Shooting pickups...

This last weekend we shot some pickups, based on needs identified from the rough cut.  My fake Japanese "legend" became the basis for a new scene to replace some material we were less than happy with.  The scene it's replacing just did not quite work, despite heroic performances by the cast and lovely cinematography by Lisa Sherman.  The problem was my writing.

Sometimes it happens that you write something that just does not quite work, for reasons that are hard to identify.  On paper, it looked fine.   It had the right tone and pace, it said what was needed, and everyone seemed to like it.  But then it came time to shoot it, and we all realized something just did not seem right.

For one, it was hard for the actors to get the feel for the line readings.  Not their fault; the dialogue was just...hard to say.  It read fine, but it felt odd to the mouth and the ears. Still, we plugged on through multiple takes and setups, including a fairly complex tracking shot that looked quite impressive.

I found myself asking all the questions a screen writer should ask under these circumstances:

• Is it advancing the story?  Yes.
• Are things actually happening in the scene? Yes.
• Is there a dramatic subtext that makes sense?  Yes.
• Is it authentic?  Yes.

But, the most important question was the last:

• Is this working?  

Eh...no.

And no amount of playing with it in editing helped.

The story of the fake legend, though - that helped.  Because it has a dramatic arc, as well as information to orient the audience, if only in terms of telling us why we have Japanese Noh masks as a motif in an American domestic drama.  It also set the mood as a tragedy with symbolic overtones and a supernatural element.  In other words, working the "legend" into the script as a story being told by one of the characters serves to set the stage for what's to follow.

This is a dramatic technique at least as old as Shakespeare (Hamlet's play-within-the-play comes immediately to mind, as do the marionette sequences in Being John Malkovitch and The Double Life of Veronique, or the ballet sequences in Black Swan, to cite a couple of modern examples).

We also decided to go more abstract with the visuals; more dream-like. We took full advantage of having an ace Steadicam operator by choreographing a new version of the rejected scene - this time in slow motion, without dialogue, and running as a single, long take. It's eerie and beautiful, with the camera floating through a stylized choreography of movement with the actors as they go about a Halloween celebration. Played against the story of the tragic thunder demon, it tells us all we need to know.  Indirectly, of course.

I cut it together and slapped some temp music and stock sound effects in, then sent out the new opening - all three minutes of it - to the cast and crew. The reaction was unanimous: much, much better.

I agree, and it's due in no small part to the work of our Steadicam operator, Mark Vetanen of Event One Video Production Services. He did an amazing job.  If you need a Steadicam guy in the Portland/Seattle corridor, look him up.  Seriously.

Also prominent were the performances of our two leads, Thurman Kellogg and Holly Rose, an accomplished actor/director who runs the Rosebud Children's Theater.  Their performances were pitch-perfect as a married couple who tragically lose a young son in an auto accident. Put simply, the acting could not have been better.

Just a little more to go to wrap up filming.  In the coming weeks, I'll also start focusing on the post-production process - the editing work flow, the scoring process (with composer David Fick, who created a marvelous Christmas Album you can order on Amazon.com), and the special effects.  It's an exciting time!

A Japanese Legend

We now have a schedule in place for filming the remaining footage for Kanashimi.  It's been an interesting few weeks, with the completion of a rough cut to get a feel for what we really needed to finish up, and some good, constructive feedback to help.  One of the crew (somewhat approvingly) called what we're doing a kind of "jazz film-making".  We started with a full score (the script, the shooting schedule), but budget limitations, minor disasters, and just plain lack of time forced us to begin improvising and riffing on the basic story.  Not unprecedented in the movie business, but not what we had in mind when we started, either.

No matter.  All films, to some degree or other, depart from their original plans - even Hitchcock had to adapt, on occasion.

