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For the past 5 years I’ve been working on the story of Black Betty. What started out as an idea about a bad ass vigilante who seeks vengeance on the man who murdered her mother when she was just a child, has turned in to something much darker and much more complicated.

Earlier this year I had decided I wanted to make the feature length story I had written in to a short. My rationale was that it would be easier to make as the budget would be smaller and a short would be easier to manage in terms of crew, equipment and post-production costs.
It was also a chance to go to film festivals with something short & sweet and establish myself as a filmmaker.

Well, once again I’ve changed my mind.

In writing the short that I was intent on making I’ve come to realize that this story of Black Betty can’t be told in 20-25 pages. I’ve tried, but it just doesn’t work.
The story of Black Betty is complex and requires a lot of room to breathe. There’s too much exposition that needs to happen to fully understand who these characters are and what drives them. A short would just not cut it.

Over the past 5 years I’ve written probably 5 or 6 different versions of this script. There are of course constants that have remained through every draft & revision, but certain elements have morphed in to other things, some ideas have been discarded and new concepts thought of in just the past month have made the story much more interesting.
Honestly I think I”m more excited about Black Betty now than I was when I first started.

As for the blog post updates on this site, they are to me a chronicle of the journey.
When all is said and done I think it will be fun to go back and look at how this story, this character and this project have all developed over the years.
It will also be interesting to reflect on where it all started as opposed to where it all ends.
I guess this is more for me than anyone, but for anyone interested in taking that journey with me — well — here it is.

In the end I just want to tell the best story I can for this character. I want to create something different that’s entertaining and thought provoking.

Suffice to say, Black Betty has been a very long-term project that I’m bound determined to complete. Although it has taken me several years, more than ever I feel that now is the time.

Thanks for reading through my ramblings.
I’d like to think of these blogs also as sign posts along the way. I think they help me re-center myself in regards to the project and keep me focused.
My way of telling myself that I’m still doing this. I haven’t let it go and I intend to see it through — even if it does take me a lifetime.
Haha, let’s hope not…

The writing process continues as I try to make time to finish off the Black Betty script. It’s a slow process as of late, but at least things are still moving forward.
One of the things that I’ve been focused on is who Black Betty is as a character.

I’m not giving anything away really, but she is in the most basic terms, a vigilante who is seeking out retribution on the man who murdered her mother many years prior.

We’ve all seen similar characters in films. Most notably Eric Draven in The Crow, Django in Django Unchained, The Bride in Kill Bill, Oh Dae-su in Oldboy and even Bruce Wayne in Batman. These are people who have been wronged and/or had someone they loved taken away from them and are now seeking revenge on those responsible.
To me, Black Betty is no different. Her motivations are clear and her actions seemingly justified.

What I wanted to bring to the table with Black Betty though is a question of whether what she is doing is right. Take this moral ambiguity that most of these characters & films trod upon, but never really specifically define and give it weight. Substance.
We always feel that these characters are justified in their actions because they’ve been hurt or wronged, and then we go on a ride of action, blood and violence — but we seem to never question if what they’re doing is a bad thing. They become these anti-heroes that we root for, even as they’re stacking up the body count of people who aren’t necessarily directly involved in what happened to them. Whether it be innocent bystanders or just hired thugs, these characters kill anyone in their way of seeking that retribution they so vehemently desire.

So with this story I want to really point out that double standard. That hypocritical story of someone who has to become that which they themselves were a victim of. To me that’s an interesting and compelling character study. A lot of times these characters sacrifice themselves at the end, which redeems their actions and somehow makes everything they did OK, but I wanted to examine that journey more closely and what it would really be like for a person to deal with this sort of thing. How it would affect them emotionally and mentally.

In a way Black Betty is a mixture of all of the characters I listed — not intentionally mind you — but there are definitely elements of Bruce Wayne/Batman, Eric Draven/The Crow and definitely The Bride in this character. But that’s more the nature of this type of story. You can’t escape certain tropes and characteristics when dealing with a story of revenge and violence.

I do feel that Black Betty is very specific in her own right as a character who has a unique take on this type of story.
That is one of the things I really want to focus on as I develop the character with actress Alexandra Heard, who will be portraying her in the film.

-Justin

It’s been years since I first came up with this idea for a movie about a female vigilante that goes after the man who murdered her mother, but I feel that I’ve finally found the time and the direction to make this story a reality.

Re-writes!
Writers always seem to be making re-writes to their work, and that’s because as an artist you never feel that your work is done.
In the case of the Black Betty script, I’ve written various versions of it and have always wanted this to be a feature length film. After some contemplation and realizations, I’ve decided to make this a short film.

