Charlie Productions : How To Make A Bad Film

Obviously the ways in which it is possible to make a film that is less than good are legion. Making a good film is very hard, making anything less than good is less hard to achieve.

Theme and Genre.
Genre Theory deals with the preconceptions that an audience is given by a filmmaker. Someone in control of their subject matter will use the subtle tics and tells of a genre to quickly guide an audience to an understanding of the narrative, they will also use their understanding of the genre to subvert the audience's expectation and lead them to a new and interesting imaginative space. Genre is the art of playing with what the audience already knows. So, one of the most direct routes to a making a bad film is simply to force feed the audience a heavy diet of what they already knew, and nothing else. My favourites are that both Child Abuse and Racism are Wrong.

Obviously subtler themes and generic images can be just as tedious, happy fat people, wise and caring whores, faceless security guards who cannot shoot straight, the Eiffel Tower being in Paris and the hero being related to the villain - but nothing is quite as remarkable to the bad filmmaker as the fact that it is wrong to touch children or be nasty to black people. Short film makers seem especially hung up about explaining these two astounding and only recently understood truths. If you are trying (and some people out there really seem to be trying) to make a bad short film then nothing hits the mark better than a film that exists to explain, yet again, that we are, beneath our skin, all the same. All of us. Well, apart from abused kids, whom lazy film logic dictates will grow up to abuse in their turn, ad infinitum and ad naseum.

Why are you making this film? Do you really imagine that there are racists and child abusers out there who would be OK if only they saw your film? That guy who firebombs the Asian owned 24-hour store and then goes home and kicks his daughter down the stairs - do you think he's going to see your short film and suddenly pale and think "Oh my God, I've been a bit of bastard haven't I?" Or are you making this film because it confirms for you that you are a good person who knows that being bad is wrong and all the other good people you know will nod sagely and feel unable to criticise the tired, uninformed, unhelpful, regurgitation of trite simplicities that pass as a script. Technically that last sentence should end with a question mark but I'm not giving it one because that's not a question, not even rhetorically, that's just a statement of what you are doing. So stop it.

Overall though the key thing about using Genre Theory to make a bad film is to think of a genre and stick blindly, graspingly, uncomprehendingly to it's rules. Horror films are especially easy to copy and especially boring to watch. The sci-fi-kung-fu-time-travel-detective-action-adventure may seem too varied to really be a genre all of it's own, but the rules are quite clear (a man, or better, a woman in a bra, does some fighting, then it ends) and astonishingly repetitive and banal to watch. You get the picture, though, when thinking about something derivative to make, spare a thought for the art house muse on sexual fidelity. By relying on overlong wide shots, abstract imagery, sudden cutting to seemingly unrelated events, acoustic guitar and/or drum and bass soundtracks and long scenes of improvised dialogue (preferably delivered naked, or better, naked and uncomfortable about the fact) you can really feel like you're making something unique and powerful, whilst all the time doing nothing but churn out a series of cliches about men being masculine and women being less so (or perhaps the other way around, a startling thought that could take up the entire last act) whilst, hopefully, seeing a bit of minge.

That said, the bad filmmaker can make brave steps by taking a genre and twisting it just ever so slightly in a way that proves that they really have no understanding of what they're doing. A good example of this is the Gangster Film with the added twist that it's Written By A Posh Boy And Set In A Place Where There Are No Gangsters! Few things are more gobsmackingly awful than watching men in jet black M&S suits strolling through the mean streets of Canterbury, York, or any other provincial cathedral city. The tragic rise in UK gun crime does not stop it still being utterly laughable when you have a shoot out by Reading train station.

Another classic example of the take on a genre that really is too original is the Serial Killer film. Inspired by Thomas Harris' shocking Hannibal Lecter novels, driven by an uncomprehending admiration for Fincher's "Se7ven", what could be better than a gut wrenching tale of two hard bitten cops on the trail of a Norfolk based serial murderer whose victims all form clues to his identity so convoluted they read like an insane dyslexic trying to write a cryptic crossword. "Wait a minute guv, she was killed using a claw hammer, perhaps that's a reference to the Hammer series of horror films" "Or, Constable, it's a reference to MC HAMMER the famous baggy trousered rapper, rapper is, after all, only one letter away from Ripper as in Jack the Ripper!" "Good God boss, no one in the Banningham area is safe!"

Casting.
Of course making a film that is fundamentally tired, ludicrous, lazy or insipid is not the only way to make a bad film. Indeed, it may not even be enough. If you are honest with yourself the proper three Star Wars films are actually just as daft as the latest ones, the only difference being that in Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, Lucas accidentally managed to cast two people with charisma. Not a mistake he has repeated. However, when making a bad film, it is important to remember that a good actor can actually make almost any tosh at least half watchable. I mean, you would have thought that casting Orlando Bloom as an heroic blacksmith would have been enough to sink Pirates of The Caribbean but you can always watch Johnny Depp. No matter how self-indulgent his performance, despite his habit of only appearing in utterly terrible films, nothing can ever be that bad if Johnny Depp is in it. He's like Humphrey Bogart, even his bad films at least have him in them.

Charlie Productions believe passionately in doing things and always trying to stop in time for tea.
Brook House Design Studios, Bluebridge Road, Brookmans Park, Herts AL9 7SX
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