"A Belly Full of Anger" - insane kung fu trailer

Post by **thebigidea** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 4:41 am

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJkw8_4OHgE

"A BELLY FULL OF ANGER"

Even the most jaded among you will be disgusted by the sight of it!

Can you stand the frankness of truth behind every scene?

large, painful knuckles
large, violent deaths
large lakes of liquified flesh

Deranged killers who use an acrobatic form of boxing called 'kung fu' -
their art is murder, their tools are their hands and feet, the canvas is anyone in their way... beyond the dreams of the most brutal butcher... an army of men ripped to pieces by justice... the law of the jungle is shown in all its savage horror through the use of techniques of terrible bloodflow...

--

Twelve years ago a friend and I wrote an over the top screenplay paying tribute to all those huge 80s clamshell boxed videos available in the local mom and pop video store: five movies for five days for five dollars. Piles of shit like "A Man Called Tiger." "Dragon Vs. Needles of Death." "Kung Fu vs. Yoga"

We tried to do it as a video project for school, shot on s8 and edited on the powerhouse SVHS linear editing system. The teachers hemmed and hawed and said we'd have to ask the administration for a bigger budget for them despite the fact we'd be paying for it and editing on existing equipment. Shrug.

It was almost made another two times in Chicago and Burbank, partially cast, then abandoned due to some crisis or another. Several other film projects intervened, a crazy political campaign, swarms of locusts possibly.

After two years of struggling with murky black and white madness and endless neo-noir features, in a fit of Buddhist nostalgia and possible ergot poisoning, the kung fu screenplay was dusted off and cranked out on E64T, Velvia, piles of outdated K40 of all sorts, 100D 16mm, 7245 16mm, Agfa Moviechrome, smelly Porst and Focal, E160s, 7240s, basically anything begged, borrowed, stolen, ebayed, or student discounted. 5 months of furious weekend filming and lo, it was done!

I'm transferring it properly next month, as several labs still have hours of it. But here's a cheesy home transfer of a trailer cut in two days with some corny narration to get the feel of it.

Its much stranger than that, I'm afraid.

Post by **thebigidea** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 3:03 pm

Next time i'll just shoot a gray card or something... maybe a wobbly shot of a balloon... that tends to heat up discussion! Anybody want to argue about filters?

Post by **timdrage** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 9:38 pm

Haha this is amazing!!! Especially liked the guy being killed with a pear!?!

Only criticism i have is the music... seems too serious/calm. for true authenticity you need long periods of fighting with no music or VO, then sudden bursts of absurdly bombastic music blatently stolen from hollywood movies...

Anyway good work, nice to see what people have actually shot on super-8.

Post by **thebigidea** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 1:28 am

oh heck yeah, the music is off and won't be in the finished thing. I needed some quick "menace," that happened to be my girlfriend's school project that was handy to be cut and pasted in. I won't mention it to her in case she starts having another session of doubts about being a composer...

The actual score being worked on in another studio is all crammed with wah wah guitars, cheesy 80s synth tones, and obscure Asian instruments.
Since I do want to release it, I guess we can't go the true authentic kung fu route of just ripping off "Rocky," "Battlestar Galactica," and Kraftwerk's "Trans-Europe Express" album.

The pear thing came out surprisingly well I thought, I love the fact that you can see the dental floss.

Post by **bakanosaru** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 3:59 am

Yeah nice work.
Looks at least as professional as many of the Kung Fu films I've seen. Really like the flying dummies.

Post by **thebigidea** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 7:07 pm

Its so fun replicating all those stiff, low-tech effects. Stopmotion, backwards filming, absurd undercranking... really complete fun to do this feature, usually films for me are sporadic bursts of fun surrounded by little sleep and things going wrong. Its an amusing little colorful lark that should give a few dozen 14 year olds endless injoke material for a few years.

Post by **thebigidea** » Tue Jun 26, 2007 10:11 pm

Oh and here's a recent video with some dirty tri-x "kinescopes" from the band fronted by that stount yeoman getting ferociously murdered by a pear:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p7Q4bSmBIo