Cinema

Interview

INDY FILM-MAKER, STEVE PIPER

by Dale Pierce

1. You run Coffee Films. Where are you located and how long have you operated?

We're based in a town called Maidstone about an hour outside London, UK. We've been around for 9 years, and been incorporated as a "real" company for 2 years.

2. Where did you get the title of Coffee Films from?

My scary intake of coffee, I do have a problem I'm afraid. It feels fairly fitting beyond that though, so many indie's tend to exist on little more than coffee and cigarettes!

3. What is your webpage?

http://www.coffeefilms.com it's huge, lots to look at.

4. You have created a number of short films. Take some time to tell us about each?

We've made over 20 in our 9 years although a lot of the early ones were about playing around and learning filmmaking; animations, music videos, that kind of stuff. In 2004 we shot and released How to Disappear Completely (www.coffeefilms.com/disappear), an 8 minute arthouse kind of short about a nature photographer establishing a philosophy on life. It had a really good run over a year at festivals and screenings, lots of good reviews and a few awards; it really helped to establish us a little on the British indie scene, a lot of people had heard the name or seen the site but it really raised the quality of networking having a good short out and about, we made the mistake of using Warner Brothers owned music which they let us have for festivals but wouldn't let us have for TV/DVD without a lot of money, and wouldn't let us have for the web at all.

We also put out Televisual Man (www.coffeefilms.com/tv) which was the first short we made in 1996, an experimental piece with some 1984 overtones. We recut it with new music by a friend Amir Baghiri (www.amirbaghiri.de) which was scary as hell and it screened at a few places and on some websites, it was a surprise really as we really didn't think it was all that but a completely different group of people really took to it.

We're just in the process of putting out a new short called 3 (www.coffeefilms.com/3) which was mostly an exercise in limitation; a £50 budget and only a week to shoot and cut, we've had a couple of good reviews already and are entering festivals now. There are two more shorts getting cut at present and we're trying to finance another one; we've had both Canon and Kodak offer to supply our camera gear but we can't get anyone to give us production finance; it's incredibly frustrating!

5. Have you ever thought of seeking distribution in the USA or running these at indy film fests there?

We've made a few US appearances, Disappear was at LA Shorts and Anchorage (and Antimatter and Wreck Beach in Canada) and TV Man is on a couple of New York based websites, the real problem is that the premier fests are really hard to get into, the mid range state-sized fests all charge $25-50 entry fees (which soon mounts up when we also have to do NTSC format transfers and postage), and for the smaller fests that don't charge an entry you really have to question if the cost of transfers and postage is worth it; I'd love to have a bigger festival budget so that we could do a serious festival campaign in the US, the thing is though I can enter most European festivals for almost nothing and as a result enter a lot more, you have to go with what makes financial and marketing sense.

6. What about in England? Have you run these in any festivals or special screenings, or do you just market these for sale via the webpage?

We do lots of festivals and screenings over here; London has a lot of short screening nights which are all free to enter and there are lots of festivals around, most very cheap or free to enter and many running sales markets alongside; so we have screened at Cannes, Edinburgh, Tampere and so on through the markets, quite a few UK festivals selected us in "best of British" sections and we were guests of the MIFED market (a bit like AFM but in Italy and smaller) as one of their best young European filmmakers award winners. Shorts are very hard to sell, we've been offered some DVDs which music rights invariably gets in the way with and we're also trying to work something out with video on demand companies both here and in the US, we really use the shorts to show the world what we can do, good films attract talent, media and ultimately financing for bigger project.

7. Where do you recruit your actors, via actual casting ore do you use your friends like many indy people do to save on the budget?

We usually advertise through networks like www.shootingpeople.org (which also operates on the US East Coast now) we then make a short list and either cast through phone interview (not ideal but very cheap) or hiring a room and holding a proper audition. We always get a good level of submissions because we work hard to get our films seen; there's nothing actors hate more than pouring their being into a film which just gathers dust on my shelf. Once you work with a good actor you have a tendency to use them time and again (just like De Niro and Scorcese for example) because you get a good working relationship and understand each other better, I also take recommendations from trusted actors for friends, and sometimes my non film friends play small roles or extras, I do keep showreels and headshots that get sent to me if they're any good and refer back to them.

