REMEMBERING SLASHER HOUSE

7 years ago almost to the Day I had just sat down to rest after a day of pre production on my first 'professional' short film 'Before The Dawn'. Me and the producer had sat back and finally got round to watching Darren Lynn Bousman's Saw 2 on DVD. As we watched it I was reminded of an idea. The idea was a joke more than anything, but I though 'what if a bunch of serial killers were trapped in a house with one girl'. It seemed like a one note quip at the time and I doodled a few characters one day in class and then kind of forgot about it till that night.

After everyone left I couldn't sleep, and I started to think about how I could turn that little joke idea into something serious and feasible. The result of course was Slasher House and I sat and wrote the first draft in about 2 days. I didn't hold back and wrote something with the intention of selling it to a studio should the chance ever arise. I once again sat and did some character sketches, mostly for myself and then I left it. 

Over the next couple of years it came up in various conversations, and at one point I looked at involving a separate writer to Polish it up, but it just never really panned out. It wasn't till I sat down to make my first No Budget feature and was about to start shooting that our original writer/producer on Creepsville said, 

"Why are trying to make a 20 odd location, dim lit movie, shot at night, on location movie, when you have the perfect low budget script?" 

"Which one?" I asked

"Slasher House" He said and I thought, 'Shit I totally forgot about that'. 

Of course we were about to start shooting Creepsville at the time and so that was my full focus, but all the way through the shoot, the thought stuck with me. 'I'm gonna make Slasher House'. 

On January 1st 2010, much to everyones hung over dismay (One of the perks of being a workaholic is not having time for hangovers) I called the first pre production meeting on Slasher House, we went over the script and then over the next few months I went away and redrafted the whole thing, changed some characters around until I had what I felt to be a well rounded script that had all the Slasher conventions in it. 

At this point to tell the story in any detail would result in a kind of The Lord of the Rings epic which I simply don't want to go into for various reasons, so let me sum it up. 

In Mid July 2010 we landed on the Isle Of Mann and begin to shoot Slasher House, what began here was to be the single most simultaneously destructive and character building experience of my life. Friends were made, friends were lost, peoples loyalties were strained and everyone came out of it, for better or for worse, a different person. 

Almost 3 years since that day I now sit here writing this, to give me a chance to think about it all, because today sees the film out there in the world on DVD and this a testament to the people (all of them) who set foot onto the set of this film or supported it by donating money, time or something else. It would not have been the same film without you. 

So if you want to support a true grass roots indie production 

BUY IT :

And if you wish to see us make another.

DONATE HERE :

Thanks to everyone who supported us thus far. 

MJ

Its Only Business

The biggest problem with this world and the reason we're all in this fucking shit to begin with is because "Its Only Business" has become an excuse to do whatever we want and treat people however we want and feel as if this somehow fucking justifies ignoring common human decency. 

I have done a lot of 'favours' for people, for friends, most of the time at my own personal expense, on good faith that I will be remembered next time round and then they dare utter the fucking words 'Its just business' when they decide that they've slummed it with me enough. Or worse they will move on to the next freebie giving sucker or worse still move on to the guy who costs £20 less.

You can tell me not to take it personally, but fucking hell, I am my business, Me, And I go above and beyond to deliver. 

I understand the need to try and save money and cut costs, but for what its worth Loyalty and human decency comes in at being a tad more valuable in my eyes. 

But then again what did I expect? "Its Only Business". Right?

MJ

FILM FESTIVALS : PAY TO PLAY?

I've never understood film festivals charging to submit a film, ever. I can understand paying a fee once your film is accepted. But outside of that I have always been dubious as to why filmmakers (especially low budget ones) break their accounts to get their films finished then find themselves at the end with a fucking ridiculous bill to get their films shown or in a lot of cases... not. 

It makes little sense to me that you would pay for something that you are not guaranteed to be involved in and even then it makes fucking little sense at that. You are giving a festival content to show, to attract custom and ticket sales, and your paying for the liberty too? 

Heres the kicker though, a lot of festivals pay for higher profile filmmakers to join them, cover their expenses, their hotels, their meals in some cases. Where do you think that money comes from? Sure a little here and there for sponsorship, but the simple fact is John Smith who made 'Night Of The Screaming Gekomen' who is still paying off £25,000 of credit card debt is sat on his todd the night of the fest eating a pot noodle and wondering if one day 10 years from now he'll be able to get his credit score back up enough to make another movie, is footing the bill.

