Do you remember the good old days when cinemas used to show some crazy short film before the main feature? Well, I've got some good news for you. Short movies are making a comeback!
David Black is a filmmaker in Melbourne, Australia and has been busy over the last couple of years making off-the-wall shorts. 17 in fact and some are now being shown before the main features at cinemas like Roxy 14 in California, Filmscene in Iowa, The Logan Theatre in Chicago (as part of the Sinema Obscura nights, at the Carlisle Club Cinema in the UK and there are more cinemas adding his shorts to their main features all the time.
Just like feature movies used to get a cinema run and then end up on the television, there are TV shows also showing those films now. You can see them on occasion on Lord Blood-Rah's Nerve Wrackin' Theatre on WAOE My 59 Peoria IL and WISE MyTV Fort Wayne In, KCTH Comcast 27/AT&T U-Verse 99! San Francisco Bay Area and VCAT Vallejo Public Access Comcast 27/AT&T U-Verse 99! San Francisco Bay Area. Also showing my films on TV are Sinema Obscura on CAN TV in Chicago and Spine Chilling Cinema 0n Roku KSUN, Charter channel 983 ksun, TDS sd 13 and HD 1013. More are adding his films on so the list will grow.
And believe it or not, just like films that had been shown on TV would then be trotted out on DVD, some of them have been added to DVD anthologies, such as Grindsploitation 666, Schlock-O-Rama, Halloween Hellnight, Drive-In Grindhouse and Trasharts Killers Vol 2.
This has all been happening over the last year, so its' quite new and therefore flying under the radar. Therefore, we'll be doing a two-part feature on his work on the site with the possibility of more to come. I conducted an interview with him below, while an overview of several shorts that he's directed or produced is available HERE.
Me: Hello and thank you for taking the time to do this. What was your initial start into horror films?
David Black: Hi Don, thanks for taking the time to interview me. You could say that my initial start was when I was playing in a crazy theatrical Gothic Rock band called “Darkness Visible.” Many of the props I used in my first horror movies were the very same ones that I used on stage. I also produced 9 music videos for the band, so that gave me some experience in film making.
Darkness Visible was not so much an act though than it was the real deal. It wasn’t going to be able to continue forever because the stage shows were too wild and the behavior of some band members was so insane that eventually our luck was going to run out and something disastrous would have happened. The crowds we attracted were also crazy and debauched. Women would jump on stage, rip their tops off, get fake blood everywhere and onto our electrical equipment and knock over props. I needed to move onto something else and discovered the local indie movie industry.
The first horror movie I made was “Dark Night of the Zomboogies.” Initially, it was really just a gimmick to get more people to come to a local indie movie night that was under threat of finishing up due to the number of attendees dropping. I’d realized that if someone was making a film and did a call out for extras then they got swamped with eager applicants, but when it came to watching films a local indie movie night, then suddenly, the crowd disappeared.
I offered to do a shoot at the movie night in the pub itself. It worked and a horde of eager extras rocked up wanting to be zombies. The place was packed and we had a chaotic night trying to film around patrons but we got there in the end. The movie itself came out surprisingly well and instead of being a “throwaway piece” just to get a crowd in to save dying film night, it ended up becoming one of my most popular ones to date. The film night eventually died but I continued on as a film producer.
Me: Being from Australia, was that a hindrance to acquiring foreign productions or force you to rely on local films more?
DB: I produce and act in movies, so I don’t need to acquire overseas films. From a production point of view, being in Australia hasn’t been a stumbling block. There’s no shortage of talented actors and crew available here so no need to get anything from overseas. On the marketing side, there are challenges because we don’t have an amazing network of horror festivals that you see in the USA. In fact, we have just the one and I don’t think I have any involvement in that this year.
That doesn’t mean that I’m totally marooned. This weekend, I’m shooting shout outs for 4 of the big upcoming horror festivals in the USA and UK. They’ll be shown at those events. It’s not the same as being there in person but it gives us a chance to entertain the attendees. Through filming shout out skits, I have constant exposure at the horror festival circuit worldwide.
The setbacks in being in Australia are that the opportunities locally are few and far between. TV-wise, we only have two community stations, and one of them loses its’ bandwidth in a year. I haven’t managed to get my films onto either of them.
