Commercialized Common Sense: Producing Guerilla Features

by Chris Watson

I've produced 7 films in the world of microcinema where I also played a big part in their creation as well, but ultimately I have directed only a few of them. Two are in post-production now, two have distribution and are currently available, one has distribution with a release date pending, one was purchased outright from me, and one is as good as dead due to an amateur director. My biggest suggestion to anyone producing a no-budget film is to always direct it yourself. Realistically, you should do as much as possible yourself.

Below are just a few notes and suggestions I've learned from the films I've done. Some are common knowledge, some arguable, but they all stem from my opinion based on my experiences--take from it what you wish to.

THE SCRIPT

You really can't do anything without an idea. The first thing you have to come up with is something that can be done for nothing. That means no fancy locations or no scenes that require a ton of extras. In the past, I've had other people write a script, or two, when I was going for quantity over quality. Even after explaining this to them they would still write in fancy locations, crazy kills/stunts, or scenes that need a lot of extras. The best thing you can do is to write the script yourself. No one knows what you have access to better than you. The mass producers of micro-features usually hire folks to write scripts for them. They pay anywhere from nothing to thousands. Besides the fact you won't find a good writer for these fees, you're wasting money that could be going into your supposed no-budget project. Writing a script that fits your actors (if using amateurs try to keep the amount of lines down) and budget can save you a vast amount of headache and work in the long run.

You also need to make sure you have something that people will want to see. When I want to do a project that would be guaranteed distribution, I write in plenty of tits and gore. I was on a panel once with a director who argued this saying that you don't need tits and gore to get distribution--he had never had a movie picked up for distribution and still hasn't to this day. It's worth noting that these are if I want "guaranteed distribution". When I directed my latest feature, DEAD IN LOVE, I just tried to write the best "doable" script I could. I have no idea if it will get distribution, but I did what I wanted to do and I think we have a really good movie as a finished product--I can't honestly say that for the rest of the movies I've been involved with.

You should know what people want to see. I produced a no budget "horror" flick that I tried to get tits, gore, and B-movie names. Unfortunately, the director--who claims to have done over 40 movies, none of which have been picked up for distribution--did not like any of the names I threw at him, did not want to do nudity, and cheated the gore so that essentially he could do the movie for $5. The end result was a well-shot movie that was boring as hell and had absolutely no commercial value. Not only wasn't it picked it up for distribution, but I honestly couldn't even give copies away. You can create whatever project you think is best, but what's the purpose of making a movie, even one considered "art", if no one can see it? Hands down the worst movie I've been involved with-SLAUGHTER PARTY--is also the biggest moneymaker. Why? It certainly wasn't high concept, but it was smartly produced with its budget in mind--a midget running around killing scantily clad chicks. Simple, but effective, whether you like it or not. It's not anything most people would usually be proud of, but it received a nice DVD release and played on Time Warner's pay-per-view.

RAISING THE MONEY

Like practically all of the no-budget guys, I have never had a "real" budget. Occasionally, you come across someone who once had a budget back in the '80's video boom that is now trying to make it appear as if they're still making movies with thousand dollar budgets, but those filmmakers, like Tim Ritter, are few and far between. Below are a few ways to raise money, all of which have been said many times by others, and probably far better:

1. Friends and family. With friends and family you tend to get money that they don't expect to see again. Granted, you have to have rich enough friends and family so that they aren't kicking themselves and making you feel guilty when they need money and blew all they had on your failed (maybe never finished) backyard epic. If you can't handle the guilt, skip this one.

2. Random rich people. There are stories of people getting money from people who are rich--dentists, doctors, lawyers, etc. Many of these backers contribute as potential tax write-offs. Others do it as an investment, just like they would if purchasing Wal-Mart stock, with the intent of seeing a return of profit. These people are harder to find, unless you're a socializing addict or come from a rich family and can network easily in those social circles. It's also important to note that one should never utter the word "investment" when approaching initial backers unless you can instantly provide an Investment Prospectus for the potential client. You just might find yourself nailed with federal charges brought on by the Securities and Exchanges Commission for illegal and unethical marketing practices.

