Joe Dante Interview Part 2

November 9, 2010 at 11:51 am · Filed under Interviews, Joe Dante Interview

What can you say about Joe Dante that has not been said already? Director of The Howling, Gremlins, as well as Amazon Women on the Moon, Joe has been making great films for the last 40 years. When Joe speaks about filmmaking we sit as his feet and listen.

JOE DANTE:
I think that’s the only thing you can do — the glass is half empty isn’t going to get you anywhere.
13BIT:
Right, right, right. I mean, we’re looking at doing webisodes– we’re doing a doc now on collectors. And we’re doing — you know, we’re doing our standard 90 minute narrative which we’ll make for, like, 20 or 30 grand of our money. But we’re getting so much stuff, we’re looking at webisodes, too. And I think it’s a leap of faith. We’re just going to have to, like, put the — you know —
JOE DANTE:
I think you’re right. I think that’s exactly what it is. It’s a leap of faith.
13BIT:
And then —
JOE DANTE:
–if you have a 90 minute movie that you can chop up into different episodes and run them at times that people, you know, will devote the ten minutes it takes to watch it, and then, “Oh, I like that, I’ll watch the next one,” it’s probably safer, I think, than getting them down — plunking them down and thinking that they’re going to watch the entire 90 minutes.
13BIT:
Well, that’s actually what we did with our last movie, which was a narrative, a bunch of vignettes. And we just ended up — you know, it was at a festival. Nothing happened, so we just chopped it up and we — we’re putting it up on YouTube. At least people will watch it.
JOE DANTE:
Yes, people will. But the problem with YouTube is that even YouTube doesn’t know how much stuff it has.
13BIT:
Oh, yes. You — I mean, and YouTube it’s like someone’s basement, you know —
JOE DANTE:
I know. It’s as — that’s why they’re able to actually take regular movies — I have movies that I’ve made that are on YouTube in segments that have been put up by people.

13BIT:
Yes.
JOE DANTE:
And the studios involved don’t know.
13BIT:
Oh, no.
JOE DANTE:
That those are pictures are up there —
13BIT:
–keep the pirated stuff.
JOE DANTE:
–unless somebody calls them and tells them.
13BIT:
Yes. No, that’s — I mean, that’s the — yes, if they
JOE DANTE:
I never call them and tell them.
13BIT:
Well, how do you feel about the issue with piracy?
JOE DANTE:
Well, piracy is a problem, I mean, and particularly with China and, you know, emergent countries that have no particular interest in our copyright. The whole impetus for making movies originally was that people would pay to see them and that people who, you know, spent the money to make them would get their money back and more. Now, that’s not necessarily true. I have a movie that hasn’t come out called The Hole in 3D. And it —
13BIT:
Oh —
JOE DANTE:
–opened in Italy. And already, the Italian dubbed version of the picture was up on YouTube.
13BIT:
Oh my gosh. It —
JOE DANTE:
And I — you know, there’s — you can get them to take it down, maybe. But it depends on what country it is. I mean, because the laws are different in every country.
13BIT:
Do you think it helps — a useful as a promotional tool? Or do you think that people just —
JOE DANTE:
Well, it is a promotional tool. And if you use it cleverly — and almost all movies have websites now — if you use it cleverly, it can — you can do it to your advantage. But you can’t stop a guy with a camcorder from going into a theatre in Singapore and shooting your movie off a screen and putting it on the internet. It’s almost impossible.
13BIT:
Yes. So, in low-budget filmmaking what is the one thing that you would never skimp on? And one is the one thing you would never pay for?
JOE DANTE:
The one thing you never skimp on in low-budget filmmaking, I think, is the script. I mean, if you don’t have a script worth shooting, it doesn’t matter how well you do it or how badly you do it. It’s just not going to be any good. And what was the other half of the question?
13BIT:
Oh, and what was the one thing you’d never pay for?
JOE DANTE:
It depends on a filmmaker. I mean, some people stint on the music. You certainly can’t stint on the camera. The image is everything. So, I don’t — I think it’s — that’s a variable. It depends on the project.
13BIT:
So, you went to the camera. What do you think — what is your position on the film/video —
JOE DANTE:
I love film. It’s going the way of the dodo eventually. And the — because video — I saw — the other day, I just saw Winter’s Bone. And nice movie, a little depressing. But I spotted right away that it was shot on video. Because — and the tell-tale thing is usually if you — if there are trees or, you know, bare limbs in a shot, they always have a slight after-image.
13BIT:
Ahhh.
JOE DANTE:
They have a little line next to it, which indicates that this is not film, this is video. But I’ve seen great video. I mean, I’ve seen pictures shot on video that looked terrific. I’ve seen pictures shot on video that looked terrible. And sometimes within the same movie — like, Public Enemies —
13BIT:
Oh, yes —
JOE DANTE:
–Public Enemies has some really bad video in it with — the lights are blowing out and it just looks like a phony home movie. But it’s a great tool and certainly is going to make filmmaking more affordable for people. And the cameras now are so small that they look like still cameras. So, you can actually shoot completely surreptitiously on the street without anybody knowing that you’re making a movie.

