Mark Stolaroff: Part #1 of a 2 Part Interview With the "Pig" Producer

Mark Stolaroff

Mark Stolaroff is known as an expert in low budget filmmaking. The independent producer is co-founder of Antic Pictures and runs the No Budget Film School. Stolaroff's newest film, Pig, will be playing at this year's Phoenix Film Festival. Recently I was able to catch up with Stolaroff to talk about Pig and pick up a few tips on making films with no budget.

The interview is a bit in depth, so I've broken it down into two parts. The first part is below, the second part coming tomorrow.


Christopher Coffel: Can you tell us a little bit about Pig and how you got involved?


Rudolf Martin in Pig

Mark Stolaroff: This is the third feature I've done with writer/director Henry Barrial. We met when I used to work for a company called Next Wave Films. Next Wave was an autonomously run company founded by Peter Broderick, but financed by IFC. We gave finishing funds to exceptional low budget features and probably had something like 3,000 films submitted to us in the six years we were in existence. These films came from all over the world, and were submitted directly by the filmmakers themselves, instead of agents. Usually unknowns, though several became "knowns." We gave finishing funds to Chris Nolan, Joe Carnahan ("The Grey"), and Amir Bar-Lev ("The Tillman Story") on their first features, and also to Henry Barrial, on a terrific $3,000 feature called "Some Body," which premiered in Dramatic Competition at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival.

Henry and I worked together again, along with my producing partner at the time, Ron Judkins, on his Sundance Screenwriters Lab project "True Love." Like "Pig", "True Love" took a long time to complete and it was while flying to our first festival that Henry first mentioned the idea for "Pig." It was just a sentence at that point, but it explained the meaning behind the title and I thought that was pretty cool. Then at subsequent festivals he would have a little more--a treatment, a longer treatment, and then finally version one of the script. I had the amazing opportunity to work very closely with Henry on the script, seeing it through all kinds of changes and adjustments. Henry is incredibly creative and also really likes the process of collaboration. He loves to bounce ideas off of you and we spent many nights brainstorming. He's a gifted writer, and this was the first time in my career I got to see how a script, how a scene, went from rough to refined. He's a consummate re-writer and I always knew that something that started out rough, would get better with the next draft.

Our idea for making the film was simple, and stupid. He was going to take out a loan and I was going to invest a bunch of my savings and we were going to self-finance it for, at first $20,000, then $40,000, and then more. Yes, I teach no-budget filmmaking and yes, I encourage this type of go-for-it DIY approach, but we'd just done that on "True Love," and "Pig" was no no-budget movie. But we certainly didn't want to wait around for possibly years, to raise a million or two million dollars, like many of my friends were doing. So, we just went for it.

So, while I don't recommend to my students to borrow money to make a movie, that's what we did and that's how I became involved! When someone asks you what it takes to become a producer, the simple answer is MONEY.

CC: Pig has been out on the festival circuit for a while now. How has the audience response been? Have you been able to get out and see the film with a live audience?

MS: I've been involved with many, many films over a relatively long career in the indie film business, but the journey of "Pig" has been unique. While I've taken 7 films to Sundance, "Pig" didn't get into Sundance and we didn't get into SXSW or Tribeca, either. For an art film, this is trouble, with respect to festivals, but "Pig" is somewhere between an art film and a genre film, and so we've managed to straddle both types of festivals pretty successfully. This is rare for a non-horror genre film, (horror films often play the Midnight sections of arthouse festivals). "Pig" is completely a genre film--it's not the type of classic character piece that you find at fests like Sundance. But it's barely a sci-fi film, revealing itself as sci-fi at the very end. So, while we didn't get into the hoity-toity arthouse festivals, and we didn't get into the hardcore genre festivals, (like Fantastic Fest), we've played an interesting mix of other great festivals, from the likes of Palm Springs, Oldenburg, Nashville, Cleveland and Atlanta on the general fest side, to Sci-Fi-London, Brussels Fantastic Fest, Shriekfest and many others on the genre side. There are no genre films out on the genre circuit playing those other festivals. We've been an official selection at over 30 festivals so far, (11 coming up between mid-March and the end of April), and we've won 5 awards so far, 4 Best Feature awards.

I'm a big believer in attending as many festivals as you can. If your film plays in a festival and you're not there, it's like a tree falling in the forest. In the beginning of your festival life, it's crucial to attend. You have to see how your audience is reacting, what are they reacting too, who are they. Are your marketing materials working, are people responding to your film, your message, your intro? We've learned a lot about "Pig" from our festival ride. Mainly, we realized that although "Pig" is a puzzle film, and requires an attentive audience that pays attention to details, and can be intentionally confusing at times, and maybe even a bit slow, it appeals to a much broader audience than we could have ever imagined. Old, young, doesn't seem to matter. Of course, sci-fi and mystery fans, Singularity followers, Memento lovers--these folks really like the film.

CC: You're known as an expert of sorts in micro-budget filmmaking. You founded the No Budget Film School. Can you tell us a little more about that and how it all came to be?

MS: As my website says, (http://www.NoBudgetFilmSchool.com/) No Budget Film School is a unique series of classes specifically designed for the no-budget filmmaker. There are a whole bunch of things I don't cover in my classes. I don't teach you how to write, or direct, or operate a camera. I don't teach you anything about how to write a business plan, how to hit up investors, how to pitch your idea to production companies. The point of my class is to teach you how to make a film with whatever resources you have available to you right now, no matter how little those resources may be. I have friends who have taken features to Sundance that have cost less than $1,000, total. So, in addition to many nuts-and-bolts techniques, like how to shoot in LA without a filming permit, how to attract crew and find equipment with no money, etc., much of what I cover is philosophy, the principals of no-budget filmmaking. You can't make every kind of film this way, but there is one unique film you can make with your specific set of resources. And it requires embracing your limitations, and learning where to focus those resources.

The inspiration for designing the class came after years of hearing low-budget filmmakers focus on all the wrong things. Like what camera they should use, rather than how they were going to get the best performance from their actor. This is the only kind of filmmaking I know. I made no-budget shorts in college on 16mm back in the 80's, worked at Roger Corman's studio when I first moved out to LA, worked my way up the production tract on these kinds of films before working with Peter at Next Wave, and then I've produced several of these kinds of films since. The priorities, though, never became clearer than from seeing 2000 to 3000 mostly bad films submitted to us at Next Wave. What made them so bad? What made the few good films so good? It was never what most filmmakers tend to think. It wasn't how "good" something looked, for instance. It was the uniqueness of the story, the strength of the creative ideas, the talent of the actors and director. These are the qualities I try to instill upon my students. I also have guest speakers who have worked successfully this way come in and tell all their dirty little secrets. I've had filmmakers like David Gordon Green, Jody Hill, Joe Carnahan, and Jay Duplass come in, and most recently I had the filmmakers of last year's $15,000 Sundance hit "Bellflower" tell their story.

Be sure to check back tomorrow for the second and final part of my interview with Mark Stolaroff.

Mark Stolaroff's newest film, Pig, can be seen at the 2012 Phoenix Film Festival. For tickets please visit the official Phoenix Film Festival website.

For more information on Pig, please visit The Pig Picture.

To learn more about no budget filmmaking, visit the No Buget Film School.