Interview with director Gregg Bishop - Part II: Making Dance of the Dead

Part I: Making a $15,000 feature film

We continue our talk with director Gregg Bishop.


So with The Other Side you had a feature film to your name. Tell us about how you played that calling card to get a producer for Dance of the Dead.

The movie premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah and was picked up for a theatrical release. Fox Studios picked up the TV rights where I’ve been developing the movie as a TV series. The great producer Ehud Bleiberg of Bleiberg Entertainment (a foreign sales agency and production company) saw the film and approached me after the screening and told me he wanted two things: He wanted to rep the movie for foreign sales and he wanted to make my next movie.

And again, just so we all understand how long it takes to get a project off the ground, how much time are we talking about between you deciding "I want to make Dance of the Dead" and the commencement of production?

I had been trying to get DANCE OF THE DEAD off the ground for 10 years. But after Bleiberg saw THE OTHER SIDE, he literally greenlit it in about 10 seconds.

Was there any difference in directing your own script versus someone else's?

I’m a huge fan of Joe’s writing so it was actually a lot easier.

I like that you cast kids who were fairly close to high school age, as opposed to mid-twenties like in most Hollywood films. Was actor inexperience at all a concern when you made this decision, or were you convinced that since the characters are all archetypes that you'd find actors capable of giving you what you wanted?

Ask any director: 80% of a director’s job is in who they cast. I told our casting director, Jonathan Spencer, that I wanted to cast REAL kids playing their age, not 25-year-olds playing high-school kids, because that never looks right. I wanted to find kids who were great at improv and that could really bring their personalities to the role. Between LA and Atlanta, we looked at 600 kids and pulled the best of the best. I am very proud of that cast.

Presumably you had more money on Dance of the Dead. Did that allow you to relax a bit, or was the scope of this so much more challenging that it was like a whole new learning curve? Or was it more like, "I squeezed blood from a stone to make the last one work, this is old hat!"

Mo money, mo problems. The only difference this time was that DANCE OF THE DEAD actually had a budget and a crew, which was fantastic, but it presented a new set of challenges. I learned a lot from THE OTHER SIDE because along with writing/directing, I was doing a lot of the jobs myself. One of my goals was to learn as much as I could from that movie, so I could apply that knowledge to future productions, which was definitely helpful making DANCE OF THE DEAD.

(check out the trailer for DANCE OF THE DEAD here.)

I've interviewed some filmmakers who've noted that the producers on their first films exerted their authority and (in their minds at least) compromised the quality of the final product. What was your relationship like with your producers?

I've heard those horror stories too. Working with Ehud felt like a wonderful partnership and never a dictatorship. The team at Bleiberg (Ehud, Shannon, Nick, & Roman) basically gave us great notes on the script and then set us loose to make the movie. They watched dailies and gave comments but never set foot on set. Ehud told me that he saw what I did on THE OTHER SIDE, he trusted me that I'd come back with something good and didn't feel like he needed to be over my shoulder second-guessing every decision I made.

Then once the movie was in the can, they made great notes in the editing process. We were always focused on the same thing: making the best film possible.

Knowing what a pain music licensing can be, I have to ask how difficult it was to get clearance for "Shadows of the Night." Was that always the song in the script, or was it a case where you went through several songs until you found the right song at the right price?

The song was never in the script, our music supervisor Peymon Maskan played it for me as an option and I knew right away that it was perfect, but I was like “can we even get that song?” He said he would make it happen for our budget and somehow he did.

A lot of budding writers and directors have this fantasy that they'll come to Hollywood with their script, be welcomed with open arms, sell that script for a high price and then find themselves in constant demand, never having to do anything other than write to support themselves. Given your experience, just how much of a delusion is that?

I don’t know one successful person here who doesn’t work their ass off. If you want to be a sports star, you stay on the field after everyone else goes home. You want to be a rock star, you play that guitar until your fingers bleed. You have to put in the work. I always believed that if you work hard and do what you love, the money will eventually come.

Given how hard it is to make a movie and "make it" in Hollywood in general, what qualities would you say are most critical for an aspiring filmmaker?

Persistence & hard work. Live life & make movies about it… don’t make movies about other movies.

Dance of the Dead is something of a cult film, so did it open up any new doors for you?

I’ve been totally overwhelmed with the response the film has received. The movie has definitely gotten me into rooms that I wouldn’t have gotten into otherwise.

What are you working on now?

I'm currently writing a sci-fi thriller & gearing up to direct an edge-of-your-seat monster movie that I wrote with Joe Ballarini.

