  |
||||
Isabelle Da More Interviews Jake BilinskiLike Mother, Like Son: Our oldest son "Morgan" who is 13, recently did a project for school. His topic of choice was independent films, as he himself dreams of one day being a film maker and is already chasing his dream. He asked for a video camera for x mas. We are getting him one, but due to our budget it's only a digital hi 8, but heck it's a start. Anyways......I'm rambling. For his film project Morgan interviewed some fellow indie film makers (with my help...good ole mom, hehe). And thus some interviews were spawned. Here is the interview with Jake Bilinski, an independant filmmaker whos most recent film is "Foxxy Madonna VS the Black Death" Morgan: Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Paradigm – I jumped off the deep end here, made it after my freshman year at college at the age of 18. I had just co-founded a film club at the university (Murray State University in KY) – M.I.F.A. (Murray Independent Filmmakers’ Association) – which I’m told still runs today. My discontent stemmed from the majority of the people around me talking about making a movie for months, but never writing or shooting ANYTHING. I said screw it… I’m making something this summer on my own. Paradigm is a short feature (around 70 minutes) about a guy who develops insomnia and starts seeing strange things – figures who may or may not actually be there, horrifying premonitions of disasters to come, etc. When he starts investigating these visions, tragedies begin happening to those around him. It is revealed that he is treading into an alternate realm of existence that can only be seen when the body is in a specific physical/mental state (i.e. insomnia). I wrote it at college, shot in the summer of 2000 with friends back home in Evansville, IN. Shooting was done on standard 8mm video, and we had to work around everyone’s work schedules (and my having surgery that summer). It took all 3 months of summer and till Christmas break for me to edit it. 37 West – I’d had a bit of a lull in making anything aside from some small experiments and easy-to-discard shorts. I got burned out of college and took a semester off, re-enrolling at IU in Bloomington in fall 2001. I set the goal that the next summer I’d make a follow up feature. I spent that first semester writing the script and the second in pre production and casting. This movie tells the tale of a drifter who passes through an anonymous ghost town somewhere in Middle America late one night, and buries a chest in the wilderness. He proceeds to the nearest tavern and over several shots of whiskey, starts spinning stories of nearby hidden treasure. After he leaves, the bartender and his friend hear on the radio about a bank heist a few towns over and put two and two together. The next day three friends on a cross-country road trip pass through town as their car breaks down. Simultaneously, an ominous man shows up asking questions about his stolen money, mentioning a description of the drifter’s car and if anyone has seen him. And he’s being tailed by a cop. Everyone in the town learns about the buried chest and a frantic race for the cash begins, in which we learn how far and to what violent ends they’re willing to go to get rich. This was a step up as I shot on miniDV. Shooting took 2 ½ weeks at the beginning of summer 2002. I spent the next year editing it (school, like work, sorta gets in the way). It’s the largest project I’ve done as it had several locations and the final cut was 106 minutes. Since all the summer jobs were snagged those first couple weeks we were filming, I had all sorts of free time (but no money!). Some friends of mine were youth pastors for the middle school and high school groups at this local church and wanted some videos to promote their group activities. So I made a handful of goofy, immature parody shorts (a John Woo-style gunfight in the woods between two rival assassins to promote an upcoming paintball event, a Men in Black 2 parody when the youth pastor was leaving for a new job in a different city, a Spy Kids type adventure spoof and a Crocodile Hunter parody, etc). It was therapeutic as I could be stupid and still film something – a sort of welcome catharsis after 37 West, which covered some dark material. It was tough though, as since it was for kids and in a church I had to be very PG…most things I write/make tend to be R-rated =) Concentric – I’d been dying to make something that following summer but was scurrying to graduate. Which meant summer school. Which meant no time for a project. Then I had the idea to get a faculty sponsor and create my own independent studies project. I approached a film professor who had liked my work thus far and proposed I make a movie. I showed her a short script and she liked it a lot, and said she’d sign on, but but said it wasn’t enough, that I needed to do another project as well. So my “class” was to go write, make 2 movies and keep a journal of the experience. Two birds with one stone – credit hours and I still get to make a movie… score! So I started co-writing Concentric with a friend of mine. We shot it in summer 2003 in a little over a month. It’s a short feature (56 minutes) about