They are being shown on TV in the USA however, on shows like Lord Blood-Rah's Nerve Wrackin' Theatre on WAOE My 59 Peoria IL and WISE MyTV Fort Wayne In, KCTH Comcast 27/AT&T U-Verse 99!San Francisco Bay Area and VCAT Vallejo Public Access Comcast 27/AT&T U-Verse 99!San Francisco Bay Area. Also showing my films on TV are Sinema Obscura on CAN TV in Chicago and Spine Chilling Cinema 0n Roku KSUN, Charter channel 983 ksun, TDS sd 13 and HD 1013.
My shorts are also being seen before the main features at cinemas in the USA and UK such as Roxy 14 in California, Filmscenei n Iowa, The Logan Theatre in Chicago (as part of the Sinema Obscura nights) and at the Carlisle Club Cinema in the UK.
They are also coming out on DVD anthologies like Grindsploitation 666, Schlock-O-Rama, Halloween Hellnight, Drive-In Grindhouse and Trasharts Killers Vol 2. Some of those are on the shelves of shops in the USA, UK and Canada.
Australia is still like a one-horse town with just a few outlets and each one run by its own “Boss Hogg.” Most want you to suck up to them, and think that if they refuse to include your movie at their theatre, festival, TV show etc, that you won’t get anywhere. Many of them deal with each other and have created their own little “old boys network.” They’ve convinced some that they are the step before the big time and that you have to get into their group and that the major local film companies are actually looking at their stuff and will notice you from there. Many local filmmakers and actors have bought into all that crap, but I’m calling bullshit!
I’ve bypassed all that nonsense. My stuff is getting out there and I’m building a following. The old punk rocker in me gets a bit of enjoyment from thumbing my nose at these local tinpot warlords and their ragtag army of sycophants.
Me: Was there any Australian film or filmmaker you gravitated towards that influenced you towards filmmaking?
DB: Definitely. Australia had this amazing era of Ozploition films when I was growing up. There’d been a tax incentive that spurred this on and when it was removed, the amount of local genre films died down. Brian Trenchard Smith made quite a few of the ones that got me excited about films, such as Dead End Drive-In and Turkey Shoot. The world also saw the odd break out movies from this era, such as the Mad Max ones.
I’m not overly influenced by anyone currently making films here now. When I first came into the local indie movie industry, I looked up to a lot of the directors. I desperately wanted to be in their movies and chased after them like a puppy dog, helping them out with anything that I could do. That was a major disappointment because so many were arrogant, did not reciprocate and certainly didn’t say thank you. If I hadn’t broken away and started making my own films, I wouldn’t be in very many at all, and I certainly wouldn’t have gotten any decent roles. I’m glad that I finally woke up.
I’ve also gone my own way of where to place my films and how to market them. I found that the local Aussie industry is stuck in a groupthink of what should be made, how it should be done, where it should be submitted and how it should be promoted. You can tell it doesn’t work well because very few of our films are known outside of our own backyard and I just didn’t want to be relegated to the same obscurity.
I’m trying to detox my mind from the influence of the filmmakers I met when I first came into our little scene. When trying to learn from them I absorbed a lot of their ineffective beliefs, so I have to keep reviewing everything I do to identify what doesn’t work so that I stop wasting time and can steer my efforts in the right direction.
Me: With a primary focus on genre shorts, was that a conscious choice to produce films in that style?
DB: The main reason for having so many shorts is because they are quicker to make and it’s the area I’m having the most success in. I was told, over and over, that you won’t get anywhere making shorts. That at best, they should only be made as a “proof of concept” so that you can put them into a film festival to try and attract investors to make a feature.
Maybe a small minority have success with their “proof of concept” shorts and find that elusive investor, but for most, all you see is a movie poster that is plastered with laurels. Very few see these shorts because many film festivals don’t want the movie to be on YouTube and seen by the public, otherwise, the public might not show up to the festival to see them. The end result is a film that gets seen by the 50 odd patrons that turn up to the showing. A grand total of just 500 if you got into 10 of them. By comparison, one of my films, Cannibal Barbecue gets around 500 views a day on YouTube and is currently at 63,000 views and hundreds of comments.
Making shorts wasn’t really the plan but I’m having a ball making them. If there is too long a gap between the making the films, I start to go stir crazy!
Me: What makes for a great short film when you're starting work on a new effort?
DB: A great short movie has to get the audience in immediately. By contrast, a feature can spend time establishing characters and the setting and mood. Features are often seen in cinemas and most people are going to sit there for at least a half-hour, even if they are bored. A short is more likely to be seen on a phone or PC, so you have 5 seconds to interest your viewer before they move to the next thing.