The sad thing is I saw this start to happen about 10 years ago with bands, paying to get on a bill. PAY TO PLAY. But the sad thing is that at least they paid and actually got the exposure here, the little known filmmakers get pushed out. Which makes sense, don't get me wrong. You want your best acts on. But if we're going down this route, why are the lesser knowns footing the bill?  As always though the film industry has always been about a decade behind the music industry, which is baffling in its own right, but I digress. 

I'm not saying this applied to every single festival, but fuck it does to A LOT of 'em. It's not on and no one questions it and I gotta wonder. Why? Because this is not the way it should be and the way I see it, is that we as filmmakers are here to to make entertainment not to be exploited. 

Look this is just my opinion, but you have to agree there is a certain amount of logic here. I think festivals are a good, or even great, thing both fee'd and non fee'd, But like I say, I see a flaw in here and quite a serious one that I feel very few people question, Including myself. Until now. 

MJ

PITFALLS OF ACHIEVEMENT

We quite often equate success with being respected and appreciated. We see Achievement as something that would be rewarded. As an artist or in fact a person in any other profession, you would expect to work hard and reap the benefits. 


See about 15 years ago, maybe less maybe more depending on wether you do or do not count my humble beginnings helping my school friends out making Slasher Movies on a home camcorder when I was 15, I have worked, for the most part, pretty fucking hard at what I do and let me tell you its not something that falls naturally into my lap. I was never good at it (I'm not saying I am now, just better than I was) but fuck I worked hard, for a long time to make sure that I could work to professional standard, and that for me has been the biggest and more importantly is still the biggest journey I face on my road to being what I hope to one day deem a successful artist in my chosen medium. In this case referring to Horror Movies, but of course I can equally apply this notion to my band Subject 7, or many other things that have done over the years.

It seemS however that people very quickly can choose to ignore the fact that you worked hard, at one point I was working three jobs, trying to set up a company attending university FULL FUCKING TIME!! and I think people lose sight of that and just choose to see the end result and view that as Luck. I'm coming to a point here as working around a lot of students this weekend I came to realise that there is one thing that we are lied to about for most of our lives. Especially when working in the creative industries and that is that others will respect you and appreciate it if you work hard, if you make something of yourself. 

Now hold on a second , I'm not saying that I am in anyway now a successful person, so please don't read this as an ego trip. Also please don't think that I'm applying this to everyone, there are a handful of people out there who support us, who have helped me personally and I am eternally grateful and if the scales were tipped in this kind of behaviour the world in general would be a better place. I simply believe that after 8 years of fucking pushing harder than I ever thought I would ever have to I feel like I might just have Achieved something and that seems to have made a lot of people angry.

Because there is a truth here, if you work hard and try and create something from nothing, to better your life, your position, people for the most part will hate you quite simply because, and I quote Bill Nighy in Hot Fuzz here "You're making us all look bad". Yes because you have tried to do something and they gave up long ago or never got up and tried to begin with, they will create a problem. A very real problem, unfortunately that problem is with themselves and as people we find that hard to accept and so we 'choose' to make our issue someone else's. But of course thats not very helpful when you suddenly realise that 'some people' don't like for what seems like no reason. 

Now just for a second, imagine you work 18 hour days, hard days. Imagine you strain most relationships around you because of the amount of time you have to commit to your art/business/career and then imagine that you have to get up every single day knowing that some people are going to dislike you immensely for that, sometimes to level of sabotage or worse. Imagine now doing the impossible knowing that your payment is that. And I stand there every day and say is it worth it... and without even a blink I say... Yes. 

Why?

Because my job is to make Those people Look Bad.

You know who you are ;)

MJ

SUBJECT SEVEN - HEART OF OSIRIS : RELEASED!!!

You can find out more about the and download their music FREE HERE.

SUPPLY AND DEMAND - How Veronica Mars Has Changed The World

Ok so the last few weeks I've talked about things like Story and Cameras, but I suppose one of the first steps in heading out to make your movie is how you're going to fund it. 

I am a believer in you not needing money to make movies and thats very true, You don't need money to make certain specific movies, that you have created to be made on nothing. Hell, I did that for my first feature CREEPSVILLE along with 25 + short films on shit all, before we finally set out and made our first 'budgeted' feature SLASHER HOUSE. But depending on the movie depends on the money. We still try to do everything on the minimum possible. 

So with the world of Crowdfunding out there and us in the midst of trying to fund our brand new feature THORN using it, I have obviously spent the last few months really thinking about Crowdfunding and how it effects us as artists and filmmakers and I released something very interesting.

SUPPLY AND DEMAND

Its an age old term that is pointed toward the idea of creating product that people want to see, because people want to see it and it makes perfect sense. 

