Making the Passion Project: An Interview with Johnny K.,
Director of The Oath: A Batman Fan Film
1-First, tell us who you are and what you do.
I’m Johnny K., filmmaker and owner of Kaotica Studios.
2-The last time that we saw you was a long time ago, just
before COVID. You were making your first film, The Killer of Grassy Ridge. So
to catch up, how did that film ultimately fare?
The Killer of Grassy Ridge shattered all my
expectations. It was made as a personal challenge, just to see if I could
actually make a short film, despite all the excuses I’d been giving myself for
years. When the film was edited and released, I was just happy that I’d
finished a creative project I started.
It was then accepted by 50+ festivals worldwide and landed on Amazon, and we took home lots of awards for Best U.S Short Film, Best Cinematography, Best Horror, and more. I had no idea that debut short films could win things like that, and I’m still very proud of that movie. It was proof to myself that amazing things can happen when you stop making excuses, get out of your own way, and just do the thing you love, and I’ll always have that movie to look back on as a reminder.
Life’s been very busy, personally and professionally, but in a good way. We shot our second short, Red Eagle-1, in the middle of lockdown during the pandemic, and I’m really looking forward to getting back to that movie and getting it out there. I was also recruited to shoot and direct Farragut Forward, a Star Trek fan production. We’ve already released the first three minutes on YouTube and we’re now right in the middle of our year-long production. With all the complex wardrobe and set construction, it’s a massive project but lots of fun.
That’s insane, when you think about it, but it’s all for love of Batman.
4- So on to your new film, The Oath: A Batman Fan
Film. This looks a lot more complicated
than The Killer of Grassy Ridge. How much time was spent on this, all total
from pre-production to final editing?
Two years… for a 17-minute short film that I’ll never see a
dollar from. That’s insane, when you think about it, but it’s all for love of
Batman.
I’m a huge fan of Batman (1989) and The Oath is
the definition of a passion project. It was one year of pre-production and one
year of post-production. I started the script in February 2021, we shot the
bulk of it November-December 2021, and it finally premiered on YouTube a year
later in December 2022. In our first week, we got around 75,000 views and some
major news coverage, which far exceeded any of my expectations.
Batman (1989) captivated me as a nine-year-old kid
and it still does today. I loved the darkness and grittiness. Anton Furst’s
production design, and the sprawling backlot of Pinewood Studios made Gotham
feel like this vast and surreal fantasy world with all manner of dark creatures
lurking in the alleys. I’ve always wanted to see more of that world, and in my
humble opinion, not even Batman Returns (1992) could live up to it.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Tim Burton and Batman Returns, but if you watch
those two movies back-to-back today, you’ll see how VERY different they are.
For The Oath, I was really interested in exploring
more of those Gotham alleys, the mob, corruption, and some whispered rumors of
a winged vigilante, but from the point of view of a Gotham cop who has to live
and work in that world.
Based on our YouTube comments, what we were trying to achieve with The Oath has resonated with a lot of people, and after spending two years to make this film, that’s very satisfying to see. We have so much more story to tell and I hope to get the opportunity to run with it. I don’t think we’ve seen the end of Sgt. Frank Kelly and the other characters…
...I picked up an obsession for screen-accuracy and trying to be as accurate as possible to the original source material.
6- Now something the readers may not know, you are an
accomplished cosplayer, You’ve even gotten a costume into the 501st if I’m not
mistaken and they’re pretty picky. Did your cosplaying skills or connections
come in handy when making this film?
Definitely. This entire project was inspired when my friend
Guillermo Mejía (aka, William Jay) bought a Batman costume and we did a
photoshoot, so connections with friends and the local costumer scene are really
what started all of this. As far as my own experience with costuming in The
Finest, the 501st Legion, and other charity groups, I picked up an
obsession for screen-accuracy and trying to be as accurate as possible to the original
source material.
