No Budget Films
The 2016 Films
Ginger VS Toy: War Between Dog and Stuffy (2016)
Release Dates:
Original Edit (Facebook): November 18th, 2015
Original Edit (YouTube): January 27th, 2016
Re-Edit (shown): August 28th, 2016
Director: Nathan Nguyen
Story by: Nathan Nguyen
Photography by: Nathan Nguyen
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Puppeteering by: Nathan Nguyen
Cast:
Ginger as herself
Pumpkin as herself
Who will prevail in the epic war between the lone dog toy, and the vicious canine creature?
Production notes:
For the first time in a while, I aimed to make a film that was pure comedy. Not a horror-comedy, and not an action-comedy either. It was just a silly little film starring my dogs, and one unfortunate chew toy. Because of the simplicity of this video, I was able to complete it in just one day. It didn’t initially get posted to YouTube though—originally this was intended purely as a family movie to be enjoyed by my Facebook friends, but later on I added it to YouTube as well. Getting my dog Ginger to follow along with the story was an easy task because of how playful she is. She chased that toy like there was no tomorrow, which is more than I can say for my other dog, Pumpkin, who wants nothing to do with play. This film was partly inspired by Adam Cox’s short film, Ginger Cat vs Paper Army.
Ginger VS Toy 2: The Stuffed Animals Strike Back (2016)
Release Dates:
Original Edit (Facebook): January 23rd, 2016
Original Edit (YouTube): January 27th, 2016
Re-Edit (Shown): August 28th, 2016
Director: Nathan Nguyen
Story by: Nathan Nguyen
Photography by: Nathan Nguyen
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Puppeteering by: Nathan Nguyen
Cast:
Ginger as herself
Pumpkin as herself
With their leader cornered by the mighty canine, the stuffed animals formulate a rescue plan.
Production notes:
This one was made fairly shortly after the first Ginger vs Toy, about a couple months later. The first Ginger vs Toy was pretty well received, so a sequel seemed like a fun idea. This time I sought to out-do the first film by adding more stuffies for Ginger to tear apart, and also by incorporating more of a plot to go with the action. The result was a film that was longer, better, and more popular than the first. My other dog Pumpkin plays a somewhat bigger role here, featured as the clueless wimp who watches from the sidelines.
Mothman (2016)
Release Dates:
Original Edit: February 8th, 2016
Re-Edit (Shown): August 28th, 2016
Director: Nathan Nguyen
Story by: Nathan Nguyen
Photography by: Nathan Nguyen, Ian Kennedy, and John Gundayao
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Puppeteering by: Nathan Nguyen
Cast:
Cooper Loundy as Jake
John Gundayao as Mothman (closeup)
Nathan Nguyen as Derek Shadowstone
A sinister beast last seen in 1967 returns to instill terror once more at the end of the decade. It's up to Derek Shadowstone (supernatural private investigator) to get to the bottom of the matter.
Production notes:
This movie was actually a school assignment for myth class. The assignment was to explore the supernatural and occult by choosing a monster, and analyzing its significance to its time period. Most of my analysis was done in written form in an artist's statement accompanying the film, but it can still be found in the film in a subtle way. Mothman was a 60's creature, so I was trying to work in some themes of paranoia, technology, fear of assassinations, and some fear of nuclear disaster as well. I wanted this film to have an air of mystery to it, as this is mainly what Mothman is all about to me. Therefore I decided to show Mothman as little as possible, and mainly made the creature appear during the night. I chose to go with the black and white theme because I thought the look suited this type of film, and it also gave good contrast to the crimson red eyes of the Mothman. That's one thing I wanted to draw a lot of attention to—Mothman's glowing eyes. This was the feature that all the sightings describe most vividly.
Dino Woods (2016)
Release Date: August 28th, 2016
Director: Nathan Nguyen
Story by: Nathan Nguyen
Photography by: Nathan Nguyen and Lucas Nguyen
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Puppeteering by: Nathan Nguyen
Cast:
Lucas Nguyen as himself
Natalia as girl who dies right away
A boy is hunted by a group of predatory dinosaurs in the woods. Can he escape, or will he become the latest prey of the savage beasts?
