a crew, a deer, and a new film (an uber-long trip report)

[pryor15]

Regular readers of tl;dr are well aware that I often use the forum as a vehicle for promoting my own film work, while at the same time trying to give people who are interested in a look at the processes, trials, and tribulations of a no-budget filmmaker. Previously there was shot-by-shot through L’Attente, which was supposed to be the first in a series, but since I suck and got distracted, it wasn’t. Then, there was a series of threads about a moose hunting documentary that ultimately didn’t work for a larger audience because, well, it only took them 13 minutes to shoot the damn thing.

This brings us to the latest project, a short film that I haven’t yet titled.

The genesis of the film lies in this post, where I solicited ideas for a character’s motivations, based on a scenario I’d come up with after seeing this photo. There were a lot of good ideas batted around in that thread, but ultimately the film changed enough that I couldn’t really use any of them. Still, the discussion of said ideas was vital to the process, so much thanks to everyone who contributed (those of you who did, PM me your real names and I’ll thank you in the credits)

A quick note about the plot of this film: there are maybe 15-20 people who know anything about the content of the film, all of whom were either directly working on the film or people who’s advice I solicited (Dominic, for example). For various reasons I’m keeping it all under wraps until it premieres in April, partly because I have a good reason, and partly for fun.

Now...on to the good stuff

Early in the discussions for this film, I knew I wanted something that was visually 180 degrees from L’Attente and other films I’d done before. Part of my process in working on a short film, since the potential audience is so much smaller, is to always use them as an opportunity to stretch as a filmmaker in some way. So, one of my early rules is to not repeat myself, to whenever possible do something I’ve not done before. This accomplishes a couple things: it makes me a better filmmaker by forcing me to work outside any sort of comfort zone, it gives me a body of work that’s more diverse and therefore more likely to show the full range of whatever talents I have, and it forces me to learn from people who’ve done this sort of thing before. It would have been really easy for me to devise something small that I could have made very cheaply and it would have been fine, but I know I can do that effectively, so it wouldn’t really have been all that interesting.

This led me to contacting a couple of the filmmakers I know in the city, who all suggested I get this guy Dave to DP the film for me, if possible, since I knew that I didn’t possess enough talents in the arenas of lighting and composition to achieve the sort of look I wanted. Dave had been a fan of L’Attente, so based on that I was able to bribe him with a little bit of cash to do the film. Which brings up a good point: you don’t, in my opinion try to branch out too fast, too soon. It would have been much more difficult for me to get the type of crew and people I did for this film without something like L’Attente to show that I’m a competent filmmaker. The ability to say, “this is my last film that we shot in 3 hours for $15, and I want to do something bigger” goes a long way toward credibility with people who are clearly more experienced than me. It also probably makes it much easier to get people to work for free, knowing that there’s clearly someone in charge who has a clue, in terms of a finished product. (Being a critic doesn’t hurt either, nor does the days I’ve previously helped out on other people’s films in the past).

Anyway, Dave gave me a list of people he’d like for a crew, so I got all of them on board, and we were off and running, albeit on a really tight prep schedule (for reasons that’ll be obvious when you see the final film). All told we had time for one production meeting, one rehearsal, and about a million emails. We would have benefitted greatly from more of each. We also locked our location a week before we filmed and our actor 4 days before filming (and he’s directing a film that opens tomorrow, so how he found the time is beyond me). So, we were really limited it what we could prepare for ahead of time. The lead character is played by an actress I’ve known since college. She was instrumental in developing the story, especially considering that the protagonist is a woman and, to quote George Costanza, “I probably know less about women than...anyone in the world.” She also convinced her father to loan us his old van...more on that later.

We lucked into a location where two of my married friends were going to be gone from Friday at noon until Sunday night. We essentially had carte blanche in their apartment, with the obvious request that we put everything back where we found it. They also have 2 cats, who we were free to use in the film.

