The Four Root Causes of “Bad Movies”

As my irregular “Films that Made Me” posts will attest, I have quite a high tolerance for bad movies. And I’m not alone. Lots of people have had great – and let’s face it, often drunk – viewing experiences watching cinematic train wrecks like The Room, Plan 9 From Outer Space, Tammy and the T-Rex, and, of course, everything Neil Breen has ever made.

Yes! Someone said my name!

The appeal of “bad movies” can vary because the definition of what makes a “bad movie” also varies. They can be poorly acted or directed, they can be cheesy and cliched, they can be incompetently made with incomprehensible camerawork and baffling editing… or they can just be as dumb as a water-soluble dinghy. 

Some common traits of “bad movies” are:

• Simplistic, cliched or incomprehensible plot
• Unnatural or cliched dialogue
• Unconvincing or over-the-top acting
• Limited or non-existent art direction and production design
• Terrible cinematography and camerawork
• Simplistic or non-existent lighting
• Poorly recorded or ineptly mixed sound
• Irritating or inappropriate music
• Poorly-executed stunts or effects
• Incompetent direction
• Being made by Godfrey Ho

The thing is, with the exception of the last one (which was added for comedic effect anyway), these are all symptoms of a bad movie – they are not the causes. There are plenty of good or great movies that have some or all of the above traits – I’m looking at you, Star Wars – but they are usually competent in some of them and frequently brilliant in others. The aforementioned Star Wars for example, has a cliched plot and unnatural dialogue, occasionally facile directing and sometimes quite ham-fisted acting, but the cinematography and lighting are perfectly serviceable if not good, the art direction is excellent throughout and the effects blew audience’s minds, with the end result being a thoroughly entertaining and iconic film.

The one thing a “bad movie” can’t be though is boring. Because if they’re boring, then regardless of their competence or quality, they are instead “truly awful movies” and shouldn’t be watched by anyone.

Or should they?

If you’re a filmmaker, trying to make the best films you can, there’s a lot you can learn from “bad movies” – and even “truly awful movies.” For a start, you can learn how not to do things. And not just technical things like underexposed images or dodgy jump cuts or line-crossing, either. You can learn what parts of a story don’t work or why a particular plot point was hard to follow or easy to predict. You can also learn from when a “bad movie” does things right – sets a character arc up or foreshadows a plot point or lights a scene to create a mood. Depending on the film, these good moments could be constant or few and far between, but like a middle aged man in a nudist colony, when it works, it tends to stand out.

The… er… lighting’s alright… I guess?

The filmmakers behind “bad movies” rarely set out to actually make a bad movie – they set out to make a good (or at the very least, sellable) movie and for whatever reason, fell short of the mark. And the mistakes they made are the same mistakes we all make, at some point in our filmmaking careers anyway, and knowing these ahead of time, might help you avoid them when making your films.

Bad movies tend to exhibit one or more of the following critical mistakes:

• They are over-ambitious
• They are vanity projects
• They chase trends and metrics
• They don’t put the audience first

Let’s have a look at these root causes one by one…

Over-Ambition

The filmmakers of this type of bad movie are usually inspired by film(s) they look up to and want to make a film like them – but lack the skill, experience and/or the resources to do so properly. 

While a low budget or practical shooting restrictions are often part of the problem, naïveté, arrogance or egotism tend to be the common factor here since a skilled or experienced team will adjust the scope and scale of the project to fit their resources – whereas a naive team will blunder on regardless, convinced of their own ability to pull it off.

Can’t afford an MRI machine or a hospital room? Just use cardboard boxes, white paper and your daughter’s bedroom.

Over-ambition can come from a good place or a bad one. It could be an earnest filmmaker wanting to make his own genre film, a copycat producer wanting to cash-in on a popular franchise or just an inexperienced team who didn’t plan their project properly and had a low standard of work.

For an audience, though, over-ambition means comparing the film to its significantly better influences – and the bad movie almost always comes off worse in this scenario. Sometimes, the film can be quite entertaining, usually in a “so bad it’s good” kind of way, where you laugh at how crappy everything is, but generally you just see it as a poor reflection of something else.

I hold my hand up and say that I have made more than a few short films that suffer from over-ambition – and I’m willing to bet that most filmmakers have as well, at least pretty early in their career. Does this mean you shouldn’t be ambitious? No. You need to be ambitious sometimes (if not all the time) because otherwise, you’ll never challenge yourself and improve. But always temper your ambition with your skills and experience – know what you lack and what you have and plan your project accordingly. The difference between a love-letter and an uninspired genre cliche is razor thin, but temperance and quality can take you away from the label that is “a bad movie”.

