• MIA: Mr. Binkee's Class
• MIA: Scrooge
• MIA: Inhabitance Bad

It's funny how time messes with stuff.  What's great one day usually ends up looking crappy later on down the road.  This can be very true when it comes to filmmaking (especially a filmmaker who is learning the trade) and can have an impact on how things pan out.  Batguy: Starts, unfortunately, is a victim of this.  What started off as a funny and entertaining movie turned into a project that to this day continues to haunt me.

Batguy: Starts was actually meant to be the third movie in a series, following two very poorly done Batguy movies made three years prior.  While the old Batguy movies were done while I was in high school, and therefore sucked, Batguy: Starts was supposed to be the start of what I had hoped to be a new and continuing franchise for the DSU Filmmakers.  The idea to resurrect the series sorta popped out of nowhere.  At Dickinson State University, movie nights are held every month, showing a movie that hasn't usually been released on DVD yet, but is no longer in theaters.  Batman Begins was set to be shown at the school in mid November 2005.  At one of the early DSU Filmmakers meetings for the fall 2005 semester, the idea of showing movies or trailers before the theatrical movies was bounced around.  Since I was a Batman fan, and I had tried to do a parody back in high school, things just sort of snowballed from there.  

I announced the project and held a couple meetings before the movie went into production.  The first meeting was established as a writing staff meeting.  Basically, anyone who gave a damn about the movie could show up and throw out ideas.  While many ideas fell through (I am a picky bastard after all, not to mention most ideas involved a freaking squirrel), one main and very important idea did stick and that was the inclusion of the villain Duct Man.  Duct Man, created and played by Frank Hurt, is a villain obsessed with duct tape.  This absurdity worked very well with the humor of the movie and Duct Man ended up being the main villain of the story (with two other bad guys offering subplots).  I wrote the script, held another meeting and introduced the story to the cast and crew.  Everyone seemed to liked it and scheduling began.  There were never really any auditions, I just grabbed whoever was willing.  That ended up being a task in itself, since we lacked people and therefore shemping was in order.  And worst of all I had to play Batguy, but more on that later.

The movie required a lot of stuff.  From a used parking lot to a showdown with a giant duct tape ball, this was and probably is our most ambitious film to date (not counting the failures Scrooge and Inhabitance Bad).  With all this wacky stuff in the script, I opted to chroma-key roughly 70% of the shots.  This included the Guy Cave, the Prankster's Hideout, climbing up buildings, and filming a toy Batman car to later paste on other footage.  God, what the hell was I thinking?

Before diving into all the messy stuff, I must say I had a blast filming this movie.  It was really a fun experience, if a tiring one.  When things wouldn't go right, we just plowed through and found new ways to tackle problems.  Everyone believed in the project and that was a very nice environment to work in (and one reason why I feel bad the movie wasn't released).  Besides a blizzard that swept through and shut the city down for over a day and my really poor acting job, filming went fine.  It's the editing that was the problem.

Just so everyone is on the same page here, we have never successfully mastered chroma-keying.  Yes, it was done to some extent in shorts like The Pentagon, but never for over half a god damned movie.  When people talk about films, the general categories are either A-Grade or B-Grade.  A-Grade is the top tier of filmmaking, stuff that comes out of Hollywood.  B-Grade is usually cheesier, or more lower budgeted stuff (watch anything with Bruce Campbell and you'll know what B-Grade is).  Our films don't fall under any of these.  Our films are C-Grade (or also known as Chad-Grade).  C-Grade films have a budget between 0 – 100 dollars, use whatever lighting happens to be in the setting, contain fucked up ideas, and usually are filmed in a way that is impossible to achieve good results.  Batguy: Starts was a fun film.  It was completed on schedule with minimal troubles.  Why hasn't it been released after over two years?  The simple answer is I don't feel the movie is good enough to be released publicly.

A lot has been written on Batguy: Starts in the past, especially with the post-production notes (links to these can be found at the end of the article).  So I'll spare everyone the boring details and get to the heart of the matter.  First of all, I never really wanted to play Batguy.  Without being able to be in front of the camera at all times, some shots weren't achieved how I wanted.  This wasn't Brandon Pelling's fault by any means (who stuck by me the whole way through and was an excellent assistant and camera operator), it was my fault for not being able to focus my attention on where it needed to be.  I played the character poorly and this was especially noticeable when I was matched up against the likes of Ken Haught and Beth Hurt, who are both great actors.  And don't get me wrong, I like acting.  I voice act all the time in my animated productions, but that's a lot different compared to really getting out there and acting.  For once it would be nice to be able to concentrate on acting and not having to split my priorities and I think that's why my portrayal of Batguy really took a hit.  The only thing that contributed to the character was my flabby physique.  I wanted it to be clear that Batguy was pretty much not fit for the job.  So there's one reason for you: Batguy, the main character, was played badly.

The next was the chroma-keying issues.  The movie can and was successfully chroma-keyed.  However, while successful, it wasn't perfect.  The green screened scenes had many noticeable defects.  This was impart due to having to set up a green tarp in a classroom with florescent lights.  The material was very reflective and the lighting didn't help much.

Finally, the artistic style of the movie was hard to nail.  This may seem like a stupid point but it's actually the most important one.  I'm a cartoonist so when it comes to creating environments and stuff, things look cartoony.  Every time something was chroma-keyed, it simply didn't look right.  The backdrops looked out of place.  Many attempts were made to make the movie look “natural”, but it never worked.  Since production ended, the movie has undergone around six re-edits to correct this.

I feel bad the movie was never released, especially since a lot of time was put into the production of it.  I feel I owe it to the cast and crew to release it.  However, at the same time, I feel releasing a movie, that is lacking in many areas, is an even bigger injustice.  And with two years now passed, the movie looks and feels even more primitive then before.  The longer the wait, the uglier the film will get.  Really, this is a no win situation.  I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't.  This may seem weird, but it really is true.  It seems like every year our movies improve in quality.  I mean, compare Space Wars- Episode II: The Beginning of  Darkness (2001) to Sabers (2005).  The quality is so much different it's hard to even make a comparison.  The same goes with comparing Mr. Binkee's Class (2002) to Walk'n with Walken (2007).  As time goes on, things either age gracefully or they end up in a wheel chair, pooping their pants and yelling for more applesauce.

There aren't too many people that are happy with my decisions on Batguy: Starts.  Whenever the subject is brought up I'm usually told to just release the damn thing and be done with it.  However, if the creator of a piece of art doesn't take pride in what he/she has accomplished or even like anything about it, how will others feel towards it?  I usually end up disliking my work after time passes.  What was good two years ago to me is now mediocre in retrospect.  So even getting the motivation to work on a project that I think is bad now is hard.  But of course if you want to voice your opinion on the matter, I'll listen.  All you have to do is contact me.  I'm not saying that I will never complete and release Batguy: Starts, but the possibility of this grows weaker as time passes.  Batguy: Starts is almost an inside joke now.  Whenever questions are raised about a project I'm involved in, Batguy: Starts usually comes up, with people saying “This isn't gonna be the next Batguy: Starts, is it?”.  Whenever I mention Batguy: Starts in the same breath as Sabers II, I almost get punched in the mouth by Amy Tichy (co-producer of Sabers II).  The bottom line is Batguy: Starts is old news now.  I think it may be time to move on to bigger and better things.

For more information on Batguy: Starts, check out these old production notes:

Batguy: Starts Production Notes:

• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3
• Day 4
• Day 5

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Batguy: Restarts
  

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