It’s — I think it’s a boon. I — it’s just what’s happening. I mean, do I love film? Yes, I love film. I love 65 millimeter film. I love Imax film. I like — you know, film is great. But — and it’s always going to have its uses. But the fact — I think, it — the fact that they don’t make film cameras anymore, still cameras, should be a tip-off that, you know, film is not going to be around forever.
13BIT:
Yes. We see the visual difference between film and video. But the current generation that sees so much video, I don’t know if they’re going to, like, have the same aesthetic, visual aesthetic —
JOE DANTE:
No, they’re not. It’s going to evolve. It’s going to change. And it’s going to be like the old masters. You know, they painted with a certain kind of paint, and then that paint went out and some other paint came in and the– the paintings didn’t look the same. But that’s just part of the way things are. You know, like —
13BIT:
That is a great analogy. I really like that.
JOE DANTE:
Well, use it wherever you like.
13BIT:
We’re going to definitely reproduce that. And then the five readers that we get will love it. So, what are your some of your favorite low-budget filmmakers?
JOE DANTE:
Well, I mean, almost all my favorite filmmakers are low-budget filmmakers. And remember that the filmmakers that we all talk about, you know, that everybody loves, like, you know, Jim Cameron made Avatar. Well, before he made Avatar, he made Piranha Two. And everybody started on a very cheap low level, on an entry level.

And a lot of their films, a lot of people who made those films, you know, became great filmmakers. But you go back to their original works, and you can still see the gleanings of what was going to turn out to be great movies. I mean, Francis Coppola made the Godfather, but before that he worked for Roger Corman and made Dementia 13. And Dementia 13 is a pretty good movie. You know, the story isn’t very good. But it’s very cleverly and very artistic.

And I really enjoy watching the early works of people who, you know, went on to do a lot of stuff. Because, you know, when you’re starting out, you’re not given much to work with and you have to try to make the best of it and use ingenuity. And the things that you learn, you apply to other movies that you make as you go along. And, you know, the only thing that’s important when you make a movie is what happens between when you say “action” and when you say “cut.” And all the rest of it around that is completely meaningless for the audience. The only thing that matters is what’s on the film. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re making an expensive movie or a cheap movie. It’s the same aesthetic. And you do learn, you know, a lot of tricks when you’re making low-budget films that you can use later in situations that are, you know, high-budget situations but have the same problem.
13BIT:
Now, all right, it’s a good learning environment, I guess a sandbox.
JOE DANTE:
Yes. Yes. I recommend it. I think that — and I also recommend that filmmakers cut their own movies. Because they’ll never know what mistakes they make until they have to confront them in the editing room. And woe be to the guy who has a great editor and the editor gets him out of a lot of trouble and then he goes back and makes another movie without that editor and makes the same mistakes and the new editor can’t fix them.
13BIT:
You know, we do it all. We’re a two-person outfit. And we actually — it’s a strange but sort of organic cycle. We love to edit. And then by the time we’re done editing — I mean, and we learn something about our shooting when we edit. And when we’re done editing, when we’re sick of it, we’re ready to start writing again. And when we’re sick of writing, we’re ready — it’s funny how it works, at least right now for us.