Production notes:
Dino Woods was filmed and edited in the summer of 2015, but I place it under 2016 films because it wasn't released until that year, plus the current edit is unique to 2016. The original edit was very similar but with different sound effects, and also differed through the inclusion of a full CGI fx shot of the T-Rex. I ultimately decided to remove that shot because it seemed too unoriginal, slapped together with an app called Fx Guru. I didn't know if I'd be allowed to post that sort of third party content, so I cut it out. Dino Woods was essentially an experiment to see how good of a movie I could make with the Jurassic World puppets. Those puppets are definitely not the best, so it was a challenge. I think the raptor sequences were pretty alright, but the T-Rex shots were horrendous. Except for that last shot with the Rex emerging from the water, which was pretty good, but that's all thanks to the 'ol reliable Puppetoys T-Rex. The final shot with the fish feeding on Lucas' flesh was actually taken by Lucas himself way before this movie was conceived, using his GoPro camera. And no, there was no real blood. The red coloration was added in post.
T-Rex vs Carnotaurus 4 (2016)
Release Date: August 30th, 2016
Director: Nathan Nguyen
Story by: Nathan Nguyen
Photography by: Nathan Nguyen
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Puppeteering by: Nathan Nguyen
The king of the dinosaurs once again clashes with its underdog challenger, the Carnotaurus. Who will get the last laugh this time?
Production notes:
T-Rex vs Carnotaurus 4: It just had to happen. This film series is by far the most popular one on my channel, so how could I not make a fourth one? Even though its release date was in August of 2016, it was actually filmed and edited much earlier, towards the beginning of 2016. Why was it held back for so long? Well, 2016 was an interesting year because it was mostly spent re-working, re-editing, and re-releasing all my old films, for copyright reasons. And because I wanted the films to be in the proper chronological order, I was forced to put off uploading this one until all the re-edits were up. T-Rex vs Carnotaurus 4 served as a testing video for the YouTube monetization program, and once I saw it worked, I began applying monetization to my other videos as well. From day one the video was gaining views rapidly, with close to 800,000 hits by the 10th day. This series is pretty much a meme by now. Part 4 takes a step past the first three parts by adding a lot more blood, making this fight a bit more violent than the others. It also differs from the others due to the outcome—this time, it was a Carnotaurus that stood victorious. I was trying to do something a little different this time. It may not be the most realistic outcome (honestly, who really thinks that the 25 foot Carno could beat the 40 foot Rex?), but hey, it's all in the name of fun right?
Top Predators
(2016)
Release Date: September 1st, 2016
Director: Nathan Nguyen
Story by: Nathan Nguyen
Photography by: Nathan Nguyen, Ian Kennedy, Cooper Loundy, Evren Keskin, Pierre Grubb, and Thomas Nguyen
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Puppeteering by: Nathan Nguyen
Cast:
Ian Kennedy...............................................................................................................................Secret Organization Member 1 and zombie
Cooper Loundy..........................................................................................Secret Organization Member 2 and werewolf (one shot)
Nathan Nguyen..........................................................Carl the Weirdo, generic worker voices, and werewolf (most scenes)
Thomas Nguyen...................................................................................................................................................Secret Organization Executive
Pierre Grubb....................................................................................................................................................................................................................Jeremy
Evren Keskin......................................................................................................................................................................................................................Bobby
A horde of monstrous mutant beasts has been unleashed upon the world from a secret government laboratory, including zombies, werewolves, and dinosaurs. Most terrifying of all is the massive Spinosaurus, a creature so deadly that its extermination is made the top priority.
Production notes:
This is the film that I intend to kick off a whole new series of monster films, in the vein of the Dinosaur Attack series. But this time I crafted the storyline specifically so it can include any sort of monster imaginable, not just dinosaurs. So with this series, we can pretty much take it in any direction we want. I also wanted to make this one's storyline and science a little more realistic than what we saw in the Dinosaur Attack series. This time around, the goal was to do away with all the lasers and time travel, in an attempt to keep things a little more grounded (although this began to unravel by Top Predators 2 [2019]). As the pilot episode of a series, this installment of Top Predators was intended (keyword: intended) to be much longer than its sequels, to really set up the premise and characters well and draw in an audience. To make things real spectacular, I chose to go with the famous Spinosaurus as the main antagonist of the film. This was my intention ever since the second half of 2015, when this project first started being made. Like Dinosaur Attack 3 (2015), this movie took a while to make because of the long periods of time between filming sessions. Rounding people up to film isn't always easy, and plus, during this time I was more concerned with completing all the re-edits as soon as possible. But in the end, we saw it through, and the resulting movie was one of the longest of its day, and also had the largest cast. Top Predators was the grand film debut of my newer friends that I made in high school (although they had been in unreleased projects before this). Puppetry and costumes remain a core staple of my films, and that tradition is carried on with Top Predators.