Examples of over-ambitious “bad movies” include: Birdemic, Plan 9 From Outer Space, Deadly Prey, Starcrash, Samurai Cop, most of the straight-to-video action and sci-fi fare from the 80s and 90s.

Vanity Projects

This is when a film exists solely to promote the career or stroke the ego of one person. Usually this person is the film’s producer (or at the very least, the person behind the project) but they tend to also write, direct and/or star in the film because aside from being a control freak, they are also a narcissist. The most mainstream-acknowledged poster child for bad movies, Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, is a great example of this. 

If my movie is the “best” worst film, that still means I’m the best, right?

Part of the problem is the whole one-person-wearing-many-hats scenario – if you’re the writer and the director and the star and the producer, you’re spreading yourself pretty thin and are probably going to do a poor job of all of those things. It’s also tough to remain objective when you can’t see your own work from the outside – this is why very few actors are able to capably direct themselves. But this isn’t the main reason why vanity projects turn out to be as well-formed as a tandoori-patron’s first stool of the day.

Vanity projects often go bad because they put a person and their ego before the film itself. Decisions made during a film’s writing, planning, production and post-production should be made for the betterment of the film – not to placate the ego of its creators. There are a number of 80s and 90s vanity projects made by and for wannabe martial arts or action stars… and they are all blatantly ego circle jerks with supporting characters remarking how tough and cool the leads are and female characters proclaiming they’re so sexy they could make a panda dampen its gusset. They’re usually pretty entertaining because of how overtly self-unaware they are but they’re also not taken seriously by audiences and are critically mauled by anyone forced to review them.

Yes, this is a real movie. And yes, it’s as bad as you think it is.

But if we dial back some of the macho egotism, we can see lots of new filmmakers make these types of films and suffer many of the same mistakes. Many new filmmakers want complete artistic control over their work and full credit, respect and, dare I say, adoration from audiences and critics. And this all comes down to the fact that most new filmmakers want to be auteurs – partly due to ego, obviously, but also because they think that’s what directing is. All the directors you hear about when you get into films and filmmaking are auteurs to some extent and filmmakers want to be like them. This causes them to insist on doing everything themselves. They want to write the script, direct the actors, operate the camera, edit the film… every role that has significant influence over the end result. If they have hopes of being an actor, they might also want to be the film’s star – although this is more common in actor-makes-their-own-film type scenarios (the primary type of vanity project you’ll see at the bottom of the Amazon barrel).

With only one person occupying the most influential roles (writer, director, editor etc), you’re not going to get multiple perspectives on what’s working and what isn’t – you’ll only get one. Yours. And your opinion might not be the best opinion. If might not even be a good opinion. In fact, if your decisions are based on ego, they’re probably bad opinions in general. And if you’re doing all the main jobs, there won’t be anyone to point out your mistakes, make suggestions and add their own creativity to make the film better.

Now, doing everything yourself is actually a good thing when you’re starting out and learning the ropes because you’ll get an idea of what everyone else needs and does on set. But once you start looking to make “good” films that you’ll be happy to share with the world, you’re better off delegating these other roles, concentrating on the job you can do well and enabling your cast and crew to help you make the film better.

Notable vanity project “bad movies” include: The Room, City Dragon, Champagne and Bullets, Fatal Deviation, anything made by Neil Breen (obviously).

Chasing Trends and Metrics

This is a tough one to define because it encompasses a few different things. Essentially, it’s when a filmmaker does something because it’s popular, successful or fashionable or because they’ve misunderstood some statistics that indicate that it’s popular, successful or fashionable. Producers do this all the time, especially at the executive level, because they tend to see movies as numbers with dollar signs in front of them and, like all corporate people, they apply this spreadsheet-centric thinking to everything. Often though, they fundamentally misunderstand why something worked – and sometimes that bites them in the arse (eg Suicide Squad having a 70s/80s soundtrack because it worked so well for Guardians of the Galaxy).

Directors and writers are liable to do this too, although it’s usually less metric-driven and more about trends. Sometimes this is for cynical reasons – making a zombie film because zombie films are popular, for example – but it can also be because they’re inspired by the same things other filmmakers are. For instance, in 2020 a lot of filmmakers were making pandemic or lockdown-themed films and contrary to what I’d have expected, audiences seemed to like them so they became popular. But they were only popular for a short window of time – within a handful of months the lockdown film became uninteresting. The pandemic films are also an example of films that reference current events – and thus often become dated really quickly.