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Joe Dante Interview Part 1

November 9, 2010 at 11:50 am · Filed under Interviews, Joe Dante Interview

What can you say about Joe Dante that has not been said already? Director of The Howling, Gremlins, as well as Amazon Women on the Moon, Joe has been making great films for the last 40 years. When Joe speaks about filmmaking we sit as his feet and listen.

13BIT:
How did you get involved in filmmaking?
JOE DANTE:
Well, I was a terrific film fan when I was a kid. I practically lived at the movies. And so I’ve had — I guess, I didn’t realize it, but I was storing up a whole lot of film knowledge in my head. And I — I wanted to be a cartoonist. went to art school and discovered that cartooning was not an art and that if I wanted to stay in school, I’d better take something else. So, I took film. And, you know, it’s almost related to cartoons in that there are storyboards and frames and shots and things. And I sort of drifted into it, because I didn’t really expect to be a filmmaker. But I had an opportunity to come out to California and work for Roger Corman, making trailers. And that led to a chance to direct my first movie, which is an entree that I’m afraid is denied to most people today.
13BIT:
It’s funny that you say that. Well, another person we’ve been speaking with, a friend of ours, Nina Paley, is — was a cartoonist and then she became a filmmaker. And now she wants to go back to cartooning.
JOE DANTE:
Yes. No, I can understand that. There might be a little more future in cartooning than there is in filmmaking.
13BIT:
Yes. I don’t know. I think — you know, she had massive problems with rights. She used some music without rights, and she — but we’ve also been trying to get a hold of Corman as well to write on our Low Budget Legends
JOE DANTE:
No, he’s definitely one.
13BIT:
Why do you think there’s going to be more of a future in cartooning?
JOE DANTE:
Well, I just — I think the — that movies are changing. I mean, movies as we understood them are a 20th Century art form. And the 20th Century is over. It is now turning into something else. As far as where the movies are distributed and who they’re made for and who they’re made by — that’s all undergoing a tremendous change, partly because of the new technologies available to make films, but also the technologies available to show them.

And, you know, whereas when I was starting out, my advice to a kid would be “Get yourself an eight millimeter camera and, you know, make some eight millimeter films,” now you can make with a videocamera some pretty good-looking movies. And you can finish them to a point where we were never able to do with film because you can do it on the computer. Coppola once said that he thought the future belonged to those who were going to make their own movies. I think that’s true to a degree, because you can actually make — if you can afford to pay for it, you can make a feature film without the help of the system. The problem is that once you’ve made it, you have to get someone to watch it. And that becomes the difficulty because there are so many things available, so many channels, so many different pieces of material to look at, that to break out of a pack is very difficult. And that’s what film festivals are for. The film festivals used to be just sort of to appreciate film. But now they actually perform a needed function of spotlighting movies that people wouldn’t ordinarily know exist.
13BIT:
That’s exactly the position we’re in. It’s funny you should say — I mean, because we make movies now and we couldn’t do it with film. Yes, no. It’s — so, how much did it cost to make your first movie?
JOE DANTE:
Well, the first movie that I made for Roger Corman cost $60,000. And the only reason it got made was because me and a couple of other people who worked there were chafing at the bit to direct a movie. And we weren’t satisfied with just doing the trailers. So, we — on a bet, basically, we said that we would make a picture — we could do it in ten days and we could do it for $60,000 and it would be a releasable movie.