Nightmare Bat (2016)
Release Date: October 19th, 2016
Director: Nathan Nguyen
Story by: Nathan Nguyen
Photography by: Nathan Nguyen and Cooper Loundy
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Puppeteering by: Nathan Nguyen
Cast:
Cooper Loundy as Cooper
Cooper takes an injured bat into his house, unaware of its true terrifying nature. As Cooper slips into a nap, the bat undergoes a transformation that turns it into the monstrous Nightmare Bat.
Production notes:
The Halloween movie tradition continues with this entry, all filmed in one day with the classic style of scriptless filmmaking. My inspiration for making a killer bat movie occurred while I was at Michael's, an arts and crafts store, when I noticed a cool looking bat decoration. I instantly knew that I would be making a film with that, and bought it immediately. The film itself had very little planning, just a few vague ideas in my head. Cooper and I pretty much invented it all on the spot, which is how all my movies were once made. To achieve the effect of the bat flying, I tied it up to fishing lines, which I hooked up to a stick. In some shots, a green screen was used as well, like in the final shots when there are multiple bats. This film experiments with some new special effects methods I had never tried before, such as the bat's growth sequence (freeform keyframing) and the bat flying outside the window (some clever mask use).
Werewolf vs Zombie (2016)
Release Date: December 21st, 2016
Director: Nathan Nguyen
Story by: Nathan Nguyen and Aedan Raynal
Photography by: Nathan Nguyen, Aedan Raynal, and Francesca Raynal
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Cast:
Nathan Nguyen as Professor Z. Moore and Zombie
Aedan Raynal as Courageous Boy
Francesca Raynal as Juice Victim/Werewolf
In this thrilling tale, mad scientist Professor Z. Moore is in the middle of a juice-related monster scheme when his plot is interrupted by a boy vigilante. During the fray, two of the crazed professor's experiments are unleashed upon each other. Who will survive this encounter between zombie and werewolf?
Production notes:
Pitting a zombie against a werewolf is an idea I've had floating around since maybe 2012. However, I never really got around to it and the idea was left unfulfilled. It wasn't until the summer of 2015 that I decided to revisit the idea when I had my friend and her brother over. As sometimes happens, we thought it might be fun if we tried making a movie, completely improvised with no script. So all the footage was completed in a single day, purely an act of fun and enjoyment. But once I uploaded the film, my friends' mom requested their full names to not be included in the credits, so I had no choice but to take it down. And due to some negative critical reception from the family, I decided it wasn't worth it to reupload the video, and left it untouched for a year. Towards the end of 2016, I decided I had let the film sit for long enough, and made a brand-new edit which was far superior to the original. This time it seemed my friends were fine with having their names out in public, so there was no need to omit the names any longer.
Dino Duels Ep. 1:
T-Rex vs Allosaurus (2016)
Release Date: December 27th, 2016
Director: Nathan Nguyen
Story by: Nathan Nguyen
Photography by: Nathan Nguyen
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Puppeteering by: Nathan Nguyen
In this first episode of the Dino Duels series, the king of the dinosaurs is faced with a tenacious challenger: Allosaurus.
Production notes:
After counting up the votes from the Dino Duels trailer, I came up with the result of T-Rex vs Allosaurus. So I grabbed the puppets I needed, and headed outdoors—no script needed, for these were the days when dinosaur fights were always improvised. I had no idea who would win, and pretty much made everything up as I went along. In the end I settled on making the ending somewhat ambiguous, because that way I wouldn't step on any toes... hopefully. Because I filmed this in the winter, it was incredibly cold outside and by the end of it my fingers and toes were numb. Blood was used quite liberally in this film—in fact, the amount I used was larger than I had intended, but it's not like I wanted to try any second takes of that.