3. Random middle class. These are the people I usually get when I can actually find investors. Usually, these are average folk who easily become excited at the notion of having a credit on a movie of mine because of the wild stories I have (and trust me, I have them). I don't get these people by pitching them--they pitch me. I just put the word out that I'm looking for small investors for a small movie. It helps when the movie has distribution ahead of time.

4. Ebay. This is something that came about in the last couple of years--people auctioning off producer credits-and the cons are just as big as the pros. I'm not sure what the charm of this is unless it's a credit you can actually use on your resume. It's never good to have your name on a bad movie, especially one without proper distribution. Would you be happy if your name was on an undistributed SLAUGHTER PART? I wouldn't, and I'd be even more pissed off if I paid $250 for it. Nonetheless, there are a pocketful of people who will pay to do no work on a terrible movie. Why not take advantage of the opportunity these people offer? Some will put that credit to use--a friend of mine puts them all on his resume and they are mentioned in articles about him as if my work and me never actually existed. It's worth it to him. Others just like telling their friends they were involved in making a movie. I heard of one guy who had a scrapbook of the movie we put his name on. To some that's a ridiculous notion. It wasn't to me until I produced one feature where I found myself performing most of the technical jobs, including directing the majority of the finished product. I received no credit for the work I did other than producing, and there's twelve other producers who never stepped foot on set all sharing the only credit I have. I could have paid a couple hundred bucks (gas was more than this I'm sure) and gotten the same credit that I slaved and stressed over.

The "investors", for the most part, are looking for credit without having to do the work. I had a guy at my day job invest in DEAD IN LOVE at a very crucial time. I loved him for it. Often, scenes arose where we needed extras. Despite the fact he lived just blocks away from most of the locations, and had put up such a substantial sum, he never showed. He didn't even want to put in the effort to show up on set once to help out standing in the background. It's good in that we received no investor interference, but someone who does a lot of work on features, as a producer, can feel cheated at times due to a lack of support.

5. Fundraisers. Recently, my partners and I have been filming ourselves trying to raise money in various fashions for LONG ROAD TO INDEPENDENCE. There are tons of ideas here--movie screenings of past films, a high school car wash (preferably with hot chicks in little clothing), holding concerts, etc. On one occasion we went to a book fair and walked around with a homeless guy wearing a sign stating, "Support Independent Cinema," and a cup for the money. We actually raised a few bucks. One of the Chiodo Brothers gave us a $1. The theory is that the more you do, the more money you'll raise. In reality, you will end up putting so much work into some of these that you might as well just get a part time job and put that money into your movie.

In the end, you just have to decide how bad you want it. If you want to make the film bad enough, go get that money. For ZOMBIEGEDDON, I used my own money. Then I cut as many corners as I could financially. I even offered a college a filmmaking course where the students would get hands-on experience. Not only did we get a free location and cheap housing, but I got paid to teach the course. I also wrote the script to fit what we had--police car, pyrotechnic, cameos, tigers, college, radio station and so on--that gave a no budget movie some production value it didn't deserve. Since ZOMBIEGEDDON, I haven't spent a dime of my own money on any of the "horror" movies. Although, I did spend some of my own money on DEAD IN LOVE, a romantic comedy that I'm very proud of and actually feel safe showing a mainstream audience.

THE CAST

When I write scripts I usually write with specific actors in mind. If you're trying to get a "name", you have to take into consideration their position. For instance, I would not ask Tony Todd (Platoon, Candyman, Final Destination) to do SLAUGHTER PARTY. It could only hurt his career. I did ask him to do DEAD IN LOVE, which evolved into a very nice indie romantic comedy that I knew would not hurt his career. Because of this, I feel confident I can approach Tony with another project in the future.

Even if you know someone, it doesn't mean you should offer them a part in your movie. SLAUGHTER PARTY was about a midget killing half-naked chicks--who do you approach for crap like that? I went with porn stars--Seymore Butts and Ron Jeremy. Personally, I think they had more to do with us getting on pay-per-view than anything else, but I could be wrong. I had met Ron at a Fangoria convention when I needed voice work for ZOMBIEGEDDON. Ron was pleasant, did his thing, and asked to be in other flicks. Then there's Seymore Butts aka Adam Glasser. I had tried to get a hold of Adam for the longest time due to my fondness for his tv show, "Family Business". I asked all the porn people I knew, did lots of internet research and never found him during ZOMBIEGEDDON. When SLAUGHTER PARTY came around I looked him up again hoping for the chance that I could come across something and was lucky enough to track him down. With both guys, they're extremely busy so I cast both in roles that could be shot in a day. I've found that if you go much over a day with someone who doesn't need the money (both are apparently filthy rich, Ron famously not spending any of his), they'll start wanting cash. So I cast the "names" in smaller roles that can be shot fast with people looking to establish themselves, who "need it more", in the bigger roles. The "names" are happy and both are willing to come back to do another one.

