30Ninjas’ Exclusive Interview With Ivan Guerrero — Remakes? The Newest Trend is Premakes! » 30ninjas

30Ninjas’ Exclusive Interview With Ivan Guerrero — Remakes? The Newest Trend is Premakes!

Share on Facebook posted 09-09-10 by Max Tedaldi

I did an interview about a month ago with Jarren Pitts, the mastermind behind the Green Lantern fan-made trailer. Thinking about my chat with Jaron, it struck me how what he had done with the Green Lantern and Technotise trailers, was essentially the opposite of my latest youtube obsession: Premakes. The trailblazer behind the retro trailer is Ivan Guerrero, although he may be better known by the moniker Whoiseyevan. While Pitts is imagining what trailers would look like for a film that has yet to be made, Guerrero is taking films that have already been made and imagining what they would look like fifty years ago. Take the nostalgic majesty of The Day the Earth Stood Still, mix it up with Scared Stiff, Ghost Breakers and couple others and you’ve got a recipe for a unique reimagined Ghostbusters trailer. Take Gone with the Wind, add a modern flair and you’ve got Gone with the Wind and Vampires. Doesn’t the thought of Scarlet O’hara getting her prissy neck ripped out by a bloodthirsty fiend sound like just thing to get you to watch the 1939 snoozer. I thought I would reach out to Ivan Guerrero to see if he could shed some light on his process and inspiration.

How to Make a Premake

Max Tedaldi: I was hoping you could take me through your film experience history and the story leading up to you making these videos.

Ivan Guerrero: Well I’m Filipino first of all. I was born and raised in the Philippines. My first job was as an art director for an ad agency in the Philippines, actually, a global agency called McCann Erickson. I decided that I wanted to tell stories, so I got into film school and then I came over here and I picked up studies in broadcasting.

The premakes are my way of showing love for old movies. A lot of people ignore them (Black and White movies); just when they see it’s black and white they’ll say, “forget it! I’m not going to watch that”. So I was just trying to come up with a way to show people that these black and white movies are in some ways up to par; they influence the movies of today. So one really cool way of really doing it is showing directly how it affects film and other movies that are more recent.

MT: So, when did you start making the premakes?

IG: The very first one was about a year ago. There’s an old Bob Hope movie called The Ghosts Breakers and it was remade into a Dean Martin movie called Scared Stiff. I was watching both movies a day apart and I remember Dean Martin had a line where he said, “I’m a Ghostbuster” or something like that. That really just blew me out of the park and I said, “I’ve got to do something with this”. One movie led to another movie that had similar scenes or similar actions or things like that, and that’s where it came from. I’m a really big Ghostbusters fan so I know everything inside and out. I remember, for instance, the Marshmallow Man, the original idea for that was influenced by the design for the Pillsbury Dough Boy and the Michelin Man.

MT: Yeah, that’s right, Bibendem is a personal hero of mine.

IG: So, I went back and looked for some old commercials online with the Michelin Man in them.

MT: You have six premakes. The Avengers, Empire Strikes Back, Gone With The Wind and Vampires, Ghostbusters, Forrest Gump, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Can you walk me through the process that you go through when you make one of these, right from its inception to putting the final touches on it and uploading it onto youtube.

IG: Each video is a little bit different from the next. For Instance, the Forrest Gump one was driven by the actor Jimmy Stewart. The entire thing was really driven by casting. As opposed to some of the other ones which were driven by recycled archetypes or recycled plot points. That one was all about researching a Jimmy Stewart movie that resembled Forrest Gump. For the premakes like Empire and Raiders I had to research all of the original influences on Lucas and Spielberg when they were making those films. I researched old Charlton Heston movies, and old action serial flicks from the 30s and 40s. There were lots of little details. I actually watched a bunch of Kurasawa films just for fun, but I didn’t end up using any of them.

So it all starts with my research process which takes me anywhere from two weeks to about a month.

MT: Are these all movies that you’ve seen before and you are going though to look for specific scenes, or do you pick an actor and just dive into his catalogue?

IG: It’s a little bit of both. I watch a lot of movies. A lot.

MT: I’m right there with you.

IG: So I do have that starting point, but then I get stuck sometimes and I have to research more which ends up being a lot of fun. I get a whole bunch of movies that I’ve never heard of, or are interesting to reference in some way. So, there is roughly a month worth of research to produce them. I spent about a week to a week and a half working out the edit, working on the title sequence, and the logos.

MT: What editing programs do you use?

IG: After Effects, Premier, and Photoshop.

MT: Once the video is up on the site, do you do any sort of promotion or do you let your subscribers take care of that?

IG: I find a little of promotion helps. I’ll sometimes send a short little note to another website that’s ”fanboy-ish” or into film content and say, “hey this might be cool, you might want to check it out”, something like that. Things lead to another and it gets me places for some reason. Word of mouth definitely helps.

MT: What are you working on now?

IG: I just finished shooting a short film for The 48 Hour Film Project. We were eight minutes late in getting it in and that just really sucked because we had a ton of shots and beautiful editing and a beautiful score. So eight minutes just…

Rubbing Elbows With Stan Lee

MT: Since you started doing these premakes, what’s your coolest story? Have you been approached by like anyone?

IG: I had a couple of really amazing things happen because of the premakes. I haven’t had any offers or anything concrete, but this past week I got a phone call from Stan Lee and he told me how much he enjoyed watching the Avengers one. He said that he got a real kick out of seeing himself in that little cameo.

MT: Wow! You must have been geekin’ out pretty hard. I would have thought one of my friends was playing a prank on me.

IG: Haha, nope it was Stan Lee. His voice is so distinctive. I was at a comic con last year and I met Joe Quesada, and I had shown him Marvel Zombies Re-Animated. He told me that he had seen them already and that he had enjoyed them a lot. I also got a note from some guy right after the Forrest Gump one and he told me that he was the editor for the original Forrest Gump trailer and he was really impressed by what I did.

In a strange coincidence, right after I did the Ghostbuster one I randomly met Harold Ramis, Dan Akroyd and Ernie Hudson at three seperate events. and I mentioned the premake to them and they all thought the concept was hysterical. I gave Dan Akroyd my card just in case.

I’ve also gotten a bunch of shout outs on twitter from Time Magazine, Mark Millar, Mark Waid, and bunch of other comic book writers.

MT: Ideally where would you like these premakes to take you. What would you like to use them for as a stepping stone?

IG: I want to direct. I want to write and direct. I’ve been doing the premakes as a way to really stand out from the crowd.

MT: For someone who is looking to do some high quality fan-made projects or amass a youtube following or presence, what sort of advice can you give?

IG: First off, try to do something that no one else has done. Don’t just shoot some cute cat because there are a million of those videos with yawning cats or babies. Do something really unique with the medium itself. There is untapped potential on youtube and I don’t think we’ve seen the maxiumum of what can be done. In the same way that Watchmen really maximized the comic book medium, there is just so much more that can be done. I was just looking on a site where these guys were doing a choose your own adventure zombie movie, and it was really well-made and it maximized what on-line video can do. It was interactive and it was enjoyable.

MT; From the first video to the last, what have you learned? What has made you a better director or editor? Any shortcuts or hints you could give to our readers?

IG: I’m much more confident stitching together random shots that don’t look like they are in any way connected. I’m much more well-versed now in editing techniques like line-of-sight, and matching cuts together. It just works when you add music and make everything black and white. So, don’t be afraid to take a risk.