Thanks again to Gregg for all his time! You can find him on Twitter at @GreggBishop and check out his website for Dance of the Dead here.

Interview with director Gregg Bishop - Part I: Making a $15,000 feature film

When he was still in film school, director Gregg Bishop found the script he wanted to make as his first feature - a teen-zombie film called Dance of the Dead. There was just one problem - he couldn't find anyone willing to give an untried director the money to make his film. Undeterred, Gregg decided to prove he deserved his shot by making his own action film funded entirely by the $15,000 profit he made on his student film!

Lesson: If everyone tells you "no," you find a way to do it yourself. His story is one that I hope will inspire many of my own readers to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Gregg was awesome enough to take the time to answer my many questions over email regarding his films, and the secrets to making your own "calling card" in this business.


I understand you went to USC. At the time, were your aspirations to be a writer/director or just a director? What made you interested in filmmaking?

I never specifically set out to be a writer, I just always wrote to generate material for myself to direct.

I grew up on movies like E.T., STAR WARS, THE GOONIES, BACK TO THE FUTURE, INDIANA JONES and as I kid, once I realized that movies could affect people’s emotions, I was totally hooked. When I was seven years old, I found my dad’s old Bell & Howell Super 8 film camera and I’ve been making movies ever since. While most kids were playing sports, I was running a mini-studio out of my parent’s basement. I would write, direct & edit movies and then have premieres at my school’s theater and charge admission. When I was seventeen I wrote, produced & directed my first feature (an action-comedy about a teen spy) that premiered at the Atlanta Film Festival. Making that movie was my film school before film school.

A lot of aspiring filmmakers grapple with the question of if film school is really "worth it." Some make the case that it's best to just go out and start shooting your own material and build up that portfolio. Certainly the proliferation of prosumer digital cameras, the accessibility of Final Cut Pro, and the rise of YouTube have made it vastly easier to shoot, edit and distribute your own material. However, proponents of education film school point to the value of a broad film education and the ability to develop friendships with people who share the same interests. As someone who went the educational route and makes independent movies, what's your perspective on this question?

There are several routes you can take to become a professional filmmaker & no one is better than the other. However, I firmly believe that you can read all the books and attend whatever classes you want, but the best way to learn filmmaking is by doing it. Learn by doing. If you want to direct, borrow a camera and direct something. The reason I went to USC was I figured a great way to get better at what I was doing was to surround myself with the best. There was always a friendly competition between the students and I felt we always challenged one another. Also, the program was very hands-on. They shove a camera in your hands on the first day of class and tell you to go make something.

Your USC short film "Voodoo" is included on the Dance of the Dead DVD, and watching it took me back to my own undergrad film school days. It's a simple idea, it's very low-budget, but it's also visually driven rather than dialogue-driven. Can you talk about what you think makes a good short film?

You said it. Keep it as simple and short as possible. Tell a story visually. Don’t spend a lot of money on it. Mine was a dark comedy about a little girl trying to get rid of her mother’s date with a voodoo doll. Very simple. We shot it for under a thousand bucks on black & white 16mm.

(you can watch VOODOO here )

I understand you ran into a little trouble during Voodoo's production when you ran out of film, and you had to bend (or more accurately) break one of USC's strictest rules in order to finish the film. Can I get you to tell my readers about this?

When I was at USC, they would give students an allotment of film stock for each project and we weren't allowed to go over that amount. But, of course, being a film student, I was experimenting during the production and ended up running out of film. So, in order to finish the short, I shot & process extra filmstock from an outside lab and slipped it into the cut… not thinking anyone would notice or anyone would really care.

But when I turned the final film into the USC lab to get our print made, I got a call from the no-nonsense lab technician who told me that I was busted: he found out I shot extra footage and he was going to burn my negative so that no one would ever see this film. Then he hung up on me.

So I freaked out and ran down to the USC lab to go plea for my film… When I stepped inside, I found the lab technician and his assistants watching a film… laughing and cheering. Then I realize that the film that they were watching was mine. After it ended, the lab tech pulled me aside and told me that I was lucky: he loved the movie so he was going to let the problem slide.

The short is now screened at USC film school orientation for incoming film students.

As I said, Voodoo reminded me a lot of the film I and my classmates made in college. I had some very talented classmates with some interesting films, but to my knowledge none of them quite had the success you did with yours. You turned a $15,000 profit on Voodoo, which is quite an achievement for a 5 minute short! Simple question: how did you do it?

