Summer blockbusters rarely cost less than $100 million, but according to Collin Armstrong you can make a high-quality short film for the cost of “a good used Honda.”
Armstrong, 30, is one of a trio of Indiana filmmakers who make up Venogram Productions. With the help of his friends and partners, Dylan Griffith, 30, and Alex Johnson, 32, Armstrong recently completed production on Venogram’s second short film, “Thank You for Calling Information Dynamics.”
The new film features a host of local talent as well as Butler University graduate Blaine Hogan [FOX’s “Prison Break,” “The Letter,” “Red Harvest”] and Samantha Simon [NBC’s “Life,” “Miss Ohio,” “Red Harvest,” “Rage”].
Production stills shot by Kristen Leep can be found here.
Can you give me the nickel tour of how Venogram came together?
Griffith: My last year at Butler, Collin [had] graduated, Alex and I started shooting my student movie, “The Letter.” We started having some success around town, shooting music videos and what have you, and Collin was in law school. He decided he didn’t like lawyering and he came back. We decided if we wanted to keep doing movies and be able to control the product a little better we decided should have our own company. We started Venogram in 2003? 2004?
Johnson: 2004.
Griffith: I think in a year or so [after that] we made “Red Harvest.” [It came out in 2006, they’d been working on it as a feature since 2004/2005.
Armstrong: I went to law school at Temple for a semester. I realized I was going to get out and owe 90 grand and still want to write movies so I decided to get out before I owed 90 grand. I lived and worked out there for a while. I worked with Dylan over the phone…
Griffith: I think it was mid-way through my second movie, “An Everyday Occurrence,” that we decided to get back together and shoot stuff again. I don’t know how far back you want to take it but the three of us had a TV show at Butler. It was called “Music Beat.” It aired about one episode. For lots of reasons we can’t get into it was taken off the air.
Tell me about “Red Harvest,” how that happened and what you were able to do with it.
Griffith: We decided that doing a horror movie that could be sold direct-to-DVD stood the best chance of making money. We had a lot of good leads but we were never able to raise enough money to shoot a feature. Out of desperation at the end of that year we decided to drain Venogram’s bank account and shoot it as a short, even if it’s the last thing we do. [made money from corporate jobs] We re-wrote it as a short, got it made, and a lot of people really liked it, so much that we re-wrote the feature to be more like the short. We toured around with the movie for about a year at different festivals and then it got solicited at international festivals as well. It was shown in Australia, Brazil, the U.K. and supposedly on Dutch television.
In San Francisco we met Uwe Boll…
Armstrong: It should be said, for those not familiar with Uwe Boll, a cursory Internet search will reveal him to be one of the most reviled filmmakers currently working.
Griffith: So we met him in San Francisco and despite all the really negative stuff people say about him, he’s a very nice guy. We went up to him and handed him our movie and the next day we got an e-mail from an AOL account…
Armstrong: It was like uwebollblahblahblah@aol.com so we’re like, ‘oh, this is bullshit.’
Griffith: We called some of our friends to make sure they weren’t bullshitting us because we told some people we met Uwe Boll. Why would Uwe Boll have an AOL account? We did all the cursory paperwork to have it appear on one of his DVD releases. Through a series of changes and miscommunications, it’s supposed to appear on a DVD that has yet to be released.
Armstrong: It’s still a possibility but as of yet there’s no release date for the movie it’s tethered to.
Griffith: It could still happen.
Armstrong: It’s been released in other territories but our deal is for the US. It’s a sequel to “Alone in the Dark,” which is based on a PC video game.
How did “Thank You…” come about?
Griffith: “Thank You for Calling Information Dynamics” started earlier this year, actually. Things started winding down with “Red Harvest,” we shot a music video for state government about gun violence. Collin and I had been talking about “The Bourne Identity.”
Armstrong: We sort of had parallel ideals about that movie and the way they treat characters, not just in that movie but modern action movies in general. You never get any down time with any characters, no matter who they are, it’s just go go go go go go. What would happen if you took those moments in a character’s life and stretched them out so you’d see them more as normal people?
Griffith: You kind of strip those characters of all their extreme music cues for mundane things. All those movies, when you open a [cell] phone it sounds like a razor blade and when they type it’s really extreme. So we’re stripping all of that away and showing you a little before and a little after what you normally see. It’s also an expression about how all of us, through our jobs or what we buy are sort of detached from the outcome of things.
So I’m expecting a horror movie or a shoot-‘em-up and I get a think piece on the banality of evil?
[Laughter]
Johnson: The logline, when they presented me with the idea, was “The Bourne Identity” meets “The Office.” I think that that’s a pretty accurate way of describing the film.
Griffith: I think it will be interesting to see how people react to the film because there are some funny moments but there is a really grisly death scene at the end.
Armstrong: We’re gonna lose the audience but it’s like, it’s over so who cares.
Moving forward do you feel like you have momentum from “Red Harvest,” do you have a network to help propel you from that stage to whatever is next.
Armstrong: I would say outside of exercising your craft, the reason to make short movies is as a calling card and to take it out and to meet people. We met so many people through “Red Harvest.” The feature script is still out in L.A., floatin’ around. I talked to somebody the other day who read it and liked it. Nothing ever comes of it but still it’s out there. [Thank You for Calling Information Dynamics] is much more accessible than “Red Harvest.” Horror is a niche genre at film festivals and I think we’ll be able to get this slotted at film festivals that “Red Harvest” wouldn’t have had a shot at.
Is the plan to get money to come here or are you hoping to be plucked out of the muck and taken to Hollywood?
Johnson: I think we’re all dealing with that decision right now. I think we’re equally open to both options and conflicted about the decision. I think we feel loyalty to the people who helped us make this movie and the connections and ease of making a movie in Indiana – gathering up a crew who will work for four days for free – but that said, we’re starting to hit the ceiling.
Griffith: It should be said we have at least a year’s worth of projects slotted here in Indiana.
Corporate stuff?
Armstrong: Mostly creative stuff.
Griffith: Music videos. We’ve got a spaghetti western about the Underground Railroad we want to shoot here.
Another barrel of laughs with that one.
[Laughter]
Griffith: Part of the reason we get things done is that we write for what we have. We don’t try and shoot the moon with things we don’t have. I meet filmmakers here and that’s their problem. They never get passed a script or they shoot a couple of days and realize, “I don’t know anything about this.” And what is that worth to people who gave their time? I think we’ve had a lot of success with the way we make movies here. But like Alex said, I think we’ve hit the ceiling here. I think a big reason is that we can’t get investment. Unfortunately there’s just not investment in that area in Indiana.
Is Film Indiana any help?
Johnson: We’ve not reached out to them. We dealt with them a little bit. I’m on the board of the Indiana Media Network group, which has been pushing the legislation a lot on getting Film Indiana reborn and re-energized.
Griffith: They’ve been as helpful as they can be. I don’t think that culture’s in place here, and I don’t think that it’s a priority with state government.
Armstrong: No, not when stadiums are failing.
Johnson: I do think they cut [film industry] tax breaks out of the budget.
Griffith: There’s that, too.
Armstrong: Everywhere in this part of the country has pushed really hard to get film production to come in...except for Indiana.
Johnson: The little bit of gains we had were rolled back.
Armstrong: The only thing that people who work on [locally produced short films] really get out of it is getting to see the finished product, getting to go to the local premiere, with the hope that maybe one day we can bring in a paying job. And they feel confident that we’ll involve them.
Griffith: Steve Marra recently did it, so it is possible. I’d like to see that continue.
Where do you rent the equipment you need for a theater-quality production?
Griffith: Cincinnati.
Really? No one has that gear in Indianapolis?
Johnson: Every time Road Pictures shoots a commercial, which is once a week at this point, they get send an [Assistant Camera] to Cincinnati to get the same package we use.
Armstrong: It makes it tough because you’re adding in travel, shipping...
You’d think that Markey’s [Audio Visual] or somebody would buy that package and go to Road and say, “Here.”
Griffith: If the state government isn’t going to offer incentives to do that nobody’s going to. Markey’s has their niche business and they make plenty of money doing it, why take a risk.