I've seen some people miscast a name actor just because they can get them. It doesn't do you any good if people are saying, "(insert actor) was fucking horrible in that movie," when they talk about your movie.

A friend of mine tried to do the "all-star B-movie cast" for his film. He offered the roles to the B-movie people and then they arrived on set and he had nothing to show them--no sets, props, crew, etc. These guys were all used to "decent" sized B-movies at the very least. One guy quit on the spot, another one waited until they saw the movie and demanded to be cut out. Even if this filmmaker does eventually get his act together, he's going to have a hard time convincing these folks to work with him again.

And then there's the people that don't take time to properly cast. I completely understand having trouble finding people in Kansas, a state smack dab in the middle of nowhere. But if you live in New York or Los Angeles, there's no excuse. I recently finished playing dual roles (only changing clothes) in a movie in LA. If I had been warned beforehand, then I could have easily phoned a number of actors I've networked with to jump right in, and they would have been happy to do so. That leads to another thing...

I worked with a producer last year who didn't even have the phone numbers of the actors who were appearing in the movie he was currently filming. Obviously, having actor's phone number while filming is VERY important, but what about after filming is done? It's not uncommon for producers and directors to delete the numbers, but I do my best to keep the ones who were, at the very least, professional. While there's some, like Joe Estevez, who I just enjoy working with, on top of the fact he's extremely professional, there are others that have great character looks that will only work for certain projects. Doing a biker movie? Get William Smith. Doing a stripper movie? Julie Strain. Need a tough looking crony? Robert Z'Dar. A martial arts movie? Richard Norton. By maintaining your established connections you are effectively eliminating the unfortunate hassle of having to track people down and minimizing your pre-production time on future projects. Those actors can also save your ass. I had an actor not show up because he was at a party (I'm not kidding) on DEAD IN LOVE. Since we were in LA, we were able to get a professional television actor to come in and do it for nothing at the last minute. Note: The partying actor was a non-SAG actor that had appeared briefly in other films of mine so I tried to help him out by putting him in the first SAG picture I had done in years--the SAG actors were all great and professional.

There's also "the hook" you can do with casting, which can help you when trying to sell your movie. With SLAUGHTER PARTY I went for the sleaze angle by casting porn and softcore stars. In EVIL EVER AFTER we tried to go with a mixture by blending the porn names with those that B-horror fanatics would recognize. With DEAD IN LOVE I tried to go with as mainstream a cast as I could. One of my regulars stopped talking to me because I wouldn't cast them in it--they were known for too many bad films and truthfully were not up to the acting standards that film had going for it.

ZOMBIEGEDDON is probably the movie of mine people talk about the most when it comes to casting. I had produced (not directed as many think) a movie called MOD DAZE, which we tried to do in Kansas. The problem was there just weren't enough reliable people who had a vested interest--the few that we did find ended up being in ZOMBIEGEDDON. So, I wasn't really casting to have a great cast, but simply casting to have people that would show up. In the end, the casting was all people talked about with the movie so we later added Linnea Quigley, Brinke Stevens, Tom Savini, and I still can't help but laugh as we added the radio show callers that consisted primarily of B-movie directors. However, that became our hook and we ran with it. The interest was high, which was good for the distribution and initial release. A friend of mine was looking for a hook as he prepared his own no budget horror films. He eventually found it in wrestling stars. It makes his movies different from the pack, he gets automatic interest because of their respective fanbases, and people know they're going to get a mixture of action and horror in his films. It was a smart marketing idea, in my opinion.