I think that really benefited The Oath, especially when creating the Gotham Police costumes. I spent a lot of time researching the original cop costumes used in Batman ’89, finding the right leather coats in the U.K., having the Gotham badges and patches custom-made, etc. After our trailer released, I heard from Hollywood legend and Oscar-nominated costume designer Bob Ringwood, who designed costumes for Batman (1989), and he shared his original designs for the Gotham police uniforms, which I had never seen. That was amazing to see, not just as a filmmaker, but as a huge fan of Batman (1989).
Thanks for noticing that! Besides Johnny Gobs, Alexander
Knox, Lt. Eckhardt, etc., there are so many nerdy little details in The Oath;
things that most people, and even die-hard fans of Batman (1989) would
never notice. We had Gotham Globe newspapers custom-made for our movie, and
since we didn’t want to use bogus “filler” text for articles, we actually wrote
real “in-universe” articles for those newspapers about things going on in
Gotham City. Like Mayor Borg’s plans for Gotham’s upcoming 200th
birthday celebration, statements from the newly-elected District Attorney
Harvey Dent, etc. Besides Alexander Knox, even the names of the Gotham Globe journalists
and authors were taken from the novelization of Batman (1989) written by
Craig Shaw Gardner, which names several Gotham Globe employees.
The wanted poster of Jimmy Atlas is inspired by Jack
Napier’s wanted poster in Batman (1989), and on that poster, we noted
Sofia Falcone as one of his associates. Batman fans know her as the daughter of
crime-boss Carmine Falcone, and I loved using that to allude to the larger
universe.
The police dispatcher on the radio says Jimmy Atlas has been spotted near the corner of “Furst and Pratt” streets. Those are homages to Batman production designer Anton Furst and cinematographer Roger Pratt, who also shot a couple of the Harry Potter movies. On the Wayne Foundation envelope and letter, we see that Sgt. Kelly’s home address is on Finger Street, which is named in honor of Batman co-creator Bill Finger. There are so many more little things like that in the film and we enjoy fans trying to spot them all.
Music can make or break a film and our composers knocked it
out of the park. Most of our music is from Italian composer Franceso D’Andrea,
whose music has been featured in shows like “The Big Bang Theory”, “Mad Men”,
“How I Met Your Mother”, “CSI NY”, and more. We licensed many of Francesco’s
tracks for The Oath which I used during the editing process, and then he
scored “The Oath Fight Cue” for us, an original track that plays as Batman
jumps off the roof into the action. The title track of the movie is called
“March of the Giants,” and from the first time I heard it, I knew that would be
the opening of our film. That track is the only reason we decided to put
opening titles at the beginning of the film, which is typically not done for a
short film. But I wanted “March of the Giants” and those nostalgic yellow
titles on blue smoke to call back to Batman (1989) and set the tone for our
film. I’ve heard that song several times
a day, every day, for 18 months and I still love it!
Additional music was provided by composers Jordan Hatfield and Jakub Pietras and I’m really happy with all of it. Please check out their work on Spotify or other sites and help support our artists!
9- Connecting your first film to this one, are there any
lessons that you learned with Grassy Ridge that you are still using?
A lesson I learned on Killer that I failed to use on The Oath is to NOT shoot your movie outside in freezing temperatures. Guillermo, our Batman actor, was very comfortable because that costume gets so hot, but the rest of our cast and crew endured some freezing cold nights on set at 3am! Our crew achieved a lot in a very short amount of time, and crews never get enough credit for all that hard work, so my thanks to them for putting up with everything that was thrown at them!
As a filmmaker, you go to great lengths to surround yourself with very talented people on set, so it would be foolish to not keep an ear open for their ideas.
10- What new lessons did you learn while making The Oath?
The Oath reminded me to be open to ideas and suggestions coming from the cast and crew. A film set should never be a democracy, or you’ll just waste a lot of people’s time, but as the director, I was receptive to ideas from the cast and crew that were never written in the script. It was actor Jerry Morgan’s idea for Sgt. Kelly to take the pack of cigarettes from Johnny Gobs’ corpse at the start of the film, and I thought that was a great addition and very true to Sgt. Kelly’s character. Similarly, Oz Keenum, who played mobster Jimmy Atlas, suggested that he touch and caress Sgt. Kelly’s police badge after their exchange, as if to say he just bought and paid for that badge, and I thought that was brilliant. I believe it was also Jerry’s idea to put his wife’s photo in Sgt. Kelly’s pocket-watch, and that became a big part of his character’s motivation. As a filmmaker, you go to great lengths to surround yourself with very talented people on set, so it would be foolish to not keep an ear open for their ideas.
