No Budget Films
The 2011 Films
Curse of the Living Dummy (2011)
Release dates:
Original Edit: March 16th, 2011
Re-Edit 1: August 9th, 2013
Re-Edit 2 (Shown): August 6th, 2016
Director: Nathan Nguyen
Story by: Nathan Nguyen
Photography by: Nathan Nguyen and Timothy Bagachev
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Puppeteering by: Nathan Nguyen
Cast:
Idean Nakhjavani as Idean
Cooper Loundy as Cooper
Natalia Nguyen as Natalia
Nathan Nguyen as Slappy
Idean, a young ventriloquist, accidentally breaks his dummy and calls up Toys R Us to get a new one. All he gets at first is an envelope, where he finds a slip of paper with weird words on it. He makes the fatal mistake of reading those words aloud, which summons an evil living doll that isn’t quite the replacement dummy Idean imagined...
Production notes:
Curse of the Living Dummy was the successor to the prior living dummy film, Slappy’s Return. It was originally intended as the pilot episode of a “Remake Series” which would recreate all my older films with more “modern” editing and filmmaking. The idea was eventually scrapped, and as watching the original edit will show, the editing and filmmaking were both pretty lackluster, but still better than what we’ve seen in previous entries. Like all my early films, this one was done scriptless. The movie has gone through three different edits- The first edit was rendered in black and white, which was dropped in the second edit, but brought back in the third and final edit. The story had a continuity problem: The opening credits show the dummy approaching the house and sneaking under Idean’s bed, but in a later scene Idean brings the dummy to life and discovers it under his bed. This hiccup was solved in the second edit by removing the reading of the magic words altogether, while the final edit rearranges the scenes so the opening credits sequence comes after the magic word reading.
Fun fact: This was the last of my live action films to use a non-video camera to shoot.
Another fun fact: Unlike most of my other films, this one has very few sound effects, since it relies more heavily on music and atmosphere.
Aliens! (2011)
Release Dates:
Original Edit (Lost): Some time in 2011
Re-Edit (Shown): August 6th, 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
What happens when a crashed alien shuttle is found underground? The Alien Tracking Agency, or ATA for short, is called in to get to the bottom of the matter.
Production notes:
This video likely marks the end of my stop motion phase, since stop motion animations became far more sporadic after this upload. “Aliens!” was the first of my stop motions to feature actual voice acting, all done by me. The whole thing was made as a contest entry, but obviously my still-developing animation was no match for the craft of some of the more experienced animators out there. The story was a little more complex than my previous stop motion material, but nothing very remarkable. The ending was also rushed.
Dinosaur Attack (2011)
Release dates:
Original Edit: June 15th, 2011
Re-Edit 1: November 21st, 2011
Re-Edit 2: September 23rd, 2015
Re-Edit 4 (Shown): August 6th, 2016
Director: Nathan Nguyen
Written by: Nathan Nguyen
Photography by: Nathan Nguyen and Idean Nakhjavani
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Puppeteering by: Nathan Nguyen
Cast:
Cooper Loundy as Cooper, Brian Brontosaurus, and assisting dinosaur puppeteer
Idean Nakhjavani as Idean
Timothy Bagachev as Tim
Shotaro Watanabe as Shotaro
Nathan Nguyen as cop
Idean has just discovered a fossilized dinosaur skin, and contacts a paleontologist. He learns that an advanced science project is underway to clone dinosaurs. His friend Cooper doubts that is even possible, but a few days later, the two of them learn firsthand that the project is all too real. Dinosaurs have broken out, and soon our heroes find themselves under the hot pursuit of a hungry T-Rex.