If you're making a horror movie with no budget, you have no reason to go beyond the porn and z-movie stars that everyone else uses. However, if you're trying to make something with good acting, you're going to have to go SAG. People say it's costly, but it's worth it. The big cost, for some, is the deposit. I did DEAD IN LOVE SAG and we had a deposit of about $1,800. I happened to get a call from someone as I went to collect debts from people and told them what I was looking for. Because it was a deposit, I was able to easily get the money--it's one of the few places where you can use money and are guaranteed to get it back. After that it was just whatever we negotiated with the actors. The big difference was the actors. They were not only as professional as they come--on time and prepared--but they were just plain nice as hell. The difference between SAG actors--people like Joshua Leonard, Kristin Minter, Tony Todd, Margaret O'Brien--was enormous. The performances were great and they didn't kill the experience. I'm getting ready to direct a non-sag movie and I'm dreading it, now knowing the difference it makes.

PRE-PRODUCTION

Here are some things you can do in pre-production to make everything go a little smoother:

1. When casting, have back up actors. If you're in an area where you can collect headshots from actors, keep even the ones you don't like. You never know when a flakey actor can save your butt when someone else doesn't show up.

2. You should have a notebook (or whatever works for you) to keep everything organized. When I did stuff in Kansas, there was a special blue notebook that people knew to watch out for and go to when they needed any information (such as what flights people are on, when they were scheduled to arrive, what we were filming on any given day). If someone screws up, they obviously didn't check it. This comes in handy when you're doing something with only a few people working. The director shouldn't have to go to the notebook and point out when someone is arriving a week from now.

3. Organize your props into a single bucket container (you can get plenty of organizing tools at Target or Wal-Mart type places). Have another one for random tools you might need. Have another one for wardrobe...you get the idea. You'll need a truck to cart all this stuff around in.

4. Keeping with the buckets, you'll also need plenty of cleaners and things like plastic and old carpet to avoid making messes in the first place. Hit the 99 cent store and stock up on these because you ALWAYS need them, even on romantic comedies. Stick them all in one properly labeled container.

5. Do your schedule. Set it up so you can shoot an actor, or location, or anything, quickly. If you know someone is troubled, get them shot out first. If a location is costly, get the hell out of there. Remember, "make sure the first two days of filming you can throw away".

6. Have back up locations for when you get kicked out. It happens to everyone.

7. Scout your locations. Make sure there's plenty of parking. Your budget will skyrocket if you have to pay for cars to park. Make sure your location fits in all ways. If it's supposed to be in the middle of the desert and you're shooting in the middle of the city, be prepared for city sounds. If trains go by when scouting, they will go by when shooting. If planes constantly fly over, you'll have the same problem when shooting. If it's close to the airport, this is guaranteed. Find out what time the sun goes down if you're counting on natural light.

As for finding locations, that's pretty simple, but a lot of producers are scared of this task. I tried bringing on some producers on DEAD IN LOVE and I gave them one job to start off--ask locations if we can film there. They seemed scared shitless and never approached a single owner, even the ones I gave them leads on. I took over and I think that's the biggest production value of the movie, next to actors, is all the great locations we gained access to. All I did was ask around and get the word out. You may get turned down, even laughed at, but eventually you'll find your place.

8. Plan to shoot exteriors early in the morning. You do this because there's less people to call you in and less cops working--apparently criminals aren't as likely to strike at 5am. I did this constantly on DEAD IN LOVE, stealing shots all over Los Angeles without a hitch. Then actors started complaining about getting up so early so we set the next shoot at 10am. Guess what happened? We got kicked out. Actors then complained about people being around and making noise and getting kicked out. Actors are actors for a reason. Do what you have to and just get it in the can.

9. Plan food for people. Food may be the most important thing. On DEAD IN LOVE we only shot for a couple hours a day max, so we rarely had more than snacks. On the days we knew we were going to have a full day (such as filming out a cameo in a day) we had hamburgers or chicken sandwiches or whatever the budget allowed that day . Of course, no one ate anything other than a few snacks but at least they can't honestly say we didn't have meals on the full workdays. On a side note, actors and crew will always say the food sucks--so get used to it now. This also allows the producers to live off of leftovers for months.

10. Do a read through. We did several on DEAD IN LOVE, yet I still had a conversation with one of the crew members where he said, "maybe you should have had some read through's." The good side is that you learn who's reliable right away. I fired the lead actor of DEAD IN LOVE because he was flakey during a read through and I ended up extremely happy with his eventual replacement.