New filmmakers are not immune to this, either. Usually the reason they chase a trend is because the trend has inspired them or because they want to be seen as part of something (this was a big reason behind all the low-budget and indie lockdown/pandemic films of 2020). Making a film that’s part of a trend when that trend is having a moment can be a way of adding your voice to the collective discussion and is potentially a way for unknown filmmakers to get their names out there. But it can also be a way to unintentionally show that you have nothing new or interesting to say and that you’re just trying to fit in like a kid on their first day of ninja school wearing a hood and his mum’s black silk bathrobe.

The trick to avoiding this is to only be inspired by certain aspects of the trend and then doing something completely new with everything else. So if zombie movies are popular, set your zombie film in a different time or place (Victorian England or an old people’s home) or turn the archetypes on their head (have the zombies be the heroes and tell the apocalypse from their point of view). The trick is, you have to show some fundamental level of creativity or individuality – just running with the pack and “joining in” with a trend won’t help you or your film stand out. Remember that a film that is technically lacking can be saved somewhat by a good idea and these sorts of films are rarely boring – make something like that and while it might not be a great movie, it’s unlikely to be truly bad.

Notable trend-chaser “bad movies” include: Cool as Ice, ROTOR, Shocking Dark, Bloodfist, Gymkata, any of the Shark vs something type films that litter the bottom row of Netflix.

Milk that trend. And when the teats run dry, sell idiots powdered milk!

Not Putting the Audience First

This is the number one mistake that filmmakers, big and small, make. It’s also something that often overlaps with the other causes I mentioned. If you’re making a film, you need to have an audience in mind. This helps you know what they want or need from moment to moment in the film, what will keep them interested, what will excite them or make them cry or get them behind your protagonist.

Obviously, you can’t predict everything or please everyone (or account for societal changes – a casual racist might be an acceptable protagonist in a movie from the 1940s, but  modern audiences will instinctively hate that bigoted prick). That being said, there are certain universal traits or elements that people usually respond positively or negatively to and knowing your target audience, however niche or broad, will help you pick the right things to address in your film.

A detective story audience wants a compelling mystery with interesting characters and maybe a few twists to keep them guessing. An action movie audience wants exciting action sequences with well-preformed and presented stunts. A horror movie audience wants an interesting antagonist, suspenseful moments and well-designed or presented set pieces that make them jump, wince or hide behind the sofa. Obviously, these are generalisations, but imagine if you made one of those films without attempting to address those things… For instance, an action movie without exciting action is like a porno movie where everyone kept their clothes on and discussed poetry for an hour – no-one’s getting stuck to the edge of their seats from that.

Not putting the audience first usually means that the filmmakers felt that something else was more important – whether that be money at the box office, the ego of the film’s star or director, the potential awards the film could win or the kudos that comes from doing something first or better than everyone else. All these things, while often important in their own way, should be secondary to the audience’s experience – although that rarely actually happens. Major studio films always put money and often put awards, egos and achievements above the audience but they generally have a level of polish that makes them at least acceptable, if uninspiring, as a viewing experience. Lower budget films don’t have the resources necessary to offset those priorities, so putting an audience in second, third or fourth place has a much bigger negative impact. 

When the needs of an audience aren’t prioritised, they tend to tune out and disengage from the film. They start to notice what the filmmaker’s real priorities were and while this can sometimes provide entertainment (eg vanity projects), they usually just feel like they were duped into watching – and paying for – something that wasn’t made for them.

In my opinion, “Manos the Hands of Fate” is the worst film ever made – as this random screenshot might indicate.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with thinking about the film’s marketability or whether it could win awards, but making those things your top priority would be a mistake. For new filmmakers or those working in the lower tiers of the industry, putting the audience first needs to be your guiding principle because it’s the only way you’ll likely create a positive impact. Putting anything else first, including your own sense of artistic expression, is only going to detract from the audience’s experience and thus the impact of your film. 

Notable “bad movies” that don’t put the audience first: Dangerous Men, Vampire Assassin, Eyes of the Werewolf, After Last Season, Manos the Hands of Fate and anything Uwe Boll puts his name to.

What Does This Mean for You?

So what are the main takeaways from all this as a new or indie filmmaker? 

Well, you need to keep your ambition in check. Know what your limits are when it comes to skills and resources and tailor your film to fit – don’t try to make something big and elaborate just because you’re inspired by bigger or more elaborate movies. 

