Director Steve Rash: The Straight2DVD Interview – Part Two

In part two of our exclusive interview with director Steve Rash (read part one), helmer of such straight-to-DVD fare as American Pie Presents Band Camp, Bring It On: All or Nothing, Bring It On: In It to Win It, and Road Trip: Beer Pong as well as theatrical releases like Can’t Buy Me Love, Under the Rainbow, and The Buddy Holly Story, we get into the nitty gritty of direct-to-video fiilmmaking and the future of the industry.

Straight2DVD: What have been some of the personal highlights of your career?

Rash: Sitting in the fifth row at the 51st Academy Awards, between Jane Fonda and Gregory Peck, with my film [The Buddy Holly Story] nominated for three Oscars. I actually believed for a few minutes that I belonged.

Sitting in the balcony of the Cineplex Odeon Leicester Square between Paul McCartney and Keith Moon watching the European premier of my film. Keith irritated me throughout the screening, getting up every ten minutes to visit the loo. (He died later that same night.)

After a concert, I overheard thirty-something female Hollywood executives talking about their favorite movies. When one mentioned Can’t Buy Me Love, I watched another sophisticated grownup morph into herself at 15 and giggle, “He went from like, totally geek to like, totally sheik!” And then with tears in her eyes, “That movie changed my life. I was never embarrassed again about being unpopular.”

Straight2DVD: Do you usually know when you start shooting that a film has been slotted for a direct-to-video release? Does that factor into your decision to shoot the film?

Rash: Yes, in fact the deal memo and DGA Basic Contract provides much different work rules. A successful DVD original can be more lucrative than small features, which are never profitable beyond the initial fee. Feature film deals often provide profit sharing which includes home video. But corporate “profits” are taxed, so prudent accounting practices and distribution arrangements strive to minimize “profits” (and thus, minimize profit sharing.) I have seen no profits at all from several of my successful feature films.

On the other hand, I have been fortunate to make a few straight to DVD films that sold millions of copies. Home video deals typically provide no profit sharing, but rather, unit sales bonuses that are subject to fewer accounting “variables” (and thus, actually pay.) I’ve made more money from some DVD productions than from some theatrical features.

Is “Feature Film Director” more prestigious than “Home Video Director?” Yes, but prestige doesn’t pay the mortgage. Besides, some of my lowly “straight to video” productions have been more fun than some “big time features.” I like them all. Mostly.

Straight2DVD: How is working on a straight to DVD film any different than working on a film getting a theatrical release? Or is it?

Rash: Work rules are different for virtually every department. Pay scales are lower than anything other than low-budget or TV projects. Technically, you know you won’t be doing film-out, so you can shoot 3-perf film, or HD without a Digital Intermediate, plus you know the viewer will not likely be sitting in a dark theater, so you adjust contrast accordingly.

Straight2DVD: Do you have to make different aesthetic decisions if you know that your film isn’t going to be on a big screen?

Rash: Yes, theatrical and home displays have required fundamentally different visual products, up to now. Wide shots are not effective in the living room, unless the viewer is sitting very close to the TV. Dark scenes get washed-out by the ambient light in most viewing situations. As displays get larger and more people create home theater environments, the differences shrink. Then will be the real problem: which audience do you shoot for?

Straight2DVD: You’ve done two Bring It Ons, the first American Pie direct-to-video sequel, and now a Road Trip direct-to-video sequel. Do you think you’re being typecast?

Rash: Few grownup films get made anymore; the 21st Century Global Marketplace requires minimal language to dub or subtitle. Hollywood has essentially returned to silent movies: VISUAL SPECTACLE with music and sound effects added later. If you want actors talking, you have to make your money within the English-speaking world. The only sizable domestic movie-going demographic is under twenty-five years old. I like character and dialogue, so I make movies for young people today. Thank God I love teens!

Straight2DVD: How has the industry, both theatrical and home video, changed over the years?

Rash: Twenty years ago, 60% of theatrical box-office was domestic. Now it’s 30%, and dialogue has been relegated to the fringes.

