As a Web animator, I’ve made hundreds of animated pieces over the past five years, including daily animations for both my Bateman365 project and Salon. About a year ago, I decided to see if I could make an animated feature film in Flash. My budget? Exactly zero dollars.
Of course, all animated films start with the sound. I immediately turned to the idea of using the sound from an actual feature film that was now in the public domain. I’ve used the sound from short educational films in the public domain many times (one of my favorites being a film that extols the virtues of asbestos siding for houses). Also, I’m a fan of the sort of movie that ends up in the public domain ‘ usually, films that are badly written, badly acted and badly directed.
Then I came across the awful 1960 horror film Atom Age Vampire. More soap opera than horror film, it features a love triangle between a sailor, a dancer and a mad scientist, plus plenty of talky scenes and awkward pauses. Basically, it’s the perfect movie for my animation style.
One of my favorite things about watching these old movies is making fun of it as it goes along, like they did on the old TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000. In order to replicate the experience of watching the movie with me at home, I included a running text commentary on the action. Or rather, the complete lack of action.
I find deadlines helpful, so the first day I sat down to animate I arranged to screen the completed movie in New York, two months from that day. Yes, I was going to make a completed animated feature film, by myself, in two months. For some reason, this didn’t sound crazy.
I animated the entire movie in Flash (my copy of Flash is still from 2002; maybe I should update it?). I mostly drew the line art on paper, then scanned it into the computer to color and manipulate. Some line art was drawn directly in Flash either on a Wacom tablet or with my finger directly on the touchpad of my MacBook.
I wanted the film to look as if I had doodled it while I was on the phone, so for backgrounds I used scraps of paper from around the house’mainly receipts and old ticket stubs. Watch for the Emo Philips ticket stub!
Because I was making a movie on my MacBook, that meant I had some portability in terms of work environment. In fact, most of the movie was animated at various Starbucks locations around New York City. I think this is the first feature film made at Starbucks!
I animated the movie in order, approximately five scenes per week. Incredibly, I met my deadline and showed a completed movie (minus the end credits) two months later.
It turns out that making an animated feature film all by yourself is the easy part. The hard part is getting a movie out into the world, and I’m still a newbie in the film world. While I spent no money at all to produce the movie, I’ve had to spend a few thousand dollars on DVDs (available at atomagevampire.org) and film festival submissions. I have yet to figure out how to get a distributor interested in the film, but one thing at a time.
But all on my own, I’ve managed to get Atom Age Vampire into a couple of film festivals and to screen it here in New York City several times. It’s slowly developing the sort of cult following the original Atom Age Vampire has, which seems fitting.
What have I learned? I’ve learned not to make a film for no money again. Currently, I’m raising a few thousand dollars to make an animated version of the awful 1966 film Zontar: The Thing From Venus (which is, of course, in the public domain) while I write an original screenplay for a third feature (which will require an actual budget, since I’ll need voice actors, original music, and all that other actual-movie stuff).
Also, I may give myself more than two months to make the next movie. Two-and-a-half, maybe!
Scott Bateman is a New York-based animator who has done work for MTV, PlumTV, and Salon.com. For more information, visit atomagevampire.org.