Why a short film?
I have yet to really make a narrative that is my own. I’ve worked on other people’s projects, and directed more music videos than I can count — but I have yet to actually create a film from start to finish that is my own idea and ultimately my own accomplishment.
To answer the question as to why, a lot of it is the simple fact that short films are less expensive and less daunting.
Rather than try and spend another year trying to scrape together financial backers, investors or beg for money on Kickstarter (btw I have nothing against Kickstarter or those who use it), I decided that I would finance it myself and finally finish a project that I’ve been working on for almost 5 years.

I do feel that the time is right now because I’ve learned a helluva lot since I started this project, and I feel I have the people, the resources & the time to truly dedicate to make this story in to something I can be proud of.

My goal is to update this blog once a week until the film is completed.
So, come with me on this journey and when all is said and done, Black Betty will live on the screen and not just in my head.

-Justin

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything here — going on about 9 months actually — and I wanted to add some sort of update to let you all know this project is still underway.

I’ve been working with a designer on the Black Betty costume and it’s coming along slowly but surely. I’m definitely trying to make it look original and not like all of the other costumes you always see female bad asses wearing, but of course there are going to be similarities simply for the fact that there’s only so much you can do with a black/gray outfit on a sexy woman with guns.
My main inspirations have been Quorra from TRON: LEGACY, AEON FLUX (both the cartoon & the film) and BIOMEGA (great graphic novel).

The script is still undergoing a re-write, but so far I’ve got a solid 22 pages I’m pretty happy with.
To give you some perspective an average feature length script is around 110, give or take.

It’s definitely been a slow process getting this project together, but mostly due to lack of funds and a lot of my focus directed at HELP! I’M ALIVE, a web series I’m directing and co-producing, but I still dabble here and there on BB, never really forgetting about it. Hopefully I’ll have something more substantial by the end of the year. Where does the time go?!

In the meantime, make sure you check out Alexandra Heard on Twitter and her new website which is coming very soon.
She’s a very talented individual you should definitely keep an eye on!

Until next time world…

- Justin

Here’s a little video from yesterday’s drum tracking session.

Tonight I was in the studio with Headnodic (Crown City Rockers/The Mighty Underdogs) to record drums for my version of the song “Black Betty”.
The track will be the film’s “theme” and will most likely play during the credits.

I wanted to do a version of the song that was different than the Ram Jam/Spiderbait or Leadbelly versions but still included the same feel and structure.
I’ve been playing drums since I was 14 and I definitely wanted to play them on this song, so I went in and rehearsed last night for a couple of hours to get my chops back up to speed and go over the different parts.
Got to Headnodic’s studio this afternoon and laid down the parts in about an hour and a half. They sound great.

As I start to build the song I’ll post various stages of its development so you can hear it evolve.
I definitely want to use Karyn Paige for the vocals, a singer I’ve been working with for awhile now. I think she’ll sound great on the track.
Need to add bass, guitar and keyboards — not sure what I want to play myself and what I want to bring in musicians for.
Definitely exciting producing the song. Gets me back to my music roots.

With the new year I’m getting closer and closer to putting this project together finally and it feels good. I’ve been grinding hard to get to this point and it’s really paid off.
Now comes the fruits of my labor….stay tuned!

-Justin

Welcome!
First off, thanks to everyone for your interest in this project.

My name is Justin Berger — I’m the writer/director/producer of Black Betty.
I have officially launched the Black Betty Blog as of today, December 12, 2010 and it is my hope that this will be your behind-the-scenes source for everything having to do with the project.

I’ll be posting thoughts, photos, videos and rants as I work my towards completing this film.

I’ll kick things off with explaining how this idea came to be in the first place.
To make a long story short I first decided I wanted to make movies when I was 8 years old…

Just kidding. Well, I’m not kidding that I wanted to make movies at that age, but I’m kidding that we’re going to go that far back.
About 3 years ago I was involved with an independent film project as a publicist. It was my first REAL taste of Hollywood and I started meeting people and learning the ropes so to speak and I realized how relatively easy it was to make a movie.
Now, a lot of people will say, yeah right, Justin. But honestly, it’s not that difficult — at least not compared to what I always imagined.
To me Hollywood was this unobtainable dream — a place where you had to be on the inside to really make anything happen. I guess in some ways that’s always been — and still is — very true, but what I learned was that just about anyone with an idea and the ambition can make a movie.
Is your movie going to reach cult status like Star Wars or Reservoir Dogs? Probably not. Will it make you millions of dollars and rival movies made by Michael Bay or Steven Spielberg?
Very doubtful.
But, that’s not really the reason I ever wanted to make movies. Sure, it would be nice to be on par with those filmmakers, but at the end of the day I want to tell a story — which to me is what filmmaking is all about.