Ten years ago, DVD was exploding; then people filled their movie shelves and stopped buying so many and are satisfied to rent movies or go online.

Tomorrow will be Blu-ray for high quality and digital delivery for everything else, but it’s not clear yet who will own the digital pipe, or the content.

Straight2DVD: Where do you see the industry going?

Rash: For the remainder of this decade, Personal Visual Devices will be a fad like the Walkman was; then people will relegate them to the same relative importance as the iPod of today, and rediscover that they want to actually SEE an image. Simultaneously large displays will become affordable, so home theaters will become the norm.

Straight2DVD: As a kid, I must have seen Under the Rainbow about 20 times on cable. Tell me about directing that film.

Rash: UTR was a disaster by almost any measure. SAG went on strike the day before production. The studio chose not to exercise force majeure, since it would be a “short strike.” Ninety days later, when the strike was settled, we were $4M over budget and had not rolled a foot of film. Because of the delay, we lost our Emerald City set, which was the last exterior built on the old Fox Backlot and had to be destroyed to make way for the construction of Century Plaza housing developments. That million-dollar set was rebuilt at the Columbia Ranch. An actor died of a heart attack during production, requiring extensive reshoots. The script was rewritten almost nightly. Because of the 20% Prime interest rate and the pre-production delays, I had 19 days to edit, instead of 60. The movie was released the same day as Raiders of the Lost Ark and Superman [II]. The entire process was so disappointing, I left the business for almost five years. A silver lining was the opportunity to meet and work with the Little People, who were professional, talented, and fun. My wife, Maggie, was the 2nd AD who staged the background action with the Wizard of Oz “midgets”. Their work is one redeeming quality of the film, along with Joe Renzetti’s music score, which I believe is among the top ten scores of all time.

Straight2DVD: What are you working on now?

Rash: I am finishing the screenplay of another teen movie with my daughter, Stephanie, and developing several projects: a lacrosse movie, an Adult Christian movie, a political/social comedy and a documentary about the last pop festival.

Director Steve Rash: The Straight2DVD Intervew – Part One

Steve Rash has directed several straight-to-DVD sequels, including American Pie Presents Band Camp, Bring It On: All or Nothing, Bring It On: In It to Win It, and Road Trip: Beer Pong, in addtion to a number of theatrical releases, including Can’t Buy Me Love, Under the Rainbow, and The Buddy Holly Story.  In part one of our exclusive interview, Rash recounts his origin story, which culminates in his first film being nominated for three Academy Awards…

Straight2DVD: Tell us how you got into filmmaking.

Rash: My uncle started filming with a 16mm movie camera after World War II. By the fifties, he was shooting early Kodak color reversal film. Some of my earliest memories were his home movies of my parents as newlyweds and myself as a baby. My father carried on the tradition and bought an 8mm camera, but his camerawork was so bad, my older siblings decided that I was the family photographer, even though I was barely 8 years old.

Movies became a hobby, starring my brothers and sister. At age 10, I theorized that I could run a roll of film through the camera with the lens cap on, then reload it and shoot it again for real, but the action would come out backward. I wasted the first roll (a month’s allowance) because I didn’t realize that the image would also be upside-down when projected. But the Rash Kids made some impressive (to us) adventure films, “jumping over” the garage, “flying” around the neighborhood, and other amazing stunts with elementary special visual effects.

I was press photographer for my high school newspaper and DJ for the local radio station; then majored in Radio/TV/Film at the University of Texas. Summers I played Trombone in the Crazy Band at Six Flags Over Texas, which gave me after-hours access to the park. To entertain my drunken co-workers at the nightly parties-‘til-dawn, I shot 8mm “action movies” of the rides, only my Jungle Boat Adventure contained near-nudity as well as bloody “tourist fatalities” at the hands of the animatronic Natives and Hippos. At one party near the end of summer, a party guest asked me if I would sell him the home movie he had just seen. I was a 19 year-old smartass and said, “Sure, for a hundred bucks!” (It cost me about ten dollars to make.) He peeled off a hundred; “Come to my office tomorrow, and I’ll give you another hundred.” I did, and he did (after I signed a release.) I should have been suspicious when his office turned out to be in Park Promotions, but it wasn’t until the next summer that I saw in the gift shop, on a rack of 8mm Six Flags Movie Memories, my jungle boat film! It had been edited for family values, with thousands of prints sold. My name wasn’t on it.

