the making of, by greg allen
…
I just got home from our first night of locations, here in NYC. First, thanks to everyone. It went extremely well, even if it took over twice as long as I’d originally planned. Some headaches/highlights:
‘Night. Gotta get up early to return the equipment, the van, and to screen/make adjustments for France.
This morning I was researching changes we may need to make to consent/release forms to enable us to shoot in France. I was reading through the WIPO site, when I searched across a memo written by an old friend and former roommate. He works at the MPAA, so in a sense, he’s the boss of the WIPO. If I didn’t know what a tough lawyer he is, I’d sing It’s a small world after all.
Oh, and I haven’t found any analysis of how a babelfish-based translation of a legal document holds up in EU courts. We may be the test case.
Yesterday’s B&H Photo haul (Total cost: around $400):
After asking and studying both DAT and MD options, we’ve decided to use a combination of DV and Mini-Disc for audio, editing all on DV in Final Cut Pro and then laying down the superior MD audio on the final…cut. LAFCPUG’s review of the HHB MDP500 Portable MD recorder was the clincher; the HHB’s USB port helped close the deal.
And we’ll have two cameras (bonus!), my Sony VX1000 and a Sony PD-150, which is a couple of rungs up the evolutionary ladder. Two cameras should help speed along the driving shots, landscape shots, and maybe dialogue scenes as well.
Another way things have changed: I made the bed. Pulled the long, blonde hair off the charcoal wool blanket. It’s just like the one on the floor. On that Jil Sander coat over there. On the seat belt strap when I got into the car for the first time in a week. Ubiquitous little signals of a life shared. And now I think of them as potential sources of DNA. Such as those the families of the missing only wish they had more of. [NYTimes, full article requires purchase]
Spent the last few days reworking the script, adding New York scenes. As Jonah suggested, it would be stronger to show the wife’s own search as well, so we set out to find an actress who would do well on camera, not just via voiceover.
Yesterday, I scouted out some friends’ apartment, which is perfect; they graciously have agreed to let us shoot there this week. It’s in Tribeca, and they have a great art collection, so it’ll shoot really well, I think.
v2.0 of the script is available, which will be substantially the same one we shoot from next week. Here is a corresponding version of the location and shots list, where most of the scene/shot numbers changed after I added NY scenes. It’s another heinous MS-generated html page.
Friday night we went to another friend’s opening and then to dinner following. At dinner, MoMA Architecture Curator Terry Riley told us about speaking about the history of the WTC rebuilding debate recently in Colorado (story from Denver Post).
Last night I went to the opening of German painter Gerhard Richter’s retrospective at MoMA. Over 500 people shoehorned into dinner, while another 1500 or so poured into the galleries. It’s the last major exhibition before the museum closes for a three-year renovation. In his speech, Glenn Lowry, the Director, likened the show (and the artist) to the museum’s landmark exhibits of Cezanne and Picasso.
Even at such a weighty, important, and exciting occasion, it didn’t take more than one course before our table was engrossed in sharing personal experiences of September 11. (Don’t look at me; I was talking about Nazi-stolen art and the growing imperative for schools to ban dodgeball.) The stories were familiar, similar to ones we all had/heard, but it didn’t matter. We apparently still need to remember these things.
Had the first reading of the script with the main actors (more about them later) to see how they fit/relate to the parts. It was unexpectedly nervewracking to hear the words I wrote being read by someone else as their own words. Would it suck? Would it sound likeme talking to myself?
Turns out, it felt and sounded good. As they settled into the roles, and we talked about the characters between readings, they kept getting better and better. By building familiarity with the characters, not just the words, the actors started getting into the roles. Interesting process. And the presence of outsiders (i.e., people other than me) who didn’t cringe or seem to struggle for something to say was also encouraging.
On another front: I put together a detailed list of locations and corresponding shots. It included time estimates for each setting and getting each shot. THIS then rolled up into a shooting schedule, which is D*#M tight! We’re looking at shoehorning 30.5 hours of shooting (including setup) into 4 days. Given the sunrise/sunset in France in February, and the difficulty shooting outdoors when the sun’s at strong angles (early and late), there’s not really 7.5 hours/day available. It’ll be close. stay tuned. Fortunately, we don’t have any Project Greenlight-style swimming scenes.
Update: Met with DP two nights in a row, discussing casting, scheduling, the script (which may go through another revision very soon), and some ideas for adding a shoot day in NYC. We’re also going to do some readings/camera tests to help finalize casting. Alice, friend of Jonah’s was along tonight; look forward to her joining. She’s got some good experience, connections, and her french is excellent. The script’s been downloaded far more than I expected (I never download pdf’s).
Other: DV audio tips search turned up another film weblog, this one from Dallas-based Bare Ruined Films.
And it turns out the master of the no-budget blockbuster, Robert “El Mariachi” Rodriquez, beat us all to it with his book, Rebel Without a Crew, which includes his daily production journal as well. There’s a webring around here somewhere, I can feel it…
YIKES. Within five minutes of posting the script, I see the opening scene of IFC’s With the Filmmaker: Martin Scorcese by Albert Maysles, where The Man says:
The worst thing when you’re preparing a film, is the endless stream of opinions and suggestions you get; people talking and talking. You can’t concentrate and hear the one voice you need to focus on–your own.
My automatic (deadpan) reply: “Are you talkin’ to me? Are you talkin’ to ME??”
