Filmmaking Focus

Atlanta filmmaker Jay Wade Edwards is bringing back the old-school monster movie, the kind that reigned supreme on drive-in screens in the 1950s and 60s. “I make monster movies…Not parodies or satires of monster movies, but I try to make the best monster movies I can within the confines of the genre…I’ve always been more interested in b-movies than anything else—from the ’50s drive-in monster movies to ’60s rock and roll movies to ’70s midnight movies. When film makers work under limited budgets, they have freedom to take chances and they have to be creative in ways that push movies in weird, fascinating directions…Directors Roger Corman and John Waters are probably the most influential on my film making style.”

To fulfill his vision, Jay made his Monster Trilogy of three short narrative films from 1998 to 2000. And in October 2005 he premiered Stomp! Shout! Scream! about an all-girl Sixties rock band who encounter the legendary “Skunk Ape.” (This is the first in Jay’s planned “Skunk Ape Trilogy.”)

Jay Wade Edwards (not to be confused with the porn bondage filmmaker Jay Edwards) has been a film and TV editor for 15 years and currently works as an editor and producer for the Adult Swim program Aqua Teen Hunger Force on the Cartoon Network. Jay became interested in film editing while a student at Auburn University, and he remains an editor at heart. “There were very few production classes offered, but I did fall in love with editing while [at Auburn] and made that my career choice…I enjoy the editing of a film the most. The actual production of a film—the planning and shooting—is a necessary evil to me, something that I don’t enjoy as much as putting all the pieces together in the edit.”

Jay’s films resemble B-movies not only in their subject and style but also with regards to the bootstrap nature of the productions. “All the short films were self-financed, but the amount invested was pretty minimal. Stomp! Shout! Scream! was done on a very tight budget, with a combination of self-financing and investors (mom, dad, grandma, etc).” Each of the films in the Monster Trilogy used “thrift store costumes and home made monster suits.” And he uses his connections to find the personnel for his productions: “Having lived and worked in television in Atlanta for 15 years, I use the talented people that I work with regularly, hopefully providing them a fun, creative distraction from their usual day-to-day stuff with a fun side-project.”

The budget and the medium used to film influence how much Jay relies on improvisation versus the need to stick to a script. “The Monster Trilogy films were loosely outlined before setting out to shoot, with characters, costumes and general scenarios laid out, but the actual dialog and action within a scene was improvised. Stomp! Shout! Scream! stuck to the script very strictly since we were shooting film. Film stock, developing and transfer is just too expensive to work any other way, at least with our small budget. That said, scenes were cut or edited down on location virtually everyday because of time constraints, again our limited budget dictating how much and how elaborately we could shoot each scene.”

Those wanting to learn more about the films of Jay Wade Edwards can vistit www.MonsterTrilogy.com or www.StompShoutScream.com. Stomp! Shout! Scream! will be touring the film festival circuit through 2007 and the DVD is currently available for purchase from Amazon.