Making MONDO COLLECTO (contains: 0% spoilers) part one: conception It was March of 2002 when the idea for MONDO COLLECTO came to me. It had been months since my short THIS IS BIGFOOT was done and I wanted to shoot more. I was hosting Atomic Midnights at the Heights Theater and used the excuse of shooting more by thinking of a video product that I could sell at those shows. A short, similar to THIS IS BIGFOOT. Only, I had no money. I had a part time gig managing at the Brookdale 8 budget theater, but it sure wasn't enough money to pay rent much less back a short subject. I also had no equipment. I did have a borrowed VHS-C camcorder that I used a little bit in THS IS BIGFOOT. But, most importantly, I had no subject matter. What to shoot? What to shoot with nothing? I had thoughts of using my Atomic Midnights characters to visit places like comic book stores or something. Not good enough, I thought. Well, what resources do I have? I know people that collect things. That's a good cheap idea. Collecting as subject matter sounded like a good one. A short subject documentary. One that would be less involved with creatively than THIS IS BIGFOOT was. Only, a documentary that showed some white guy talking about his comic book or toy collection seemed kinda dull to me. And, where would the girls be? I like a strong female presence in film. (where applicable, of course) So, how could I involve women enough in a subject matter (like this) that would be dominated by... well, at least the guys I knew. I almost walked away from the idea all together. Then, I thought of the title: MONDO COLLECTO. Damn, that's a good title. Can't turn back now. But, how to get the girls in it? I decided to let my mind wonder and watch TV. The show ROWAN AND MARTIN'S LAUGH-IN was on. As I watched, there was a bit where they had the female cast members Go-Go dance in segments that came on in between the sketches. Go-Go dancing? That's it! Even if I had nothing but boring white guys yammering, I could still get girls in it on some level. Made sense to me. Now, what to do with these "boring white guys"? Mondo. Mondo. Mondo. If I really designed this documentary like a Mondo film, then I wouldn't necessarily have to educate and inform my audience the way I did with THIS IS BIGFOOT. I could twist the truth, make it more free form and fun. The "boring white guys" wouldn't be boring if I presented them in an off center context. Under a Mondo banner, I could shoot just about anything I wanted to and tie it in with narration. part two: production I made some phone calls and started shooting. By April, I had one Go-Go dancer and two segments shot. The first collector I shot surprised me because his live-in girlfriend was also a collector. Yay for me! But, April was full of other surprises. The Atomic Midnights run at the Heights came to an end. And after months of barely being employed, I got a full time job managing at the St. Anthony Main Theater. I then put MONDO COLLECTO on hold until my life became more stable to these new changes and I saved up some cash. After a few months, I was able to purchase an eMac computer (under 2 Grand with a scanner and printer) which is similar to the iMac I used edit THIS IS BIGFOOT. This would allow me to design a web site and edit anything I shot. I would need a digital camcorder to import video into the computer and get a copy of Final Cut Pro to properly edit the footage. The eMac comes with a video editing program called iMovie, but that program is designed for average people who want to edit their home videos. It does work for the filmmaker, but it becomes difficult when wanting to make precise edits. The eMac also comes with a dvd burner (using the iDvd program) which again, is not bad, but is made for the average person and not the creatively minded filmmaker. The overall point of this was to be able to answer to myself and not have to use other people's equipment as I did before with THIS IS BIGFOOT and the music video I did for the metal band IMPALER. The latter was produced during the summer of 2002 using a friend's camcorder and computer. Other than the borrowed VHS-C camcorder, I would be borrowing my roommate's lights and gels for the Go-Go dance sequences that were shot in my room. In the fall of 2002, I shot a segment that changed the entire course of this short subject. What fans would call the "Jesus Lady" segment. Without giving anything away, this segment basically set the standard that EVERY other segment had to live up to. It also gave me the angle of how to present the collectors. I would focus on the collectors and what they collected. This would also help in regards to the one main rule of not shooting items that had been popular in the past ten or more years. I also wanted to keep away from what I call "fan boy collector realms". These are the collectors that you'd run across at comic book / science fiction / fantasy conventions and such. Not that I have a problem with these people, since I do qualify as one of them, but I didn't want to alienate the audience. I wanted to make something that damn near anyone could watch and enjoy without any knowledge of anything fantastic. I also didn't want to make another TREKKIES. But, I would bend this rule to fit the Mondo mold. The "Jesus Lady" footage made me realize that I should pursue the project as a feature and not a short. The collectors I shot were either friends of mine or friends of friends. They were all relatively easy to shoot as long as I remained focused. In regards to the involvement of Ted V. Mikels, I asked him no differently than anyone else, if he would be interested in sharing his ancient weapons for my film. He asked me, "How far do you plan to go with it? I told him, "All the way." His segment was shot in April of 2003. Save for the segment shot in Las Vegas, Nevada, the majority segments were shot in the twin cities area of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. Wisconsin locations included Lake Geneva, my hometown of Milwaukee and an undisclosed location near the MInnesota border. Finding, picking and choosing what collectors to shoot was, at times, just as tricky as getting actors, locations, and props for a story based film. Go-Go dancers were an interesting endeavor. The second Go-Go dancer was shot in the summer