You can’t fluff around. When you only have 5 – 20 minutes for the entire film, each shot has to accomplish much more than when you have an hour and a half. For example, you can’t spend 4 minutes using a drone to do an overhead shot of your amazing set. You need to establish the setting, the characters and the story in the very first shot, if possible. It’s a bit like having to build something with a small swiss army knife with a hundred little tools rather than using an impressively large kit with everything laid out individually.
Me: Having also worked in various other fields both in and out of the filmmaking industry, what have you accomplished in these positions? Is there anything you gravitate towards as a preference?
DB: One of the main fields I worked in was cartooning. I made a living from that for a number of years. I was the editorial cartoonist for a national tabloid called “The Truth” in 1989/1990 and released a comic book called “Punkz in Space” that sold in news agencies around Australia in 1993.
Comics are like drawn movies. You have to think of camera angles, settings, lighting and how your characters act within each scene. Even the frames themselves give a pacing to the story, so many of the elements involved in film making are present in drawing sequential art.
Another of the fields I worked in was music. I was in a punk rock band called “Thrush” from 1983 – 1985 and later in a theatrical Gothic Rock band called “Darkness Visible” from 1994 – present. Darkness Visible achieved quite a lot and songs went out on a number of CD compilations. We were included in 2 Gothic Rock books that sold around the world – “The Hex Files” and “Music 2 Die For,” as well as making 9 music videos.
The band work gave me a lot of stage experience so you develop the feel for working the audience. I also got the hang of marketing because every gig had to be publicized, so I was always chasing the media, getting us into newspapers and intro the radio stations.
By the time I entered the local indie movie industry, I had more experience than many of the more established local filmmakers and proved it. The producers of the 3rd set that I got onto as an extra were worried that they might not get enough people for a big zombie horde shoot that they had planned and were hoping for some media attention. I got them the front cover of 6 Star Newspaper mastheads and coverage within 5 or 6 Leader newspapers, which resulted in them getting over 16,000 applicants to be zombie extras over a 48 hour period.
Me: You have a new project coming soon called 'Horror House.' What was the inspiration to start the show and how did you come about it?
DB: Horror House is now out. It’s brand new to the rest of the world, but for me, it’s an old project. The inspiration came from when I was new to the local movie industry and going to many of the small movie nights and film festivals. I was seeing a lot of fantastic Aussie horror films and realized that after the festival or night, that they were hardly seen anymore. I came up with the idea that I could do a show where I presented the best of them.
I’d first gotten into horror movies as a kid when we had a hosted horror show on TV called “Deadly Earnest.” That finished around 1972, but it was huge at the time and had a big impact on me. Horror House is a little bit in that vein but also combined with some of the sass of Elvira with my co host on the show, Mistress Boobiyana.
In one way, doing the series was similar to doing short movies. For each of the 6 episodes, I scripted 3 segments that each had sexy, schlocky, gory skits in them. On average, that’s 6 minutes of footage filmed for each episode and 36 minutes all up for the whole series. It’s also a sort of bridge between my band days and now because each episode features a Darkness Visible music video at the end.
Me: Lastly, what are some of your other projects you have coming up you would like to inform our readers about? Thank you again for your time!
DB: My upcoming projects include lots of short movies. I’ll continue to bring those out at a rate of one per month because they are now being seen at cult movie nights at around 6 cinemas in the USA and UK before the main features. From there, they are getting a TV run in the USA on roughly 12 channels via 5 TV shows. These outlets are growing at a fast rate and mainly because there is always a new film coming out to do the rounds.
I also have a feature movie coming out for Christmas called “Badass Bunyip.” It’s a full on, gory, exploitation movie with a legendary Australian monster that goes on a murder rampage. I’m looking forward to this one mainly due to being able to share Australian culture, folklore and dreamtime mythology with the world than due to the gore. This is going to be a movie unlike anything the world has seen before.
I have a documentary too that is just now in editing called “A Night at the Movies …. Indie Style!” It was shot at a local indie movie night and explores our little world of filmmakers and actors. This one is important to me because most other movie industry documentaries that I see concentrate on big names, but most of our DIY industry is made of people you might never have heard of before. Each one being passionate and talented, with hopes and dreams. Most of the big stars came through a little scene, just like ours. This is where it starts and where the true heart of movie-making lies.
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