11- For the technically minded, what did you use to make
this; camera, editing software etc.
We shot The Oath in 6K resolution on a Blackmagic
Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro with Canon and Sigma lenses. It was my first
extended shoot using that camera and I loved it. Everything was very intuitive
and I didn’t have to waste a lot of time on set figuring out settings, etc. That
camera and our lenses also perform exceptionally well in low-light, which was
obviously important for The Oath since so much of the film was shot in
pitch black.
The film’s opening jib shot in the alley was shot on my old
faithful Nikon D3300 (the same DSLR I used to shoot The Killer of Grassy
Ridge) because the Blackmagic camera was too heavy to use on our jib, and
we didn’t have the budget for a new jib! A few insert shots, including the
establishing shot of the Gotham City painting (painted by artist Joe Granski)
were actually shot on my phone. It just goes to show how far technology has
come.
The film was edited using Davinci Resolve which has become my go-to favorite software. Besides the Hollywood/industry-standard color grading application, it’s a very powerful editor, VFX, and sound design platform, and it eliminates the need to export your project around multiple programs. It does it all.
... the worst thing you can do is put too much light on Batman.
12- Another technical question. The lighting seems pretty
moody. Talk about what you did.
When we made The
Killer of Grassy Ridge I was really inspired by The Revenant (2015) and the use
of natural light in that movie. Killer taught me that there wasn’t a need to
“over-light” everything. Not every shot requires an overpowering key light,
lots of fill, etc., and sometimes less is more, since what you CAN’T see is
usually more interesting than what you CAN see, especially in Gotham City.
That approach really
worked for The Oath, since the worst thing you can do is put too much light on
Batman. I wanted to keep him in the shadows, with lots of reverse-key and
edge-light on the iconic silhouette. That moody style then carried over to the
rest of the film as well, with lots of hard-light, shadows, and the “color
noir” style we hoped to achieve. Almost every costume in our film is black, so
shooting those black costumes against black streets in the black of night
required lots of creative edge-lighting. We barely used any fill light in The
Oath, especially on Sgt. Kelly, since I wanted half his face in darkness for a
good bit of the film, to help thematically emphasize his “dark side” if you
will. Even in the last scene, at our resolution, half his face is still in
complete darkness, perhaps symbolizing that a part of him remains in conflict.
Art is, of course, highly-subjective, but I’m very pleased with the overall
look of the film.
There are many things, but I’ll mention the casting. Every actor in The Oath was my first choice for that role. During pre-production, and even as the script was still being written, I spent a lot of time thinking about actors who I knew who could pull off those roles. Jerry Morgan, Oz Keenum, Chris Konke, and I all met while filming different shows, and I was impressed with all of them. Jerry, who plays Sgt. Kelly, is a tough guy with a big heart, a Marine Corps veteran, and he’s lived a life, and I knew he’d be perfect for Sgt. Kelly. Oz may be in danger of getting typecast as a gangster because he’s so good at it! The character notes for Jimmy Atlas called him something like “a serial killer disguised as a businessman,” and I knew Oz would crush that role. Chris Konke played Sgt. Kelly’s partner, and with Kelly being a man of few words, Chris’ role was important to get certain bits of exposition out to the audience in a very short amount of time. Guillermo Mejía was great as Batman, despite all the challenges that came with moving in the bat-suit, and I obviously knew how talented Michael Stumbo was after we filmed The Killer of Grassy Ridge. Although The Oath is non-profit, we’ve had lots of eyeballs on it and my hope is that it draws more attention to our very talented cast and crew and launches them in new directions.
