SPOTLIGHT ON INDIE FILMMAKERS: KEN MADER

Ken Mader is an award-winning director, writer and editor. For his debut feature film, 'Carnivore', he won a Crystal Award of Excellence for editing and an Award of Distinction for Directing in the 5th Annual Communicator Awards, a Selection Committee Commendation in the independent feature category at the 11th International Festival of Fantastic Films, and a Merit Award in the 2001 B-Movie Film Festival. The film has now been picked up by Fox Home Entertainment and as a result he is now packaging his next project, a psychological thriller entitled 'Zali's Crush'. AUSUS Magazine spoke to Ken about the challenges of making his first film, his 'other' career as an editor, and what the future holds.  

Q: So Ken, tell me something interesting about yourself

(laughs) Something interesting about myself is that I'm probably going to enter the Guiness Book of Records as taking the longest time in history to make my first feature film, which was basically twelve years from the start of shooting to release.

Q: Why did you decide to become a filmmaker?

The filmmaking stuff goes as far back as I can remember. I think I came out of the womb with my eye in a viewfinder.  When I was really young I became intrigued with both movies and special effects. So I started following the traditional indie filmmaker route, which was taking my Super 8 camera and just filming everything I possibly could. That was back in the day before there was such a thing as digital. I made two feature-length super-8 movies which never got released, but I edited them together and had screenings for my friends and that was kind of the beginning of it.  Then pretty much right out of high school I started volunteering on movie and commercial shoots and worked my way up to freelancing, from being a production assistant to assistant director. From there I segued into doing optical effects and animation camerawork on commercials and corporate multi-media shows.

Q: When did you decide to make 'Carnivore'?

In the midst of all this, I was writing and trying to get various projects launched. Then at the end of 1988, my partner and I decided to make something we could basically self-finance. We'd been through the whole route of trying to raise money and gotten close a couple of times but nothing had ever come together. So we wanted to make something that could be marketable, that couldsell, and would also be fun. Kind of a wink at the audience. The market at the time was ripe for horror films, especially direct-to-video, so we thought we'd have a great chance of getting it out there quickly and tapping into that marketplace. Then, during the course of shooting, which ultimately took two-and-a-half years, the market changed. Companies like Full Moon Entertainment started to use name actors in their films, then other companies followed suit and eventually it became practically a requirement for distribution.  It kind of shifted the paradigm and then the big budget studio movies started proliferating video, taking up the shelf space, and low-budget indies got squeezed. Fortunately it has since changed back in a way where you don't need name actors in horror, and this is part of what helped get 'Carnivore' released.

Q: What made it change back?

I think it's just cyclical. Audiences start getting tired of big budget studio films. They want to have fun again and see some low budget horror flicks. There's also something rather cathartic about them.  We were lucky enough with 'Carnivore' to tap into that resurgence. Horror is now the only genre where you don't need any name actors because the genre sells itself. Basically, it's the special effects, the monsters, the gore. . . and it has a built-in fan base.

Q: Why did it take two-and-a-half years to make 'Carnivore'?

Our original schedule was about eight months. We knew we could only shoot on weekends because we couldn't afford to pay anybody, all the salaries were deferred. We were scraping together money to pay for hard costs, you know, film stock, camera equipment, that kind of stuff. We'd start on Friday night, go through to Sunday night, get as much done as we could in that time frame. For the fist few months it all went really well, even though we were pooling money, using credit cards, taking out a second mortgage on my parents house! Where we started to hit the wall was with the interior of the old house that is the centerpiece of the film where the 'creature' lived.  We realized that no one in their right minds would lend us their house to use, given what had to transpire in those scenes (notably a messy evisceration sequence and the tearing-off of a policeman's face), so we started to build sets in the basement of my partner's house. That's what really began to extend the schedule. First, we didn't have enough space to build the entire house. We had to do it room by room. So we started with a bedroom, shot that, then converted that to another bedroom. I didn't have a construction crew so it was me, my production manager and my partner. It took at least a month or two between each set to rebuild it, redress it and all of that. So we just had to do it piecemeal. We did bedroom to bedroom to living room to foyer and eventually to upstairs hallways. That entire process took a year-and-a-half. The final set was the government laboratory, which we ended up doing in my parents' garage, where we used a lot of plastic instead of hard walls and based the design loosely on 'ET', you know, where the government guys come in and seal off the house.

Q: What was the total budget of the film?

With salaries and everything we're sitting at about three hundred thousand.  

Q: Why did you decide to make a film like 'Carnivore'?

We both grew up as fans of horror, and with my production/effects background plus my partner being a sculpture artist, we figured he could create the monster while I handled cinematography, prod. design and visual effects.  It seemed at the time it would be relatively easy to do. We wrote the initial draft within a month and the script evolved based on ideas the actors would bring to the table. Some of the actors were professional, others were just people we thought would fit the parts, but they were all great and totally committed to the project.

Q: What's the story of the film?

It's basically the story of a government experiment gone wrong. The creature is a biogenetic prototype that escapes it's containment inside a secret laboratory within this desolate old house. And of course, in traditional B-Movie fashion, a group of teenagers decide to go up and spend the night in the house. In the meantime, a government bureaucrat is on her way from Washington to capture and contain the monster.