During senior year, because I had been shooting film since childhood, I easily won the competition for a job as part-time cameraman at a local TV station. I continued after college as TV cameraman for news, commercials, and live shows (including a Rock ‘n Roll music program much like American Bandstand.) I was fortunate to be hired by ABC Sports to shoot NCAA Football on weekends, as well as NFL games and the Mexico City Olympics.

Meanwhile, my day job advanced to Director and Producer of local programming (including more Rock ‘n Roll.) One of those shows (which contained music videos) caught the eye of a Philadelphia producer who had a prophetic vision: a 24-hour Rock ‘n Roll television channel. He hired me to direct, and we shot over 300 hours of music videos in Atlanta for a marathon pop music program, The Now Explosion and its Heavy Metal cousin, The Music Connection. The initial concept failed after a 26 week run, but eventually succeeded several years later as MTV. For me, it was a perfect training ground for filming live music, as well as visual effects (electography) and dance. I continued producing and directing syndicated TV programs, mostly music, as well as documentaries and commercials.

In 1972, inspired by Don McLean’s hit song, “American Pie,” I decided to make a movie about Buddy Holly. It took five years to raise the money, but eventually I arrived in Hollywood, not looking for a job, but with enough money ($2M) to make a movie. That film was nominated for three Academy Awards and won the Oscar for Best Music. After my first feature film found instant success, I thought, “The movie business is easy, I can do this.” Little did I know how hard it really is! But none of this was planned. Never once, until the Buddy Holly idea, did I ever think I would be a feature film director. To a Texas kid, Hollywood was not even my dream; I just wanted to shoot. So I did.

Read part two of our exclusive interview.

Road Trip: Beer Pong Screenwriter Brad Riddell: The S2DVD Interview

Brad Riddell has been writing screenplays since American Pie Presents Band Camp first introduced that franchise to straight-to-DVD.  It was, in fact, his USC thesis script, Band Geek, that led to his writing that sequel.  Since then, Riddell has penned Slap Shot II: The Junior League and Road Trip: Beer Pong, which recently won Best Comedy at the First Annual Straight-to-DVD Movie Awards.  In this exclusive interview, Riddell holds forth on the state of the industry and the challenges of working in the direct-to-video market.

S2DVD: How did this all begin?

Riddell: I grew up in Northern Kentucky, my dad was a football coach and I played tuba in the marching band. At the University of Kentucky I entered as a finance major because I loved the movie Wall Street, but soon flunked finite math. Then, I saw Gross Anatomy, and that sent me toward medicine. Eventually, Dead Poet’s Society rocked my world and I realized I was meant to work in theater/film and tell stories, not just watch them. So from there, I pieced together an arts and writing degree, worked professionally in industrial video for five years, applied to graduate producing programs, got universally rejected for lacking “savvy” (as USC’s program once told me), got angry, wrote a script, applied to writing programs, and ultimately, still ended up at USC. My thesis script, Band Geek, went out to the town as a spec, no one bought it, but Universal saw promise in using pieces of it in an American Pie sequel, so I was brought on to write Band Camp.

S2DVD: When you start a project, do you typically know if it’s designated direct-to-video and, if so, does that affect the way you write?