Apropos of the coming shoot, here is a bit of backstory for the film, in the form of a short piece I wrote yesterday. It's designed to provide a rationale for some of the symbolic elements of the story, including the use of two Japanese Noh masks as key props.  This one is called Hannya:

Hannya is a female demon who was once human, and was transformed into horned, fanged beast by jealousy.  In our film, the mask is used as part of a Halloween costume, so there is nothing to explain.  She's just supposed to be scary.  But creating a rationale for the inclusion of the other mask proved a little more difficult, since he is supposed to have symbolic meaning, as well as just being creepy.  That one is O-Tobide:

"O-Tobide" is Japanese for "startled expression", which the mask reflects.  In Noh theater, the mask is worn to represent a supernatural character, usually a demon of thunder. The Noh plays, while interesting, are lyrical, philosophical, and poetic (as well as being very "Japanese"), and thus were not suitable to provide an interesting back story for Kanashimi.

As Werner Herzog did not say (but easily could have), "Never let the facts get in the way of a good story."  So, in that spirit, I present:

雷鬼の悲しみ

(Kaminari oni no Kanashimi - The Sorrow of the Thunder Demon)

(a Japanese "legend" I made up, with elements taken from the Noh play, Kamo)

 A man and his young son were walking to Kyoto to visit the shrine known as Shimogamo Jinja.  A thunderstorm struck, but they continued on in the rain, for they were on their way to pray for the soul of the man's wife, who had passed away on that very morning.  Fed by the storm, the Takano river swelled as they were crossing the bridge, and the man's son was swept away in the current. Heartbroken, the man cried out to Wakeikazuchi, the god of thunder, who answered by striking the bridge in front of him with lightening.  The man was so shocked that his countenance was frozen in astonishment and fear.  Nonetheless, the man pleaded with the god to return his son.  But it was too late, the boy had already joined his mother in the land of the dead. Overcome with grief, the man pleaded twice more, until, in an act of pity, the god transformed the man into a supernatural being - kaminari oni - a demon of thunder.  Now he could strike at will between heaven and earth; he could visit both the living and the dead, but could not be a part of either world. To this day, he is called "o tobide", for the look of surprise and grief that he will wear for all eternity.

The Value of Diversity

The Value of Diversity - it's not just a politically correct sentiment.  It's actually a useful concept, especially in film-making.  Allow me to explain:

I had to replace our original DP, who shall, for the moment, remain nameless.  Regular readers (all two or three of you) will know who he is/was 'cause I bragged on him back when I thought it was a done deal.  I bragged pretty fiercely. Very talented fellow, who liked the script and believed in the project.

Then, he had a prior commitment (a paying one) extend the shoot into overlapping with our Kanashimi schedule, which, unfortunately for his participation, was quite inflexible.  So I released him of his obligation, no hard feelings. I scrubbed the old posts referring to him, mainly to avoid embarrassing either of us professionally.  He's a good guy, and we may work together in the future.

As I told him, though, I had a contingency.  I always have a contingency.  I'd made up my mind to put a friend of mine on the short list as a replacement, and her name I shall tell you: the lovely, the talented Lisa Sherman.  She and I have known each other off and on for about 30+ years.  We went to school together.  As teens back in Florida we made silly little horror movies and dreamed of Hollywood.  She actually went; I didn't. A USC Film School graduate, she now owns a company in Portland, Oregon called Media FX.

So I talked her and her business partner Erik Mayne into joining the team, serving as the Camera Department.

Here's where the "diversity" part comes in.  No, not her gender; I couldn't care less about that.  I'm talking about her training and her vision. While I have worked in TV and directed a few short films to order, I'd never been to film school.  Nor had I ever originated a film from the ground up (outside of the aforementioned teen-aged cinematic extravaganzas we'd shot on Super-8 and VHS).  I was always a hired gun, with someone else to handle the fine details (like craft services).

Lisa, on the other hand, knows the "right" way to do things.  She like, went to school for it. This created an interesting dynamic between my sort of theoretical, self-taught approach and her more grounded world view.   She knew when I was off on a losing tangent, even when I didn't, and would reel me back in. Sometimes gently; more often, not so.  The first couple of days, I was so sure I'd planned everything pretty well, and she was so sure I had not.  Guess who was right?  Yep.  Score one for Lisa.