It was all timing. When I finished VOODOO, there was a small market for short films. There were a lot of websites popping up that were buying shorts and several cable shows programming shorts. It was also winning several film festivals which carried cash prizes. When I received my first check for VOODOO, I opened up an account and told myself if I gathered up enough money, I’ll make a feature with it.

So sometime later, you get a look at Joe Ballarini's script for Dance of the Dead and decide you want to make that your next film. When was this exactly?

I first read the script for DANCE OF THE DEAD in 1998 while the Joe and I were in film school together and just flipped for it. I told him I thought it was the coolest movie that had never been made and that he HAD to let me direct it. He said, “Hey, find the funding and you can.”

And as I understand it, you found it hard to get someone to hire a director with no feature credits to his name. No one wanted to take a chance on you with this script.

Yeah, no one wanted to take a chance on a first time feature director and also, no one was making zombie movies at the time. So, out of frustration, I decided to take the $15,000 profits from VOODOO and fund my own feature film to prove I had the chops. That film was called THE OTHER SIDE.

(check out THE OTHER SIDE trailer here. The film is also available via Netflix Instant here.)

I have friends who've spent $15,000 on a twenty minute short. When you're trying to stretch your dollar to the maximum, how do you do it? How does it affect the script? Is it hard to find a balance between the story you want to tell, and the limitations imposed on your production?

What I did was I worked backwards. I made a list of everything I had access to that would give the film production value (actors, props, locations, etc) and then I backwards constructed the script to fit those things to make the movie look bigger than it actually was.

Orson Welles once said that “the enemy of art is the absence of limitation”. We embraced our limitations and used them to our advantage to make a movie that Hollywood could never make. I wrote a story that called for a documentary style approach, which allowed us to be more mobile and shoot fast, giving the movie spontaneity and an energy that most big Hollywood movies don’t have.

Conceptually, The Other Side is something of a familiar premise. A dead guy escapes hell, only to be on the run from bounty hunters determined to bring him back, even as he tries to solve the disappearance of his fiancée, a crime he finds himself accused of. What really made it stand apart for me were the action scenes. When the film starts, you're fairly aware that this must have been made low-budget - even if you don't know EXACTLY how "low" it was in this case. The instant the action kicks in, it's like a perfect symphony of choreography, camera work, editing and stunts. I think if you gave most filmmakers $15 grand and told them to go make a movie, they'd come back with a "contained thriller" along the lines of Misery or Hard Candy. Something that's heavy on dialogue with few sets and actors. Did you ever entertain the notion of doing something like that?

That’s the thing-- I didn’t want to make a drama with three dudes in a room talking. I wanted to do a movie in a way that hadn’t been done before…a movie that would challenge me as a filmmaker and a movie that I’d actually go see as a film-goer on a Friday night with all my friends.

These kinds of action movies are usually made with big budgets and long schedules... We had neither so we just had to work ten times harder than the guys who had the luxury of time & money. This was a true guerrilla filmmaking experience.

Do you have a particular method for shooting your action scenes efficiently?

I was the camera operator and the editor, so that made us extremely efficient. Action films are all about coverage. It’s better to get 40 quick shots than 10 beauty shots. Also, most every shot in the movie is one take. I figured we didn’t need to shoot ten takes of a guy running around a corner shooting a gun. It’s about the flow of the overall sequence, not the individual shots. Plus, shooting fast like this gave the movie a raw energy and allowed us to move at a breakneck speed, averaging about 70 – 80 set-ups per day (that isn’t a typo).

Also, since you were directing from your own script, did you give much detail to the action scenes as you wrote them, or did you just hit the major beats and give your stunt choreographer a lot of latitude to work out the particulars?

I wrote them in detail and then continually adjusted them as we scouted locations and as I worked with our stunt coordinator, Nils Onsager.

Without a doubt, Nils and the Black Knight stunt team brought this film to a whole other level. Not only is Nils extremely knowledgeable and experienced in his field, but he also possesses a solid understanding of story and character. He was able to choreograph unique fight scenes that were consistent for each character all while moving the story forward.

How many days did it take to shoot The Other Side? What lessons did you learn from making your first feature? Was it at all like you expected?

We shot the film in about a month. One great lesson I learned is the power of the orange vest. Whenever we needed to shoot in the street or a public area, the crew would just wear orange vest and we could be doing anything and people would just leave us alone since we look like we were supposed to be there.

The other trick is orange cones. Just place them around where ever you’re shooting and people won’t even question what you are doing.

Come back tomorrow for Part II: Making Dance of the Dead.