11. Test your cast and crew. Set up lunch meetings/wardrobe checks/readings for actors to see if they constantly show up late or prove to be flakey. Find something that each of your crew members can do in pre-production so you can see how reliable they are. If they fail, get rid of them--they're not going to change.

PRODUCTION

1. Respect the time of others. It's important for the future projects not to keep people waiting around. When I'm on a first-timer's project, I expect mistakes and plan to forgive for a lot of mistakes. Recently, I was on set for a director's third or fourth film. I had two days on the shoot. The first day I showed up at the time requested and the crew was all present, but soon afterward everyone left to pick up supplies and things that should have been taken care of before even scheduling the shoot. I proceeded to sit around the 100-degree desert for two hours before anyone came back. This other actor was stuck there with me, consistently saying how stupid we were for taking off work to be there. The other actor ended up not showing up again. I showed up my second day and did one scene after I first arrived, but the crew soon left again to take care of another production task that should have been completed days before. Again, I was left there by myself for about two hours. I played with an umbrella.

You need to move quickly. Some people like to take breaks. That is wasting their time. They are not there to take breaks. They are there to make a movie. This isn't to say you don't have a break--just don't let the ten minute break turn into two hours. Some people make movies for "fun". They'll spend four hours socializing and one hour filming. I like to get my stuff done. I recently shot a project with an actor that I have a great deal of respect for and has done a number of movies. He stated how much he admired that we shot the production like it was a "real" movie and that we didn't "fuck around like a lot of other young people" he works with. We didn't waste his time and he's eager to work with us again.

2. Take care of your locations. We had a group of effects artists who acted like the three stooges. They couldn't figure out why their expensive, fully rigged blood machine wouldn't spurt up in the air like my $5 air mattress pump did. They started looking at my pump and sprayed blood all over the location. To top it off, they didn't help clean it up. I ended up going in on my day off with another guy to attempt to clean up the stained location. We got booted that day.

If you damage something then you're expected to pay for it-plain and simple. I always ask the owners to clear out wherever we're filming of any valuables just to be safe. Sometimes this freaks them out but it's better to be safe than sorry.

On ZOMBIEGEDDON we did the head explosion in a separate location to avoid trouble with the college. SLAUGHTER PARTY we moved to the desert. EVIL EVER AFTER we tried to film at cast/crew's homes, but I think that caused more problems than it was worth. DEAD IN LOVE we filmed everywhere BUT the homes of cast/crew. The businesses seemed happy with us on that one. No blood makes it easier to keep locations happy.

3. People are going to try to take your money. Do NOT let them. You have to be strong. I had a fight coordinator buy a bunch of unauthorized stuff and then hit me up for money to pay for them after the fact. I told him he wouldn't get a dime above what I had said he'd get. I still listen to him complain to this day, but I told him his budget and he screwed up by doing something unauthorized. You'll get many variations of this so be careful. However, you also have to be ready for paying for your screw-ups. If you got a location with no parking and the only choice is paying for everyone's parking, then that's what you have to do. It's different when it's your fault.

4. Get what you need. When I first started, all I wanted to do is keep people happy. As you've heard from some of the examples above (changing start times for example), people are never happy. If someone likes to be unhappy, they're going to find something to be unhappy about.

I worked with a director who was getting yelled at by an actor. The actor was throwing a fit for the first time. I was thinking in my head, "Let's cut out this, this, and this, and then we'll be done with this jerk." To his credit, the director stuck to his guns and put up with the yelling actor and got what he wanted. It's sad that you have to put up with that kind of nonsense to get what you want but it seems to be common. I had similar problems on DEAD IN LOVE where everyone just wants to be done with the project and have something to show their friends--good or not, they don't seem to care. I had to re-shoot portions of the movie for various reasons and it lead to some real hard decisions about whether it was worth putting up with certain people again. The frustrating part about that movie is how close it is to being perfect (for me, at least) but I did everything in my power to get it there--I'm at least satisfied with myself although frustrated with others.

5. Don't pay people up front. They can seem nice, honest, and honorable, and maybe they've even put in a week on the movie. Maybe they're your best friend. But as soon as they have that cash in hand, it's over and they're done. You now have nothing to hold over their heads. We did a movie for less than a thousand and a cast member wanted to pay someone to edit. They foolishly gave someone who worked on our crew $500 up front to edit. Of course, that unethical shyster took the money and didn't do the job. The "editor" didn't seem to care that he was pocketing more than we could afford or that he was preventing people from possibly putting up more money for the movie, or even future movies for that matter.