I knew my Canon XL1S wasn’t going to be up to task of what I wanted visually (at least for the scenes in the apartment), plus it was in the shop, so we rented a DVX100b for the weekend, along with a bunch of lighting equipment. So, Friday I dove the borrowed van around to pick up all the stuff and got to the apartment around 5pm, where I took pictures of every square inch of the apartment and started moving stuff around. After a bit, my roommate Josh showed up to help me move larger stuff, and seeing as it’s about 45 minutes from our apartment, we both crashed there.

The call for Saturday was 8am and we had, at first, a crew of 7 people, not counting me, plus 2 cast members. The first thing I noticed was that whereas I’m used to doing pretty much everything, there were stretches where I wasn’t needed. We’d look at the shot list and while they set up the next shot I’d hang out until they were close, then I’d look at the monitor and say something like, “Can we shift the camera left about 2 feet?” or “I’m not thrilled with the light in this part of the frame.” Then, they’d fix it and we’d shoot. Whenever something odd needed to be done, I’d get Josh or someone to do it, which left me free to deal with the actors and make sure we were getting the shots we needed. Had I been better prepared, we could have moved more quickly, but that’s part of the learning experience. I wasn’t really prepared for the amount of set-up required to, say, shoot a profile shot after we’d already set for a shot from straight on. This is something I’ll do better for the one scene we still have left to shoot in March. By the end of the day, we’d shot for almost 16 hours (my male actor had a change in his schedule so we had to get all his stuff on Saturday, which forced us to adjust our shooting schedule). Some of the footage is beautiful.

The next day, we had to finish some of the scenes that we couldn’t fully shoot the day before, because of the schedule shift. Like, there was one scene that was 80% the two actors, then 20% just her. Normally, you’d shoot it all at once, but we had to shift the 20% to the next day, which cost us a lot of time. The second day also had the emotional core of the story, which we had planned to do last, since we weren’t sure how much the actress would have left after that. But, this also was shifted around a couple of times, costing us time. The second day was 11-12 hours and the owners came back with like 2 hours left. Apparently she was pissed, which I thought was at me, but supposedly was at her husband, who hadn’t really told her the full extent of what was going on. So, here’s the scenario: we’ve got a scene in the bedroom that’s a closed set, with just me, Dave, the sound operator, and the actress. In the other room is the rest of the crew, waiting for us to finish and supposedly putting everything back in place in the other rooms. You’ve got the wife who has to be up at 5.30 the next morning and just wants to go to bed and her husband is thrilled to death that there’s a “real” film shoot going on in his apartment. And I’m trying to keep the peace. So, about half-way through the scene, I come out and ask them if they could keep the noise down a bit more and point out that there’s still a lot of small stuff that needs to be done–photos replaced, trinkets arranged, stuff like that–I go back in the other room and come out a minute later. No one’s moved. So, I grab a couple of the trinkets and hand them to someone. Again, no one moves. I then ask Dave if we need any of the equipment left in the other rooms. He says no, so I tell the crew that it’d be great if we could get this stuff cleared out while we’re setting for the next shot. No one moves. She’s pissed. So, mostly for her benefit, I snap a little and say, “guys, I know it’s nice to watch TV and everything but this stuff needs to be moved now. I’m not [censored] around.” So now they’re all mad at me and I’m emailing apologies to everyone. As it was, I was there for 3 hours after everyone left, cleaning walls and replacing photos and doing tiny stuff they could have easily done.

So then I’m driving back to my apartment in the van and 2 deer jump out in front of me. I swerve, miss one and hit the other. It bounces off the grill and there’s an antler resting on the windshield wiper. I stop and the hood looks a bit banged up, but good enough to drive. I keep going, trying to call someone who knows what I should do about the deer. Finally, I get my father and he says I should stop somewhere that might have a flashlight and see if there’s anything wrong underneath the hood. So, I stop at a Hampton Inn. I can’t get the hood open, but there’s a ton of oil underneath. So, there’s no way I’m driving a borrowed van in this condition and I can’t leave all this equipment out in the sub-freezing weather, so I get a room for $100, move about half the stuff into the hotel room, and wake up at 7 to rent a van from the U Haul down the street, so that I can drop all the stuff off by 10am and not get charged for another day. I’m still not sure what’s going to happen with the van. Then, last night I got drunk.

Now, some photos: