Guerilla Tactics

Why do things guerilla?

Well........to be honest with you, when you're able to get away with it, it's A LOT of fun and creates a kind of immediacy that doesn't happen any other way. I usually love doing things guerilla.

"Danse Macabre" was kind of an exception (because things got out of control at some points and I thought that the police were going to shut us down and/or people would really think that the coffin contained some unfortunate person/former-person in a bad situation) but, otherwise, I've had only good experiences filming, guerilla-style, on my other projects.

I've tried following the rules and getting permits. From my experience, a lot of times people act like assholes OR my low-budget project gets pushed to the wayside OR, depending on the location, the permit and insurance is so high that it would completely wipe out the budget of the project and then some. Which would defeat the purpose.

With my style of (primarily) digital filmmaking (and, as all those who've worked with me know, I like to move things along in a quick, sufficent fashion which, when you're doing a low-budget indie, what choice do you have?), attacking the location and hopping to it seems to work for me.

But, then again, having a no-rush, all-access location is really fucking nice sometimes.

When you need to go guerilla then just go for it, don't attract a ton of attention, move things along in a quick and sufficent fashion, and do what you gotta do.

"Scrapped Music Video/5 Minutes of Your Life That You Can Never Get Back"

A creative collaboration that just wasn't meant to be. Oh well. Since this project doesn't officially exist there will not be any credits listed in order to avoid confusion; all that you need to know is that it was made by me, Derek Quint, along with another independent director, Dana Von Dana.

This project originally was created to be a music video for a particular musician but he was creeped out by it and the video was tossed in the circular file. I think that the video is a lot of fun, though, and the actors did a great job. After the video got rejected I was just going to erase all the footage and call it a day but then, because we did spend some $ on it and there was time and effort put into it, I've rehashed the music editing so that people can at least watch the video and come to their own conclusions.

The project now known as "Scrapped Music Video/5 Minutes of Your Life That You Can Never Get Back" ended up having a kind of early-90's/Rob-Zombie-goes-to-"Degrassi High" feel to it and is a sort of goofy spoof of "The Exorcist" and "Xuxa".

A lot of people really hated this video but there were a good amount that really enjoyed it too. It all made more sense when it had its original song (obviously) but you can still get a sense for the narrative:

How do you have a nice family birthday party when your child is possessed by demons?

And, if you're getting frazzled by the prospect of it, and you decide to hire a Dominatrix to beat the stress out of you a few days beforehand, make sure that you don't short-change her!  Because what if that very same Dominatrix ends up working as a party clown part-time and your husband unknowingly hires her to entertain the family?!  Then you'll be really stressed-out (understandably).

So, basically, the storyline is a very typical family drama/character study.  Clearly.

Keep an open mind.

This edit of "Scrapped Music Video" premiered online October 29th, 2009.

Watch "Scrapped Music Video/5 Minutes of Your Life That You Can Never Get Back" HERE. Rate it. Leave a comment.