The Start Of This Log

Promo picture shot for investment trailer--
Rick Ganz, Darla Albornoz and Dennis Long(as the clown)

-----------------

Unlike my other log for "Hunting Humans" this one has NEVER seen the light of day. I have never shared exactly what happened on the making of "Fear of Clowns", other than what you can see in the behind-the-scenes on the DVD.

At this point I had successfully shot a movie, won a few minor awards for the film, and received distribution from a reputable company who got the movie into Blockbuster/Hollywood Video/Netflix and paid us more on signing than the entire budget of the film--in general you can't hope for more from your first film.

But none of that stops the apprehension you get when moving toward the next film. How much work there is to do...how bad you may fail...how can you make it all happen and come out with the best movie possible?

So it began again.

I had to raise money for the film, which is really just glorified begging. On HH I paid for everything(by selling comics and using my charge cards) except for $5000 that one of our actors gave us to finish the film. So I really had no idea how to raise money.

I put together a prospectus. We dressed a buddy of mine up as a clown, put him in a vintage clown costume I'd bought on eBay, and I shot stills and some video. Scenes from a script I hadn't even written fully yet.

We had access to a movie theater, so I figured I'd set the end of the movie there. I took my actors and my clown up to the theater after hours to shoot some more video for this trailer I was going to put up.

I took my smoke machine. We're up by the elevator and I smoked up the area and started to shooting. The smoke alarm starts BEEPING wildly, and apparently it can only be turned off by the fire department who is ON THE WAY.

That's where we stopped filming and took off. I cut the trailer to music from Aliens and Signs, and it came out good.

To finish the story a lot easier than it was, I showed it to some people and two of them agreed to give me 10K apiece. I had 10K left over from what I got paid for "Hunting Humans" that I was going to put in, and just like that we had the $30,000 I thought the movie would cost.

So that's where the "Fear of Clowns" log begins. Hope you enjoy.

I think the only thing you're really going to learn is that if you just want to make low budget movies because you think it would be cool or that it's fun then you are sorely mistaken.

(As with the other log, I will preface each entry with current-day thoughts in bold type, and the log will be in regular)