three friends in college who get mixed up in a deal gone wrong. It’s told through flashbacks from the perspective of Brent, who is being told by his best friend Zeke that Lana (Zeke’s girlfriend) stole a load of cash from him, cash that he owes to his drug dealer. Lana (who Brent has a serious crush on despite that she’s his best friend’s girl) claims that Zeke beat her up and is trying to frame her, presumably to save his own hide. Brent has to choose who to believe, and ultimately, who will live and who will die. I wanted to tell a sort of seedy, modern, neo-film noir tale set in college. I also wanted to experiment a lot with color and camera aesthetics. While I don’t feel I hit the mark with this, Concentric still for some reason remains one of my favorite accomplishments. It’s just my kinda flick. Mime – This was shot IMMEDIATELY after Concentric in summer 2003. It was the script I showed to my faculty sponsor that got the OK for the independent studies. I wrote it back at Murray, in 1999 or 2000 (I forget) and shelved it. I decided that this was the time to make it, so I reworked a new draft and off we went. It’s a dark comedy about a mime who’s put on trial for pretending to murder someone. This is totally my style of humor – irreverent and absurdly off the wall (but played seriously). This was a breezy, energetic shoot. We shot it in two days. I reworked a cut to show at the Rock the Water Tower festival in Louisville in summer 2005, and just this past year re-edited a director’s cut for the DVD (final version is 30 minutes). So… I’ve kind of edited this movie three times now. I’m happy with the final version, and still think the movie’s a lot of fun. I get compliments on it quite a bit, so I guess the humor translates well. At the very least, it’s my wife’s favorite of the flicks I’ve made! Shade of Grey – I made a New Year’s resolution in 2006 – I’d make another movie. I’d taken a hiatus since graduating, getting married and enjoying being a newlywed, and now it was time to get back in the game. I started writing the script in March 2006 and shot that August. Preproduction was intense on this one. Lots of auditions and casting calls and meeting with people and finding costumes, props, catering, etc, etc. The story is an intense, dark character drama that takes place in a single motel room. Everyone who passes in and out of it is intricately connected as we revisit them in various stages of their lives. The entire feature (which is a short feature, a little under 80 minutes) was shot in a SINGLE weekend. It was grueling. I rolled the first take at 3pm on Friday and stopped shooting to sleep for the FIRST TIME at 7am Sunday morning. 40 hours of shooting… straight. We were shooting again before noon, shot till 10pm Sunday night. I slept all the next day. I’m still in post on this… Foxxy Madonna vs The Black Death – This was done in October 2006 right after Shade of Grey. It was done for the National Film Challenge, which is a 48 hour film competition. I’d done the 48 Hour Film Fest competition that summer in Louisville on a friend of mine’s project and had a blast. You’re given a genre, prop, character and line of dialogue you have to use and you have 48 hours (a weekend) to make a movie around that – write, shoot, edit and turn it in. I thought since I’d done it before and also shot Shade of Grey (a feature) in a weekend, this would be cake… and fun! And a means to promote Shade of Grey, too. So I assembled a team and we shot in Indy. Prop = chalkboard, character = Sam Pinkerton, a preacher, genre = spy, line of dialogue = “Throw cold water on it!” So Foxxy Madonna was born – the tale of a superbad renegade preacher agent pitted against her rival, the villainous The Black Death. I’d been watching trailers for Grindhouse (that Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino double feature) and always loved 70s exploitation cinema. I thought we HAVE to make something like that! I teamed up with Tao Films for it and we all had a blast. There were over 200 films submitted from teams nationwide (technically worldwide, a few came from other countries) and Foxxy made it to the top 15. It got to show at Filmapalooza 2007 in Albuquerque, NM and won “Best Use of Spy Genre.” Honestly I thought it’d win something more, but at least it got something. I spent the next several months churning out a MUCHLY improved director’s cut, working very closely with Tao Films. I recut and reworked the visuals, expanded the deleted footage and the flick ballooned from 8 mins to 15 mins. We stripped ALL the audio and re-recorded all the dialogue and made a fresh sound FX track and got a revamped/improved score. We’re working on manufacturing the DVD (which is done) now. Despite how easy I thought it would be, I was dumb enough to make half the flick an action scene… a shootout WITH choreographed fights no less. That weekend we got no sleep. Was up all Friday night writing, started shooting Saturday AM with no rest. Shot all day and night, edited Sunday, slept off and on, shot more Sunday, edited through the night and mailed it off RIGHT at the cutoff for FedEx (5pm Monday). Tired… very tired… Right… so maybe I should answer your other questions.
