Interview: Doug TenNapel on Making Sockbaby

POSTED BY Wesley Scoggins, 08 November 2007

During the Stunt Fight Episode of Backyard Effect, WestHavenBrook helped show us how to accomplish excellent Stunt Fighting for no cost. Today we are joined by the other side of the Sockbaby team, Writer/Director Doug TenNapel. You might recognize him as the creator of Earthworm Jim, The Neverhood, Catscratch, and many other Accalimed Graphic Novels.

We all loved his work on Sockbaby, and how he was able to accomplish so much, with practically no budget, and I think that all Independent Filmmakers can learn a lot from him.

Thanks for letting me ask you some questions today. I'll just kind of come right out and get started, how did you come to get involved in making Sockbaby for Channel101?

I’m friends with Rob Schrab and Dan Harmon and they were talking about this shorts-festival-thing they were doing. I had seen some of the shorts at Rob’s house where the group of friends were just making their own Batman stories... and Channel101 was born. I didn’t really get Channel101 at first. I submitted a music video that was totally wrong for them and got rejected. I kept thinking it was like an art-film kind of festival. Then after a few Channel101 screenings I felt like I got a grasp of the material and wanted to see if I could make something that audience would like.

I already had the idea of Sockbaby rolling around in my head as an ultra-low budget feature I could shoot in my yard but just put it on my stack-of-100-undoable-ideas.

How did you come to collaborate with John and Justin and the rest of the WestHavenBrook crew on Sockbaby?

Right around when Channel101 got started and I had written the name “Sockbaby” on a piece of paper, I got a DVD in the mail from John Soares. I think I had seen his movie trailer for Tao of the Meteor Serpent and liked his kung fu. I emailed him and asked if he wanted to do something together. They lived in a small farm town near the town of Turlock/Denair where I grew up. I banged together the script for the first short in less than 30 minutes and sent it to John and he wrote back, “This is exactly the kind of stuff we do.” We set a meeting in Bakersfield (half way between their town and my house in Glendale) and we talked out the whole movie, including drawings, and storyboards. John had moves choreographed on paper and we set a date where I could spend the weekend up there and do a shoot.

How long did it take you to shoot and finish Sockbaby and how many people were involved?

The first short is pretty frugal...and that’s saying a lot given Sockbaby is the cheap-o of all cheap-o projects. We had a cast of three, four if you include my hand playing Sockbaby. We had Justin on camera and a few chicks to help with makeup, food and set wrangling. We were fighting weather; blistering heat then fog, then rain which broke up the shoot days over my weekend stay. By the time I left that weekend there were still some doo-dads to shoot but it was pretty much in the can.

What were some of the Cameras you used for Sockbaby?

I brought my 3 chip Sony DV and Justin uses this Sony 8mm crappy dinosaur he swears by but nobody else can handle the tapes. We might have even resorted to joe-tourist over-the-counter handicams for some footage. It’s all over the place in picture quality. Our mantra was to really nail the content, and didn’t have the money or time to have high quality presentation as a goal. The strength of Sockbaby is the character and the action, so subtle tuning of sound recording and picture quality wasn’t even brought up.

What was probably the most complicated Effects shot in Sockbaby, and how did you accomplish it?

Well, just about everything was really uncomplicated. We went for the cheapest, fastest solution for everything, so John would do the most hokey, inappropriate, Photoshop effect and make it work with a little airbrushing and a lot of sound effects. But the most jaw-dropping effect was his windmill kick where I swore he was using wires...he jumped off a table. So I guess the most complicated effect was John jumping off of a table just off-screen. Impressive, huh? It’s a gift.

I know that you work in Hollywood and you've worked on movies before. How did doing something like Sockbaby compare?

Working on your own thing doesn’t compare. It’s the exact opposite from how Hollywood works and it’s why even when I’m really busy in Hollywood, I make time to work on my own stuff. I like telling stories that pay my rent, then I like to tell stories with no approvals or red tape to dance around.

With Film Making becoming so much cheaper to produce now with digital mediums and digital effects, and it being so easy to publish onto the web, do you see this as affecting the Hollywood system? Do you think it's going to dissolve like a lot of people keep predicting, or do you see another outcome?

Guerilla film-making affects Hollywood but isn’t going to cause some giant upheaval of the industry. Blogs won’t put book publishing out of business, though it’s got some papers on their toes. Blogs are a bigger threat to papers because writing a blog can come out identical to writing an article for People Magazine. Text is cheap, so big money doesn’t necessarily provide a significantly different product from blog to magazine. But given movies are so expensive, even a cheap theatrical movie can run circles around the quality of most web-shorts. I don’t think web shorts will ever be able to produce stories that are identical to stories told with a production of hundreds getting top salary.

I think Hollywood is its own thing, and web content is another thing. I don’t think it’s wise to compare all forms of story-telling to Hollywood as if Superman Returns is some kind of standard. A theatrical movie can succeed or fail on its own terms and a web short can succeed or fail on its own terms. The web is a great gift to struggling content creators who want to tell stories and need a pipeline. BANG! There’s your pipeline, now shut up and make something. If you can’t manage to make something when you have this web pipeline I didn’t have when I was young then you should just admit that you are a cry baby and are grasping for excuses not to tell a story. That’s right, you’re a full time unstory-teller. Oh, I’m wrong? Prove it.

I know that you're working on some new Graphic Novels and some new shows, and you're going to be doing one of the cover's for Rob Schrab's new Scud book. Planning on doing anything like Sockbaby again anytime soon?

I’m always open to doing more stuff. I’ve mumbled about doing a 4th installment of Sockbaby or making a new short. Right now, I’m swamped on projects that pay rent so they always take precedent than the fun I have on the web. Because I can tell huge stories in the Graphic Novel format, it’s like making a giant feature on a web-short budget so it’s a superior story-telling medium for me than shooting shorts. But I get itchy to get back in the director’s chair. There’s nothing like an active set where creative minds get together to put on a show.

And lastly, you've said before that you usually come up with the moral core of a story before you fully flesh it out. With this in mind, what would you personally say is Sockbaby's core "message," or was it the exemption to your rule?

Sockbaby’s core is just another hero’s journey. Ronnie Cordova begins as not taking the responsibility of Sockbaby seriously. His friend Burger is the actual caretaker of the Christ of the Sock people. But when Burger is killed, Ronnie takes on the mantle of hero as the protector so he goes from “adult” to “leader” which is pretty typical stuff in Western story-telling morals.

My pleasure, Wes. Any time.

Thank you again Doug.

Check out Sockbaby, and other TenNapel and WestHavenBrook creations:

Sockbaby.com - Sockbaby website
WestHavenBrook - Website of John Soares' and Justin Spurlock's film group.
TenNapel.com - Douglas TenNapel's website
Channel101.com - The Festival that Originally Featured Sockbaby