KB: What made you decide to make Bugeaters?
JF: I had two reasons for making this documentary. First, when I make a documentary it’s because I want to learn more about the topic. In this case, I wanted learn more about why the early Nebraska football teams were called “Bugeaters” and how football in Nebraska evolved from its humble beginnings to the highly evolved system it is today. In addition, considering that Nebraska football is like a religion in the state, I knew if the film turned out well, I could sell a lot of copies of it on dvd so I could update my equipment and make my next film.
KB: Bugeaters is not your first film; you have made two other long docs. Can you tell me a little about them?
JF: Soon after I bought my first camera (the Sony VX2000) in 2001, I recruited local actors and worked with a few friends to make a no-budget feature film called Plain Living. Of course, since it was my first project, it didn’t turn out that well (although I’ve seen a lot worse films since then). I consider it my “student film.” While I was editing that project, my favorite local movie theatre closed; it was a huge round Cinerama threatre from the 60’s that I loved ever since I was a child. I took my camera and filmed it, just to get some shots of the theatre to keep for myself. Then I heard some people were having a rally downtown to try to save the theatre, so I decided to check that out and film it, and before I knew it I was making my first documentary. As you can see, I fell into documentary filmmaking completely by accident. Unfortunately, after I completed the first version of the film, which then was called Saving the Indian Hills, (after the name of the theatre) and was accepted into film festivals, I got sued by a member of the preservation group trying to save the theatre. It was one of those frivolous lawsuits where the person suing claimed he owned the movie and all the rights; however, he had a lot of money and dragged it out until 2005. In the meantime, I was determined to become a real filmmaker so I made another documentary, 416, about Nebraska’s controversial defense of marriage amendment and the lawsuit to overturn it. That became my first released documentary and went on to play in over 10 film festivals and won 4 awards. Finally, in 2005, the lawsuit over my first movie went to court and I was successful in winning the case. After that, I decided to completely redo the movie and included preservation fights to save other historic theatres in the country. The revised film, titled Preserve Me a Seat, was released in 2006, and has been shown at festivals, as fundraiser for historic theatres in danger of closing, and has sold over 3,500 copies on DVD from my website. A year later, I began researching the material for Bugeaters and began filming it in 2008.
KB: Were the period costumes a big expense? If not, what was?
JF: The costumes were the biggest expense of the film, costing over $3,000.00. My original costumer, Julie Gullickson, was great; she made replica 1890s’ period uniforms based on details and either found or made authentic period clothing. She had a great eye for detail and was a real stickler for making sure everything looked “right” for the period. Unfortunately, she tragically died unexpectedly mid-way through the filming of the historic recreations. She went in for surgery and didn’t survive; she was only 40 years old. That was a major setback, but eventually, I worked with another costumer, Kevin Steward, and he created the original white 1890 football uniforms, along with uniforms for many of the opposing teams.
KB: Would you mind revealing the rough budget and how you funded the film?
JF: When I began filming, I didn’t have a set budget. One of the nice things about low/no budget documentary filmmaking is that you don’t need all the money to make the film at once; you can kind of “pay as you go” so that’s what I did. When I ran out of money, I stopped filming, and taught extra classes to make more money to film the next segment. However, most of the recreations were filmed in the summer of 2008; I used money from teaching summer school that year to pay for them. The additional expenses came when I had to travel to Kalamazoo, Michigan, to film an interview with a football historian and when I realized I needed to film more football games that required the creation of more opposing team uniforms. The final budget turned out to be $10,000.00, and I’ll probably end up spending another $5,000.00 for marketing over the next year.
KB: Did you have much help in making this film?
JF: At first I had one or two dedicated crew members, but as time went on they lost interest and dropped out, so I ended up shooting a lot of it myself, especially all of the action sequences and the parts with the fans “watching” the games.
KB: As the producer, were there any issues that drove you crazy that other filmmakers should think about before they jump into making a film like this?
JF: This is the first film where I’ve had to pay for the rights to use historic photos, and this was an area of concern. It seems like archives and libraries have really jacked up their prices of historic photos lately, perhaps as a way to find additional revenue after losing arts and government funding. Also complicating things is the fact there aren’t a lot of photographs of early Nebraska football in the 1890s to begin with, so I knew early on I would need to use as many as I could find (or afford). However, the University wanted $750.00 per photo for the rights to use in a movie, and I certainly couldn’t afford that. Then I discovered that the State Historical Society had many of the same photos for a much cheaper price, so I used them instead. In addition, I also discovered that I could buy a few old 1890s N.U. yearbooks on ebay, and since it was before 1920 they wouldn’t be subject to copyright, so I bid on them, and although I lost many auctions (some of the yearbooks sold for over $800.00), I was able to buy a few for as low as $45.00 a piece. I also found additional original photos for other nearby college football teams I needed like Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri on ebay for reasonable prices as well.
KB: What is your distribution strategy? (Is it going to be driven by DVD sales?)