JB: I’m obsessed with stories. And movies are the ultimate form of storytelling to me. You can hear a story, you can see a story, you can interpret a story from subtext. Cinema combines all the forms into one medium. Plus it has the duality of being art and entertainment, which is intriguing (and controversial). I’ve always been fascinated by movies. I was always an “indoors” kid, preferring to stay in and watch a movie as opposed to playing sports or whatever outside. Translation = I was a little geeky in school, and not very popular. I can remember staying up to watch the Academy Awards every year since I was a kid. Something about that world just appealed to me. In school, if we had to give a presentation to the class, I always asked the teacher if I could make a video at home and show it in class. I never liked talking in front of people, and it afforded me more creativity. I’d edit in music and cut things into the video… sometimes that got me in trouble =) I just couldn’t stray away from it. When I was a senior in high school (17 years old), I took an advanced placement English course for college credit. Our final project was to create our own project expanding on anything we’d studied that year. I was fascinated with Shakespeare – Hamlet in particular (still my favorite story). So I made a 15 minute condensed version of Hamlet with high school kids sporting guns instead of swords (the Columbine shootings happened soon thereafter and I sort of got a bit of controversy, but all panned out well). I got an A and won a prize (like 3rd place I think?) and got a strong ovation from my class. I thought hey… this was fun, never felt like work, and people responded to it. That memory sort of clung to me and I started considering being a filmmaker. When I got to Murray State I was a Fine Arts major. I’d transitioned from wanting to be an animator (like Disney or Anime) to wanting to be a comic book artist. I took all art classes for the most part. But I took an introduction to cinematography course too. We started watching all sorts of films I’d never heard of. Films by Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Frederico Fellini, David Lynch. This stuff blew my mind. Till that point I was mostly into movies that had stuff that blew up. Suddenly I see film as an art form. Totally changed my outlook on everything. I knew I wanted to be a filmmaker.
JB: Three way tie – time, money, and resources. Making films when you aren’t sustaining income from it (at the indie level) is HARD. Means you’re working 40 hours a week at your job and writing/shooting/editing an additional 40 or more, but for no pay (most of the time). It’s hard to find good, willing, talented people to collaborate or work with that are within close range who GET cinema and want to really be involved and share your vision… again, without pay. Finding funding/support can be very difficult. People will either perk up interest or grow very confused when you tell them you’re a filmmaker and you’re making a movie (around here anyway). It’s an easy conversation starter, but it’s hard to end that conversation with who you’re talking to saying “yeah I can help” or “sure you can use this for free” or “yeah, I have money… want some?” And at some point your body will crash and remind you that you need sleep. That’s always when you realize you don’t have nearly enough done to be satisfied. So it’s an unrestful sleep. Then you have to get up and go to work and wait all day to get home and try again. Patience isn’t a virtue I’ve learned yet =) Sometimes it helps in the money area to take small paying gigs. I occasionally shoot weddings, graduations, training videos and music videos for local bands.
JB: Wow… thank you for those very kind words! That’s a tough one to answer. The initial response is “you just do them.” But it’s not that simple. The easiest thing to keep your film from ever getting made is to tell yourself you’ll make it when the time’s right. By this I mean when you get the $$$ or when you can get this location you have to have or when winter rolls around, etc. The time might never be “right.” It’s very easy to make excuses to postpone, even if your intentions are great. I would never suggest rushing out and making a film just to get it done and have it be compromised. But there’s always a creative solution. So the story takes place in a cabin in the woods in winter. You can still tell the same tale in a suburb home in the summer. It’s all about the characters and the plot. So you don’t have a camera and can’t afford to buy or rent one. Do you know someone who has a decent camera? Can you get them to be involved? If not, find someone who has one and will let you use it. If you broadcast you’re making a flick, you WILL attract people. There’s a strong chance that someone will have, or knows someone who has whatever you’re looking for. For Shade of Grey I posted calls for not only cast, but crew online. I contacted a friend from college to work on it. Turns out he owned a great camera and wasn’t doing anything with it at the time. One of my actresses I cast had a boyfriend who had sound equipment. It boils down to communication, determination and creative solutions. 90% of directing is problem solving. If things aren’t working out as you planned, on set you have to keep moving so sometimes you have to find a way to make what you have in front of you work, even if it’s not what you had originally hoped for. There’s always a way. Preparation and pre production is the same – and a good precursor to honing your abilities in the moment when on set.