14-OK, the next few questions are a chance to geek out about Batman. I think it’s safe to say that Batman has become the most recognizable superhero on the planet. If not he’s a very close second behind Superman. What do you think is the appeal of this character?
I’ve always related more to Batman because he’s not an alien, and he wasn’t bitten by a radioactive spider, or the victim of some lab accident. He’s just a guy, albeit a rich one, but there’s something interesting about a man who dresses up as a terrifying figure to beat criminals to a pulp. That’s not a normal thing that normal people do, and the psychology behind Batman, and the pros and cons of “vigilante justice” have always been interesting to me. He’s multi-layered and practically an anti-hero, and I like Batman in much the same way I like the Punisher.
Michael Keaton… I’ve honestly not seen any of the other
films enough to rate anyone else.
I have to mention Kevin Conroy. With 30 years in the cowl, his contributions as Batman in The Animated Series, games, and other media, definitely earn him a spot on my short list! Kevin passed away on the same day we were shooting some behind the scenes interviews for The Oath, and you can feel the impact of his loss in our footage. He was a legend and will always be remembered.
The world was robbed in that we never got to see Billy Dee Williams become Two-Face in a third Tim Burton film.
16- A big part of the Batman mythology is his rogue’s
gallery. Give us your top 5 Batman villains and why?
Catwoman, for many of the same reasons I like Batman. She’s
a tragic figure and I love certain interactions between Bruce and Selina,
especially when they each know who the other is. The scene in Batman Returns
when they go to the costume ball and their costumes are their real faces –
absolutely brilliant.
Carmine Falcone. I really like non-super villain stories
which flesh out the shady underworld of Gotham. “The Long Halloween” is
probably my favorite Batman comic, and I loved John Doman’s performance as
Falcone in the show Gotham.
Two-Face. I like Harvey Dent in general - a mostly-good
character with a major flaw. It’s always interesting to see such a good
character flip to the extreme and become a villain. The world was robbed in
that we never got to see Billy Dee Williams become Two-Face in a third Tim
Burton film.
Scarecrow. There are so many fun places to go with this character because we can all relate to having unspeakable and inescapable primal fears. I think I’ve yet to see Scarecrow used to his absolute full potential.
Take a nice long break and regroup.
The superhero movie market is just so completely saturated, but studios are making way too much money for anyone to actually say that. I wish there was a greater focus on quality over quantity. I’d rather see one GREAT superhero movie every five years than five mediocre “hits” in the same year. But those five mediocre hits make a boat-load of money and they’re not going anywhere.
Without Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns, we wouldn’t have any of the rest of it.
18-This a tough question- what do you think had the
BIGGEST impact on the modern idea of Batman? Frank Miller’s Dark Knight
Returns, Tim Burton’s Batman, or Batman the Animated Series?
I don’t think that’s a tough question. Without Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns, we wouldn’t have any of the rest of it. I love Superman (1978), but Batman (1989) reshaped what comic book movies could be and paved the way for everything else, and Frank Miller’s work was hugely responsible for that.
19- The year is almost over, what were some of the best
new movies or shows you’ve seen this year?
I discovered Dark this year on Netflix and couldn’t
stop watching it. It’s like a German mashup of Lost, X-Files, and Stranger
Things and I thought the first season was fantastic. I hope to get back to it soon.
It took a couple of episodes, but Andor ended up as one
of the best shows I’ve seen in 20 years and is now my personal favorite Star
Wars ANYTHING since the original trilogy, even better than Rogue One.
I also really enjoyed The Offer, about the making of The Godfather.
20- Where can
people see The Oath? And where can folks see more of your work?
The Oath premiered on the Kaotica Studios YouTube channel
on December 6, 2022, and is free for all to enjoy. I can be found on Twitter
(@ThatJohnnyKguy) and you can find Kaotica Studios on (almost) all social
media, and at www.KaoticaStudios.com.
As a small and growing studio, we have to fight to get our name out there and
get noticed by our algorithm overlords, so please LIKE and SUBSCRIBE! It really
does help us.
Thanks for the interview!
Want to see more interviews with interesting people? Look here!
