Don't be a player hater - be a player congratulator!
Couldn’t really come up with a cool image for this. Of course I thought about the Chappelle Show characters for the Haters’ Ball…but that wasn’t very “horror” related. This week I decided to talk about mindset and what I see going on with fans/a lot of the population.
Years ago I heard a story about someone that would go catch crabs with family and they would take a shallow basket to put the crabs in. It sounds odd but apparently that’s all you need. The trick is you have to have a minimum of two crabs in the basket. If there is only one crab it will notice that it can get out and proceed to get out. If you have more than one crab, the others will pull the escaping crab back into the basket. This seems to happen with people as well. If someone is doing well, trying something new or following their dreams…people will tell them they can’t do it or they are crazy for trying it. For artists, this is highly frustrating because we see our visions clearly and want to work towards them. Others just tell you that it can’t be done.
To me this comes down do mindset. Some people have a mindset of scarcity, others have an abundance mentality. I think this is kind of funny in the film business because of the final product. If a movie cost $100 or $200 million to produce the DVD usually cost what? About 20 bucks. Also look at it like this. If you buy DVDs, do you own just one DVD? I really doubt it. If you rent DVDs, do you rent one per year or one per lifetime? No, we rent movies or buy movies all the time. So what is the point of being so negative towards other filmmakers, etc…?
In honor of the the upcoming Tales From Mutantvilleshoot with MVP’s own Muticia the Movie Goddess, the producers at Mutantville Productions thought this would be a good time to take a look at the history of horror hostesses through the ages. It would take a book length essay to properly cover this subject, so for the purpose of this discussion, we’re going to keep it simple. We’ll take a look at the roots of Horror Hostess-dom starting with it’s originator - Vampira, then we’ll take a look at the rise of Elvira into 80′s pop culture stardom, and lastly we’ll visit our good friend and self-made horror hostess extraordinaire – Miko Macabre.
The origins of the horror hostess are as murky as the smoke filled stages they haunt. There is some dispute as to whether the woman named Maila Elizabeth Nurmi was born on December 21, 1921 or on December 11, 1922. What is not in dispute is that she would one day find inspiration in the character of Morticia Addams from Charles Addams’ The Addams Family comic strip and create the persona of Vampira.
(Click “continue reading” to read the rest of the article.)
The name revealed little and the trailer to Super 8 revealed even less. The anticipation has been building for months. All we knew was that Steven Spielberg was producing and J.J.Abrams was writing and directing and the early reports were that it was good – very good. Well the Doctors of Horror at MVP were able to put Super 8 under the microscope and have come back with their own conclusion – not only is Super 8 super good – but it is the best horror film of 2011 so far!
Super 8 started off with a low Friday night gross of $11 million leading analysts to predict a low opening weekend – but word of mouth carried the nostaligia tinted ride straight to number one with a weekend total of $37 million surpassing expectations by almost $5 million.
Super 8 tells the story of a warm Ohio summer in 1979 when a group of adolescent filmmakers set out to win the local film contest with their latest horror film. Little did they know that during the course of shooting their film, they would witness a horrendous train crash and the subsequent military quarantine of the surrounding area – leading them on a journey to get to the root of the mystery. Super 8 stars Kyle Chandler, Elle Fanning, Joel Courtney, Gabriel Basso, Noah Emmerich, Ron Eldard, Riley Griffiths, Ryan Lee and Zach Mills.
In honor of being at Con Carolinas with Brinke Stevens next weekend, we’re featuring “Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama” this week in the Classics Corner. Classic Corner? Really? You maybe asking. I know, I know. This isn’t The Exorcist, Halloween or Nosferatu…but it’s late 80′s horror!
Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama was directed by David DeCoteau and written by Sergi Hasenecz. It stars Andras Jones, Lennea Quigley, Robin Stille and Brinke Stevens! So check out some clips, articles, etc… Enjoy!
Rock star turned filmmaker Rob Zombie shared a look back at some of his filmmaking roots by sharing a link to a video he directed back in the 90′s. Rob posted a link to the Prong video on his official blog this morning.
“Here’s one I directed from way back in the day. This sucker is fifteen years ago. Crap, where does the time go. Prong were a great band and did a whole bunch of shows with White Zombie. I think this was their best line-up with Paul Raven on bass. Wacky low budget video. Enjoy.”