Production notes:
I guess you could say that this movie was my first “serious” film. For one thing, it was the first one to utilize a script. Additionally, this movie was one of the main things that I had been planning for a couple years- It was basically my first idea to make a movie, period. In a way, it was one of the major components that helped start No Budget Films. Dinosaur Attack is an interesting case because the storyline was changed around several times. In the first edit, only part of the footage was released, because frankly, I was lazy and decided to save the rest for the sequel. But eventually, all that leftover footage was abandoned because I grew unsatisfied with it. And so, the series continued with the release of Dinosaur Attack 2 (2012), and the “other half” of Dinosaur Attack wasn’t seen until I released it was a “bonus scene”, dubbed Dinosaur Attack 1.5. It wasn’t until 2015 that I decided to re-edit and re-release all of both halves as one complete package, plus some new footage to create a new finale. Cooper (who looks far more grown up than he did in 2011) returned to play a new character, Brian Brontosaurus, who is a dinosaur expert wishing to study the creature. I myself play a cop in this new finale, who I also played back in 2011 when I was 13. However, the new “Improved Edition” of Dinosaur Attack takes the liberty of entirely removing all the old cop scenes, and replacing them with new ones where I’m a little more believable as a “grown-up”. One more edit followed the 2015 version, and it's nearly identical in every way, save for some swapped out sound effects to make it more copyright-friendly. Although the original edit was made once again on Windows Movie Maker, the next three edits were done on PowerDirector, steadily improving in quality over the years.
Milestones: First movie to have a script, earliest movie to pass a million views (not the first to reach that benchmark, but the oldest video to eventually hit that number)
Slappy Hurts People (2011)
Just a fun little compilation of Slappy injuring various people in the movies. Why did I make this, you may ask? Good question. I'm not sure I know the answer myself. For fun, I suppose. Due to all the re-editing, plus the addition of several newer Slappy films, this new edit of Slappy Hurts People that you see here is somewhat different from the original.
Release dates:
Original edit: August 23rd, 2011
Re-Edit (Shown): August 6th, 2016
The Dinosaur 2 (2011)
Release dates:
Original Edit: December 6th, 2011
Re-Edit 1: April 26th, 2014
Re-Edit 2: August 7th, 2016
Director: Nathan Nguyen
Story by: Nathan Nguyen
Photography by: Nathan Nguyen
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Puppeteering by: Nathan Nguyen
Cast:
Natalia Nguyen as herself
Alex Clayton as himself
Alec Neilly as himself
After a narrow escape from the T-Rex, Natalia returns to her neighborhood to catch up with her friends. But she’s not off the hook yet, as the ravenous reptile has followed her...
Production notes:
My sister had her friends over, and we were bored. Then, I had a brilliant idea: What if we made a movie? And so, another spontaneous, scriptless film was produced. Even though it’s a sequel to “The Dinosaur” from earlier that year, this movie has very little connection to its predecessor, save for the same main character and a brief mention of the last film’s events. The technique used to bring the T-Rex to life is the same as what has been previously used: A puppet positioned close to the camera to convey size. The effect is somewhat improved since the previous dinosaur entry to the series, and new types of shots were experimented with, like the shot with the Rex’s head in the door. I also snagged one of my sister’s barbie dolls to represent Alec’s corpse.
Milestones: First sequel (not counting the formerly separate parts of Slappy's Return [2010])
Killer Plant of the Bamboo Forest (2011)
Release Dates:
Original Edit (Lost): Some time in 2011
Re-Edit 1: September 19th, 2012
Re-Edit 2 (Shown): August 7th, 2016
Director: Nathan Nguyen
Story by: Nathan Nguyen
Photography by: Nathan Nguyen
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Puppeteering by: Nathan Nguyen
Cast:
Nhi Nguyen as herself
Biologist Nhi Nguyen is on a scientific expedition in a bamboo forest, when she comes across an interesting plant. However, interest soon turns to shock as the plant suddenly grows to massive size and starts attacking!
Production notes:
The original upload of this is deleted (can’t remember why), but luckily I was able to find the raw files so the film could live on through re-edits. Me and the family were at this Vietnamese temple where we usually go to celebrate the new year, and as it sometimes happens, I felt like making a movie. I found a cool looking plant lying around and worked from there. The film is exceedingly simple, and certainly one of my worse ones. The like to dislike ratio on YouTube is sure proof of that, on the original edit at least.
In case you missed anything...