JB: To be perfectly honest, I continue to struggle with that hurdle myself. I think it’s always a good idea to be realistic and have creative backup plans. I’ve got several scripts I’m working on or that are written that I want to shoot one day, but I don’t have the means for them right now. Everything I’ve made has actually been written with the intent of going right into production with it. So I write assuming I have nothing and start examining what I DO have, and potentially (and realistically) can get access to. Like for 37 West – I needed a ghost town type street. I live in southern Indiana. I knew I could find SOMETHING that would work if I dug around. For the locations of the bar and the Inn lobby, I passed this abandoned Mexican restaurant building one day with a big FOR LEASE sign. I called the guy and asked what he’d charge for me to use on a day by day basis (estimating I’d need 3-5 days). He said $100 a day. I said “how about $50?” and he said “okay.” He wasn’t making any $$$ of it just sitting there, and I’d be there for such a short time it was worth his while for me to take advantage. I know when you’re young $50 a day is a lot… but compared to what I could’ve spent, that’s a steal. I needed guns - $15 a pop for an airsoft gun at Walmart or online (looks real enough on camera). That’s a deal. Also, for Concentric I was shooting while at college and had access to anywhere on campus, my apartment, my actors’ apartments, etc. So I wrote a story set in college using those locations. Mime was a courtroom comedy. I was in college and IU has a mock trial courtroom for the law department. I was a student – got to use it free. For Shade of Grey I knew I had to keep it cheap. One location, one weekend, actors had to be local (since I’m not paying them). You set up parameters to work within. Sometimes the more boundaries you give yourself help. You can’t do a sci fi action extravaganza with 30 foot aliens without money, so you set guidelines and it can sort of force creative thought, as you have to think along the lines “this is what I have, how do I make it work?” Use what you have, but think outside yourself. Your friends, family, acquaintances. I posted casting calls and crew calls online, like I said. If you have a cool script and get access to a camera, the rest CAN be easy. People will want to be involved and you just reiterate that there is no pay. If people won’t do it without pay, let them walk. Someone will. People want to be a part of something they like. Sometimes you discover help comes out of the woodwork if you just keep broadcasting “I’m making a movie” and actually DO it.
JB: I love them all so much, it’s hard to pick. I’m a sucker for a slick, savvy action flick, but I also love comedy, however trite or intelligent. I’m a hopeless romantic so I relish a good love story, but I also get fueled by a dark tragedy, or any tale of revenge or vengeance. I love art films, foreign films, silent films, old films, new films. It’s so generic to categorize something in it (because it’s so broad), but I love dramas. I love bad films, campy films, grindhouse cinema, B-movies and summer blockbusters. However… I do have a soft spot: horror (which tends to surprise people when they see my work). For me there’s nothing like a good fright, a slow-tension builder, or an over the top gore-fest. Can’t help it. I’m a sucker for horror flicks in any regard. So I guess there’s your answer =)
JB: Hopefully the rundowns I gave above in #2 help with this one, also. Foxxy was for fun and I never thought it would do as well as it has. It got us all onto IMDB (Internet Movie Data Base, www.imdb.com – the online movie credit bible) and has some small level of recognition online. We all had such a blast on it and I’m very proud of it (specifically the director’s cut version). I consider it my homage to 70s cinema, and that whole exploitation era. I see the 48 hour projects and everyone tries to be edgy and make a quirky comedy or drama, or a quick horror flick (that never delivers), or some sort of love story. I wanted to make a friggin action extravaganza (for that type of scale) because I thought no one had the nerve to try that. I thought in my own way we’d be pushing the boundaries. Plus I figured we’d have a better shot at winning something if we made it cool and fun without looking like we were “trying too hard.” Shade of Grey at the moment is my baby. I always intended it to be the movie that got me the opportunity to make my first legit project. No cramming shoots in weekends, no fitting it in between work. I want funding and resources and time to make a solid flick. My thought is that Shade of Grey might show people potential of what can be done, as I accomplished it with VERY limited resources and time (at least in principal photography). As far as insight to the movie, it actually is a pretty important tale to me. It’s short and nothing drastically original, but it does paint a vivid picture. As I was writing it I fell in love with each and every one of the characters. They became like family to me. Oddly enough, the story started as a dark comedy about random unrelated events that happen in a hotel room, stemming from my long nights working at a campus hotel in college (and a very overactive imagination). As I wrote I became very attached to certain characters and wanted to bring them back. Before I knew it the story took its own shape and dropped the comedy and I had this dark, intense character piece. It’s about family and the struggle to define that seemingly simple term. It’s about choices and consequence, about relationships and humanity. The camera never leaves the room until one key point, so the tale is from the perspective of the room. Like it’s a character, watching, all-knowing. It silently knows the secrets of these people. I wanted it to be very voyeuristic and sort of tell a simple tale in a complex fashion and set it all in one place (like Hitchcock, who’s one of my heroes). My dual intent was that if I had to work and wasn’t paying people, then I had a better shot of attracting interest (cast/crew) if the shooting commitment was only for ONE weekend. No one would have to take off work and I wouldn’t have to juggle around several peoples’ work schedules. Easiest solution was ONE location. I approached the whole thing, from the script stage on, as a personal challenge. Could I do this? So I kept everything feasible and realistically possible, given what I had access to or thought I could get, but also tried to make everything complex within those boundaries. I think it’s a film that’s easy to relate to as the characters sort of speak a lot of the things we leave unspoken.
