| With ENDANGERED SPECIES (1996), Joel Wynkoop and I collaborated with Kevin J. Lindenmuth and contributed the 35-minute RANSOM segment. The post-apocalyptic Florida locations in this homage to ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK was all done pretty much guerrilla-filmmaking style. In other words, show up and shoot! Mostly we shot in state parks where we posed as (aging!) college students making a short flick! We got plenty of "Everglades-ish" woods scenes like this and lots of scenes with rundown, burnt-out buildings in public areas where I just framed out the busy highways in the background! This works against you when you don't alert the police. The rule of thumb is, if you're going to film in public places with guns, you have to at least let the police know what you're doing! Actor Joel D. Wynkoop almost got shot in a state park when authorities were called about the "trench coat-wearing vagrant with a gun." Some cities and towns (other than here in South Florida) actually encourage filmmakers to stage gunfights and chases on the streets as long as the police know and an officer is hired for "security" on the set, so the public knows that the setup is legitimate! The RANSOM segment made use of mainly out of the way overgrown areas and desolate beaches (which are impossible to find in Florida: hence framing again!) so other than the cops at the state park and the Marine Patrol checking in on us in the intercoastal "alligator fight" scene, everything worked pretty cool. The opening and closing scenes of RANSOM, featuring the big burned-out wall where Joel Wynkoop has to climb over it and fight a border guard were filmed right on busy U.S. Highway #1, at the burned-down remains of a True Value hardware store! We just showed up, did what we did with a relatively large crew, and left! We were there all day long, using such props as gas masks and rocket launchers, and no one even bothered to ask if we had permission to be there! This was a case of sheer guts and luck, if you ask me. But it worked! Again camera placement avoided the busy highway not twenty feet from the fight scene! Another cool scene was shot in some woods not far from a McDonald's! Special guest star (and genre journalist) Franklin E. Wales found this neat abandoned area with an old overgrown school bus, an old rundown house, and rusted-out cars. Again, this seemed to be public property, so we traipsed on over to the location with over half-a-dozen cars and a twenty-five foot, 200 pound Python to boot that a friend of Frank's brought along for the scene! We staged a graphic gut-eating scene (where Frank's own kids ate his innards!) and a scene with Joel and the Python! Again, no one said a word... The end scene, in the "alien's lair" was shot at a warehouse where Joel works. The exterior shots with all the cool satellites and weird dome-like buildings were shot at an actual missile tracking base here in Florida that I stumbled onto! They keep an eye on Cuba, and I thought that would be a wild "alien base" exterior. I didn't bother to ask permission, I just snuck around the base(filming around armed guards!) and got the shots I needed! In the finished movie, I used only the shots that were taken with a telephoto lens on public property to avoid any problems with trespassing on or any other legal hassles! Recently, the person that operates the missile tracking base saw the movie and loved it! They reportedly "got a kick" out of the shot where the U.F.O. zooms out of the sky over the base (courtesy of special digital effects man Tim Thomson, I presume!). And check out the ENDANGERED SPECIES ending that Kevin Lindenmuth came up with that included not one exploding building but SEVERAL exploding buildings using the same strategy that I used down here in Florida on CREEP to get those "money shots." Used in an "alien context", this movie also goes out with an exciting bang! It again shows that anywhere in the country, you can find exciting and resourceful locations that will give maximum impact for next-to-nothing: the cost of videotape and gas to get there! For SCREAMING FOR SANITY: Truth or Dare Part 3 (1998), we had some location problems. Mainly, not many people wanted to help us out or give us their places. Aside from myself, the ever-reliable R.M. Hoopes, and Joel Wynkoop, no one was cooperating. The screenplay to TRUTH III (co-written by myself, Ron Bonk, and Kevin Lindenmuth) was meant to be easy to film. Mainly indoor location, they included a police department interrogation room and hallway, a few offices, a few apartments, a house or two (one with a pool) and other incidental things like city streets and a warehouse for the conclusion. Also needed was a large public rest room where a character was crucified to the back wall. | | |