The reason was that we were familiar with all the action scenes from previous movies that were made by the company, and we wrote out script around those. And we made it about a movie company making those kind of movies. So, we dressed our actors the way the actors in the clips were dressed. And we cobbled together this comedy together about making movies, which, when you look at it today is actually almost a newsreel of the way pictures were really made — on the low budget level in the ’70s.
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Larry Cohen Interview Part 3

August 12, 2010 at 12:29 pm · Filed under Interviews, Larry Cohen Interview

We were lucky enough to speak with Larry Cohen recently for Low Budget Legends. Larry is not just a low budget legend. He is just a legend — period. He is the director is such moveis as Bone, Black Caesar, The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover, Full Moon High, and A Return To Salem’s Lot.

Enjoy!

13BIT:

Yeah, definitely yeah– Who are some of you favorite low-budget filmmakers– from the past or the present? Do you have any inspirations?

LARRY C.:

Oh, I– I mean, I like Don Siegel and– who made a lot of low-budget pictures early in his career and– and Sam Fuller– who made–

13BIT:

13Bit loves Sam Fuller.

LARRY C.:

Yeah. He made a lot of low-budget films. He was a very good friend of mine, and I actually directed him in an acting part in my movie, Return to Salem’s Lot. So we spent a lot of time together. And– and he was a delightful fella. And I like those kind of pictures when I was a kid growing up. And– so I– you know, I gravitated towards making those kind of pictures, which is– genre films, they call ’em.

13BIT:

Do you have any favorites among your movies, favorite children?

LARRY C.:

Oh, that’s like asking me, “What’s your favorite child is,” you know, (LAUGHTER) you– it’s something about every picture that you like, whether it was– whether it’s the picture or whether it’s the experience you had making the film. Sometimes the worst pictures were the ones you had the most fun making or that you made– relationships with people– on. And– you know, it might have been– the picture may not have worked out to be the best one but has a place in your heart because of the people that were involved.

And– so, you know, it’s– I can’t pick– that– of all of them I suppose The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover would be my favorite because everybody said, “Oh, you can’t make a movie about the FBI. You’ll get into terrible trouble and– you’ll get blacklisted or something. And– you can’t do it.” So as soon as I heard, “You can’t do it,” then I wanted to do it of course.

13BIT:

Yeah. That– that– that’s alwaysthe biggest– impetus to making something– people saying, “You can’t do it.” Oh—one more question, how much do you think it should cost to make a film?

LARRY C.:

Oh– that’s– that’s a very odd question. It has– depends on what kind of picture you’re making. I mean, if you’re making a picture with costumes and horses and battle scenes and stuff, you know, of course it’s a whole different story than if you’re making– a film about– a robbery or you’re making a film about a romance, or you’re making a film about family. I mean, there’s– there’s no comparison– of– in– in what’s required. So–

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Larry Cohen Interview Part 2

August 12, 2010 at 12:25 pm · Filed under Interviews, Larry Cohen Interview

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Larry Cohen Interview Part 1

August 12, 2010 at 12:20 pm · Filed under Interviews, Larry Cohen Interview

We were lucky enough to speak with Larry Cohen recently for Low Budget Legends. Larry is not just a low budget legend. He is just a legend — period. He is the director is such moveis as Bone, Black Caesar, The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover, Full Moon High, and A Return To Salem’s Lot.

Enjoy!

13BIT:

Okay. Larry–

LARRY C.:

Yes, ma’am.

13BIT:

How did you get involved in filmmaking?

LARRY C.:

Well, I went to the movies as a kid. That’s how. As soon as I saw movies I fell in love with ’em and– knew I– knew I wanted to do that someday.

13BIT:

How much did it cost to make your first movie?

LARRY C.:

The first movie that I directed?

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Nina Paley Interview Part 5

July 28, 2010 at 2:18 pm · Filed under Interviews, Nina Paley Interview

Nina Paley is one of our heroes. We met her at a theater in the town of Apt, in southern France, during the Avignon film festival. After seeing “Sita Sings the Blues” that night in that beautiful mountain town, we realized were in the presence of the Jimi Hendrix of modern animators – a truly talented virtuoso.

