No Budget Films
The 2019 Films
"Sound and Image" - Film 20P Exercise 5 (2019)
Release Date: August 22nd, 2019
Directed by: Nathan Nguyen
Story by: Ian Kennedy
Photography by: Nathan Nguyen
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Cast:
Ian Kennedy, Nathan Nguyen
The fifth project, but second video, for a summer film class I took. The main idea of this assignment was pairing sounds with images, so I tried picking out sound effects, background noises, and ambience that seemed like they would fit into each little scene.
The pictures were actually pulled from a prior project for the class, and they do tell a bit of a story. They capture the essence of my friend Ian, who I picked as my subject for that project.
Picture #1: This represents how Ian felt growing up. It's a critique of the American education system, pre-college level. As Ian put it, school for him felt like it was "run like a prison industry".
Picture #2: This one's all about Ian's thoughts on American people. The photo is meant to suggest that he feels disconnected, unable to relate. According to him, most people in America seem like "f**king cartoon characters".
Picture #3: This photo is meant to illustrate Ian's life philosophy. In his own words, "do unto others as you would have them do to you. I want people to ignore me so I ignore them."
Picture #4: This was an attempt on my part to represent Ian's greatest fear, which is climate change. The photo might be kiiiiiind of a stretch, with the dried out grass standing in for the environmental damage caused by humanity, and the one green patch standing in for what little hope may be left. Look, it's not easy to find a straight-forward way to represent global warming in a photo, so I had to go all metaphorical on this one, ok?
Picture #5: In this photo, we see that despite the negativity in life, Ian still finds fulfillment through friends. Pictured here are him and me at the beach.
The Gloomling
(2019)
Release Date: August 31st, 2019
Directed by: Nathan Nguyen
Written by: Nathan Nguyen
Photography by: Nathan Nguyen, Evren Keskin, Pierre Grubb, Thomas Nguyen, Paul Mattox, Ira Irvani, and Natalia Nguyen
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Music by: Nhi Nguyen
Cast
Nathan Nguyen..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................Himself
Evren Keskin and Nathan Nguyen......................................................................................................................................................................................................The Gloomling
Pierre Grubb..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................Park friend
Paul Mattox...............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................School friend
Natalia Nguyen....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................Herself
Riitta Lehtinen-Nguyen.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................Herself
Haunted by an unexplainable creature that radiates despair and hopelessness, Nathan's life falls into shambles. Will he summon the courage to face his tormentor? Or will he succumb to the gloom?
Production notes
This film was created as the final project for a film class I took over the summer. One of the suggestions of the instructions was to make it using still images, which I was a bit skeptical about at first, but the style eventually grew on me. It was very interesting to experiment with. Some things are easier to do in this format, like showing time passing for one thing, and smoothing over mistakes for another. For instance, there was one part where my friends' reflections can be seen in a car door, but since there are fewer frames in this still picture style, it wasn't unreasonable for me to Photoshop them out frame by frame.
At first I wasn't really sure what to make a movie about for my project. One early idea was to make a movie about a giant slug that attacks UC Santa Cruz, which would've been fitting since the slug is the mascot of the school. But eventually I settled on a more serious idea—sometimes when I'm sad, I like to visualize my negative emotion as a monster. A dark thing that no one else can see. So I thought, why not try making a movie about that?
I got to work making sketches and blueprints for the monster, and once I had finalized the design, I bought the materials I'd need: LED lights for the eyes, flour for the papier-mache, replicas of human teeth, clay, and plenty of cloth. The rest of the materials--paint, newspaper, metal wires, tape, and a werewolf glove--were all available at home. So I used the metal wires to construct the frame for a puppet head, and covered the whole thing in tape and then papier-mache. The wires formed "eye sockets" of sorts to hold the LED lights, which were fastened into place with hot glue. The face was painted black, and the mouth a dark reddish-brown. Brown polymer clay was used to create the gums, onto which the teeth were attached, all held together with hot glue. The body was a simple cloth, and with a little sewing help from my sister Natalia, the body and head were united. The costume functions much like Sesame Street's Big Bird, with one of the actor's arms relegated to the head, and the other to an arm. This means the Gloomling can only have one arm, but I think that makes it a little creepier.
Making this movie was lots of fun, but the downside was that I was in a serious rush to complete it, what with summer session's fast paced due dates and whatnot. I had to be working on this thing every day and late into the AM hours. The night before it was due, I had to work on editing all the way until 6:30 AM, which was quite the grueling task. A lot of the work I can do myself, even a good chunk of the filming, because in many of the shots I'm the only character on screen. But there was also lots to be filmed that required the help of friends, and on the main filming day it took us all day (albeit with a couple hour gap in the middle) to finish capturing all the footage. It took us until like 12:40 at night that day. We had to keep pushing with everything we had, but I'd say the end result was well worth the effort.
One unique aspect of this film is the soundtrack. The music is custom, composed by my aunt Nhi, who I think did a fantastic job. According to the assignment, the film would require at least four tracks in an original soundtrack, which means I couldn't rely on the Kevin MacLeod or TeknoAXE music I have grown so accustomed to. Luckily I have my talented aunt who is willing to help with these projects, and she was able to perfectly capture the type of music I imagined for The Gloomling. She also created some of the Gloomling's sound effects, which can mainly be heard during the final confrontation.
Professor Z Moore and the Creepy Crawlies of Doom (2019)
Release Date: September 5th, 2019
Directed by: Nathan Nguyen
Story by: Nathan Nguyen and Francesca Raynal
Photography by: Nathan Nguyen and Francesca Raynal
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Puppeteering by: Francesca Raynal and Nathan Nguyen
Cast:
Nathan Nguyen as Professor Z Moore
Francesca Raynal as Assistant
Before his infamous juice experiments, there were the bugs. What sort of hijinks will the mad professor and his assistant get into this time?