Riddell: With Band Camp, before production, the studio was very high on the script and I was told they considered a theatrical release for it, but from the outset, it was always intended to be video. The rest of my projects have been video from the beginning. In terms of differences in writing, I’d like to let your readership know that everyone involved with these projects from the top down endeavors to make the best movie they possibly can. No one walks around set saying, “yeah, but this is straight to video…” We don’t lower our standards. We all know what makes a good movie and try to deliver that. The difference between a theatrical studio movie, or a well-funded indie, and what we do is…money and time. Marketing controls the whole business for us. They know how much money they feel a straight-to-vid movie can make, and that determines the budget, which often isn’t much compared to theatricals. So, we have to limit locations, limit cast, and find short cuts around expensive scenes, sets, and props. The script is always in flux based on added or subtracted cameo cast, and frankly, a lack of local talent in the locations where we’re shooting. Directors have to generally move at a faster pace than they normally would. It’s a very tight box we’re working inside, and the process is always fluid. The script is never locked. Plus, we have the demands of the franchise for us to meet. What people expect from a Road Trip or American Pie movie greatly influences the story development, and forces some creative compromises. While most theatrical movies encounter budget, creative and cast issues at some point, we ALWAYS do, and our constraints are much, much tighter. But no one I’ve worked with approaches the content creation or the filmmaking itself any different than they would a big-budget tent pole. We just have to be very creative in solving our story and production problems, because there’s not much money or time to throw at them.

S2DVD: Tell me about some of the changes you’ve noticed in the direct-to-video industry since you’ve been involved.

Riddell: Band Camp was a smashing success, and they are still making American Pie movies today. I think Book of Love is number seven, now. The studios wouldn’t continue making these films if they didn’t think they would be profitable. Someone is buying them. However, the profit margin has decreased in the ten years I’ve been working in the industry. People are no longer buying DVDs like they once did as everything has gone digital. No one knows who’s making what money on iTunes downloads. Road Trip 2 hit the the top ten on iTunes — but I have no idea what that means in terms of money. So the delivery format is changing, and how that will continue to evolve is murky.

Piracy is a big problem. Most movies are leaked to the internet now, but the calculus on straight to vid profits has gotten so tight, that the lost revenue from people who steal the movies is a big, big deal. I actually got involved with Paramount when Road Trip 2 was leaked, and waged a Facebook/Twitter/Blog war on pirates who were distributing the movie, and also those who admitted to having stolen it on their accounts. My efforts amounted to nothing but the venting of my own frustration, but piracy is a huge problem for studios and individual artists, alike.

The economy has changed, obviously, and people are using Netflix and Redbox to see our movies now as opposed to buying them. That can be attributed to lower discretionary funds in our bank accounts, the advent of digital distribution, but also maybe the content itself. Like I said, everyone does their best to make a great movie, but perhaps the perceived ownership value of our product has taken a hit, too. Combine those factors with a recession, and these are lean times for everyone.

S2DVD: Where do you think the direct-to-video industry is headed?

Riddell: I have a sense that studios are being more cautious with what they develop and greenlight. It seems that only well-established franchises with longevity and proven worth are going forward at this point, and that the development of brand new offshoots for video franchises is undertaken with serious trepidation. That mirrors the theatrical market, too, of course, where spec or original material is nearly impossible to sell. The studios are only interested in stories with an existing and proven audience. My own instinct, and I have no hard data or insider information to back this up, is that niches will grow on video — movies will be targeted to specific markets, such as the lacrosse movie I’m currently working on for independent producers. I think, down the road, independent movies that struggle to find distribution will find their way to the internet market (replacing DVD) with increasing ease — the question is, can they be profitable or even recover their costs that way?

Studios are making fewer movies for theatrical, and banking on big franchise-able fare to carry their slates. But these are the kind of movies that get theatrical sequels, and not DVD — until the end of a long run. There aren’t those moderately successful, middle-range breakout movies that have minor cast members who can be extended to DVD sequels, which is a staple of this corner of the business. Less product up top, means fewer options down below.

S2DVD: What are you working on now?

Riddell: Right now, I’m preparing a spec script for the market, despite the impossible odds, and doing a rewrite assignment on an independent lacrosse movie which is exciting and a lot of fun. I’m also co-producing a script I wrote, and like everyone else, looking for funding and cast to get that project over the hump. And, to be honest, I’m considering writing a book. Because even though fewer and fewer people read these days, it seems like the only way to get your movie made is to first write the book!