As I was saying, 3 years ago when I was involved with this indie film project it really pulled the curtain back to me and made me realize how I could make a movie just as easily as anyone else in Hollywood. I mean, after seeing some of the shit that gets produced, it surprises me that more people aren’t out there trying to make movies.
So, upon my “epiphany”, I sought to make my own movie.
I started thinking of ideas and scripts and storylines and characters, trying to decide what my movie was going to be about.
I had two very strong ideas that I started writing scripts for, but eventually let them fall by the wayside as they just didn’t have the interest that I was looking for.
So about a year ago I started thinking about a female action hero. Someone who was bad ass but very realistic. A chick who could kick ass with the best of them, but didn’t rely on super powers or fancy gadgets to do it. And as I thought about this character and who she would be and what the story would be about the idea sort of took a life of its own.

Black Betty, as I’m sure most of you probably know, is a song title. It was made popular in the 70′s by a band called Ram Jam. The song itself however is actually an old blues song that originates way back to the 1800′s as a prison work song. I learned this the way anyone these days gets their information: Google.
I always loved the Ram Jam version of the song. It’s very driving and just a kick ass song.
The more I thought about the song and the title, Black Betty, the more I sort of just associated that title with my character. The energy of the song and the name, Black Betty, was to me a perfect fit for this character I was developing in my mind.

So I did my research and I only discovered one other movie called Black Betty — a low budget Vampire flick that was released years ago. Upon further research I discovered a comic book character with the same name as well. Since the comic character nor the Vampire movie really had anything to do with my idea or concept, I decided to move forward with the name.
The domain name, blackbetty.com, was already taken, so I opted for the next best thing — blackbettymovie.com.
I bought the domain, created a logo (below) and put up a placeholder. I grabbed the Facebook and Twitter names as well and started Tweeting about the movie.
This was all soon after I started writing the script.

Now, I had started on a script a couple of years ago for one of my other ideas — before that I had never written a script in my life.
I got Final Draft, did some studying up on script writing via the internet and by the time I began writing the script for Black Betty I felt confident enough I could do it to at least make my own film. I figured if it wasn’t technically correct it didn’t matter because I’d be directing the movie regardless. I just needed to get my story down.

A couple of months after I started writing I finished my first draft. It was about 100 pages — the average length for a feature film — and needless to say I was pretty proud of myself. Mind you this was a first draft and was chock full of plot holes, bad dialogue and filler, but still, it was a finished script. It was an accomplishment to me that I cherished.
I wasted no time registering the script with the WGA and printed up copies to give to some of my friends in Hollywood to read through and get some feedback on.
During that time I already began re-writing the story, changing characters, dialogue and key scenes. Each time I went through the script I wasn’t happy with it and would always change some part of it.
At this point I don’t know how many revisions have been done on the script, but I’m about 80% finished with a story that I’m pretty happy with. The remaining 20% is being worked on as we speak and in the meantime I’ve already began pre-production on a Black Betty short film. The short will be specific scenes from the script put together into a 15-20 minute version that I’ll be submitting to film festivals and gaining some exposure for the brand.

Ultimately I’d love to see a franchise born out of this character and already have an idea for part two.

The past year has been very productive without a doubt, however I’m positive that 2011 will be even moreso.
I’ve already cast the lead for the short — Alexandra Heard — who will play Black Betty. She is an unknown and this will be her first real acting gig. I met her on a music video shoot and the more I got to know her the more I felt she was perfect for the role.

Currently Alexandra is doing some fight training to prep her for one of the scenes we’ll be shooting. Being a dancer she already has the agility and stamina to do it, I just want to make sure when we start shooting she knows what she’s doing and it looks good on camera — also so we can make sure nobody gets hurt.

So that’s the story. If you’re here you must have some interest in the project, and so I ask that you keep checking in as the film progresses. Please mention it to your friends, post about it on Facebook, Twitter and on your blogs. I don’t expect you to just take my word for it, which is why I’m making the short in the first place.
I want to be able to show you guys my vision and give you something to get excited about.

Until the next blog, here’s a photo of Alexandra Heard (aka Black Betty).

Alexandra Heard

Follow Black Betty on Facebook and Twitter to keep up-to-date on the latest news, photos, videos and behind-the-scenes exclusives.
I’m very excited about this project and I hope you guys can share in that with this blog. Thanks for reading and for the support!

-Justin