If you’re in hurry then you might want to bookmark this post and come back later with some popcorn, because we got a lotta action for you. Stuart Bender’s stuff is best described as ‘die hardcore’, a freshly coined term to describe the getting ever better YouTube action genre. You can find his work on YouTube and Vimeo. Here’s a little taster…..

BRAINS?: Hi, and who are you?

STUART BENDER: I’m a filmmaker working in the genre of short action films. I do two types of films; test films and actual narratives. The first type is a series called “A Shitload of Action” and I’m editing #9 at the moment. These films allow me to set effects challenges for myself to overcome.

For example, on A Shitload #7, “How the hell will I do an explosion inside a house convincingly?” Then on Shitload #8, “Ok Bigshot, you thought you did well with that explosion? How about a HELICOPTER this time?”

The other films, the narrative films, then absorb those effects once I get them right. I also set narrative or formal challenges; eg: Can a film make narrative sense without any dialogue? (Loverboy), Can a film-noir contain a modern action film sensibility? (Asphalt and Lace).

The guns are replicas that are easy enough to get from army surplus shops. It looks fucking stupid on set because people are essentially “playing wars,” but then it’s so satisfying when I’m in post-production compositing gunshot effects and it suddenly becomes believable machine-gun fire etc.

People have talked about using guns with blank ammunition etc, and I can see advantages there in terms of actors’ performance. But actors can also fake it well enough, and replicas make things faster on set.

If I did it with blank firing weapons; I’d need an armourer who would inspect the weapons before and after each take, actors would need to stop and wait for that to happen, I’d also need to PAY for the armourer’s time, the weapons and the ammunition, and I anticipate we’d need to inform every neighbour.

What do I gain by doing it in post? A faster shooting schedule, and hours of enjoyment when I sit down and work on the effects in post.

My shootouts are filmed in what I’d call a “Gonzo decoupage” style– put this guy behind a car, film him from a range of angles firing and taking cover, then he dies; next guy behind the column, same thing; next guy behind some pile of barrels or whatever, same thing.

I’ve seen the same films my audience has, so I know how the shots are meant to be cut together later on, and because these things have to be cut so fast it makes sense to roll camera for a minute or so and just snatch a bunch of decent angles.

BRAINS?: Could you walk us through a few of the films?

The films are available in various places; youtube will give you all the “A Shitload of Action” films… except #4 which has been a casualty of censorship, and #6 because it doesn’t exist.

“A Shitload of Action 5: Hostage Holocaust II” is a good place to start.







From there it would be logical to look at “Loverboy” which is an attempt to use the effects within an actual narrative:







The team I work with is expanding all the time; which is something I feel incredibly grateful for. The majority of what’s been done so far has been produced by Chris James, and along the way I’ve gathered a really enthusiastic team. Some of the key people in the core creative team include [cinematographer] Murray Christian and [production designer] Juliette Dujardin.







“Asphalt and Lace” came out of my obsession with Mickey Spillane’s novels featuring Mike Hammer. One of the reasons Spillane’s my favourite hard-boiled writer is that I’m fascinated by the fact they’re private eye novels where we never see the protagonist actually deal with a case. We might catch Hammer as he’s on the way home from finishing a case, and because it’s pissing down with rain he stops to get something to eat… and just so happens to be there when roughnecks arrive to hassle some girl.

I believe in a short film you don’t have enough time to develop character or story in ways that will feel satisfying, so it’s the perfect genre to experiment with different means of telling a narrative.

The film started with Chris and I having a discussion about those kinds of ideas; after which I wrote the treatment as a short story and then together we fashioned it into script form. At that point the other creative people joined in; Murray and Juliette.

I think Murray Christian’s major task was lighting the thing well, without money, and with a short shooting schedule. I’m really happy with his lighting on this piece — especially because he constantly wanted to work in some soft lighting and had to deal with me saying “No! It needs to be stronger. More harsh. And don’t put any fucking scrim on those lights either!”

We shot the film on HDV in a two-day shoot. There were a few pickup shots later on, like climbing onto my roof, setting fire to a road and doing close-ups of a scalpel into a shirt but those were things that came up during the lengthy post-production process.

The edit itself was fairly quick, but because of the amount of effects I probably spent three or four months, most nights of the week, working in After Effects to put the thing together.

After that, Wendi Graham worked on the sound in post which I think really makes the film hang together. One of the best things she did is layer different rain sounds throughout the piece, and I can still remember the first time I heard the way the rain and wind whooshes up when the protagonist pushes open the high-rise window.

I’ve just directed something written by Matt Zappala which has been so satisfying because he’s got a great knack for snappy dialogue, and he writes FAST. As the director this kind of script is great because I can take the dialogue scene that reads as “cool dialogue” on paper, and add some kind of sexual subtext (eg: tie the girls up) or certain kinds of suspense (eg: the good guy is making smart-ass comments becuase that will distract the baddie from the girl-hostage enough that she can get free). I’m really excited about the next thing we might work on!