A few years ago I heard a local (to St. Louis) film maker named Eric Stanze give a talk at a university. At the time he was at work on a feature called “Ice from the Sun”. He had already produced three or four feature films and, perhaps sadly, seemed to have no inkling of how bad they were.
Stanze’s movies tend to be about zombies who rip people’s heads off. He got the financing for his first film from a local cable TV company in outstate Missouri. They didn’t give him much but then, he didn’t come up (from what I could tell from clips he showed) with much of a movie.
Despite this, they had all gotten distribution, going directly to video stores. The trick was that they weren’t in the U.S.; he said his most recent movie had gone directly to five countries but he was unsure of which ones; evidently their are store chains in places such as the Philippines which are willing to distribute a no-name American film with the expectation that people will rent a movie because it is American even though they have never heard of anyone connected with it.
I have also appeared in a couple of independent productions made by Doveed Linder, another St. Louis independent film maker with rather more polished skills.
Whatever such independent artists may lack in technical experitise, artistic vision or taste, they tend to be geniuses at networking. Linder got hundreds of people to work on his film, most of them for free. The exceptions were a few professionals who worked in the local advertising industry. There are dozens and dozens of suburbs in St. Louis and, through persistence, he was able to find a couple which were willing to lend the use of police cars and ambulances for a short subject he made.
The short subject was based on a story by Stephen King, and was shot at Washington University, which has a picture perfect ambience of tree-lined walks, English College Gothic buildings, etc. The university rents itself out as a shooting location for a fee. Stephen King allows independent film makers to use his short stories for a one dollar fee.
Many of the people working on these productions were friends of his, or friends or friends. I became acquainted with Linder through a nonprofit group which gives pro bono legal and accounting services to artists. After giving him some simple consultations, he asked me back to work as an extra. I was one of hundreds.
Some of the actors in his films are people who are relatively serious about becoming actors professionally but are unwilling or unable to give up their day jobs and move to the coast. There is a kind of community of people who turn up whenever a studio shoots a production locally and try out for postions as extras or bit players. Some of these same people like to audition for shows such as Survivor.
A western Linder made had a story which took place over the course of ten years or more. As a result, the town went through two sheriffs.
The first was a longtime voice-over professionals in local radio commercials. I remember when he used to be the local “dialing for dollars” guy in the 70s; a local TV station ran old movies in the afternoon and he would introduce them and then, at commercial breaks, phone people at random to ask them to guess how much was in the station jackpot.
The second sheriff was the owner of the local comedy club franchise. He is also the pitchman for a local tire store chain.
There is also a pool of local little theater enthusiasts, drama and film students, and other people who are looking for things to list on their resumes. Mostly, I think, he was able to get the cooperation of people like me who thought that it would be interesting to watch a movie be made, and to be able to tell people later that they were in one.
There are enough aspiring independent film makers around today that a whole system of film festivals exist. Numerous independents make small movies–small either in the sense that they are short subjects, or that they are made on a minimal budget–and shop them around to the festivals in the hope they will be “discovered” and be able to negotiate the financing for a bigger independent film.
Tim Burton’s highly enjoyable film Ed Wood, cited above, gives a picture of the kind of ingenuity and stamina an independent film maker sometimes needs. Wood was farcically bad as a director and a screen writer, but he was a genius at salesmanship.
Also of interest is the documentary American Movie. It details two years in the life of a cemetery janitor who is struggling to complete the latest in a series of independent horror movies despite a near-total lack of funds and a startling lack of talent or expertise. Some people I know who have seen it describe the movie as extremely funny. I found it sad. Either way, it has the lurid fascination of a really awful car wreck you can’t help but slow down to look at.