De Gako’s in Thailand | FRAGMENTEN UIT HET SCHEMERLAND

On my YouTube channel, Jeppy’s Video Circus, I usually post short videos in three categories.

The first is pop culture features, like Schwarzenegger’s 100 Greatest Kills and Ranking the Top 100 Beatles Songs.

The second is experimental shorts, such as Passenger and Light Parade.

The third category is amateur movies I made during my childhood, including A Bad Trip and Nicky and Mugs.

I’ve just released another one called Brains For Breakfast and this one might be my favorite.

The Amateur
The unfinished video was shot in 2000, about halfway through my five-year stretch as an amateur filmmaker.

That period began in 1998, when my buddy Jean-Marc and I took a two-week videomaking course in Charme, France, taught by the Amsterdam-based Open Studio. They taught us the basics of filmmaking: camera work, directing, editing, screenwriting – the whole package.

The following year, I shot a number of shorts with my friends in Heiloo, including Nicky and Mugs and A Bad Trip. Many unfinished projects from that time still live in the dusty archives of my desktop.

In an upcoming short called Dreaming of HeilooWeed, I plan to edit those fragments into a medley of our unfinished amateur films.

In 2000, we created what I consider the highlight of that era: Brains For Breakfast, which is now available on YouTube.

That same year, I also traveled through India and Nepal, where I shot a two-hour travel movie.

In 2001, my friends and I spent three months in Thailand, where I filmed another travel documentary – though calling it a ‘travel movie’ doesn’t quite do it justice. It’s part Jackass, part comic meditation on backpacking. I plan to edit it into a half-hour YouTube version next year, titled 2001: A Thailand Odyssey.

By 2002, my movie career had started to fade, and I moved on to other things. I made a few videos that year, but nothing particularly noteworthy.

That is, until 2020 – when I picked up filmmaking again as a hobby.

About Brains For Breakfast
Brains For Breakfast can best be described as a horror-comedy, heavily inspired by Peter Jackson (Bad Taste) and Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead).

The story follows weed dealer Jimmie Lombardo, who suddenly finds himself in the middle of an alien invasion, one with the sole purpose of stealing Dutch weed.

What I love most about it is the humor. There are some genuinely funny moments, along with a few surprisingly effective scenes, like the one where an alien shoots a guy on a bicycle from a balcony.

I also have a soft spot for all the amateurish mistakes: jumping the axis, catching the cameraman’s shadow, or scenes that shift from early evening to near-dark in the blink of an eye. All of it adds to the charm and hilarity.

Since the film was never finished, I decided to create an ending by adding a short ‘making-of’ segment, showing us trying to pull off one of our great ‘special effects’.

I’m happy with how it turned out, and I hope you’ll enjoy it too. Check out Brains For Breakfast below on YouTube!

The latest release on my YouTube channel is the 17:13 minute short A Bad Trip (1999). One of the highlights of my career as an amateur filmmaker. I am currently working on the redux of another highlight, the feature length De Gako’s in Thailand (2001), but won’t be able to release it publically due to the extensive use of music (A Bad Trip only has three musical tracks that I have replaced by licenced music).

A Bad Trip is an in-camera-edited short about a drug user Sjakie (my old buddy Boris Bruin) who buys wrong pills from the local dealer Eddie (played by yours truly) and enters into a nightmarish trip. I have improved the edit by removing a few bits and pieces and adding the odd sound effect. I also added subtitles. It is one of the few fictional shorts that I have made that actually tells a complete story with a beginning and an ending.

Reviewing it today, 22 years later, I can see my lack of experience at that point. The camera work is of inconsistent quality and contains quite a few beginner mistakes, like jumping the line. However there are some very nice shots and camera moves as well as a bit of camera trickery.

The acting is – well amateuristic at best – but consider that we shot it in four afternoons and many scenes are built up from one-take shots with dialogues improvised at the spot. Since a lot of focus was on the timing of the shots (we had to edit in-camera, since I had no editing equipment at the time), the acting got far less attention.

What I like most about the short is the scenery from my childhood. Sjakie’s house is my parental house in Heiloo and all other interiors are the houses of my friends. The point-of-sale of dealer Eddie is the first school I attended. And the woods in Heiloo (my Heilooweed) have a unique atmosphere to them. I love those woods.

Working on this project has wetted my appetite for amateur filmmaking. It is still my dream to one day shoot Brainfood, which would be the biggest amateur movie ever attempted. It is about a race of aliens secretly invading the Netherlands to steal our drugs. Then a special military squad is ordered to find them and exterminate them. It is currently budgeted at 150.000 euros, so for the foreseeable future it will remain a dream.

To be continued, I hope….