Second, keep your and everyone else’s ego out of the project. You don’t need to be an auteur –  work with everyone else to bring your collective vision to life. And don’t try to do everything yourself – wearing too many hats will always lower your standard of work. 

Third, don’t chase trends – just because something is popular or in the zeitgeist, doesn’t mean you should do it too. But if you do decide to add your voice to the choir, make sure you’re doing something new or creative with the trend. 

And lastly, always put the audience first. You can focus on other things too (like marketability or winning awards), but remember that a good film is one that leaves it’s audience in a better place than before they saw it. Put their experience first and the other things will come much easier.

“Bad movies” are often bad for multiple reasons, but usually one or more of the above poor choices were made that impacted everything else. So the next time you watch a “bad movie” (and if you don’t watch them, I urge you to try a few) see if you can work out what the root causes of the film’s faults are and then think about how you could avoid making those mistakes on your next project.

The Sci-fi London 48hr Challenge 2023

Last weekend I got involved in another 48 hour film challenge. It was a last minute thing – my friend Kaz had signed up for the SciFi London one and asked around on the Thursday before for anyone who wanted to help over the weekend. I hadn’t shot any fiction since “Two Sugars” and since my social calendar is currently as empty as an AA group in Salt Lake City, I thought that doing something like this could be fun.

As per my tips for doing a 48hr challenge, we messaged around and got our actors on board – Alistair Smith (who I’d worked with on my last two projects) and Emma Louise-Price (an actress Alistair knew through an actor’s group he attended). The other crew members were two of Kaz’s friends – Paul Cassell and Liz Salmon – and we were also pretty sure that we’d rope Kaz’s daughter Heidi in to help at some point.

So at 11am on Saturday morning, we received our starting criteria – a title “Sparkle in Your Eyes,” a line of dialogue “Patterns everywhere, all around” and an action “a character circles two dates in a calendar, one week apart.” We also had an optional science element “a year-long eclipse changes the world.” After brainstorming several ideas including a woman looking for her father who was abducted by aliens when she was a girl and a story about a dog going to therapy (yeah, no idea where that one came from either!), we landed on an alien abduction story involving a dog.

The dog in question was Kaz’s white husky/labrador cross Sky, and the main location was going to be Kaz’s house so we were very much making use of our available assets. Although Kaz has written scripts before, Paul and Liz had little screenwriting experience and, as is often the case, I took it upon myself to crack out the iPad and Final Draft and start writing the script.

I have a tendency to fill a void in a group project and if no-one else takes charge and puts on the director’s hat, then I’ll start making those decisions and get the ball rolling until someone else steps up to the plate. And, by that point, they rarely do. People who want to direct are usually quite forthcoming with this desire (as they need to be – confidence being a necessary leadership quality after all), and I only take the reins if no-one else does and the metaphorical horse actually needs steering. That being said, I felt bad about “taking over” the project, especially since it was Kaz who wanted to do the 48hr challenge and invited others to take part. I said as much to Kaz, but she was only too happy for me to write and direct things since she didn’t have much fiction experience and, in her words, “wasn’t a particularly controlling person” – which maybe says something about me, I don’t know…

With time pressures very much on, I got to work on the script and managed to knock out five pages in about 45 minutes, fitting in our action, our line of dialogue and a moment that made sense of our title. I even managed a reference to the optional bullshit science reference – although since it was optional, we didn’t count it. Our story was about an eccentric astronomer and his long-suffering partner and their dog, Kepler (we spent about ten minutes coming up with that name). The astronomer, Oliver, manages to prove his theory of a stellar alignment and that evening their home is visited by an other-worldly light and Kepler is abducted. After days of fraught searching,  Kepler returns… but the dog is no longer completely of this world. It was a simple little story with some fun character moments, a cute dog and a bit of emotional drama. And a dash of low-budget, largely-inferred science fiction just so it qualified for the SciFi London 48hr Challenge, but what the hell…

The original plan was to start shooting on the Sunday, but because we had some scenes set at night and the actors were free, we started shooting on the Saturday instead. And I’m glad we did, because that meant we could clear about a third of the film and left us with more time to get the few remaining night shots.

When the actors arrived, I spent some time with them, going through the script, making tweaks and developing the characters. I know that for most crews, this is somewhat frustrating – having the director talking to the actors while we’re on set and the day is ticking away – but I think it’s always worthwhile to do this so the actors are comfortable and confident in the script and you as a director. On a less time-intensive shoot, this sort of thing would be scheduled as rehearsal time, but we didn’t really have that luxury. Besides, having actors that trust your input and judgement will often save time in the long run because you’ll get better performances with fewer takes and less opposition if you ask them to do something off the cuff.

