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i think the general rule of thumb is ... if you are making a quality production .. then it probably isnt needed
(for the record i hate north american love scenes too ... either show the goods or stay out of the bedroom .. americans are painfully afraid of sex)
if you know that you're on a sinking ship then by all means - throw in a bunch of naked women ... some kind of saving grace ..
sort of like rock bands that know they're shit - so they just crank the volume up as loud as possible.
as far as making the kind of horror film that doesnt require naked women to stay afloat (so to speak)
it has to have :
- an engaging plot
- origionality
- quality effects - or none at all
- quality music (not one guy on a synth trying to recreate a whole orchestra richard band type shit)
- smart editing
- 100% quality actors - even one bad one spoils the entire production.
- great sound
- and well written dialogue
if even one of these things goes amiss then you have failed. Horror is fantasy. For fantasy to work there can be no distractions... all of the pieces have to fall into place.
there is no room for 'we'll have to make do with what we've got' in a quality film.
Also .. the more 'homegrown' efforts - no matter how entheusiastic the filmmakers are - tend to look better to the people involved BECAUSE of their involvement .. they're pumped .. the film kicked ass .. they cant believe it looks so damn good !
but - the wider target audiences dont have emotional ties to the film. They are judging it alongside films that are big budget, - more established. Most (not all) wont readjust their expectations for the fact that it's an indie project that represents a lot of hard work on a shoestring budget.
to them it'll just look like another piece of poop.
I have a friend who has friends... all doing the indie thing. He asked me to look at the film. To him it was a major achievement .. to me it was unwatchable/unbearable..
the dialogue wasnt as clever as they wanted to think and it was delivered so woodenly that it wouldnt sound good no matter how well it was written .. the music wasnt properly married with the scenes ... I asked him if he wanted me to judge it as a feature film or as a student film ... (it wasnt even a good student film)
It leads me to believe that most indie film makers are too involved - too close to the project to stand back and look at it from the outside. They are unable to see it as an uninitiated audience member would .. and although it's understandable - its also a real problem.
(maybe thats natures natural protective sedative to cushion people from the pain of failure - but it only prolongs the inevitable (unless they get into denial mode)
'fuck those guys, this movie was better than Se7en !!!!'
so i guess - to sum it all up ...
if you find your production suffereng from any of those things above ...
time to round up the pretty young things with big tits ...
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