Day 5: Why we made three 80's Heist Films?
- Mar 3, 2017
- 2 min read
Day 5: Why we made three 80's Heist Films?
Today's film story is about a series of short heist films I made that take place in the 80's. This is the story of The Forgotten Treasure series.
The idea came after someone gave me an old RCA VHS camera. I immediately wanted to shoot an 80's film on it. I started coming up with ideas and the one that really stuck with me was a heist film. After a lot of thought and planning I discovered it would be too hard to film on the old camera. I had already written the script and got to the ensemble cast together so it was too late to back down. We shot the whole thing on my Rebel T3i.
The idea was simple: "2 teens find a map that leads to a safe underneath their school. They put a team of friends together to get to the safe." It is extremely simple and I knew I wanted this to be a dumb comedy movie. The Forgotten Treasure was released in 2014. Little did I know I would return to this concept to make 2 more shorts in the series. The film was praised by many and so I decided to make The Forgotten Treasure 2. I was not able to get the entire cast from The Forgotten Treasure, but still make a decent film. The humor in this series is just dumb. No other way to put it. The Forgotten Treasure 2 would come out in 2015. It was not nearly as exciting as The Forgotten Treasure so I knew I needed at least one more in the series to finish it off right. The Forgotten Treasure 3 is the most humorous one yet full of dumb characters and an over dramatized plan.
The series is based off of the idea of an extremely hard plan for something that does not need a difficult plan. For example, in The Forgotten Treasure they have to break into their school and get to the tunnels. The way in is extremely complicated involving sensors, cameras, drop shafts, safe cracking, and more. The 3rd film in the series, The Forgotten Treasure 3 came out in 2016 and is my favorite one in the series.
The series is nowhere near perfect, but that is one of the reasons I like it so much. I was going for dumb comedy with terrible cheesy looking effects and even worse dialogue featuring very awkward moments. The style is 80's B movies. This series is fun to look back on. We spent 3 winters making 3 short films about the 80's and everyone involved had a lot of fun. Watch the entire series below!
What I learned: Everything I do does not have to be perfect. Film making is about telling stories and that's what I do, tell stories.
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