JF: My distribution plan can be broken down into three areas: theatrical showings in the state, regional film festivals, and then home video release on DVD, and hopefully Blu-ray. We just had our Omaha premiere last Thursday night and it was a great success. We held the premiere at our local community playhouse because it was only a few hundred dollars more than renting a local movie theatre and it could hold more people. We had to bring in the projector and screen, but that actually didn’t cost all that much to do and it looked fantastic on their stage. We had 450 people come see the film and sold many DVDs in the lobby. People were also buying the DVDs for my other two documentaries, so that was great too. Next, I’m taking the movie on tour throughout the state of Nebraska, but I wasn’t able to book the film in as many theatres as I had hoped; it seems that it’s getting harder to get theatres to work with indie filmmakers than it was 4-5 years ago, yet at the same time a lot of theatres have converted to digital projection so it would actually be easier to show indie movies than in the past. But, unfortunately, many theatres today only want to show the latest Hollywood blockbuster rather than do something different or independent. However, I think the real market for this documentary is on DVD. This could be the perfect Xmas gift people to give to their relatives who are N.U. football fans – I purposefully kept the 2 disc DVD/CD soundtrack set priced low at an affordable $15.00 per copy.
KB: Are you thinking about film festivals? Which ones?
JF: Yes, but only festivals in the region because I think for the most part this topic would only interest people in the Midwest. We just played the Iowa Indpendent Film Festival over the weekend of July 15-16th, and because the Iowa football team played an important part of the story, they liked the movie quite a bit. Next, we’ll play the Estes Park Film Festival in Colorado in September. I’ve also submitted the film to The South Dakota and Reel Dakota film festivals, as well as The Kansas International Film Festival.
KB: What was the smartest decision you made with Bugeaters? What was the dumbest?
JF: Without a doubt, the smartest thing I did in making this movie was hire Greg Kincheloe, who composed the music and did the sound editing on the film. Greg composed the score for two local films by my friend Mark Thimajin of Lincoln, and I liked his music a lot. I approached him in January of this year and thankfully he wanted to work on the film. Originally, I thought the movie would have music that was more like the silent movie music of Charlie Chaplin movies. However, Greg took it in a whole different direction, using fiddle, dobro, banjo, and even a person whistling to make it more “Americana” sounding – it was a brilliant idea, and I’m thankful he thought of it. In addition, Greg’s ability to use Pro-tools for audio editing has made this the best sounding movie I’ve ever made. I look forward to working with Greg again on all of my future projects.
However, the dumbest thing I did was hire a local artist who didn’t come through for me. In fact, I had a lot of problems with artists in making this film. I knew early on that I wanted to show reporters writing the game reports for various football games. My idea was to make it like Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula where you would see people writing and then see inserted film footage around them. A lot of the newspaper articles/game reports that I found had black and white ink drawings, so I thought it would be cool if they could be “brought to life” through animation and drawings. Unfortunately, every animator I met only could do blocky looking computer animation, and they thought they should all be paid $10,000.00, which wasn’t going to happen. Then, on Facebook, I saw some great cartoon style drawings that a local artist had done on a friend’s profile, so I met with her and paid her an advance to recreate some cartoons for me, especially one of a cartoon of an ape turning into a caveman, who turned into an Indian, and then turned into a football player. But she never drew it, and eventually only gave me one drawing that I think she spent 5 minutes making. I hate wasting money and felt really burned by that. Thankfully, I later discovered a Rotoscope animation software program made by Red Giant and experimented with that. I found out that I could take all of the color out of it and then “tint” it with a solid color, making it look just like early silent movie animation. That worked great.
KB: What would you do differently next time?
JF: I think my two biggest weaknesses mirror those of a lot of other indie filmmakers: funding and marketing. I can’t keep funding my projects myself, especially as they keep getting bigger and bigger; I have to find a way to get investors and or donations. For my next project, which will be a low-budget feature film, I’m going to pursue getting both investors and donations through crowd-funding websites like Indiegogo.com and through having fundraising “house parties” and events months before I begin shooting. Of course, I’m going to keep teaching extra classes too, so I can use that money as well, and if I can sell a lot of copies of Bugeaters on DVD, I plan on upgrading all of my equipment, which needs to be done before the next project. I’m also going to work harder at finding a real crew;
KB: Where can I buy copies of this film and your others?
JF: The DVD/Blu-ray for Bugeaters will be available in early October after all of my theatrical showings/film festival screenings have ended. My other two films are available on my old website http://www.apartment101films.com though I hope to come up with the money soon to get a new company website, since I had to change my company’s name to Objectif49films.com (I moved, and my new apartment is 201, so I was not getting my mail for film stuff and DVD orders).
So there you have it. Straight talk from a filmmaker who walks the walk. I have seen all of Jim’s films and I’m a fan. I think he is someone who is going to keep doing great work no matter what happens. I know I’m looking forward to what he does next.