8. Are feature films ever in the works or is the budget for such just too great?

A bit of all sides. We have two awesome feature scripts optioned but it's very hard to get financing for them, they've been around a while and the stumbling block is always money. We had an internationally known highly respected indie actor interested in the lead for one but his fee was more than the total film budget; the other we're ready to show to a few of the big companies in Europe but we need the short I mentioned earlier to go with it; but of a Catch 22. We've also got ourselves involved in a US children's film developing the script, it's a million miles from what we normally do but the income could easily make one of the other features; I come from a business background and don't plan to sacrifice my company out of genre snobbery, if the price of making a film you really love is making one you don't it's not such a terrible price!

9. Are there any major differences, aside from the accents, that you see between US and British films on the indy market?

This is a tricky one to answer without offending somebody! I suppose traditionally British/European films get credit for being more cerebral and "arty", whilst US indie is classically about style or anything too gory for the mainstream. Right now though I think there are very few differences; US movies are made by every nationality in the world including a lot of Brits, and a lot of the US directors were heavily influenced by European greats, with the web spreading everything around you have British people making Manga cartoons and US people shooting French arthouse and suddenly we're flooded with exciting talent from South America, it's much more of an international and multinational scene and with studios dipping fingers deep into indie it's more questionable than ever what indie really is. I think Britain can be misperceived as a great filmmaking nation, we had our moments with maybe Hammer Horror or Trainspotting, but we really make very few truly British films; we have some of the greatest talent in front and behind camera but sadly no real industry to exploit it at home.

10. Wasn't there a great deal of censorship going on years ago in England, especially in the horror realm?

For many years politicians in the UK were terrified of home video; the concept of children having access to films like Freddie terrified them, our politicians have always been very British; kind of stuck up and a generation out of date. Their solution was to ban just about anything with any kind of blood or sex in it so of course horror took a blasting. Things changed hugely about 5-10 years ago when a new chief censor came in and allowed a lot of previously banned stuff through; Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Driller Killer, Natural Born Killers etc. all of them were easily available on the pirate market anyway and with the arrival of the Internet it became impossible to really ban something as readily available as a video. There's a famous case over here though of two 10 year old boys murdering a 5 year old in a way they had seen in a horror film; of course the fault lies with the parents who let 10 year olds watch something like that but it certainly made the whole thing a hot debate again. In the present day our censorship is no different to anywhere else, and on the flip side we do get real news programs!

11. Has this lightened up any?

as above

12. Did you study film making someplace or did you pick it up on your own?

Well and truly self taught, I worked in fringe theatre for a few years which helped, and studied English Literature at school (almost entirely Shakespeare) which also helped, but mostly I learnt from watching great films, devouring "making ofs" and directors commentaries, and most importantly, going out and making films. I find most people that study film have a great depth of knowledge on the history and theory but limited ability in the actual doing, I'd rather direct like Kubrick than write a 10,000 word paper on him, I think British film schools are largely pretty crappy.

13. You handle several elements of film making, do you not, including directing, writing and production sometimes. Is there one aspect you prefer the most?

Directing is my true love because it never feels like working it just feels like what I was supposed to do. I hate producing but have never found anyone I trust enough to produce for me, good producers are rarer than good directors for certain. Writing I sometimes enjoy and other days don't, there are good writers around but they can't always give you what you want so it's a useful skill to have. Everyone wants to direct though don't they? So I'm happy that I can whenever I want, once again if the price is having to be a producer as well then it's an acceptable price.

14. Any interesting stories you would like to tell concerning shooting?

I think working with tiny budgets breeds a lot of ridiculous situations because you have to come up with inventive ways to do things that usually cost a fortune; like your DP hanging out the back of a car trunk at 30 mph so you can get a nice tracking shot. Filming around the general public can be both funny and frustrating; everyone's so interested in what you're doing, we shot some of disappear in a busy shopping mall and the challenge was filming without people seeing the camera otherwise they stopped and stared; we had one shady looking guy come over and whisper menacingly in my ear that we better not have caught him on film because the police were after him, but then for another shot where we staged a kid stealing a bag from a shopper we had the camera so well hidden that a passerby (a very brave 14 year old lad) jumped out and grabbed our actor!

15. What are your interests outside of film?

To be honest my job is my hobby; besides film we also have a music agency (www.coffeeartists.com) and a design company (www.coffeedesign.co.uk) and it's a lot of work on all of it. Most of my spare time is spent on my girlfriend, cat, dog and friends and we play a lot of Halo on X-Box Live! When I have the time and energy I'm a pretty keen stills photographer, I just started taking flying lessons and I like any chance to get close to wildlife; my girlfriend recently arranged for me to feed a tiger by hand (that "scent marked" me) and meet up with a captive raised jaguar that licked your hand if you scratched it's back, that's my kind of day out!

16. Why do you like coffee so much? Aren't British people supposed to all drink tea?

Well that's actually pretty true, we're a big nation of tea drinkers but I can't stand the stuff, they just don't do coffee shops here the way New York does!

17. Future plans?

Well we struggle on to fund our short and features but the main thing I've been working on is documentary. A bunch of experiences (including making Disappear) drove me to get more interested in the natural world, that grew to wanting to make films about it and that grew to wildlife documentaries on cats; I think cats are pretty fucking cool basically. I'm nearly wrapped on a one hour documentary for TV on the Scottish Wildcat; it only weighs in around 15-20 pounds but it's reknowned for it's extreme wildness and tenacity. On a good day they can take down small sheep, deer and even golden eagle and they survive incredibly tough conditions in the Highlands, sadly there are only about 400 left after years of hunting persecution and the swamping of their gene pool by domestic cats left to run wild. Because they're small, rare, well camoflaged, hate people and are, well, cats they're extremely hard to film but we've had a ton of support from conservationists, scientists, wildlife parks, wildlife photographers and half of Scotland simply because they want people to know more about the cat and how best to prevent it's extinction; it's been an amazing experience and a lot more rewarding than anything else I've done so I expect to do a lot more of it; I'm hoping to go to Mongolia next year to film Pallas cats and I'm working on a film adaptation of a world best selling conservation book with the author, it's a very different world to fiction films and extremely refreshing, it also breeds a completely different kind of "shooting story", like on our trip through the Scottish mountains where we hiked all the way over the top of a mountain and down this incredibly steep and slippery waterfall into a valley (all with 60lb packs) only for our stills photographer to trip and bust his ankle once we got to the bottom.

18. Tell us about some of the actors and actresses you have used?

We use a lot of young up and coming talent, most people that act for us have had a few small film roles, done some TV presenting or acting and been through at least a couple of years of proper training but we use completely fresh people too. A guy we use regularly is David House; he was the lead in Disappear and 3 and is also going to be in the upcoming short Into the Shadow. David's done a pile of print modelling, adverts, music performance, a little theatre like the Edinburgh fringe and has had small roles and stand ins with directors like Mike Leigh and Oliver Stone so he has a lot of experience of being on a set and seeing how very successful actors go about their work, as a result he's a real professional who's really targeted on success, he just wrapped his first feature as a lead in a small British indie called "The Run". On the flip side one of the shorts we're currently editing, Dealer, is almost entirely people with no acting experience at all; it's kind of a semi documentary so they all play themselves but within a fictional setting and relate memories or play scenes that have actually happened; they're a complete mixture, a primary school teacher, a fireman, a couple of DJs, a music agent, a marketing executive, a guy on disability welfare, all kinds.

19. As a director do you like to keep pretty tight control over your projects or do you allow a lot of input and creative suggestions from the actors?

I try and encourage a lot of input from actors because that's more the norm in theatre and I got to see a lot of benefits to doing it when I was working in that area; good actors know more about their character than the director ever can so you have to let them have input and put forward suggestions, it's then up to you to decide if the ideas work within this particular scene or if you want them to explore a different aspect to the character's personality. I do build a vision and I tend to stick to it but it's nice to have a proper rehearsal period and let the actors play around.

20. Anything else you would like to touch on before closing that we may have missed?

I wish more people worldwide would get a lot more serious about making truly "indie" films and media. We have more indie filmmakers than ever (thanks to DV and desktop editing systems), it's phenomenally easy to communicate with anyone in the world and get information on just about anything (thanks to the Internet), so why isn't true indie media making up a far larger percentage of the film market place? We need a lot more people getting to terms with the business side; things like company management, marketing, law, strategy; the indie world as a whole isn't so different to Britain as a country; there's a lot of talent but nothing really tangible for it to exist within, so the few get a break into the mainstream and the rest disappear beneath the waves, I'd like to see more people understand that the only way to have an independent industry is to build independent companies that can build a brand loyalty of their own just like the big corporates and majors, people need to be prepared to take bigger risks if they want to see any changes.