It has been our privilege to talk and hang with Nina over the last two years. We finally prevailed upon her to share her thoughts with us and the world on low-budget filmmaking, free culture and the system.

Visit her truly awesome website to see more of her work and her menagerie of cool ideas and causes: http://www.ninapaley.com

Enjoy!

13BIT:

So, okay, this is a little off topic.  I guess it — and I don’t even know if it has anything to do with Sita really.  Do you have any thoughts on the film video debate?

NINA PALEY:

Well, I think that — you mean, when you say 35 millimeter. It’s not very affordable or practical. It’s changing rapidly.  I mean Sita had its first festival screening in 2008 which is just over two years ago.  And it had to be on film for this particular cinema.  I’m sure that’s not the case now.  I mean, this 3-D — this independent 3-D film screening I went to — they had a 3-D digital projector.  Like, they were projecting on DCP.  They didn’t even have to use two projectors.  So it’s a lot cheaper.  Not saying it’s better.  But, you know what, prints of Sita Sings the Blues get pretty bashed up.

13BIT:

Film prints.

NINA PALEY:

Yeah, there’s the — I mean, quality’s a problem —
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Nina Paley Interview Part 4

July 28, 2010 at 2:18 pm · Filed under Interviews, Nina Paley Interview

Nina Paley is one of our heroes. We met her at a theater in the town of Apt, in southern France, during the Avignon film festival. After seeing “Sita Sings the Blues” that night in that beautiful mountain town, we realized were in the presence of the Jimi Hendrix of modern animators – a truly talented virtuoso.

It has been our privilege to talk and hang with Nina over the last two years. We finally prevailed upon her to share her thoughts with us and the world on low-budget filmmaking, free culture and the system.

Visit her truly awesome website to see more of her work and her menagerie of cool ideas and causes: http://www.ninapaley.com

Enjoy!

13BIT:
So what do you think are the advantages to low-budget filmmaking?
NINA PALEY:
Low-budgets?
13BIT:
–low-budgets. Like, in filmmaking, what’s a good thing about complete creative control.
NINA PALEY:
Well, as a culture, there’s more diversity of media when people can take risks and experiment. I’ve met a number of people who make films just for the sheer pleasure of making films. They’re not pandering to an audience. They’re doing it because it is pleasure for them. So at the very least, you are getting, you know, a mode of pleasure. A mode of pleasure is available to people. That’s pretty cool. But yeah, I think, you know, there’s just, like, so much diversity. And when people can take risks you get cultural progress that you don’t get otherwise.
13BIT:
Cultural progress. That’s noble actually.
NINA PALEY:
I’m so noble.
13BIT:
What’s the disadvantages of —
NINA PALEY:
Well, okay, so, you know, 98 percent of everything is crap. And low-budget filmmaking just means that there’s an explosion of films and 99 percent of them are still going to be crap. So there’s more crap. But there’s also much more good stuff. The disadvantage for people that don’t know how to filter is that there’s more crap. And they’re, like, “Help, help. There’s all this crap.” But filters are quite natural. I mean, an open internet works as a filter. And people share stuff that they like. And so the good stuff will eventually reach you. And they don’t share stuff that they don’t like. So the bad stuff has a much lesser chance of reaching you. That filter only works if the internet is open.
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Nina Paley Interview Part 3

July 28, 2010 at 2:17 pm · Filed under Interviews, Nina Paley Interview

Nina Paley is one of our heroes. We met her at a theater in the town of Apt, in southern France, during the Avignon film festival. After seeing “Sita Sings the Blues” that night in that beautiful mountain town, we realized were in the presence of the Jimi Hendrix of modern animators – a truly talented virtuoso.

It has been our privilege to talk and hang with Nina over the last two years. We finally prevailed upon her to share her thoughts with us and the world on low-budget filmmaking, free culture and the system.