of 2002. I never thought that getting Go-Go dancers would be as difficult as they ended up being. I somewhat regret that I did not have auditions for these parts. But, I figured that these were not nude roles and all one needed was an outfit and the ability to dance. That's it. Even the physique of a Go-Go dancer offers a wide range of body types. Only, I shot those sequences in my room. I'm sure that didn't sound "on the level" with some of the ladies I talked to. I also didn't know how many dance sequences I needed. So, months would go by before a Go-Go sequence would be shot. Save for three dancers that I had already had a working relationship with, the rest were trusted friends of friends. It was funny though that after months of begging and the such, I hit a weekend of "when it rains it pours" and shot four Go-Go dancers. part three: post production There was about a three month delay starting post production due to ordering a $760 mini dv camcorder online that never came. A word of advise to anyone ordering anything expensive from an internet based company: check them out first. Just visit a site that rates internet companies. They're quite easy to find. Anyway, It took me fifteen minutes to find out that the company I did business with was shady, not filling orders and giving people the runaround. I fell into that trap easily because I had ordered my eMac from a company online and had a good experience. So, I was conditioned to expect no kind of con. Excuses!! Fall of 2003. I had a mini dv camcorder (Cannon Optura 20) and enough footage (about fourteen hours worth) for a feature length ordeal. I obtained a copy of Final Cut Pro from a friend and started learning how to use the program. By December, I had one segment fully edited. But something happened when I started working on another segment. The process became slower. It became so slow that I started to wonder if I was losing the ability to edit. I knew that editing this feature would be challenging and made the adjustments in my life to accommodate it. This included stepping down as host of the Atomic Midnights at the St. Anthony Main and getting my own apartment. Those adjustments, which occurred very early in 2004, ended up becoming essential for the editing process. In regards to the editing process becoming slower, I discovered that it was not because of my ability. It was because of the genre chosen: a Mondo film. Though THIS IS BIGFOOT was a documentary, editing it was not as challenging as MONDO COLLECTO. This was due to the fact that THIS IS BIGFOOT had more of a news expose bent to it. A question is asked, which leads to another question, and so on. (It was also less than 30 minutes long) MONDO COLLECTO was more free form in terms of an overall narrative structure. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. S8: How is editing documentaries different from editing features? VF: Well, they're entirely different. Editing a documentary is ten times as hard, a hundred times more creative. When you do a documentary, you're the writer, you're the director, you're the filmmaker. - Except from an interview with Verna Fields, film editor of JAWS (SUPER 8 FILMMAKER magazine, Volume 4 / Number 6, December 1976) To edit a segment for MONDO COLLECTO, I first would look at about an hour's worth of raw footage. As I watched the footage, I would make mental notes on what shots looked good and look for any interview footage of the collector and import that footage into the computer first. Once imported, I would arrange the collector's dialog into a sort of monologue. Then, I would import shots that would best play off of the collector's dialog and that would add to the overall framework of the segment. After all that is done, I would tweek the segment until it had a good pace and told an entertaining story. The real difficulty came in who I was editing, how it was shot, and how I wanted to present it. So you understand: When you edit a traditional story film, you are editing together footage that matches a script. The vision of the story has already been establish in the blueprint of that script. So, as an editor, you look for the best takes and shots of what is written for a scene in the script and edit it accordingly. With a documentary, you construct the narrative based on the footage you have already shot. So, it would be like building a Lego house using blocks that you've either found or have stolen instead of building the house from a Lego kit like a normal person would. Not acting like some Lego pirate who pillages their neighbor's bedrooms looking for Lego blocks with the vain hope of recreating that Ultimate Dragon Castle that so terrorized the other eight years olds of the neighborhood. Forcing them to join your Dragon Army of Doom and worship you as the Ultimate Dragon King. Offering you only the best Barbies from their sister's dolly collection for your Ultimate Concubine Harem of Dragon Lust. That said, it would take me up to about a month or more to edit one segment together. The amount of concentration needed was tantamount and would often cause me to break away from the computer screen to rest my brain long enough to rethink new editing equations. But still, the process itself was tedious. Hours and hours would be spent just to complete a few minutes of a segment. Still shots had to be timed. How much time should the collector be seen while they're talking before, during, and / or after you cut into a shot of their collection? Editing nine hours straight only to change your mind because the scene's not working. Answering the demands of real life and the more intrusive full time job definitely slowed the process down a lot. Every segment became an editing challenge. Even the Go-Go dance sequences took a fucking month to complete! Only segments that were sketches went quickly. In Spring of 2005, before I wrapped my brain around the beast known as narration, I took a month long break. By September of 2005, I had an eighty-some minute long cut of the feature without Go-Go dance sequences. All 84 minutes and 30 seconds of the final cut of Mondo Collecto (pre-end credits and score) was completed October 1st, 2005. Musician John Mapes agreed to do the score on October 10th. So, all I have do these days is wait... R.P. Whalen 11/23/05 RETURN HOME