Fortunately (and perhaps miraculously), my ego stood down long enough to listen to her guidance, and - by the third day - we were humming along like a well-oiled machine, with proper preparations and even (gasp!) short production meetings every morning.  My prior experience, as it turned out, did help, because it taught me to listen to people who know more than I.  Directing a scene on the floor and working with actors is something very much in my comfort zone, but worrying about what people were eating and how to make sure the crew stayed on the same page throughout the day?  Well, that had always been someone else's department.  Now I have a fair clue about that part of the process, too.

Beyond that, though, was the fact that I'd almost always DP'd my own work.  With few exceptions, I used to set my own lights, operate the camera, and get what I wanted by just doing it. The people who used to hire me loved that.  This time I had my hands full as a first-time Executive Producer, Location Manager, and Chief Assistant Cook and Bottle Washer as well.  All that and photograph it, too?  Are you KIDDING?!

So it was that, this time, I actually sat back and watched someone else light the set.  Frequently, her ideas were utterly different from my original conception.  I would start to say something, then let the words die in my throat and just take it in.  Most of the time, I just let her do her thing, even though it's not what I had in mind, because - God help me - I found it inspiring to see someone else's take on the same material I'd been living with for almost a year, now, in the form of script drafts and storyboards and concept art. The similarities in our visions were instructive, but more so the differences, which forced me to look at the script, the set, and the performances through new eyes.

In other words - and this is very important for you aspiring film-makers to soak in - the diversity of our artistic visions led to some awesome solutions that, alone, I would never have seen.  When she got through lighting the office scene, for example (which I had envisioned as flat, pasty, and dull), it looked dark and menacing - like the undocumented 8th level of hell.  This spurred me to compose a shot that was never in the storyboards, which led to an inspiration that literally saved the days' shooting schedule when one of the actors could not show up.  Her lighting played no small part in getting me to think about the scene in a different way and solve the problem of the missing character by framing a master shot completely different from my original concept.  That and some excellent improv by lead actor Thurman Kellogg.

So, whatever your political leanings, don't dismiss the concept of "diversity" as empty Liberal happy talk, or embrace it for the wrong reasons (as a quota process).  Actually use it to try and view the project through other peoples' eyes.  You'll be amazed and delighted at what you see.

Long time, no see...

Wow.  So much has happened since the last post.  Now, symbolically, I shall drop the mask.

The mask of which I speak is the mask of "professionalism", the one I put on to try and seem impressive.  Someday, perhaps soon, it will go back up.  It's the "corporate" thing to do - to wear a slightly formal identity where you avoid pronouns like "I", and try to sound like you know what you're doing.

But it seems rather ridiculous and pretentious to try that now.  Especially since it's been so long since the last post.  Corporations don't go months without updating, normal people do.  And you know what?  I'm just a normal guy, trying to make a movie.

So for the moment, I'll stop trying to impress you.  I'll just talk in my own voice.

Kanashimi is about 90% shot.  The prior schedule held - principal photography went more or less as planned during the mentioned time frame  More or less.  By which I mean there were the usual disasters, which required the usual kinds of improvised solutions.

Which is why we're 90% done instead of 100%.  Just like the software business.  My day job is software developer for a Major Corporation (one whose name you'd immediately recognize and whose products you literally use every single day).  In that business we have a saying - there's the first 90% of the project, then the other 90%.

Now it's time for the other 90%.

Here's a short list of things we had to overcome:

• We had to replace our original Director of Photography
• We lost several locations
• The locations we replaced them with were fine, but there were some, er, complications
• An actor got sick and had to be replaced the day of filming
• Another actor got the schedule mixed up and didn't show on his big day
• It took longer than we thought to shoot some things (doesn't it always?)
• I did a lousy job the first day or two of keeping everyone happy and fed

And so on.  So now, I shall drop the "professional" voice and just talk to you like the fellow enthusiast you probably are.  Directly, plainly.  Because you deserve to know, without the patina of BS, what this process is like, so you can learn from our mistakes, as well as our triumphs.

Right now, I'm cutting together a rough assembly of what we have shot, so we can figure out what we really need to finish shooting (as opposed to what we think we need to finish shooting).  So stay tuned; it's about to get more interesting.

Special thanks to a spectacular cast and crew, without whom this little project would be literally impossible.  I'll be getting into specifics in the coming weeks, but let's just say we have some terrific talent working on this thing!