6. Fire people. This one's going to be arguable, but hear me out. On one movie I wanted to fire this guy, but everyone told me we shouldn't (even though they didn't like him and thought he was trouble). Most people who've made a movie know that when one person is negative it spreads like a virus. Then you start having a cast and crew of negative people. If I had fired him like I wanted, would things be different? I'll never know on that one, but I can only imagine. Since then I haven't listened to people when it comes to canning people. I think we've fired at least one person on each movie for three movies running. I don't regret a single one and with each one the set environment suddenly became perfectly harmonious. I know one director who thought about firing a couple of people but didn't, and they ended up stealing his movie--literally. Had he gone ahead and done it, he'd at least have a movie to show for it. Don't be afraid to do this, no matter how hard it is. In the end, it's worth it, but you'll have to learn how to judge the situation. Some people just weren't meant to work their asses off for no money.

7. Stay on schedule. Plain and simply, this is the easiest way to prevent going over budget. Even if it's only one scene that you don't get on the right day. This could mean keeping an actor over an extra day or bringing back the effects guy. Get the movie in the can, no matter what you have to do to get it there. If you have a good producer then this should be no problem. For producers, I will warn you of this; don't try to be too nice to your director. I tried to give one director full freedom creatively and what spawned out was the shoot from hell. He made everything disorganized, we shot a ton of footage we didn't need, and most of the cast hated him for it. The end result were a mountain of unnecessary costs that could have been avoided by me simply doing my job.

8. Don't be afraid to change things on set. Woody Allen goes in an hour before shooting to prep his shoots and for a good reason. Scripts/locations/actors, etc change on a daily basis. That means that more times than not, your storyboards will be worthless. You can spend tons of times doing worthless work or you can do something that'll actually help the movie. My favorite story on this is when we were filming my first directorial "effort". I had storyboards all ready and handed them to the director of photography as we walked onto the location. He looked at them for a second and then folded it back up. He pointed out that a wall had been added since we location scouted and it changed everything on the storyboards. Sure enough, where we were filming had been under construction the week before. On that note...

9. Do storyboards. This kind of negates the above note but here is why: It makes the cast feel more comfortable (unless they've directed project themselves numerous times before). Since I have no talent in drawing, I prefer to use "x"'s as the people and arrows showing where they and the camera move. Some people spend money on a real artist but that's a total waste at the micro level.

10. Follow the shot list. If I ever had enough crewmembers, I wouldn't hesitate to assign one person to do nothing other than check off this list. I've been on more than a few sets where they're all prepared with a shot list or storyboard and no one looks at them. While you can get away with the no storyboards, all you have to do is leave off one important shot to screw everything else up in post-production. Even though you're pushed for time, you need to make sure you got all your shots.

11. Shoot nudity first. It's very common that someone who is to do topless will bail out when it's time to shoot the nudity. That's why you ALWAYS shoot the nudity on their first day. If they don't do it, go with your replacement. There's ALWAYS another actor around the corner.

12. As I mentioned earlier, film shots you can throw away your first few days. It's odd to think someone as criticized as Donald G. Jackson could offer such great advice but this is something I learned from him. On ZOMBIEGEDDON, we just jumped in there and started filming, knocking out one thing after another. If I had to do it again, we would shoot simple things first (exteriors and other 2nd unit stuff). Everything we shot in those first couple of days was just terrible and most ended up cut from the final film (I think they might appears in the deleted scenes on the dvd). Shooting throwaway material would have given a chance to get the crew on the same page instead of meeting and jumping right into filming. These days I make them go through many boring meetings before we step one foot on set.

POST-PRODUCTION

1. One big mistake is giving out copies to cast and crew as soon as the when the movie is finished editing rather then waiting for commercial distribution. In the past, I'd heard about this one no-budget producer who refused to pass out copies and at the time I thought he was absurd. Then I had a movie where I handed out burned DVDs to some cast and crew. One actor who requested a copy told us it was for his reel. Soon enough, we had an email from someone else stating that he received a copy of the movie when, at the time, the producers didn't even have copies. Then copies were released to other unrelated third parties, and eventually found their way onto bootlegging sites. My main problem with this is that was an extremely rough cut and a year later when the final version was release people were talking about bootleg instead of the final release. We eventually found out that practically everyone who received those pre-release copies had bootlegged the movie. Since then, I don't advise ever releasing copies until the movie's release date.

