BOTTOM FEEDERS
Interview with Director Vincent D'Alessandro
Vincent D’Alessandro was a Filmmaking BFA student of mine at Rutgers University, with the unlucky timing of graduating during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the shutdown, he raised money and produced a film right out of school. I was delighted when he invited me to a recent screening of his debut feature, Bottom Feeders (2025).
I spoke with him about the process of making a microbudget film, his approach to character, blocking, shooting, misadventures in distribution, and plans for future projects.
RENT THE MOVIE HERE: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/bottomfeeders
Bottom Feeders interview with director Vincent D’Allesandro
Congratulations on the release of Bottom Feeders. How would you describe it to someone considering clicking the rent button?
Bottom Feeders is about a lost 20-year-old living in rural Pennsylvania during a blistering winter. He’s dealing with an unstable father and using sex and intimacy as his one constant of control against a world and life that he has no control over.
And then in one word, what is bottom feeders really about?
Escape.
You're 27 years old. You graduated from the Filmmaking BFA at Rutgers University in 2021. Did you take any other classes or think about grad school at all, or did you just want to go right into the film business?
The thing about a BFA that's nice is you're getting a lot of what will be in an MFA. Rutgers was a self-sufficient program, which was good. They didn't hold your hand at all. And that was the best preparation to make a first feature right out of the gate, right after graduation. Because you're already seasoned, you're doing it, you know, especially right after doing your thesis, and you're doing it, you know, and everything is inherently scrappy when you're doing it.
Bottom Feeders is your first feature film. Did you make some short films after college, building up to this? What was your path?
I made my thesis film, Dogfood, in the Fall of 2020, and I finished the cut probably around January or February. While I was working on the sound mix and design, I was writing the feature script, and I knew I wanted to do it. I was trying to do it that year, but the reality of COVID shutdowns pushed it back. But we did it within a year. Exactly a year after I started writing the script, we had shot it. I did a Kickstarter in the middle, around June of 2021. And then we shot it the next January 2022.
Six months out of school. That's great. That's really what every film program wants, right? You get your training and get right out to make it, do it. So, where did you find the inspiration for this?
It's a world that I was exploring in my thesis, which I felt like I was not done exploring yet, and still feel I'm probably not done exploring, and probably will continue on whatever the next project is. I had become fascinated with this kind of Americana on the edges, basically Rust Belt Middle America, and specifically, youth. People who are lost at such a young age and don't know what to do truly just have to survive and fend for themselves.
And whether that be Non-high school graduates or high school graduates who are just thrown into the machine, lacking parental guidance, pushing them towards university, trade school, or a career. People who are lost at such a young age and don't know what to do just have to survive and fend for themselves. It's fascinating to me, and just incredibly sad, and stories that I felt weren't being explored. It felt like a very natural extension of my thesis film.
I started developing the character in the script because I wrote it specifically from his perspective. Let's just explore this world explicitly, just through his eyes. Let's see where it goes. I was incredibly regimented, too, in how I was writing. I wanted to write at least ten pages a day. Just bang it out, go go go. And, that's really easy to do when you're not thinking about act structure and all this other stuff that I find to be problematic.
Dimitri, your lead character, has a world-weary aspect, but he's naive at the same time. How did that come out in the draft - was his character formed as you started, or did that come together as you were writing it?
He came together as I was writing it. I knew he was a little arrogant shit. That was part of it. I thought that was important to the character because I think that is a testament to a lot of us at that age. It is, you know, a survival instinct.
I think to be that cocky, that arrogant, that confident in yourself when you don't know you have no control over anything else is a natural impulse.
He's a powerless character. He can't even get unemployment benefits because he's only ever been paid in cash. He's never done paperwork for a job. So he's very much a lost character.
Yeah. That was all about control and a lack of a positive mother or father figure in his life. That skewed his perception of women. When he meets the character Jess later on, he forms a more maternal connection with her. It is romantic, obviously, but it's the first time he's giving himself up to someone. Sex is the one thing he can control, you know, I do think he thought he was good at it, or at least, you know, the pleasure he got from it made him believe that he was good at it.
So let's talk about converting the script into shooting format. So you worked with your classmate, fellow alum Jack Mannion on this as cinematographer. Did he shoot your short as well?
He shot my thesis, Dogfood.
Okay, so this seems like a natural progression, then.
Yeah, it was good. He knew the rules already.
How did you guys go about breaking down the script, deciding on locations, deciding on camera form, and building a shooting plan?
Oh, there's so much to say. The shooting language is something we brought over from the short, trying to pack as much into a single shot as possible. I have an affinity for blocking, which is fun but also saves time if we can get a scene in one take.
Also, moving the camera as much as possible to create the oners, letting the camera continue to flow. We’re latched to Dmitri, and whenever we dislodge from him, it was intentional. And then in the final scene, when he's looking through the garage, he's pretending that this is a house that he's flipping with his father, we start to pass the camera to each character.
It was important for us to be able to move the camera without cutting and then make fluid editing decisions later. It doesn't feel like a cut to a new setup because it isn't a new shot. It's the same setup. It's just cutting between takes, which is cool and fun.
What camera did you use?
We shot on the Black Magic 6K Pocket Camera, and it's a great camera. One thing that I'm thinking a lot about now is how unnecessary shooting in 6K is, especially because it filled up two 14-terabyte hard drives, plus an additional two for backups. Of course, I mastered in 4K because mastering in 6K is pointless. No one is going to be able to exhibit that.
