Synopsis: A man travels to Springville, Utah to hang out in a dry cleaners owned by Joe, a Korean immigrant.
Cast & Crew: I directed. Artist/photographer Patrick Barth starred as cinematographer. Producer/assistant camera/astrophysicist Jean Cottam did everything else. Joe (presumably) makes his onscreen debut as himself. Patrick, a longtime friend, is working on his own film-based project for the Spring, and was interested in getting a feel for the Sony VX camera and the logistics of shooting; when we found out that we would all be in Utah for the holidays, I rushed together this one-day shoot.
Locations: The simple script calls for just three locations: a hotel room, the man’s car, and the cleaners. The Provo Travelodge served us well; we didn’t spend nearly enough time in the richly appointed lobby (see left). Faced with such breathtaking mountain views, the Travelodge decided not to compete; their room decor is very pared down, which fit the aesthetic needs of the story. I’d known about the cleaners in Springville; you might say I’d location scouted it before.
Equipment: For this rather impromptu shoot, I kept equipment at a minimum. Probably too minimum, but any more’d mean more crew, more time, next thing you know there’re unions involved, Della Reese wants a cameo, you get the idea.
Actually, I’d planned to mooch equipment from a friend in SLC, but schedules didn’t match up, so at the last minute, I brought my old Sony VX-1000 and package from New York. It worked great, except when it didn’t work. Overdue for its factory service, we had inexplicable outages, which we at first thought was the monitor (battery or cable). As they say in Provo, oh my heck, this thing is a piece of shizz.
Lighting, with a 2-live crew , we had to go with natural light; from my intense study of Soderbergh DVD commentaries (see Traffic School), I learned about replacing light bulbs. (Note to Travelodge: If you’re wondering why room 217 uses 10x as much electricity as the others, check the bulbs.) What we didn’t figure out until it was too late is to use natural wavelength or tungsten bulbs. As a workaround, I rewrote the script so that the golden hues of the small hotel room pay homage to Soderbergh’s Mexico scenes. Option 2: Heck, we’ll fix it in post.
Sound, we were screwed. I didn’t get DAT/MD and a mic before coming out, so we ended up shooting all camera mic. This should be ok, since there’s hardly any dialogue in the 5-min. film. The solution here: fix it in post. We took ample room tone in each location, and then did some scenes purely for sound, as if the camera were just a mic. The idea is to clean up these tracks as much as possible and construct the sound once we get the rough cut.
I’ve got some last minute Christmas shopping to do, so check back for some amusing anecdotes.
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the making of, by greg allen