Q&A with Mike Thompson
How old were you when you first started making films?
Well I think I always liked telling stories. I'd write dumb little short stories, and draw comics with all my friends and later when video cameras were more available I started making movies.
I didn't know I wanted to be a slave to the movie world until my senior year of high school. My older brother Jerry (who co-writes and directs most of the stuff I do now) was already in film school and I started helping him shoot his school projects. I helped him edit one on imovie and thats when I really fell in love with making movies. Once I saw that you could make someone's totally lame jump kick supremely bad ass with the right camera angle and a little slo-mo, I was done for.
How do you feel about the world of indie filmmaking and the popularity it is seeing now with so many indie films being taken in by the mainstream?
Its the perfect time to be a filmmaker. Anyone can go out and make a film now. And while that's a little scary because the market is flooded, it's a beautiful thing, because now a good story is what will separate you from the others. Skill.
Sure, people with money still have a huge advantage, but it's possible now to break in without it.
How long does it take you to work out a script and put a film together?
My brother Jerry and I have written and directed over a dozen short films together, but we just finished our first feature length film a few weeks ago. It's called "Thor at the Bus Stop."
Most of the shorts only took a few months to put together. The last short we did was called "Passenger Seat" and we shot it in one weekend. Thor took us about a year and a half from start to finish. We wrote for about 6 months, shot it on the weekends for about 3 months and spent the rest of the time in post. The post production felt like it lasted forever, and it would have been even longer if we didn't have as much help as we did. Dog and Pony Studios (the best sound design studio in Vegas) did us a huge favor and handled all of our post production sound for us, and that was so much work it still hurts me to think about...
You have done some great music videos for some of our local bands in town, is that an avenue that you would like to continue down? Do you have a personal interest in that arena?
I absolutely love doing music videos, and I hope to be doing many more in the next few months. My next one will be for A Crowd of Small Adventures, mainly because I love their music, but also because I owe Jackson Wilcox for doing the score on Thor. We also used a bunch of Crowd songs in the sound track, as well as Hungry Cloud and Kid Meets Cougar, who we shot videos for.
When I was in film school I never thought I would get into music videos because I like writing dialogue so much. I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I do. It was the music I think that surprised me. There is so much talent here. I had no idea that these little bars downtown were showcasing so many great bands. But it's a little sad sometimes because I don't think they are getting the support they need and deserve. So yeah, I think I do have a personal interest also. I'd love to see the music scene in Vegas grow.
What format are you currently shooting on?
We shoot everything on Sony XD Cam. Which is HD. I work with Jerry at his production company, Light Forge Studios. So he lets me use the cameras whenever I need them.
I love the digital revolution thats going on. I also love Jerry for always having the best camera gear.
Where do you want to be in five years?
I plan to stay in Vegas for the long haul. It'd be great if we could make enough money from Thor at the Bus Stop to make another feature every year or so. There is a great little film making community here that really helps each other, we were super lucky to find the group that we did. If we were in any other town who knows if we would have been able to pull off making a feature for practically nothing. We got the little money we did have from our Producer David Schmoeller. He was our Professor in film school, and if it wasn't for him and our other producer May May Luong, we'd still be out there shooting... And it's getting hot again...
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