Visit her truly awesome website to see more of her work and her menagerie of cool ideas and causes: http://www.ninapaley.com

Enjoy!

13BIT:
I like that. I like that. So what do you think about distribution for indies and low-budget films?
NINA PALEY:
Sita has conventional distributors. Or not conventional. But Sita has, you know, regular film distributors. People that distributed on 35 millimeter film. And they do have a monopoly on their own prints. I call it a natural monopoly. I mean, there’s only so many prints that exist. They’re a scarce good. And these distributors control those prints as they are entitled do and should do. And I’m really glad that they do it. That’s why Sita can be in theatres. It’s hard work distributing a physical print of a film and they do that.

They were both open-minded enough to — this the domestic — so there are two domestic distributors of Sita. One is east of the Mississippi, one is west of the Mississippi. And they were both open-minded enough to try this experiment of distributing a film that does not have a monopoly on the content.

And they’re both doing fine. I mean, it’s performing just fine as an independent film. They’re independent, you know, they’re very small distributors. So it’s not, like, it has a giant distributor behind it. But it’s behaving well. And the whole fact that it’s — the content itself is free has only helped it. I know at least one of the distributors has actually said, you know, they wrote me a thing saying, “Well, we were worried about it. And we thought this was hurting. But then actually it picked up. And now we think it’s helping.” So yeah.
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Nina Paley Interview Part 2

July 28, 2010 at 2:17 pm · Filed under Interviews, Nina Paley Interview

Nina Paley is one of our heroes. We met her at a theater in the town of Apt, in southern France, during the Avignon film festival. After seeing “Sita Sings the Blues” that night in that beautiful mountain town, we realized were in the presence of the Jimi Hendrix of modern animators – a truly talented virtuoso.

It has been our privilege to talk and hang with Nina over the last two years. We finally prevailed upon her to share her thoughts with us and the world on low-budget filmmaking, free culture and the system.

Visit her truly awesome website to see more of her work and her menagerie of cool ideas and causes: http://www.ninapaley.com

Enjoy!


13BIT:
The musical rights?
NINA PALEY:
Yeah, the music rights. So to add — you know, so that brings it up to $270,000. The thing is that $20,000 of that was just transaction costs because I could not get any estimates or any communication at all from the corporations that controlled the licenses without going through a paid intermediary. We tried and tried and they do not return your phone calls if they don’t know you. So you have to pay someone.

They expect you to have a music supervisor, who is somebody that you pay basically because they have relationships to these corporations. And you can’t reach them any other way. Or you can use a lawyer. And I initially used a lawyer and then switched to a rights clearance house. So all those transaction costs were about $20,000. Which is a bargain because I was getting, you know, super low rates for some of it. And, you know, people going above and beyond.

So that was — and of course it cost a year of time — of my time because they were so slow in responding. And there were the whole festival license things. Because they negotiate with you — once they return your phone calls, the first thing they say is, “Pay us $500 immediately.” And that is to give you the right for one year to show the film in festivals and promise not to make a profit. So, in return for your $500 you sign a piece of paper promising that you’re not going to make a profit. So it cost me $5,500 to sign promises to not make any money which makes no economic sense whatsoever and was only the beginning of the topsy-turvy Kafka-esque world of music licensing.