But while the actors were comfortable with their characters, everyone was uncomfortable due to the heat . We were doing all this at the end of June and the UK was going through something of a heatwave. Now, Brits aren’t geared up for this sort of heat – there’s a reason the stereotypical British weather is cold and rain – and our houses have lots of insulation and no air conditioning. So we were baking throughout this shoot, sweating buckets and having to put fans on between takes just to keep things comfortable. Fortunately, we were using my FalconEyes LED panels so the lights weren’t adding any heat to the furnace, but we were also shooting on Kaz’s Sony A7S 3 – and that camera doesn’t seem to like heat or humidity.

Several times throughout the shoot, the camera would refuse to stop recording – the tally light was on but when you pressed the record button again to stop, it would do absolutely nothing. If you turned the camera off you would likely corrupt the memory card and lose everything on it so we just had to wait until it showed that it had stopped and hope for the best. And most of the time, it hadn’t actually recorded that last take at all. We assumed this was due to the heat or the humidity – the A7S is a stills camera after all and isn’t designed to be used continuously like a dedicated video camera would be. This is why the processor gets hot when shooting video and why a hot or humid environment might just make things worse. Our solution was to regularly take footage off the camera so we didn’t lose anything and keep the camera in the coolest room in the house until we needed it to minimise the impact.

Other than the technical hiccups, the shoot was relatively stress-free. Even Sky did what she was told (mostly), although there were some limitations since she was a pet and not a trained stunt-dog. One such moment was the last shot of the film – a close-up of Sky being hugged by Emma – where we wanted Sky to keep her head still and look vaguely towards the camera so our VFX expert, Dave Gregory, could comp some sparkly stars into her eyes and thus fulfil the film’s title. The problem was that we were using treats (mainly cheese) as a way to hold Sky’s attention and get her where we needed her, but the moment the treat was lowered to camera height, allowing us to see her eyes, Sky would lean forward to take said treat. Also, we needed Emma to hug Sky so that it matched continuity with the previous shot, and if Emma went for the hug too fast or around the time the cheese was offered, Sky would just break free and move out of shot. Combined with the fact that we were picking this night-time shot up during daylight by filming against a small black background in Kaz’s lounge and it was difficult to both keep an erratically-moving Sky in frame and in focus. We also had the A7S 3 playing up throughout this time just to rub some salt into an already-over-salted wound.

Eventually, after much dog-wrangling from Heidi and a whole lot of cheese and treats, we got a usable take and managed to get it to Dave so he could do his magic while we finished getting the remaining sequences shot. I think we wrapped at about 2am on Sunday, leaving Kaz and I to start editing the film. I somewhat reluctantly took the reins here as well, again due to Kaz’s lack of experience with narrative films, and it allowed us to get a presentable cut done in an hour or so. While we didn’t shoot log or raw to minimise grading time, there were a few shots that needed grading. Some of the night shots were lit differently and we needed to colour correct that to match them together and there were scenes in the bedroom where an alien light needed to come through the window that didn’t work that well. This was on me not thinking things through when we were shooting the scenes – the light was supposed to come through an off-screen window, but rather than use a COB light and barn doors to shape it into the shaft of light we needed, I elected to use one of the FalconEyes panels instead. This meant the light was big and soft and didn’t create the effect we wanted. I put this error down to not thinking clearly – it was hot and stuffy in that room and I was doing double duty as director and gaffer. It’s probably the only shot in the film that doesn’t really work as intended.

Kaz scoured one of the music platforms she licenses tracks from for some appropriate music tracks and with a few judicious sound effects and a quick audio mix, the film was pretty much done. We were also able to include the panning shot that highlighted the production design and built the characters since we were still under the five minute max runtime. After checking the film and weighing up whether it was worth making any changes given the time pressure (and our lack of cognitive ability due to it being 4am) – it wasn’t! – I packed up my kit and left Kaz to upload the film to Youtube and submit it to the organisers.

As is often the case with 48hr films, I’m proud of what we achieved in such a condensed timeframe and while the film has its faults, they can be easily overlooked given the circumstances. Everyone really bought their A game to proceedings – especially the actors, who didn’t always have much to work with given the brevity of the script and simple story. I was also reminded of the adage about working with children or animals – although I would add that the latter can sometimes be bribed with cheese whereas the former are probably always going to be a pain in the arse.

Anyway, here’s our finished film, “Sparkle in Your Eyes”: