that tries to do a Cliff Notes version of older movies.

As for Westerns, I can’t say I’ve seen anyone really make a try at it, but I kind of dread any attempts.  Considering the resources that need to be acquired, it would be a shame to see them wasted on the kind of half-assed storyline we’ve come to expect in this category.

GARY:  My favorite Westerns were always the ones that didn’t have such black and white storytelling (The Searchers, High Plains Drifter), and I think it’s still a genre that can be used to tell effective stories (the big budget The Missing looks like it might be a step in the right direction).  Unfortunately, if you don’t live in the Midwest or have access to a stable that’s willing to loan you horses for your shoot, it might not be such a cheap alternative for micro producers.

I’d love to see more noir-style pictures - Hall of Mirrors is a great example of telling a dark story with plenty of twists and turns, and I think that’s something that can be done well on the micro level - AND take the story in new directions.

I guess that was my original impetus for starting this discussion:  why do you think it is more micro storytellers don’t take more chances with their movies, and take them in new directions?  All too often the Hollywood formula is followed, and I would think that on this level it would be easier to take the audience somewhere that they’ve never been before.  That’s one of the reasons why I enjoyed the first Evil Dead so much - sure we’re all big Bruce Campbell fans now, but if you watched the movie before he became a cult figure it was clear that his character was a jerk and a wuss, and the blond guy was the "hero."  But halfway through, half the cast is dead - including the guy who was supposed to be the lead.  It turned the story on its head, and not only was the audience unsure of who would survive - or if any of the actually would live through the night - but since we didn’t have the same feelings for the Ash character as we would a traditional hero, it was okay for us to enjoy him getting the crap beat out of him by the forces of evil. 
So while I would love to see more soul and passion in these micro efforts, I’d also love to see someone take more chances and see where they can take a story that’s fresh and new instead of the same ol’, same ol’ that’s been plagueing Hollywood for so long.

JASON: Amen!

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