Yeah, but anyway, and I should say for the $70,000 — or whatever, the $20,000 plus $50,000, the music isn’t fully cleared. For every 5,000 DVDs sold, I have to make additional payments. And, for every $1 million the film makes at the box office I have to pay another $50,000. But it’s not going to make $1 million at the box office. But it has sold more than 5,000 DVDs. Or will sell more than 5,000 DVDs. So, we have to keep track of this and at some point, payments have to be made. And every downstream distributor of the film has to set aside that money. It’s about — it’s, like, $1.85 a DVD has to be set aside. Which is certainly more than I’m getting from the downstream distributors.
13BIT:
Who verifies the numbers sold?
NINA PALEY:
That falls on me but then it falls on my distributors. Like, everyone who’s distributing it has to keep track.
13BIT:
Yeah. And keep records. And are they checked by — who is it? RIAA?
NINA PALEY:
No, it won’t be RIAA. It’ll be all the individual companies. But I’m pretty sure it falls on me. So basically —
13BIT:
Just curious.
NINA PALEY:
–I, you know, I’m very good at keeping track of the ones that I sell. I haven’t sold 5,000 yet. We actually need to do a reckoning of this pretty soon. And some of my distributors haven’t come back with numbers. They’re very, very slow. Like, some of the downstream distributors haven’t paid me anything yet. And this is not at all uncommon.
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Nina Paley Interview Part 1

July 28, 2010 at 2:15 pm · Filed under Interviews, Nina Paley Interview

Nina Paley is one of our heroes. We met her at a theater in the town of Apt, in southern France, during the Avignon film festival. After seeing “Sita Sings the Blues” that night in that beautiful mountain town, we realized were in the presence of the Jimi Hendrix of modern animators – a truly talented virtuoso.

It has been our privilege to talk and hang with Nina over the last two years. We finally prevailed upon her to share her thoughts with us and the world on low-budget filmmaking, free culture and the system.

Visit her truly awesome website to see more of her work and her menagerie of cool ideas and causes: http://www.ninapaley.com

Enjoy!


13BIT:
Okay, so Nina, how did you get involved in filmmaking?
NINA PALEY:
How did I get involved in filmmaking? Well, I have been an illustrator and cartoonist my whole life, I guess. And that led into animation. So I guess I got into filmmaking as an animator. And I still don’t really think of myself as a filmmaker because animation is such a different process than conventional filmmaking.
13BIT:
So it was not always what you wanted to do. But, did you always want to be a cartoonist or an illustrator?
NINA PALEY:
Yeah. Well, when I was very little I wanted to be an artist. Yes, I’ve always wanted to be an artist. I also wanted to be a pink and purple giraffe. But that was when I was very young. And actually when I was, like, 13 and 14 I borrowed a neighbor’s Super 8 camera. And got into animation. But I was already into drawing.

And then I abandoned that after a couple years because there was nowhere to go with that in Central Illinois. And all the books that I read pretty much indicated that you could you do your amateur Super 8 thing. And if you wanted to do something good, then you needed an audio department and this and that – engineer and a whole production thing – and it got really expensive. And you needed a camera stand and lots of money. And that was, you know, just not viable. So then I got more into comics, sequential art. But when I was very young I thought the best artists were the ones that drew most realistically. And —
13BIT:
But you were poorly guided in that decision by budget constraints?
NINA PALEY:
Yes. I mean, if — had I grown up 20 years later it would have been a different story.
13BIT:
Right, right, right.
NINA PALEY:
But it simply was not possible at the time. But, you know, it’s good because the cartooning which I could do alone, and I could control entire worlds myself with just ink and paper — that was the best background for doing filmmaking later. Like, there’s no storytelling challenge like a three panel or four panel comic strip. You really have to learn how to make a point and be concise. And, you know, visual storytelling, all that stuff.

So if I started — yeah, if I started when I was younger than 15, and started doing animation when I was almost 35. So yeah, 20 years of being a cartoonist helped a lot when I started doing the films.
13BIT:
So did you storyboard Sita?
NINA PALEY:
No.
13BIT:
Interesting.
13BIT:
Yeah, you know what, it’s (LAUGH) not strictly just filmmaking. We may branch out into just low budget everything.
NINA PALEY:
Yeah, low budget everything. Like what? Like, sewing, knitting?
13BIT:
Exactly. If it’s low budget, we are —
NINA PALEY:
That’s my life. I mean, it’s, like —
13BIT:
–low budget people.
NINA PALEY:
–yeah, low budget —
NINA PALEY:
–it’s what we all do.
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