No Budget Films
The 2013 Films
Light Bulb Ad (2013)
Release Dates:
Original Edit: January 14th, 2013
Re-Edit (Shown): August 7th, 2016
Director: Nathan Nguyen
Writer: Nathan Nguyen
Photography by: Cooper Loundy and Nathan Nguyen
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Cast:
Nathan Nguyen as Nathan
Cooper Loundy as himself
Ace salesman Nathan shows us an amazing new product—the light bulb!
Production notes:
Here we have another school project, this one much improved from the previous one. The whole thing was filmed smoothly in one day, and overall I’m pretty satisfied with it. I remember when I showed it in class, it was rudely interrupted by an announcement, which completely ruined one particular hilarious scene involving Cooper in the bedroom. This video was more of a 2012 film (filmed and completed in 2012), but because it wasn't uploaded until the start of 2013, I categorize it as a 2013 film.
Professor Wesley's Dinosaur (2013)
Release Dates:
Original Edit: August 9th, 2013
Re-Edit (Shown): August 9th, 2016
Director: Nathan Nguyen
Story by: Nathan Nguyen
Photography by: Nathan Nguyen
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Puppeteering by: Nathan Nguyen
Cast:
Natalia Nguyen as Casey
Cam Santagata as Casey’s mom
Wesley Fields as Professor Wes
Riitta Lehtinen-Nguyen as herself
Casey and her mother move in with Professor Wes, a “top scientist” who is cloning dinosaurs as his latest science project. However, he soon finds that one of the creatures has gotten loose. Now no one is safe!
Production notes:
Although edited and released in 2013, the footage was originally shot in 2009, which I guess that makes this movie one of my true earliest films. We filmed this at Lake Tahoe, where our family vacationed every winter. I had brought my newly acquired dinosaur puppet, and my aunt Cam suggested we make a movie. And so, we did—completely improvised, from start to finish. I never got around to editing it until four years later. As a matter of fact, back when we filmed this I didn’t even know how to edit videos and add sound effects and such, so I actually voiced the T-Rex’s roars myself. Thankfully, the 2013 edit has my horrendous voice acting muted and replaced with some cooler roars. The main thing that most people love about this movie is Wes’ wooden acting, especially in that one scene where the T-Rex appears outside the window and Wes reacts by “gasping”, and then monotonously stating “The dinosaur.” The sad part is that that was actually a second take—the first one was somehow even more robotic. I figured he wasn’t going to improve any more than that, so I left it as it was.
The Possessed Doll (2013)
Release Dates:
Original Edit: August 9th, 2013
Re-Edit (Shown): August 9th, 2016
Director: Nathan Nguyen
Story by: Nathan Nguyen
Photography by: Nathan Nguyen
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Puppeteering by: Nathan Nguyen
Cast:
Nathan Nguyen as guy who crashes his car
Natalia Nguyen as herself
An evil doll that lives to murder has just made another kill. A nearby girl arrives to investigate the aftermath, only to become the next target of the terrifying toy.
Production notes:
Every summer we'd travel to Finland and stay with our grandparents for about five weeks. One day me and Natalia felt like making a movie, and after finding an old doll, we were all set. We took No Budget Films back to its roots and filmed the whole thing without a script of any kind. I made use of some low angle photography to make a toy car seem life sized (I also slowed down the footage, adding to the effect), and the doll was maneuvered in much same way Slappy was in my living dummy videos. It’s the art of keeping your hands out of the shot. In this movie I paid some attention to the weather, making it match the grim mood of the film (added thunder and rain).
Surge Tries to Impress Breez (2013)
Release dates:
Original Edit: August 27th, 2013
Re-Edit (Shown): August 9th, 2016
Director: Nathan Nguyen
Story by: Nathan Nguyen
Photography by: Nathan Nguyen
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Animation by: Nathan Nguyen
Cast:
Nathan Nguyen as Aquagon
(other voices are sound effects)
Love is in the air in the Hero Factory as Surge attempts to woo his fellow Hero, Breez.
Production notes:
Ah yes, this little animation. I made this when I was somehow struck with a mood for stop motion (about time too; it had been years since my last one!), and so I grabbed a couple of my Hero Factory figures, and made it all up as I went along. The animation itself was done in one night I believe, and same with the editing. Not much to say here, it was just a quick little bit of fun. The video has gone through two edits, without that much difference between the two (The second one has different sound effects and improved visual effects).
The Corrupt Lego Police (2013)
Release Dates:
Original Edit: August 27th, 2013
Re-Edit (Shown): August 9th, 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
A day in the lives of the most incompetent police force ever to exist.
Production notes:
I actually made this way before 2013, in like 2011, but like many of my films, it remained buried in my computer for some time before finally being uploaded to YouTube. When I first uploaded this thing, I was in the middle of my second stop motion phase, so I guess that’s what motivated me to remember to post this. Despite the length of the animation, it was made all in one day. Don’t think that’s all that impressive? Then clearly you don’t know just how time consuming stop motion is! Which is why I don’t really do stop motions anymore. Anyway, as a kid, I always wanted to do a Lego police stop motion. I was inspired by stop motions others did on YouTube, and after I got myself the 2008 Lego police station, I dabbled with some mediocre stop motion until I eventually came up with this little short. The Corrupt Lego Police is the first and only successful Lego police animation I’ve ever made. And the first upload only ended up raking in just over 2K views. I guess my audience doesn’t really care for stop motions that much.
Skrall vs Xplode 2 (2013)
Release dates:
Original edit: August 27th, 2013
Re-Edit (Shown): August 9th, 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
(Sound effects used for Xplode)
Skrall and Xplode rematch after a devastating defeat for Skrall. Who will prevail this time?
Production notes:
As the title of this video suggests, Skrall vs Xplode 2 is the second entry in a series. A series which was never meant to be a series to begin with, but because of all the outrage of Bionicle fans at Skrall’s loss, I finally decided to humor them a few years later with a follow-up. In this sequel, it’s clearly not a fight anymore. It’s just Skrall utterly owning Xplode, with a little critique of the design choices of Xplode thrown in as well. The original upload of this video only garnered a measly 2,000 views, compared to the 16,000 view count of part one. So I guess not every enraged fanboy got the closure they deserved. Poor fellas.
Attack of the Roboraptor (2013)
Release dates:
Original Edit: November 16th, 2013
Re-Edit (Shown): August 12th, 2016
Director: Nathan Nguyen
Story by: Shotaro Watanabe and Nathan Nguyen
Photography by: Nathan Nguyen
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Cast:
Cooper Loundy as himself
Idean Nakhjavani as himself
Shotaro Watanabe as Dr. “Wannabe” Watanabe
Mocked by Idean, Dr. Watanabe decides he’s had enough of these impudent brats, and calls forth his Roboraptor to annihilate Idean and Cooper.
Production notes:
On the day we were supposed to film the interview scene for Dinosaur Attack 2 (2012)—which we didn’t because Kate didn’t show up until way later—we decided to screw around and have some fun. So we filmed this bonus scene where Shotaro eradicates Idean with his Roboraptor, and I'd say it turned out pretty funny. Action Essentials 2 and a new laser effect technique I came up with really helped bring out the visual effects in the second edit. The whole action sequence is an example of using distance to create illusion—the 30” Roboraptor was propped up onto a chair in front of the camera, while the actors stayed some distance away, tricking the viewer’s eye into believing they are seeing a 40 foot robotic creature.