JB: Always! =) I’m actually writing a script at the moment for a horror anthology project I am potentially involved in. A guy I know is assembling this feature film comprised of 3 short horror tales, each one is its own script, each one has its own director. I’m planning to write and direct one of the 3 stories. Sort of like a Tales From The Darkside, Tales From the Crypt, 3 Extremes thing (IMDB any of those for reference). Supposed to be an homage to those old black and white B movies, but with a modern twist and without the campy feel. If all goes according to plan we’ll be shooting very early in 2008. Beyond that, I’m juggling possibilities in my head. I have several feature (3 to be exact) and short scripts finished and ready to go, and several more I’m in the middle of writing that I’d like to do. But I have a list of ideas I have yet to do anything with that I’d also like to make next as well. Right now I think it’s all about not just finishing Shade of Grey, but putting it out there and seeing what it can’t do for me. As I said, I always intended it to be a sort of gateway film, in that I want it to get me the chance to do the NEXT one on a much larger scale. And you know… make enough of a profit that I don’t have to juggle it with a full time job =) M: Where do your brilliant ideas for your films come from? JB: Aw shucks Morgan… thank you for the compliment! That’s tough to pinpoint. It’s equal parts from the world around me and my overactive imagination. I get a LOT of ideas from dreams. I try to write down what I can remember from dreams when I wake up, if they’re impacting to me. Paradigm actually came from a stretch of insomnia I had (mildly). I’d fall asleep in my Psychology class while taking notes and while I was dozed off my hand kept writing. I’d go read this jibber jabber and it freaked me out. Plus when I was really tired sometimes I swear I’d see things out of the corner of my eye that weren’t there (a freaky little hallucinogenic side effect of being REALLY tired). So I wrote a story about that. I watch a lot of movies and always think that something is cool but I’d have done something different. I try to work that in sometimes. I get a lot of ideas from conversations with friends and acquaintances. One great way of getting ideas is to eavesdrop. I used to love to go to Denny’s or some all night restaurant late at night with a notebook and sit and drink coffee for hours, just listening. Let my ears take in bits of conversation from people around me. Think about who these people are and what they do, etc. Then I start getting ideas for characters and a story and even dialogue. Sometimes I’ll build things around a single line of dialogue, sometimes one character I come up with. Or I’ll be like “I want to do a revenge story” and just run with it. Shade of Grey actually sort of ended up being a hypothetical “what-if” dramatized story about my biological parents deciding to give me up for adoption (to an extent, anyway… the real story I know nothing about – I was a baby). More than anything I just try to observe a lot and often get lost in daydreams. Before I know it, crap just pops in my mind.
JB: Never ever take no for an answer. The only person who can keep your movie from getting made is you. If someone won’t let you use a location, that’s fine. Accept their “no” but don’t tell yourself “no, the movie won’t happen” – go find another location. It’s trial and error a lot. Learn to accept rejection and understand that it’s never final. For every ten people that tell you no, one will say yes. That’s the only thing that will ultimately matter in regards to the movie. And down the road for every person who likes your movie there will be someone who doesn’t. That’s fine. Difference of opinion is what makes it all so interesting and exciting. If everyone thought the same thing, the world would be friggin boring and we’d have nothing to talk about. So keep determined and don’t lose the spark. The most important thing is that you keep a passion and drive going for your film. If you don’t believe in it or care about it, how can you expect anyone else to? This mentality can be very contagious, and others will recognize it. That’s how you draw people to the project, because we all have a need to be a part of something that matters. So make your film matter. It takes endurance, as the longer a project takes, the more trying it can be to stay enthusiastic about it. You have to work at it sometimes. Remember, as a director YOU set the pace. If you lose your cool, you can expect a domino effect of similar instability among your cast and crew. And watch as many movies as you can. You can’t really immerse yourself in an art until you’ve studied and experienced it. And make sure to step outside of your comfort zone. Try watching things you think you won’t like (for example, if you don’t like horror movies go ahead and watch some anyway… but I have a feeling knowing your parents, you probably like horror too). You’d be surprised what you can take away from the stuff you don’t at first like. Open minds/opinions are sort of demanded by art sometimes. Read Isabelle Da Morte's review of Foxxy Madonna VS The Black Death |
||||
Copyright 2007 Micro-Shock Cinema. All original content is a copyright of Micro-Shock. All content derived from other sources are copyright of their respective owners and are used for review purposes in accordance to the "fair usage" terms of the US copyright act.