When Neighbors Piss You Off
I Hate My Neighbor! A New Film By Steph Wynne
Yeah I know a tacky name. But for real tho I definitely have yelled out of my apartment window at the top of my weed filled lungs to shut that fuc#kin baby or dog up! Oh you’ve never had that problem? Well good for you. I don’t deal with that type of madness too much anymore, but I still clam up when I hear a baby scream in a store or a nearby barking dog.
Anyway…I was at a film festival and I remember this filmmaker saying it took her 7 years to complete her film project and I was like 7 years F that! But here I am dealing with “I Hate My Neighbor” and it will be 5 years. 5 years and I’m still working on it. Well, not consistently…It should’ve been completed in 2015 or early 2016. Good thing I filmed it based on in the year 2030!
This film was originally titled I Hate My Landlord and due to a character on the movie poster looking like a client whose life the movie was sorta based on…well there were some issues. Out of respect, I changed the name to I Hate My Neighbor! and tossed out the old partially written script.
At that time I wanted to show Hollywood I could a write, direct, cast, edit and shoot the film…alone. So I set out to produce this feature film without a script and…gulp…a crew. I figured if I could be a one woman crew I could maybe inspire others to take their creative vision into their own hands…
I ended up casting 60 people over a two year period and filmed practically every weekend (thank God I have my own equipment). I did a couple of regular casting calls with backstage.com and casted everyone else, including family, friends, the mailman, the telephoneman the delivery weedman and a couple that were homeless. I think at least a third of the actors aren’t actors.
I paid them $25 every time I filmed them for an hours’ work and have over 150 scenes. I tried to squeeze 3 scenes out of each actor, however, some actors have up to 16 scenes.
It’s crazy, but I simplified it (sorta of) by filming at least 60% in green screen and most of the actors have never met each other. Ha ha, the actors don’t even know that I can flip this film in several directions including animating it.
There’s a lot going on too…yes lots of yelling, loud music, dancing, stomping, designer drugs and bad language but meh what else is new. It was gonna be a 3 hour movie, but obviously that’s too long and was meant to be broken up into 7 or 8 episodes.
I call it a dramady because there’s definitely drama, but you’ll get a few chuckles. Within the film is an embedded talent show called Voice Masters where 9 of the neighbors audition, there’s another show called Real Talk with Diamond who interviews the Saggin and Braggin’ (a spin off movie) rappers and 35 Year Old Grandma (another spinoff movie). There’s a news show called Nicky’s World and there’s a young boy genius scientist that turns sugar into a drug called shuga and has hooked himself..
Coming soon To Nextflix and Amazon. This is not a youtube film.
Thanks! Please out the trailers.