See when you set out to make, oh i dunno, lets say 

' a movie about a taxi driver who kidnaps a girl, dumps her boyfriend in a park on an estate that is terrorised by masked maniacs who escaped from an asylum fire over a decade ago and have been living in a tunnel preying on anyone who wanders into their turf in the dead of night' 

and then you realise to pull that off is a relatively impossible job, then you realise that as you near 3 1/2 years of production and still have no finished product, that people may not actually be interested your product, because you didn't check for the demand of said production, well now that can be avoided… kind of.

After Slasher House, we got some amazing feedback, but two characters stood out as firm favourites. THORN and CLEAVER (Fuck, the clown even made it to the cover). Since the film was shown I'd been getting calls and e-mails asking me what we were doing next and would it be THORN? Well, in fact it was… it always had been (Actually a little know fact is that THORN was supposed to be shot before Slasher House, but certain shifts in other film trends forced me into getting Slasher House out first, and funnily enough was a fantastic testing ground for several of the characters who were being developed for their own solo projects) and that is the film that we are now in Pre Production on.

See it seemed there was a demand for THORN from the offset, instead of setting out to make a movie that I wasn't even sure anyone would want to see (although I do make my best educated guess at the time), we now get to move forward on a movie that people may actually want to see from the start, before its even in the can, before we've even started to fill the can. Of course this is all 'educated' theory at the minute, of course. The IndieGoGo Campaign has only just started so it hard to judge that money and mouth will swap places as of yet.

My point here really comes down to someone called Veronica Mars, I don't really know too much about the property, other than it's some kind of US TV Show starring that chick from Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Which is amazingly funny for a Rom Com). which was cancelled by its network. But what I do know is that the Creative team behind it launched a Crowdfunding Campaign last week to make a 'Veronica Mars' Movie and they blew their target wide open in less than 24 hours. This, my friends, is the future. 

This is absolutely supply and demand in full working order, this is people saying, if you REALLY want to see this, support this, If you REALLY want to watch this, then you can and you can pre order in order to make it happen, then they will Supply to that Demand. This approach could change the way that things are made, think about things like Firefly, Angel, and all the movies that struggle to get made that are based on amazing properties, but get caught up in studio funding bullishit yet have a huge and supportive fan-base. They now have a chance of happening and the same goes for the indie who lets say 

'Made a movie called SLASHER HOUSE and now needs a small amount of cash to make their next movie THORN'.

Speaking of which ;)

MJ

GETTING INTO GEAR...

I wanted to start this year from the top trying to cover the basics from the beginning and hand out a little advice or at least insight into the process that I follow when it comes to filmmaking.  Like I always say, my way is not the right way of doing things, probably the absolute opposite infact, but it is a way and all you can ever do from these things is take what you want to learn and disregard the rest if you so choose, but just remember I make a lot of mistakes, and you can learn from them without having to go through them first hand. So With that in mind lets talk gear.

Obviously this entry is called 'Getting Into Gear' which is sound advice, and that is a great first step, get into cameras know your s**t about them, believe me once you start people will wanna kill you for reeling off camera models like they 'ain't no thang', but understanding your tools is the first battle and it can be fun if you let it be. I gotta tell you I don't know everything about everything, you stick a RED in my hand, I'd probably wonder why its black ;) But I know how to use the camera that I use and thats all I really need to know. But fuck me do I know it well and so I can use that to my advantage when the inevitable shit hits the inevitable fan.

If your making your first film, and I mean like first ever film, I imagine you are probably camera operator too (and sound man if you have no friends). If you have someone else doing your camera for you, then good for you, but believe me you'll learn a lot more knowing the process inside and out, In this day and age its not enough to be a director, you have to be a filmmaker and getting stuck in to every aspect of the process is the best thing you can do.

I hear a lot of people say "We're gonna wait till we can shoot on Red" or "I need one of them canon 5d's before I'll even think about making a movie", I even hear some idiots arguing that "Film is the only look they will ever consider going for" these people will never make it in the industry and here is why. Because they are thinking about the metaphorical cart before the metaphorical horse.

See what should be driving you is 'Story' (Your horse) or at very least your idea, everything after that (Your cart) doesn't matter (to some degree) if you haven't got a f**king shit hot horse to pull it. Now I'm not saying I'm the golden child of writing or original thought here, I'm the first to admit that as a young(ish) man I have a lot to learn about writing, Bit I understand it's importance and the need to get it right before you shoot.

So before you start 'Getting Into Gear' make sure your Cart has a horse and that your horse, is a Stallion.