Interviews
Interview: Director Brett Piper (SHOCK-O-RAMA)
By Patrick Desmond
Aug 31, 2006, 07:16

*Note from Dave* Just a quick note to re-introduce you to my good friend Patrick Desmond.  He hasn’t sent along any articles lately but hopefully that is all about to change.  Dez (as I call him) sent along this quick interview this morning and I thought you all might enjoy it, read on.

With the upcoming September 5th street date for Shock O Rama closing in I thought we needed to check in with Director Brett Piper to see what it was like making the film. If you haven't seen the film yet definitely pick it up it's very entertaining.

Brett I have always been amazed by how many effects your films have. In your new film Shock O Rama you have a unique space ship sequence.

I was rather pleased with the space ship sequence myself. It was done very simply and for very little money but I think the look is, as you said, unique. It reminds me a little of one of the old Italian space operas crossed with early Star Wars. 

You often use labor intensive stop motion animation and miniatures how long does it take you to finish those types of shots?

It depends entirely on how complicated the shot is. A very simple shot might take as little as half an hour. I don't think I've ever done a stop motion cut that took more than two hours to shoot.

When you made Shock O Rama as a film within a film did you find that freeing or more of a challenge?

Actually all three stories were shot as entirely separate segments. It wasn't until the editing stage that EI (Now Pop Cinema) decided that wanted to minimize the anthology angle and try to make the movie as coherent as possible, so we shot another half day of linking material to tie everything together. I think ultimately it worked out reasonably well.

Was it a way to get in some fun digs on Hollywood? 

A little bit.

Like the scene where the studio execs are talking and the one says he doesn't even like movies.

I suspect that a lot of people on the business end of this business don't really have much use for movies. It's all about power and money to them. Fortunately I've been spared all that power and money,  so I get to concentrate on the movies themselves.

Your new film along with your other movies has a nostalgic feel to it. Have you ever screened one of your movies in a drive in?

No, drive-ins were pretty much on the way out by the time I started making movies. It might be fun to have a premiere at a drive-in, but it would also mean striking a 35mm print which would be almost as expensive as actually making the movies.

In Shock O Rama you worked with actors from your other films like Misty Mundae, Rob Monkiewicz and Julian Wells. How did it feel to work with everyone again?

They're talented people and always fun. Rob in particular is a very nice guy, no ego at all and great to work with. Julian is very funny and always brings a little extra to her characters. Misty knows how to play to the camera as well as anyone I've ever met.

Do you have in new films your working you would like to mention?

I'm finishing up a picture called Bacterium, which is kind of a throw-back to movies like The Blob and the Quatermass pictures. It's funny, most of my movies have a retro feel which seems inspired by movies that were even before my time. That's the cool thing about movies, no matter how old they are they're always new to somebody. You can enjoy a movie like Fiend Without a Face just as much as audiences did in 1958 if you've got brains enough  not to expect it to look like it was made in 2006!