THE TWO SHEDS REVIEW

THE TWO SHEDS MOVIE REVIEWS by Julian Radbourne
E-mail: twosheds316@aol.com
Website: www.twoshedsreview.com/otherstuff

CLERKS - 10th Anniversary DVD Review

It was in 1991 that a young man from a small town in New Jersey had an idea, and thirteen years later, that idea is now beloved by millions around the world.

This year marks the tenth anniversary of Clerks, Kevin Smith’s film debut as a writer, director, and actor, an anniversary that has been marked with a new, three disc, DVD set.

Originally shot on a shoestring budget, Clerks tells the story of Dante Hicks, a convenience store worker, who is called in to work on his day off. We follow Dante and his friends throughout the day, as he has to contend with his slacker best friend, Randall, his current girlfriend Veronica, his ex-girlfriend Caitlin, a parade of unique and unusual customers, and two certain stoners by the name of Jay & Silent Bob.

Clerks is basically a simple story, shot in a simple way, in which the characters talk how people really talk, and because of this relative simplicity, it’s a beautiful piece of work.

Having worked in a retail environment for a number of years, I sympathised a great deal with
some of the characters and the situations, it really is that true to life. In that respect, Kevin Smith is like Ricky Gervais, in as much as he has captured his former working environment perfectly.

Of course, this three disc special edition comes with a ton of extras. Along with the usual
directors and actors commentaries, there’s also the chance to see the film in it’s original form, with it’s original ending - which I won’t spoil for you in case you haven’t seen it yet. There’s also a ninety minute documentary which chronicles the development of the film, which in itself is an interesting story.

When Kevin Smith first came up with the idea for Clerks, he probably had no idea just how
successful the film would become. He is regarded as a visionary, a master of modern-day film making, and rightfully so. Clerks was where it all began for him, and with Clerks 2 currently in the pipeline, it looks like we’ll all be making a return journey to the Quick Stop soon. It certainly will be a trip worth taking.

OLD BOY - DVD Review

Over the past few years, I’ve taken a bit of an interest in far Eastern cinema, an interest that began after I saw Battle Royale for the first time. Which is why when I saw Old Boy in my local Woolworths, I purchased this DVD hoping to see a great film.

The basic story is this - Oh Dae-Su is kidnapped and held against his will for fifteen years, his only contact with the outside world being television. Then, for some unexplained reason, he is released, given expensive clothes, a mobile phone, a large sum of cash. He is given one task by his unknown captor - to find out why he was imprisoned.

And what we have here is a perfectly crafted thriller. Made in South Korea in 2003 and directed by Chan-wook Park, upon first hearing the premise of this film you would be forgiven for thinking that this is little more than a revenge flick, but it’s a lot more than that. It’s a near two hour journey as Dae-Su, played perfectly Min-ski Choi, goes on a voyage of discovery, through a tangled web of mystery, intrigue and suspicion as he attempts to find out why he was imprisoned for all of those years.

Without giving too much of the plot away, Old Boy takes you on a tremendous journey, with plot twists that are well worth the wait. It’s perfectly acted, perfectly directed, and well put together. I really can’t speak too highly of this film. However, I get the feeling that as with other great foreign language films, Hollywood moguls will get their hands on this and screw around with it, so the story loses a lot of it’s magic.

Foreign language films may not be to the liking of many, but I’m fast becoming a fan of them.
Compared to a great deal of the hogwash that’s coming out of Hollywood these days, the films that the Japanese and Koreans are producing are giving the big American studios a run for their money. Old Boy is a masterpiece, as simple as that.

THE ED WOOD DOUBLE BILL

He’s been called the worst film maker ever to set foot in Hollywood. His ideas were quite frankly ludicrous, but he had the uncanny ability to turn himself into a cult hero. Mention the name of Edward D. Wood, Junior, and some people will tell you that he was nothing more than a weirdo with an angora fetish with an entourage of people even more weird than himself. But the great man is the first in what will hopefully become a series on Double Bill film reviews.

