The Making of Sam Goes Nuts

Okay, there are just a few basic things about making Sam Goes Nuts...

First is the look... The whole thing seems to exist in its own, bizarre,  super high-contrast black-and-white universe - like you're watching a moving photocopy. You should see the grainy Super 8mm black-and-white filmstock - it looks great! But anyway, I like the "dirty", gritty look because - well, I just go for a dirty, grainy look whenever I can. Because I like things a little raw and hard-core, with edgy humour. It was what drew me to punk-rock - the whole do-it-yourself feeling to it; the "let's photocopy our gig posters" kind of thing. Punk rock in it's original, youthful, angry spirit - like from the Summer of '77 - rather tongue-in-cheek, instead of the putrid crap it eventually became (Marilyn Manson and all that...).   

Second, is the casting. I mean, the guy who plays Bob is really like that - just ratcheted up a few notches. Same with me and the Sam character - yes, I am intense. (But I never smashed any real cameras at the camera proficiency tests - what a waste of a good camera that would be...) So there's a fun in-joke to it all.

Finally, there's the whole thing about destroying the camera...

We got the camera - a permanently-broken model (when you shook it pieces inside rattled around) - from the technician of our film department, Steve Pitch. And we knew we had one chance to destroy this.

The original gag was that when the film prof says "Take the camera off the tripod", Sam picks up the tripod - complete with camera - and slams it down on the desk repeatedly until it finally breaks off. That's why it's so dark in the office - because on an upswing he was supposed to smash the single lightbulb (which we'd show in an establishing shot), at which point the entire room was supposed to go black. You'd then see a black screen and hear weird smashes and grunts followed by a little spinning disc sound and then a couple words of dialogue between Sam and the deadpan film prof (then cut to the final shot).

However, I figured that maybe I might smash the entire thing off inadvertently in the first swing. If that happened, we'd be screwed because we'd have no way to keep trying to "take the camera off the tripod" in a comic fashion.

So, as a back-up plan, I put the piece of concrete block on the desk - clearly established as a kind of idiosyncratic paper-weight early in the interview.

When we did the shot, sure enough the camera snapped off in one blow. So we fell back to Plan B, and I took that there concrete block and smashed the camera to pieces on the floor. (Yes I did.) The whole thing is followed with a shot of me scooping up the remains of the camera and depositing it on the desk - which is hilarious...

I shot those smashing scenes in wide angles to give the audience a rather objective standpoint. When the camera's being smashed, you aren't seeing it from Sam's point-of-view (though we shot some close ups of the camera actually getting hit over Sam's - erm... my shoulder). Rather, you're a bystander. That's what makes it so friggin' funny - the objected, disinterested viewpoint. You can see how absurd it is.

Anyway, we all had a lot of fun, but I did get in a bit of trouble with my profs... Whatever.