An American chemical weapons scientist (Barry Livingston) is kidnaped off the street and taken to Iran. CNN reports that the CIA believes he will be forced to participate in Iran's chemical weapons program. The clock is ticking.

A Navy SEAL Team is sent in to rescue him. New on the Team is Bob Rogers (Billy Warlock from "Baywatch") who is our Tom Cruise-like star. Rogers tangles with the tough second in command of the SEALS, Lieutenant Cord, played by Tim Abel (star of Bruckheimer's new "Soldier Of Fortune" TV series).

After the SEAL Team rescues the scientist, they are captured by the Iranian Army in a HUGE action scene (with the biggest gas explosion fireball ever put on film!) and taken hostage aboard one of 3 Iranian submarines. Old Russian Kilo Class diesels.

The American 688 Attack Class sub which was supposed to pick them up, commanded by Gary Busey, is trapped in the Persian Gulf by the three subs. He plays a deadly shell game, only able to fire on 2 of the 3 subs in self defense, as he follows the sub with the hostages. Lots of large scale underwater submarine warfare. Lots of torpedoes fired. Lots of countermeasures used. Things generally explode. The sub battles are bigger than anything in "Hunt For Red October".

Admiral Tom Perry (Billy Dee Williams) coordinates the rescue operation from an Aircraft Carrier in the 5th fleet, using heat registration spy satellites to help Busey evade subs and keep track of the one our SEAL Team is on.

Williams sends F-14 fighter planes over the Gulf, and will send choppers to rescue our heroes later. He also gets to call The Pentagon. We used an actual aircraft carrier, actual Navy helicopters, and actual F-14s in the film. This IS a big Tom Clancy style techno-thriller, after all.

While the submarine battle rages outside, inside the Iranian sub, Billy Warlock and the SEAL Team escape. Now it's "The Warriors" on a submarine: 5 unarmed men have to travel close to 300 feet, past 100 enemy sailors, to escape. One of the men (Cord) is wounded, and one is a geeky scientist.

By the end of this film, Iran will lose all 3 submarines (we explodes 'em!), a bunch of planes flyover, our SEAL Team uses kitchen chemicals to fight their way through the sub to the escape trunk (hatch), there's an underwater rescue operation, helicopters transport our Team to the Carrier, and everyone goes to 5th Fleet Command in Bahrain to get a medal.

Fade Out

That may sound complicated, but I'm trying to give you an idea of the scope of the film. It's a mock Tom Clancy techno- thriller. Billy Warlock is the lead, he gets the character arc (though other characters also get arcs). Lots of hardware, lots of REAL F-14s, lots of things get blowed up real good.

Hard to believe a story this big is a cheapie, right? Hard to believe it cost 1/80th of what "Speed 2" cost. The secret is in the script.

THE CONCEPT

A staple in action films is the CAR CHASE. We've seen a million of them, and every new one has to be BIGGER (and more expensive) than the ones before it. THE ROCK started with the BULLITT/San Francisco car chase, then began a path of destruction which included driving the car through a window, over other cars, knocking a cable car off its tracks and blasting it into the air, crashing about 20 cars, and blowing up anything which didn't crash and burn.

Expensive. Because they REALLY had to do the chase. It couldn't have been done on a computer or in miniature.

One key to a "big budget" film which can be shot cheap is to come up with BIG ACTION which doesn't have to be done for real. "ID4" blew up the White House... Done in miniature.

It's also important to keep your actors and effects separate! Two reasons for this:

1) To combine real actors and miniatures or computer effects is expensive and time consuming.

2) Real actors make CGI and miniatures look fake. They give us a point of comparison. This is why Stan Winston built LIFE SIZE dinosaurs for the petting/touching/standing next to scenes in "The Lost World". We aren't doing ANYTHING for real!

This DOES limit your palate. You have to find a story where the big action takes place 'outside' and the actors work 'inside'. "DIE HARD" type movies work well for this. But so would "ALIEN" and "ALIENS", "CRIMSON TIDE , "EXECUTIVE DECISION", any Star Trek film, and Hawks version of "THE THING".

My HBO World Premiere Movie "Crash Dive" was DIE HARD on a submarine. A terrorist group takes over a U.S. 688 submarine and aims nuclear missiles at Washington DC, a retired Navy engineer sneaks onboard the submarine, using his knowledge of the submarine to stop the terrorists.

My idea was to have hand to hand fighting and shoot outs going on Inside the submarine, and a submarine chase and torpedo exchange going on Outside. The outside stuff was all shot in miniature (we used one of the models from "Hunt For Red October") and a three-storey set was built for the Inside stuff.

"Crimson Tide" built their set on a gimble, so that it could tilt from side to side. On "Crash Dive" we just rented a rocker device so that the CAMERA could tilt from side to side, and saved a ton of money. Our three-storey set was designed to be different parts of the submarine from different angles. Some of the rooms could be re-dressed as Crew Quarters, Machine Rooms, the Galley, and the Torpedo Room. The camera could be placed UNDER the lower deck, so that it could shoot up through the floor grates and capture all three storeys on film. A terrorist on the upper floor could shoot down at the hero on the lower floor.

One entire room was built in a tank, so that it could gradually be filled with water.

The submarine's Control Room was a separate set. That way, we could film action on the main set at the same time we were rigging lighting on the Control Room set. Even the set was designed to ease production and save money.