2. Be careful when you promote the movie. Keep it under wraps until close to the movie's commercial release date. If you promote before then you are wasting time and money. Early on, there was one person who liked how we promoted ZOMBIEGEDDON and thought there was mass interest in the film simply because we went to conventions. At conventions, tables usually cost money, and anything like postcards or posters obviously cost money. So this guy would go to all these conventions before his movie was even done. He ended up spending more money on the conventions than the movie itself, and eventually interest waned.

3. Get the movie distribution. If you wrote something that's horror and has tits and gore then you won't have any problem at all finding distribution no matter how bad it is. If you went another route, it actually depends on how good your film looks/sounds and what sellable value it has (whether people will want to see it based on a name or idea, etc). For instance, I'm taking my romantic comedy to film festivals to "build a poster". Most people do this but it also allows me the chance to find out if it sucks or not. If the response is great, I can set up a small theatrical run. If the response is mediocre then I'll just try and get it a good DVD deal. If it sucks, I will feel lucky if anyone takes it. It's tougher to market, and the distribution field isn't as narrow for the non-horror material. In reality you have to be honest with yourself. Why would I send ZOMBIEGEDDON to Warner brothers? I wouldn't waste my money. I would try for the long shots of Lion's Gate (they release a ton of bad movies even though they release a lot of great ones), Maverick, York and so on. If they shoot me down, then I'd move to the Brain Damage, Sub Rosa, Tempe, and Troma level. If they all turned me down then it'd be time to quit and find a new focus in life (note: that did happen, all of them turning me down for the one that I mentioned earlier where the director for MINDS OF TERROR didn't want name/tits/gore).

POST-DISTRIBUTION

If it did get distribution, then you have to figure out what to do next. Micro-movies are not easy to continuing working in and a lot of people just make sequels to their bad movies. I can't imagine making ZOMBIEGEDDON 2-6--what a waste of time. Some even spend their entire lives doing nothing but sequels to the one idea they can't get enough of. They're not making money off of it; they just apparently love that idea. What if you don't want to do that? What if your head is just filled with excellent ideas? Well, here's what I did. Once ZOMBIEGEDDON made the rounds, Troma wanted more projects, so I made other films with them. The budgets have gone up with each one. The Troma family has even been kind enough to help out with non-Troma projects too (like the romantic comedy, which has no hope of ever being a Troma film). While doing those, other companies would occasionally pop up looking for material. We produced EVIL EVER AFTER as a for hire for U.K.-based Cryptkeeper Films. I haven't had to spend a dime on a horror movie since ZOMBIEGEDDON, and ironically I haven't seen a dime from its DVD release but in the long run the project is paying off. I've learned that most distribution companies don't care if your movies are good; they care if they make money. If you don't gear your movies towards what will sell then keep doing those fund-raisers and searching for investors so you can make what you want.

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Chris Watson--Writer/Director/Producer

After graduating from Pittsburg State University, Chris Watson began working on his first film, MOB DAZE. Watson co-wrote and produced the comedy, directed by Dave Thomas, and starring Robert Z'Dar and Joe Estevez. The following year he made his directorial debut with the low-budget flick ZOMBIEGEDDON, which he also wrote, produced, and acted in. Based on the success of this film, Watson was soon tapped to produce the films SLAUGHTER PARTY, MINDS OF TERROR, and EVIL EVER AFTER. In addition, Watson has worked on a handful of films by other directors in various capacities, including casting director, screenwriter, and second unit director. Watson has even appeared as himself in the hit Showtime series "Family Business" and Troma's film-production how-to MAKE YOUR OWN DAMN MOVIE!. Watson is currently in post-production on his second directorial feature, DEAD IN LOVE, starring Kristin Minter, Richard Norton, Eric Edwards and Academy Award Winner Margaret O'Brien.

You can contact Chris through:
MySpace
or e-mail: wildrangeproductions(at)yahoo.com

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