So you graduated in the worst possible time, right in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. How did that affect your decisions?
I went right into this film, and I knew I would do this after graduation, so I saved up to be able to just focus on making the feature. I don't have much interest in working on other people's sets or interning or anything like that.
You put yourself out there with your film, how did that feel to say, “Hey world, judge my film?”
The word independent filmmaking is a very loose term right now. They're very liberal when they use it. A movie like this, say, ten, 15 years ago, might have had a shot of getting into a pretty reputable festival highlighting new talent or scrappy films or movies that are just a bit more abrasive.
It did play at three underground film festivals. Kansas City Underground Film Festival, which is cool. Torino in Italy, Toronto Underground Fest, and then Melbourne Underground Film Festival in Australia. So “underground” was the theme, I guess. Yeah, it is an underground movie. It is a midnight movie for sure.
Let's talk distribution. You signed with a distributor, but they let you down, right?
It was my first feature, so I was a bit delusional about my expectations for everything. The issue with the distributor was that they pitched me a specialized release, confident that this was something that we could get into some name festivals to use as a launching pad, a specialized release for the arthouse crowd. And I was like, that's a good pitch, so I said yes.
Down the line, they abandoned the film when success wasn’t easy. They sat on the movie for over a year, then dropped it on pay-per-view streamers, not even many of them. Nobody's going to know it's there, you know? And it's like you have to do something, some sort of work, to get people to know that it's there.
So, after some big promises, the distributor dropped the ball.
That's right, basically. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt that they had the good intention of following through on these things. But at one point or another, I decided that it wasn't working. This tactic, the strategy, the specialized release strategy, wasn't working. I do feel many of the distributors are working in a world of ten years ago. How can you just release a movie and no one's going to know about it, you know?
I confronted them about that very mildly, very nicely. Just kind of like “what happened?” They said that there are no name actors, no festival run like all these things. It's kind of like, but you knew this. You knew this when you picked up the movie. So it's like, again, that's a cop out.
What did you learn about your film that you didn't know before by playing it for an audience?
It was a lot harder for people to watch than it was for me, like it was a lot more abrasive than I had thought. I knew it was abrasive. It's a testament to living it as you're making it. Right? Because you are living it, watching it happen. So you're getting desensitized to some of the, you know, more shocking or abrasive things. It's because this is normal for these people. Right? We’re in his world. That's great, I thought that was awesome.
It's a different context, you know, if you see disturbing sex acts in the privacy of your own home on your computer, like it's a very different situation than being in public in a group environment. Right?
Right. Yeah. That's definitely interesting. I mean, the one advantage you have is that the underground film festival audiences are a bit more resilient and interested in seeing more exhibitionist content.
So, take the lessons you learned from your first distributor experience. Now you've released the film through Vimeo on Demand, how is it going?
Vimeo on Demand is the only place left where you can upload a movie and sell it for purchase or rent. Prime Video Direct used to do that, but they just ended it, about, oh, maybe six months ago. They finally pulled the plug on that, which is a bummer to not have any other avenues for a filmmaker to self-distribute, without the influencer or aggregators or whatever.
It's not the most ideal thing in the world, but it's the only way to self-distribute and put it behind a paywall. I want an audience member to feel like they're actually renting a movie, not just downloading an H.264 file from my WeTransfer. So I’m holding on to it for now, holding on to the rights, you know, because it just makes the most sense.
I'm not opposed to working with a distributor in the future. The idea of transparency upfront and expectations is something that I would definitely ask about earlier on.
So you've been through this process now, are you trying to make another film? What are your next steps, and what have you learned from this? How would you do it better, smarter, faster next time?
I think, cheaper and more efficient. Crowdfunding is interesting, but I would never do it again. There's a lot of pressure, and crowdfunding has a lot of pressure after the fact, especially with people who are strangers who donated and reach out to you a lot.
For the next go around, I want to be in the $5000 range, which I think is doable. I would have to be a one-man band, which I’m OK with. I’m looking at a lot of camcorders that have their own look, but also they’re really efficient. You put an SD card in and press record, which can make the process a lot smoother. Do a 7 or 8 day shoot with 2 or 3 actors, a location I don’t have to pay for, be super efficient, and just worry about making a good movie.
I think writing to the resources you have is always the way to go, right?
Absolutely, that's my goal. Part of me wants to be super ambitious and, like, can I just bang out, like, three in a row? Let me just see if I can bang out. You know, do the Joe Swanberg thing, just kind of see if I can do it because I think it's important to not have too much space in between films one and two. The distribution process is a total soul killer and momentum killer, and it gets you away from the work.
I've mentioned Swanberg a lot because I think what he did in the like 2005 is the best thing that can happen now, and that is to make as much work as possible. So that so basically his his mentality was like, you know, like if they are ignoring me, I'm going to make so much work that they can't ignore me anymore, you know, and I think that's actually that's a really good ethos to have because it is it's true.
And then that's what he did. I mean, he made six features in one year at one time. You know it's like, and you can argue whether or not, you know, quality and what you think of them if you like them, if you like that style. If you mean if you like mumblecore people, some people just don't like it, and that's fine.
You just came out of film school, raring to go, and have a film to show for it. You know, some people never get to their first film, let alone their second. So I think it's something you can be proud of, the world does not make it easy to accomplish your goals. And so you just have to show that determination and, you know, just keep moving. Right?
Yeah. Brute force. Brute force.
All photos and poster art are from the film, courtesy of Vincent D’Alessandro.