We start off in 1955, with Bride of the Monster. Originally, Woodwanted to call this film Bride of the Atom, but apparently your averageAmerican Joe Public didn’t know what an atom was in 1955, hence the title change. It’s typical 1950’s monster fare here. Starring Bela Lugosi as Doctor Eric Vornoff, the story is simple. People are vanishing when they go near a swamp, and the local police investigate. It is Vornoff’s wish to create a race of atomic supermen, hence his evil experiments.

A totally unconvincing octopus, and tons of bad acting ensue, especially from the local coppers. Wood’s dialogue is also a joy to behold, as it’s unintentionally both bad and good at the same time.

The Internet Movie Database give this film a whopping 3.1 out of 10. Every aspect of the film’s production is really, really bad, but in a highly delightful sort of way.

When then move forward four years, to a film that is universally recognised as the worst film ever made - Plan 9 From Outer Space. The tag line for this film has to be one of the best in motion picture history - Unspeakable Horrors From Outer Space Paralyze The Living And Resurrect The Dead! Starring Tor Johnson, Criswell, Vampira, Bela Lugosi, and Ed Wood’s usual band of misfits, everything about this films just screams tacky. The plot is laughable, the production values suck, the dialogue is ludicrous, and the set at times looks like it’s about to fall down at any moment.

But what is most absurd about this film is Lugosi’s starring role. Shortly before he died in 1956, Wood filmed Lugosi, and used a great deal of this footage in Plan 9. But how could Lugosi star in a film three years after he died, I hear you ask? Wood got his chiropractor, Tom Mason, to play Lugosi’s part, holding his long black cape over his face so just his eyes remained visible. Wood
thought that he had movie goers fooled, but any idiot with half a brain could tell the difference.

But the thing about Plan 9 is that even though it’s bad, it’s good, if you know what I mean. This was meant to be a horror film, but Wood unintentionally came up with a comedy classic.

One thing that you can say about Ed Wood was that he was as untalented as he was enthusiastic. But almost thirty years after his death, Wood’s films continue to develop a cult following, even though they are so, so bad. But
then again, that’s what makes his films so compelling.

METROPOLIS

The second in the Double Bill series goes back nearly eighty years, and looks at the work of one of the world’s greatest film makers, Fritz Lang.

Lang will always be best remembered for his masterpiece, Metropolis. Released in 1927 after nearly sixteen months of filming, and featuring a cast of thousands - 37, 383 to be exact - Metropolis is a city, a utopian dream, whose wealthy inhabitants live in palatial apartments, while the city’s slave community live underground, working gruelling shifts so that their masters can continue to live in the style they have become accustomed.

The workers are unhappy with their conditions, but are stopped from rebelling by the saintly Maria. Realising that she holds a great deal of power, industrialist John Frederson has Maria kidnapped, and orders mad scientist Rothwang to create a robot replica to take her place. But Frederson’s plan goes awry, and the robot Maria incites the workers to revolt.

Metropolis is a cinematic masterpiece, but Lang had problems with the film’s money men. Germany’s biggest film company, UFA, was almost bankrupted by the film’s two million dollar budget. UFA took final editing out of Lang’s hands, and he hated the final edit that was released. It was several years before Lang’s vision of the film finally saw the light of day.

Even after all these years, Metropolis still stands as a monument to Lang’s artistic vision. It’s a truly stunning, truly breathtaking piece of work.

It was almost sixty years later when Metropolis was released again, but this time in a different form. Italian composer Giorgio Moroder, renowned for his work on Flashdance, composed a new soundtrack for the film, with tracks performed by Freddie Mercury, Bonnie Tyler, Jon Anderson, Pat Benatar, and many more.

Even though, as someone who grew up in the eighties, I enjoyed the music a great deal, the combination of 1920’s film making and 1980’s pop music just didn’t work for me. Although I’m sure he had the work’s best interests at heart, Moroder’s music took away from Lang’s vision, and while Lang’s original lasted over two hours, Moroder’s version lasted a shade under ninety minutes.

As the old saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. If you ever get the chance to watch Metropolis in the way that it should be watched, the way that Lang wanted us to see his futuristic world, then you’ll be in for a hell of an experience. Forget Moroder’s vision of Lang’s world, unless you want a good eighties soundtrack. But then again, I’m sure you can get the soundtrack on CD somewhere.