Making Movies on a Budget : Raedon Entertainment views films as commerce, not art.

First-time movie director Rick Pamplin was in Glendale recently shooting a low-budget action film when the cops burst in. Pamplin, it seems, didn’t have a police permit to film at the warehouse where he was staging scenes for “Provoked,” a shoot-’em-up feature about a hostage-taking.

But the police crackdown--complete with squad cars and a helicopter--wasn’t really such a bust for Pamplin. “I, of course, filmed the police helicopter so I could put it in my movie,” Pamplin explained later. After all, with his $120,000 production budget, it was a spectacle that Pamplin couldn’t have staged on his own.

That’s the kind of initiative that Denis Donovan likes to see. Donovan, 39, president of Raedon Entertainment Group, a Northridge company that will soon release Pamplin’s movie, is a low-budget movie mogul. Really low budget. In the 1950s, the low-budget movies played at drive-ins, but Donovan is one of those who has helped update that distribution route for the 1980s. His films never play on TV or in movie theaters: He sells them only to videocassette stores as eye candy for movie gluttons.

An early effort from Raedon was “L.A. Heat,” starring former football player Jim Brown and ex-”Welcome Back Kotter” actor Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs. Brown’s star seems to be on the decline and Jacobs has yet to make it big, but Donovan packaged the videocassettes of “L.A. Heat” in some sexy artwork and has managed to sell more than 7,500 copies to video stores.

According to Donovan, that’s about $225,000 in sales for a movie that cost $175,000 to produce. Donovan wants to make that his formula: Shoot and market movies for less than $250,000 each.

“It’s not art, man,” said Donovan. “It’s commerce.”

A former video company marketing executive, Donovan’s idea is to reduce the risk of producing flops by doing the marketing first. A case in point: Along with Pamplin, Donovan and his wife, Ralie Rae Donovan, Raedon’s art director, first thought up the title of “Provoked,” bounced it off a few friendly video distributors, then planned a few action scenes and hired some actors. Only then did they pay to have the script written. Finally, in eight days of what he terms “guerrilla film making,” Pamplin shot the movie.

But “Provoked” is the first film that Raedon has produced. Until now, the company has simply released movies whose video distribution rights Donovan purchased. Donovan started his company 19 months ago with $8,000 and runs things out of his house. In that time he has released 10 films, Raedon is up to 10 employees, and Donovan says revenues are running at $200,000 a month.

His films are a cut below what most people call B titles: films intended for release to theaters and made by independent producers for perhaps $1 million. Despite their minuscule budgets, Donovan’s releases must go head-to-head in video stores with major studio films that have had millions spent on television and newspaper advertising.

So low-budget movie companies such as Raedon have to count on the hard-core fans of genre films. Donovan is putting most of his money on pleasing the fans of action films.

One video chain company that stocks Raedon releases is Blockbuster Entertainment, based in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. Ron Castell, Blockbuster’s senior vice president, calls films such as Raedon’s “man-with-a-gun movies.” They have a solid following among young men, said Castell, particularly ones who are “not much interested in the subtleties or nuances of plot.”

Ed Hulse, a critic for Video Review Magazine in New York who has seen some of Raedon’s films, described the made-for-video action film audience. “We’d have to call them droolers.”

Dramatic Packaging

Low-budget genre films must also appeal to less dedicated fans who come into a video store for a film such as “To Live and Die in L.A.” but are willing to walk away with “L.A. Heat” as a second choice. In either case, potential viewers are only going to rent a made-for-video film that leaps off the rack. “Box art is incredibly important,” said Frank Moldstad, the editor of Video Store Magazine in Santa Ana.

A striking number of the videos that Raedon has released have boxes displaying a scantily clad woman wrapped around a man holding a gun. “The bigger the gun, the better,” observed Warren Cohen, president of a Boca Raton, Fla., video distribution company that specializes in low-budget titles. Cohen said the Donovans are masters of box art. “They do a fantastic marketing job with their packaging,” said Cohen.

Still, the major studios make it tough for mini-moguls like Donovan. Most of the big studios now have their own video distributing arms, some of which pressure video chains and other distributors to meet quotas for selling videocassettes of theatrically released films, according to industry analyst John McRae with Bear, Stearns & Co. in New York.

Despite the obstacles, Donovan said he thinks that made-for-video movies are a great way for him to make money and eventually break into producing films for television and theaters.

Donovan hearkens back to the 1960s and 1970s, when producer Roger Corman, sometimes known as “the King of the B’s,” gave young directors such as Francis Coppola and Martin Scorsese a chance directing genre flicks such as “Dementia 13” and “Boxcar Bertha.” But Corman said it’s harder now for even genuine B movies--features such as the successful “sex, lies, and videotape”--to get exposure because major studio releases such as “Batman” open simultaneously at more than 2,000 theaters across the country.

Corman, who said he hasn’t heard of Raedon Entertainment Group, said low-budget movies--including those made for videocassettes--can be a good way for directors to get experience. “If they do a good job, it will come to the attention of someone.”

‘No Ego’

That’s certainly what Joseph Merhi, the director of the Raedon release “L.A. Heat,” is hoping. Between the two of them, Merhi and his partner, Richard Pepin, have produced 26 films--virtually all of them for video release only--since they teamed up in June, 1986.

“There is no ego,” said Merhi. “We say if we make a great film in 15 years we’re grateful.”

You can’t call Merhi pretentious. He agrees that “L.A. Heat” has problems, from occasional contradictions in the script to a muddy sound track (which he says was caused by low-quality tape duplication). But Merhi said his films get better each time.

Donovan said he’s particularly happy with the new direction that he’s taken with a drama film that he just released called “Livin’ the Blues,” about a rich, white, suburban kid who falls in love with a poor black girl.

“There’s no machine gun there,” Donovan said, pointing to the box. “There’s no half-naked girl standing behind a guy. There’s no guy with a grenade launcher in his hand. I think it’s the nicest cover that the company has.”

Donovan moved to Los Angeles from New York in 1977 to “write the great American screenplay,” but when that didn’t work he got his start in the films-for-video field in 1984 as a telephone salesman for a local company, Video Gems. He then served as vice president of marketing for another local firm, City Lights Entertainment, which distributed action movies much as Raedon does.

But Donovan didn’t get near the production side of the business until he started Raedon with his wife. To open for business they had to borrow $3,000 from a competitor, which paid for their office equipment, but it took a $5,000 bank line of credit obtained by Ralie Rae to give their company some operating cash.