Q: What did you shoot it on?

We shot it on 16mm, using Panavision cameras. We actually started shooting on an old Arriflex camera that had been lent to us by a friend. Unfortunately, as with anything you get for free, it's generally worth about that, and fell apart after about two weeks of shooting. So at that point we had to go out and rent camera gear and this expanded the budget yet again, so I decided to put together a business plan and a prospectus and approach investors. I was a freelancer at the time so a lot of the people I had worked for kicked in money.

Q: What about the editing process?

Initially we edited the old fashioned way, on film, cutting a workprint. Once we got it to a rough cut we transferred that to video and started sending out tapes trying to get completion funds from distributors. Which was a nightmare. I learned a valuable lesson: Never send out a rough cut of your work. We had to shelve the project for a while to pursue other avenues to get it finished. It wasn't until about six years later when I started working for a post-production house that had a non-linear system that I was able to continue editing on nights and weekends. Eventually I transferred the negative to Beta SP tape and then digitized that into the system at high resolution broadcast quality and cut that. The problematic thing was that because we had shot the film so long ago, Kodak hadn't started putting key codes on their film stock. So I couldn't use key coding to match the negative, and instead had to eyeball every single cut, frame by frame against the edited workprint. Needless to say it was very labor intensive!

Q: What was the next step once editing was complete?

 The film was officially finished in early 2000. At about the same time I hooked up with a group called Film Artist's Network, a co-op that helps bring members movies to the marketplace. We brought it to the American Film Market and started selling some territories like Malaysia and Thailand and Indonesia. The following year we brought it back and we sold it to Germany, among others. I also picked up a sales agent to go after domestic distribution. Within about two months he had an offer for us which was basically acceptable. After that it was a mad scramble to pull together all the elements including footage we had shot for a 'behind-the-scenes' extra on the DVD. In the midst of all this I was moving out here to LA, so I was literally editing in hotel rooms on the trip out.

Q: Where was 'Carnivore' released?

We sold it to a company called Spartan Home Entertainment and they released it at the end of 2001. It did really well. Hollywood Video took up to twelve copies per store. We also sold Pay-Per-View where it had a fifty-two percent buy rate. And then in early 2003 I got a call that Twentieth Century Fox was releasing the movie. I couldn't believe it. They had picked it up as a library title, so now it's everywhere. Target, Walmart, all over the place. That was cool, both seeing it on the shelf at Hollywood Video and then with the Fox logo on the back. What a trip.

Q: What's your next project?

The next project is a psychological thriller entitled 'Zali's Crush'. It's the story of a troubled young girl who has a crush on a serial killer. We've already attached a number of name actors. It's a completely different type of project. I liken it to 'Fatal Attraction' meets 'Seven'. It'll be a lot higher production value. The budget is $1.5 - 2 million. We're shooting 35mm. The interesting thing about the script is that it has marketable elements to it, but at the same time it has a kind of quirky indie sensibility, so it can play either theatrically or on video or go the festival route. We're looking to complete it within twelve months this time, not twelve years!  We'll see how that goes.

 Q: Tell me about doing actor's reels and Perfect Reel Productions

I kind of fell into it.  Basically right before I moved out to L.A., I did a reel for an actress back in Chicago and it actually helped her get an agent out here. When I came out here, I started meeting actors who needed reels and began doing it as a business. After about a year I decided I wanted to expand, so I started to advertise. As a result I got a call from a guy who was looking to sell his business, Perfect Reel Productions. We'd been following a similar philosophy, doing similar kinds of work, and were part of only a handful of people who were doing reels in this fashion; a little bit higher-end kind of editing style, putting them together in a more entertaining fashion, and actually shooting scenes for actors who didn't have enough material. He was moving out of state so I took over the business, along with 325 clients and an existing referral base. The other reason I got into cutting reels is that I'd seen so many reels that just didn't serve the actor. Many times they're far too long, the material doesn't work, or it's shot digitally and the quality is poor. One of the things I do is Cinelook and Cinemotion processing, which is basically state-of-the-art software that makes video footage look more like film, a lot more professional. Another positive thing about this for me is that I now have a greater pool of talent to pull from for my projects, and also I can employ actors to shoot scenes with other actors who need more footage.

Q: How long should an actor's reel be?

Generally no more than three to four minutes. Agents and casting directors  just don't have time to watch more than that. You have to be really selective and keep them brief. Sometimes montages can help peak their interest, but those should be short as well.

Q: What do you want your career to have looked like when it's over?

I want to have made movies that have entertained people and at the same time had something to say. That spoke to issues I care about. We work in an important medium where the best movies can accomplish both of those things. My next film 'Zali's Crush' is essentially about child abuse and neglect and the effect it has on the victim in adult life. In fact, we're developing a documentary to go with the film based on the research we did while writing the script. In it's own way 'Carnivore' kind of speaks to the dangers of genetic manipulation and a suspicion of government.  Other projects I'm developing talk about the environment and emerging diseases like SARS. Also anything to do with government conspiracy. I was a huge 'X-Files' fan.

Q: Any final thoughts?