Friday, November 30, 2007

Fantastique






-----I've realized lately that I've been a bit resistant to just making a straight ahead horror picture. I'd probably make vastly more money doing it though. And it would be much easier in many ways than doing a sci-fi flick.

In fact, I've been sitting on an excellent horror script a friend wrote. It's totally shootable as-is. It may even have the requisite number of "jump scares" to satisfy distributors. It would be cheap and easy to shoot. My friend really should try to get a bigger company with a real budget to shoot the picture first, but if not we could totally shoot it in 20 days and it would be good.

But we wouldn't be creating a whole new world. And I think I need that.

We've been trying to write a mission statement. Normally I think mission statements are kinda silly. My first inclination was to make it something like "Make movies that don't suck." But after fighting with various mission statements I thought of "Independent Cinema Fantastique".

Ted Raimi said that practically nobody makes independent sci-fi. And I guess that's really what I'd like to be doing. It would be simply delightful to have a budget of, oh say, $2 million to make a movie (even though we keep being told that any amount less than $2 million ought to be $15 thousand). But no matter what, I'm just more interested in a fantastique world than a normal one.

Perhaps if I shot horror pictures like New York was this weird distorted steampunk version of itself then I'd be interested in making a horror picture.

Actually, now that I think of it... that sounds like a great idea.

Incidentally, in English we seem to use the term "cinema fantastique" a bit differently than the French do. I think the French tend to think of cinema fantastique as more horror and not sci-fi, but I'm not sure.

And it's not to say I won't try to do straight up horror, I'm just thinkin' out loud and concludin' and suchly.

6 comments:

Chance Shirley said...

If you have a good horror script laying around that you aren't going to shoot, I'd be happy to take it off your hands.

As for your desire to "create a world," I can dig it. Even though it's been a pain at times, I've enjoyed creating a low-rent, corporate version of Mars. It'd be a blast to do a sci-fi movie with some actual money and a decent-sized art department.

Andrew Bellware said...

I just wanna make movies that look as look as Immortel (but with a plot.)
http://www.immortel-lefilm.com/immortel_flash-640.html

Anonymous said...

Cinéma fantastique can be anywhere from comic books (The Crow, Hellblazer etc.) to sci-fi (Blade Runner, Brazil, Dr. Who). Gore, horror and shock cinema are new definitions to cinéma fantastique, but I would definitely include them.

As far as (dare I say) "selling out" to make money on an easy jump-scare horror film, do it. Many great directors have made their initial budgets from blockbuster horror films, only to go on to make masterpieces with the money they made on the first soul-less venture.

Actors do the same thing. Can't blame a gal if she has to eat and pay rent. There's always room for another soul-fulfilling sci-fi indie project.

But: Have fun with it. make it your own, churn it out and move on to better, more artistically fulfilling projects. (that's what I keep telling myself anyway....).

hope that helps,


Satu
myspace.com/satu

Andrew Bellware said...

Well, I'll certainly be making it my own. I mean, gratuitous lighting has to come from somewhere. ;-) But we'll see. We also have a vampire huntress script getting prepped (presumably... ahem... Mac? You there?).
I want to start shooting whatever it is that's our next picture on March 1.
Of course, if we do that our sales reps will insist on having a teaser cut together for the Cannes Film Market in May...

Anonymous said...

Vampires huh... that can be tricky. You can have a beautiful artistic vision in mind and someone else on the shoot can have an exploitative cheapened thriller idea, then the whole thing turns out wrong.

just be clear about what you want with the whole crew and cast.... something tells me you would be.

people tend to be on the same page, but reading a different book altogether:)


Satu Rautaharju

Andrew Bellware said...

And vampires can soooo quickly become alien androids in the development process.
This we know from experience.
;-)