Production notes:
This short little skit was originally filmed in 2015, intended as a follow-up to "Bugs!" (an intro to what I once meant to be a full movie about radioactive mutant critters). I deemed this skit kinda lackluster though, so I scrapped it, but in the beginning of September 2019 I rediscovered it and thought it was pretty funny in its own way. So why not post it for all to see, now with new editing. I've decided to tie this in with Werewolf vs Zombie (2016), since both videos feature Francesca, as well as me in the role of a crazy scientist. Originally my scientist character here was to be named "Dr. Rupert S. Mustard", but I switched to Z. Moore so I could connect the videos. Out of all my productions, I think this is one of the most "No Budget". With few props to speak of other than cheap plastic toys, and a ping pong table trying to pass as a "laboratory", it's clear that this was never meant to be a serious film. An earlier edit was so bad that I was actually kinda embarrassed about it and buried it in the No Budget Films backlog. But I guess its unbridled cheesiness is part of its appeal.
Gun Safety with Sgt. Huggles (2019)
Release Dates:
Facebook version: December 23rd, 2013
YouTube version: September 27th, 2019
Co-directed by: Nathan Nguyen and Ian Kennedy
Story by: Nathan Nguyen and Ian Kennedy
Photography by: Ian Kennedy
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Cast:
Ian Kennedy as Sgt. Huggles
Nathan Nguyen as High Friend
learn how to properly handle a firearm in this educational video
Production notes:
Another hidden gem unearthed from the depths of my video library, this little skit was shot (heh, see what I did there?) in 2013 originally, for no other reason than a few laughs during a hangout. Filmed with a laptop camera, the picture quality is absolutely abysmal—the worst that No Budget Films has to offer. It's unclear if this was ever intended to be posted to YouTube, though an early version was uploaded to Facebook just before Christmas of that year. That iteration of the video was definitely more on the rudimentary side, with very little edits other than a title card and an awful-looking muzzle flash. The 2019 edition adds some new visual twists in the form of some poorly spelled text, comedic zooms, and an overexaggerated fountain of blood that apparently cost the video its monetization status.
Fun fact: The real reason my character is incapacitated on the couch is because I simply could not hold it together and not laugh during Ian's performance!
Gloomling Prank! (2019)
Release Date: October 31st, 2019
Directed by: Nathan Nguyen
"Story" by: Nathan Nguyen
Photography by: Javier Sanchez and Nathan Nguyen
Edited by: Nathan Nguyen
Cast:
Nathan Nguyen as the Gloomling
Paul Mattox as himself
In this Halloween special, the spine-chilling entity known as the Gloomling pays a visit to UC Santa Cruz and terrorizes some unsuspecting victims!
Production notes:
In a first for No Budget Films, we dip our toes into pranking—and what better way to do this than with a creepy creature costume for Halloween? The Gloomling had just been freshly created for its recent debut film, and during these first few weeks of my time at UC Santa Cruz, I'd been taking it out for a spin on some nights to celebrate the spooky season. It had gained some notoriety around the college thanks to these appearances, becoming a sort of myth of a "scary guy on campus". I loved creating this little intrigue. Kept my identity a mystery too—all people knew was that sometimes, a shadow monster would kinda just randomly appear around the school.
So with the video, I wanted to keep the Gloomling's haunt going strong with some strategically planned encounters and scares to be captured on camera. The concept I felt was solid—I mean, just imagine it, like this dark figure with glowing eyes stalking around our forested campus at night? The atmosphere seemed primed for something like this, and I couldn't wait to see how people reacted. But then filming started... and it all went a little messier than I'd anticipated. So my friend Paul was doing the acting as the guy "warning" people about the paranormal threat, while my roommate Javier filmed, and I was the creature itself. The plan seemed straight-forward enough at first, but our coordination and communication ended up a bit off a lot of the time since we were often stationed in different areas apart from each other. So either we were yelling at each other and giving away the joke, or just totally mistiming everything. And people's reactions usually weren't really all that spectacular—we got the awkward stares, the walk-aways, and that one girl who got mad at us. Man I was like c'mon people, gimme something to work with here!
There were a handful of good reactions though, and those really carried the video well in the end. My favorites were those with a bit of surprise followed by laughter, because in the end this whole thing's supposed to be fun anyhow. Some of the more bizarre reactions were fun to include too, like the guy who gave the Gloomling a smooch and the dude who threatened to show us his ass. And who could forget the girl who loved the Gloomling for who he is? I still think that was a sweet moment. All this, combined with Paul's terrific acting and some editing embellishment, countered the unsteady production well and made for an end result that was actually quite entertaining, and a worthy Halloween special for 2019. Even some of the lame reactions I was able to spin into something funny through editing.
Although I'm not sure I'll return to pranking any time soon, as involving the public does make the production rather unpredictable and uncontrolled. I had many ideas I would've liked to see that we just couldn't pull off because of circumstances outside our control—for instance, a sequence where the Gloomling suspensefully walks out of the shadows of the woods to spook some passerby. It just didn't work because there really was no such spot we could find where the lighting was good and people were consistently walking past a shadowy hiding place. Overall the prank was a fun and memorable experience, but maybe not something I'd do all the time. For the Gloomling's next appearance, it would show up in a more traditional scripted story.
The rest of 2019 would be empty of videos, due in large part to my studies at the university. The following years of 2020 and 2021 would also take a toll for this same reason, leading to some further stagnation of channel viewership.
Fun fact: Despite getting the footage filmed on October 17th, I put off the editing and ended up working until 4 am the night before Halloween to finish the final video.