Hello Mutantville! I want to discuss something that helped us out immensely when embarking on our first feature film “C for Chaos.” A few of us had gone to art school to develop our eyes, since of composition, etc… But we hadn’t gone to “Official” film school. We were lucky that Streebo had been studying storytelling since he was young and I had been behind a camera since I was young. Brento had been making and editing movies since he was young. So now that we’ve established that at one point we were all young, we’re ready to move on.
When preparing for “C for Chaos,” we all studied feverishly. We read all the books we could find but another thing was watching movies. I know this sounds like a “Duh” type thing but…we watched them from as if we were making them. Streebo and I would get together and point out camera movement, lighting, pacing, screen directions, composition, coverage, etc… If you really watch and dissect films in this way you can see how different directors can cover similar situations. Some may use more wide angles, some may go in for close ups, etc… Commentary tracks are another great resource. Of course not all commentary tracks are created equal. If you’re a low budget filmmaker then I recommend lower budget movies. Robert Rodriguez has great commentary tracks. Some of his you need a note book and the pause button to keep up. Be sure you keep an open mind when listening to the commentary. You may only get one or two gems, But if it saves you a night of shooting or makes something easier, I’d say that was worth 2 hours of your time. For example, on the commentary for Ronin, he talks about the scene when they’re buying the weapons. They purposefully wet the entire area since they were filming outside, that way if it rained, it wouldn’t mess up their shooting schedule. Either write this stuff down in a journal or file it away in your brain somewhere.
Streebo is a big believer in only watching what you’re filming. So when we shot “C for Chaos” for about 3 years, that’s pretty much all Streebo watched. Thanks to places like Netflix he showed me horror films from all over the world. This can give you a lot of insight into the genre.
So before, while and after making your film, study as many films as possible. Notice I said study and Not watch. Watch is passive. Study is active.
Below Please leave comments about films with good commentaries for other filmmakers to go and study! Thanks!
Posted 2 years, 1 month ago at 9:08 am. 4 comments
From The Dig by J. Riddle: Roger Corman has been called a lot of things. Shrewd. Miserly. Maverick. He’s been given titles like King of the Cult Film, King of the B-Movies, and the Pope of Pop Cinema. The last is probably the most appropriate, and not just because it sounds cool and Corman says he likes it. For over 50 years, Corman’s particular breed of low-budget, action-oriented, socially conscious exploitation fare has graced the cinema, to the persistent delight of audiences and, in turn, to his significant profit. He’s brought his talents to bear on every genre under the sun, and has even invented a few of his own. He has a finely-tuned eye for talent–it’s only a little exaggeration to say it would be easier to list the big name Hollywood directors, writers, actors of recent decades who didn’t get their start with Corman than those who did.
Hop over to Youtube and take a look at Italian Maestro Mario Bava’s amazing science fiction effort that went on to inspire later works such as Ridley Scott’s Alien and The X-Men movie.
missclassics00 writes -
“Ok and now for My first film uploaded on this new channel I bring everyone a classic Italian Sci-Fi Horror film from 1965 intitled (Terrore nello spazio) or as it became known in America as (Planet of the Vampires).
This film is a true classic and aside from all the goofs and cheese of that era, one must respect it for it’s wonderfully creepy atmosphere and the great use of fog and camera work that makes the low budget effects seem not so horrible.
The plot I must say for 65 in a movie of this genre was pretty tightly contructed and is free of alot of the cliches common to that era of filmmaking.
So now please enjoy this Mario Bava directed classic and more info and facts to be included in later portions of this film.”
Posted 2 years, 5 months ago at 11:33 pm. Add a comment
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Welcome to Mutantville Productions MVP Blog. Join Streebo, Brento, Geo & the rest of the Mutantville Players as they set sail on the high seas of guerrilla filmmaking in their ongoing quest to bring you the finest in genre entertainment.
From The Dig by J. Riddle: Roger Corman has been called a lot of things. Shrewd. Miserly. Maverick. He’s been given titles like King of the Cult Film, King of the B-Movies, and the Pope of Pop Cinema. The last is probably the most appropriate, and not just because it sounds cool and Corman says he likes it. For over 50 years, Corman’s particular breed of low-budget, action-oriented, socially conscious exploitation fare has graced the cinema, to the persistent delight of audiences and, in turn, to his significant profit. He’s brought his talents to bear on every genre under the sun, and has even invented a few of his own. He has a finely-tuned eye for talent–it’s only a little exaggeration to say it would be easier to list the big name Hollywood directors, writers, actors of recent decades who didn’t get their start with Corman than those who did.
