28 Days of Vengeance Trail - Countdown to Memphis Premiere on April 23!
HOW WE MADE A FEATURE WESTERN FOR $10K!
Indie Filmmakers, this is one way to get your movie made! See what you can accomplish with the first $10K and all the resources and relationships you can parlay for free.
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| Hollywood Guns & Props TripleDare Productions |
Origin story of Vengeance Trail: Josh Seat was a film professor at Master's College in Newhall, CA. He was friends with Al Frisch of Hollywood Guns and Props. Al's company could outfit 4 period movies at a time, with wardrobe, props, and guns. His wife Sue made costumes. They owned a few horses and had standing sets in their backyard, where they would host Cowboy Poetry once a year when all sorts of Western movie fans would be in town for the Golden Boot Awards. Josh wanted to make a movie with his students and Al had screenplays lying around. Al brought in his friend Keven (Russell) McCaulley, who had his own vintage props and wardrobe, and they put up the initial $10K to make a movie. They formed Copper Button Entertainment. Josh intended to shoot fast and cheap on a consumer camcorder.
My film partner in crime, Stephen McCurry, got hired as DP and he brought his ambition to the project. Al had connections at Golden Oak Ranch in Newhall to shoot on their Western street backlot. He was also friends with various other talent, such as Phil Spangenberger who taught Mel Gibson to shoot on Maverick, and Jack Lilley, who could drive a 6-up. Stephen owned a Canon XL-1 camera and some lights. Al had a putt-putt generator.
Stephen needed help. He brought on his 4 Atlanta friends who had done many guerrilla shoots together and now lived in Los Angeles; Ian Eyre, Aaron Day, Christopher Lowell and Julian McClellan. Everyone needed to get paid something, so I think we agreed to $100 per day flat. As you can probably tell, the budget grew, but we accomplished most of a feature for about $35K. We decided to shut down production and Stephen went off to edit.
Al and Keven liked the footage as it came together. It felt like a real movie. Stephen and Al workshopped the script. Stephen and I took over producing from Copper Button Entertainment, with our own shingle, TripleDare Productions. Then reshoots were planned for the next year. Long story short, we kept running out of money and Al kept putting money in our bank account. How?
Fortunately, Al had once-upon-a-time purchased half of the props and guns from Stembridge Gun Rentals when they closed, so he was able to match guns, leathers, set pictures, and serial numbers for unique weapons, used by movie stars such as John Wayne, and sell them to collectors. I shot a long barrel pistol used by Steve McQueen in the first year's shoot, but my footage got cut in the reshoot. Vengeance Trail was funded by arms sales, lol.
All this to say, a little momentum can lead to big results. I'll continue the Vengeance Trail story another day.
Speaking of, what are some topics you'd like to learn more about? Leave a comment!
- Why am I going through all this effort after the movie being dormant all those years?
- Which ai tools I used?
- Why am I self-distributing?
- How much money do I expect to make, and how much do I need to make?
Today's goals accomplished:
- Edited a promo for a short screening event on April 14. Exported the DCP. Delivered!
- Create a high res image for my t-shirt printer to create a sample.
I'm curious that with so many people involved early on, how you ended up being the one to re-release the film on your own all these years later.
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