No Budget Films
The 2011 Films
The Living Dummy (2011)
Release Dates:
Original Edit (Lost): Some time in 2011
Re-Edit (Shown): August 5th, 2016
Director: Nathan Nguyen
Story by: Nathan Nguyen
Photography by: Nathan Nguyen
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Puppeteering by: Nathan Nguyen
Cast:
Timothy Bagachev as himself
On a visit to his friend's house, Tim finds the place to be completely deserted. It's dark, and empty, but there's something else in there... Something evil...
Production Notes:
This film was created after the production of Slappy's Return (2010), in an attempt to make a darker, scarier living dummy movie. I guess I just wasn't really satisfied with how Slappy's Return turned out in terms of scariness. So with this one, I filmed it with very little light and opted to use a black and white color scheme to make it creepier. Some of the inspiration for this film actually came from a YouTube video where this ventriloquist talks about her ventriloquist dummy collection. And intercut between the interview segments were these cinematic scenes of one of her dummies coming to life, stalking her, and killing her in the night. A bit odd given the context, but the scenes were actually pretty well put together and quite creepy. Seeing this inspired me to make something that could match that level of creepiness. The original upload of this film was taken down by me because the video contained Dead Silence soundtrack, and I didn't want to get into any copyright trouble.
Milestones: First black and white movie
Terror of Roy McCoy (2011)
Release Dates:
Original Edit: Januray 1st, 2011
Re-Edit (Shown): August 5th, 2016
Director: Nathan Nguyen
Story by: Nathan Nguyen
Photography by: Nathan Nguyen
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Animation by: Nathan Nguyen
Cast:
Nathan Nguyen as all characters
An evil criminal, Roy McCoy, goes on a violent killing spree for seemingly no reason. Can the police stop him?
Production notes:
This video is the earliest of my stop motions to remain on YouTube (It was preceded by one other, which was deleted). It was made over the course of a few days, and was probably one of the better Lego animations I had made at the time (I was in my Lego stop motion phase). Back then, I didn’t know about voice recording yet, so the original version is more or less a silent film, with subtitles in the place of dialogue, and some sound effects littered here and there. 2016's re-edit adds voice acting and overall better sound design to enhance the viewing experience.
Milestones: First stop motion posted (that actually stayed up)
Attack of the Killer Plant (2011)
Release Dates:
Original Edit: January 19th, 2011
Re-Edit 1: February 2nd, 2015
Re-Edit 2 (Shown): August 5th, 2016
Director: Nathan Nguyen
Story by: Nathan Nguyen
Photography by: Kai Jacklin and Nathan Nguyen
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Puppeteering by: Kai Jacklin and Nathan Nguyen
Cast:
Nathan Nguyen as himself
It’s just another boring day in Nathan’s life, when something truly bizarre happens- A seemingly harmless bush suddenly springs to life, and attacks the unsuspecting child!
Production notes:
At first we were going to film Scarecrow Doomsday (2011), but Tim happened to be on vacation that day, so instead we made this. My dad had just finished trimming some bushes in the yard, and the ground was still covered in bush pieces. Somehow it hit me that I should use those for a movie, and the rest is history. In the original edit, done on Windows Movie Maker, it was apparent that I was restricted by the software’s capabilities because I actually had to interrupt the music to insert a censor beep sound effect. Curse you Movie Maker, and your singular audio track!
Skrall vs Xplode (2011)
Release Dates:
Original Edit: January 21st, 2011
Re-Edit (Shown): August 5th, 2016
Director: Nathan Nguyen
Story by: Nathan Nguyen
Photography by: Nathan Nguyen
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Animation by: Nathan Nguyen
Cast:
Nathan Nguyen as Skrall (original edit only)
A stop motion battle pitting two of Lego’s most well known constraction lines against each other: Bionicle and Hero Factory.
Production notes:
At the start of 2011, I was just getting into Lego’s Hero Factory line, which was the constraction theme that replaced Bionicle in the previous year. The Internet was ablaze with hate for the new line, and many a stop motion was made where Bionicle wipes the floor with Hero Factory. There were next to no videos where Hero Factory triumphed over Bionicle, so I decided I’d change that. Unsurprisingly, my video was very negatively received, with dislikes far outweighing the likes. The response to the re-edit was far mellower, partly due to how little attention it got and partly because no one really cared about Hero Factory anymore at that point.
The Toa Mahri vs Gadunka (2011)
Release Dates:
Original Edit: January 29th, 2011
Re-Edit (Shown): August 5th, 2016
Director: Nathan Nguyen
Story by: Nathan Nguyen
Photography by: Nathan Nguyen
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Animation by: Nathan Nguyen
Cast:
Nathan Nguyen as Hewkii
The underwater Toa team, the Toa Mahri, come face to face with a mighty mutant creature—Gadunka. Who will prevail?
Production notes:
Another stop motion entry into my movie series (I was still in my stop motion phase). Originally, the visual effects were very primitive (paper cut out explosions), but to be fair, I was using Windows Movie Maker, so you really couldn’t expect anything too great. The animation itself isn’t that bad, though. However, the re-edit does fix those lame effects with some quality Action Essentials 2 stuff, and also adds improvements in the sound effects and music department.
Scarecrow Doomsday (2011)
Release Dates:
Original Edit (Lost): Some time in 2011
Re-Edit (Shown): August 5th, 2016
Director: Nathan Nguyen
Story by: Nathan Nguyen
Photography by: Nathan Nguyen
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Puppeteering by: Nathan Nguyen
Cast:
Timothy Bagachev as Tim
Kai Jacklin as Kai/werewolf
Nathan Nguyen as Scarecrow, Shrunken Skeleton, and Slappy
Slappy, the Shrunken Skeleton, and the werewolf all return to declare war on the boy who had once defeated them all. The attack is led by a new villain, a living scarecrow, who exists only to destroy.
Production notes:
Scarecrow Doomsday is an interesting one because not many people know about it. Basically what it is is an "epic crossover" between most of the villains introduced in the films thus far, plus one new one which the movie is named after. Scarecrow Doomsday was the first movie where I tried to establish some sort of continuity between the films. I remember initially wanting to make Scarecrow Doomsday into a trilogy, but that never ended up happening. While I tried to make this movie epic, even hyping it up with two trailers, the final product sort of fell flat with bad editing, subpar acting, and poor special effects. In fact, I must've thought it turned out so bad that I deleted both the film and the trailers from YouTube. Well, the film's back now with some better editing. Still cheesy as they come, but perhaps enjoyable in a "so bad it's good" way.
The Year of the Cat (2011)
Release Dates:
Original Edit: January 30th, 2011
Re-Edit (Shown): August 6th, 2016
Director: Nathan Nguyen
Story by: Nathan Nguyen and Trac Nguyen
Photography by: Nathan Nguyen
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Cast:
Trac Nguyen as himself
Natalia Nguyen as herself
An old man falls asleep on the night of the year of the cat, only to wake up the next morning to discover his dog mysteriously transformed into a cat. Coincidence? I think not.
Production notes:
Grandpa had the idea of making a funny movie for the Vietnamese New Year, so we took it from there. It was indeed the year of the cat, so we grabbed a cat toy and made up the story as we went along. The end result was sort of funny I guess, if you like poop jokes (and who doesn’t?). Grandpa has a bit of an accent, so I added subtitles in the original edit, which I later deemed unnecessary.
Milestones: First film with an adult protagonist
But wait! There's more!