In the golden age, movies were all shot on sound stages, with 2nd unit (or stock footage) for exteriors. They made thousands of great films using this method. I often wonder why today's producers don't use the cost saving techniques from yesterday's hit films. Low budget films have been using golden age studio tricks for years to stretch their budgets.

In "ALIENS" we can show the transport ship leaving the big space ship and landing on the dusty planet in miniature. Intercut some cockpit shots showing the actors. Once the transport ship is at the factory building, we take our actors inside for the rest of the film, showing the occasional exterior shot to remind us of the big picture.

The "ALIENS" concept could have been done as a cheapie! (Corman did an "Aliens" type story for "Carnosaur 2".)

"Steel Sharks" began with the set. They wanted to re-use that amazing submarine set from "Crash Dive" and asked me to pitch ideas. I came up with 5 new sub stories, careful to avoid anything similar to "Crash Dive". Each of the 5 concepts had big 'event movie' action going on outside the submarine, and fast paced action inside the submarine. After a misfire, the story chosen was "The Warriors" on a submarine, and it went to script.

In "Steel Sharks" I could have Gary Busey's 688 Sub involved in underwater chases, hide and seek, and big battles with the 3 enemy Diesel subs because it was all shot in miniature. We could blow up all 3 enemy subs, because we only had to blow up MODEL subs, not the real thing. Busey can give the order to fire torpedoes, then we go to miniature to SEE the torpedoes fire, and SEE the enemy sub get hit and explode. We can also see the enemy sub's torpedoes hit the ridge behind Busey's sub, and SEE Busey and his crew almost knocked off their feet by the concussion.

This is BIG SCALE ACTION... bigger than that car chase from "The Rock"... but MUCH cheaper to film. I'll bet that car chase cost more than our entire below the line budget on "Steel Sharks"! Because their CONCEPT required them to do the big expensive action scenes FOR REAL... instead of taking advantage of miniature effects and CGI.

Even though the "Speed" concept required real bus stunts, by separating the big action from the actors, they kept their budget reasonable. Keanu and Sandra could be shot driving around on Bus #1 reacting to obstacles, while a second unit crew could shoot a stunt driver in Bus #2 actually swerving to avoid (or hitting) the obstacles. Most of "Speed"s Act 2 is Keanu and Sandra in the same exact spot on Bus #1 reacting. Very easy to shoot.

But if they would have replaced the real bus with a miniature submarine, they could have decreased the costs and increased the production value. Just by changing the Outside action.

The most important element in bringing budgets down is to find a concept where the big, expensive action takes place OUTSIDE (where it can be done with CGI or miniature) and the actors work INSIDE (on a set built to match the miniature).

Finding a concept for this kind of story is easy. I make a living doing it, as do many other low budget writers. You start with the Outside location. My "Moonlight Express" script is about the hunt for a killer onboard a non-stop express train from Los Angeles at San Francisco. I used a 727 Chicago to DC shuttle for "Sky High", the story of passengers who must band together to fight hijackers. "Black Thunder" uses F-117 stealth fighter planes (shot in miniature) for the big action scenes in Act 1 (where a top secret plane is stolen) and Act 3 (where our hero steals the plane back and is chased) to augment the sneaking behind enemy lines "traditional" action in Act 2 which was filmed in the desert.

Other good Outside locations include boats, space stations, under water labs, tunnels, space ships, trains, planes, submarines, subways, monorails, the space shuttle, a mining colony on Mars, that Stealth ship the Navy isn't talking about, and dozens of other places where actors on a set can be combined with big Outside action to create blockbuster movies on a budget.

Not every film can be made this way, but if a third of all the studio's big summer event films used this method, they could cut costs without sacrificing the scope or entertainment value of their blockbusters. They could make a $100 million film for $32 million, and make more profit if the film was a hit. Event films in this budget range are guaranteed to make a profit. Last year the average studio film made $35 million domestic. Unfortunately, it cost $78 million to make and market.

By using these simple techniques, plus a pair of writing techniques I'll discuss in the next issue, studios can give the audience the films they crave, give name actors the $20 million they demand, and spend a third of the cost of this summer's big event films.

Was DEATH RACE not nearly as good as the original DEATH RACE 2000? Should Tom get an Oscar for TROPIC THUNDER? Is HOUSE BUNNY the most politically charged film you've seen more than once on the big screen? Be heard: Movie Discussion!

The NAKED SCREENWRITING CLASS!

The 2001 London Class on 8 CDs! Recorded *live* the morning after the Raindance Film Festival wrapped. The two day class on 8 CDs, plus a workbook, plus a bonus CD with over 300 screenplay PDFs - all 3 BOURNE movies, all 3 MATRIX movies, all 3 Indiana Jones movies, plus all kinds of action and thriller and scripts from Hitchcock films. Yeah, I threw in some Charlie Kauffman and rom-com scripts and some National Lampoon Vacation movie scripts, too. Plus, an orginal brochure for the class. All for one reasonable price: $99.95.

(If you had taken the class in London it would have cost you $450... plus airfare, plus hotel, plus you'd have to eat "mushy peas" for dinner.)

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For more information about NAKED SCREENWRITING CLASS on CD - 8 CDs + Bonus CD with 300 scripts on PDF + Bonus DVD! Makes a great Holiday Gift!

HOLLYWOOD CREATIVE DIRECTORY - 2008