Considerations made in posting the script for this short, called (for the moment) Souvenir:
Anyway, here is the first complete shooting script in pdf format. [note: I fixed the link; ome people with old skool browsers reported problems. Also, I noticed that the title shows v1.4, not 1.5.1, and the footer is screwed up. OTOH, I converted this .doc to .pdf for free on Adobe’s site. Thanks, Adobe.] Do with it what you will (as long as it isn’t appropriation, unauthorized publication or use, outright mockery, or plagiarism).
Making this film means keeping “artist hours,” means watching the Australian Open semis live on ESPN2 while storyboarding.
Updating the storyboard means ftp’ing on the site, means checking my logs. it’s been a while.
Favorite search engine query bringing me a visitor (from google): “I went to high school with Ben Affleck”
I’ve found a DP (director of photography, or cinematographer, variously), Jonah Freeman, a brilliant artist who works in video and installation. Very excited.
The last week has been spent rewriting and looking for a lead actor, who’ll have to carry the whole thing, basically. The actor I wanted first, Ed Norton, just started shooting a new Hannibal Lecter film two weeks ago, so he’s out. Jonah and I are meeting with some people today who he’s worked with before. Stay tuned.
FWIW, I started a storyboard based on the latest version of the reading script. (See a brief discussion of shooting and reading scripts here,) As we start blocking out the scenes and building the shooting schedule, detail will increase. I’m using Google Images Search to approximate the composition of shots I have in mind. Never seen this done before; if you have, please let me know where.
Details about the short:
Cast:
New Yorker, 30, m
His Wife, 16 (just kidding. 30), f [phone voice only]
Mechanic, 22, m [french]
Cafe Owner, 50, f [french]
Farmer, 85, m [french]
Locations:
CDG/Roissy
Albert, France & surrounding region
The last two weeks, I have been consumed by the task of writing a screenplay for a short film that has been percolating/eating at me/distracting me since the late fall. ( You do the math.) I’m thinking of posting either an in-process or a finished version of the script here soon; we’ll see. Shooting should take only about three days.
The format a short film takes–as dictated by various film festival submission requirements and a group called The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences— is proving to be at once constraining and liberating, maybe like writing a sonnet or something. There’s enough structure to give ready shape to the ideas and story I’ve got in my mind.
The movie is set in France (thus my last post about rental cars in France), and explores the lives and views of people living in the aftermath of World War I. It specifically looks at the Battle of the Somme, which was one of the most devastating, prolonged, and–in some ways–pointless acts of violence in the century.
At the time (starting in 1916), it was extremely difficult for people to adequately comprehend the scale of the killing that took place, and it was supposed that nothing could surpass it. Such views were, of course, proven wrong in WWII and since.
While The Somme lives on in metaphor and has specifically been invoked to describe Ground Zero and the killings of September 11, I think the contemporary view is quite removed from the experiences and perspectives that prevailed “in the wake” of 1916.
Hellfire Corner is a tremendous source of current and historical information about The Great War, which still seems to resonate in the UK far more than in the US (as far as I’ve seen, anyway). When I was visiting the UK for some friends’ art opening last October, I saw many Londoners wearing the Flanders Poppy on their lapels, a sign of remembrance for those lost in battle that seems to proliferate in the Armistice Day/Veteran’s Day season.
It’s odd and unexpected how this writing and pre-prod process is having such a cathartic, mind-clearing effect on my other, “main” project. Like gauging and mapping out a boulder that has been blocking the (clear, I thought) path.
How NOT to screen video of farmers baling hay that you shot on your first day of your first location:
1) Watch Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, in which nearly every scene looks like a Vermeer, a Hopper, shot at “magic hour.”[note: this link’s a bit random; a blurb on magic hour from a home entertainment center dealer]
2)Watch your own. shot on DV.
You know, I have to say, I started writing this entry before I screened our tape, immediately after being blown away again by Malick’s daunting images. I was intimidated, and I expected the stuff we shot to be totally unwatchable by comparison. You know, it’s not the case. Our footage is certainly different, very rough in spots, and will probably not win the cinematography prize at Cannes like Nestor Almendros’ work did, but it’s not bad.
The first third of the tape were exterior shots of the barn/shed and the fields behind my grandparents’ house; their neighbor’s corral with its tired old horse; and the lawn, huge evergreen bushes and a willow tree in the backyard. (I remember when these bushes were small enough to see through, if not quite over.) There’s no sound, though. At all. I remember that.
The middle third is of my grandmother driving through Mapleton, discussing the town and their land and farming as we searched for hay being baled. We’d missed most of the harvest by a week or so, as it turns out, due to scheduling exigencies. She’s pretty good. Decades of teaching elementary school show themselves in her clear, descriptive manner.
The last third was new to me. We’d found a crew loading bales of hay onto a trailer, and Jeff got out to shoot them while I went back to get our car. There’s an interesting poetry in the footage. Two teenagers with T-shirts and baseball caps and a late 30’s guy with a walrus mustache, a paunch, and those glasses that darken automatically when you go outside. It’s hot (100+) and it’s clearly hard work. Every once in a while, you can see where the guys are hamming for the camera. No way are they gonna be caught on film struggling with a bale of hay. Jeff kept the tape rolling nonstop, so myriad adjustments and setups punctuate the footage. As he jogged towards my approaching car, he said, “that loud sound is the A/C. I could use some water.”
The mountains in the background, the cloud-streaked blue sky, the deep green field, these young guys doing essentially 100-year old work that’s not so different from that of Malick’s farmers. It’s encouraging. (and late. good night.)