Month: October 2011

It’s a role without any speaking lines, an unsavory part that some actors would treat as a yawn, a walk-on. But as small as this part is, Q is critical to the storyline — and Theo Williamson walked onto the set prepared to play. Once the hooded jacket was on him, he skulked and paced the set. In one scene when he — a non-smoker — is required to smoke, he pulled out his own pack of Kools, his own butane lighter and lit up; no waiting on the art department for props.

In this shot, you see the final moment when he breaks the car window with a length of chain and a lock; it was the only car window we had (heck, because it’s the only CAR we have).

At one point, as we were rigging the door, everyone sat bolt upright as we heard the sound of breaking glass. In the abandoned lot, Theo had found a television set. As we all sat there seeing him bent over the shattered picture tube, he looked up — and without smiling, without breaking character — strode back to the set. He was now ready for the real window.

We asked for a Grip and Electric department and got these guys – straight out of central casting….

I’m mean, look at these guys! Sam, Dave, Ryan, Chad and Derek (from left to right.) These are the kind of guys you CAST to play your crew members – IF you’ve got a leading lady good looking enough to compete with them. Ask these guys for a candid photo and you get the first month of the “Hot Guys in Film” calendar.

The good news is: they not only only look the part but they do the job.

In the course of the past week, they’ve been razzing one guy with the nickname “Princess”. But heck, I’ll let you decide which one deserves that title.

I wish I could think of some pithy comment for this picture of Loren Harper, taken as he was waiting to play the role of J.T. – one of the homeless people whose lean-to gets burned (see the last post) — but sometimes the image is enough.

Hey, boys and girls! Do you want to make your own molotov cocktail from a mason jar and gasoline soaked rag? Would you like to stage the burning of a small homeless lean-to for your film? Well, plan on rounding up a pyrotechnic expert and his assistant, a child welfare representative, the local fire marshall and some dude who reportedly works with her but simply sits ominously silent in a folding chair — along with the rest of your crew and we’re ready!

Wait… do you have the FAKE molotov cocktail that the boys can actually carry? Oh, and how exactly is the ringleader going to ride his bike one-handed while carrying the aforementioned cocktail? The kid’s pretty good on a bike, but let’s do a few run-throughs and be sure to shut down all access on the roads into this site (which means people at each corner with walkie-talkies to shut down traffic). Ready?

After several hours of this set-up, the one thing we canNOT control and which tends to put a damper on any campfire or act of arson… it starts to rain.

Oh, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain/We’ve had pyro-technic displays that were a real pain/I’ve seen 30 people work to set an awesome flame/Coz we won’t have another change to get this shot again….

Thanks to everyone who helped make this happen.

I first saw Helen Sadler in a Sam Shepard play with David Dastmalchian in Chicago. Watching their on-stage chemistry as girlfriend and boyfriend, I asked them to play similar roles (but very different from boyfriend-and-girlfriend in the Sam Shepard cosmos) in my second short film, Credits.

What I love about this photo, taken between scenes at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit is Helen’s focus on the work — and the colorful surround of the interior. Watching her, engrossed in the artwork she’ll be looking through in the film, reminds me of just how she immerses herself in a role — whether a short film, a Sam Shepard play, in a brief scene in Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, or in this case, as Moira, the art curator in Cass.

Thursday night/Friday morning marked the first night shoot of the production. Call time was 7 PM and we went until 6 this morning.

Of course, even after the martini shot (another term we movie-folk use for the final shot set-up of the day), while others are breaking down the set, packing the equipment vans or driving the actors (and the director) back to the hotel, these two jamokes — the producers — are still working.

Stacey Evenson (on the left) and Charles Cirgenski (you figure it out) are the reasons we’re standing on Woodward Avenue at 4 in the morning as the 834th car with a bad muffler pulls up and yells “HEY! Can I be in your movie?!” (Thinking back on the various Hollywood stories I’ve heard about actresses being discovered at a soda fountain or waiting tables in a diner — I never heard of ANYone being discovered after they pulled up in their 2002 Saturn, rolled the window down and shouted at the top of their lungs. But heaven knows, many, many try everyday.)

Stacey and Charles have done the reams of SAG paperwork and negotiated with people over locations. They meet each day to find out what items are over (and we keep hoping: under) budget. They’ve even listened to crew complaints when the director insists on shooting in a different sequence to get key lines in earlier. (Hey! in my defense, the Tigers have been in the playoffs and Lions played Monday Night Football — after three o’clock the skies are filled with helicopters, blimps, and light aircraft dragging huge banners for “Hustler’s Club” (which I thought an odd ad to fly over a stadium full of families — ‘Mommy, look! What’s a Hust-lers Club?”))

The logistics and planning and financial side of this business is in many significant ways as arcane as that of the Sound or Lighting or Camera departments. But these two people (and the office of folks who work with them (more on Nicole, Shannon, Sareta and Roshando later) are the reason we’re out in the a driving October drizzle in assorted colors of raingear trying to make some magic.

What I particularly like about this photo of our 1st Assistant Cameraman, Jeffrey Schultz, (he in the black shades on the far right) is the placement of his hands over Ron. Of course, the reason his hands are there are to block the sunlight from the monitor to help get the shot right — but for me it has the feel of a holy man giving some kind of blessing. “May your shot be in focus.  May it not be overexposed. May you never have a bogey walk into your shot.”

 

It perfectly captures the sense you get talking to Jeff: he is a quiet man who, like Ron, has a love of Arcane Knowledge — the inner workings of the camera and all things cinematic. If you listen close, you’ll hear him in low tones invoking F-stops, lens sizes and the names of various filters. There’s an air of medieval master in the monastic halls of cinematography.

We’re all counting on the camera department pulling off a few miracles and he’s just the guy to help make it happen.

I put off posting about David for a few days because frankly, I’m not quite sure what to say about him. Not because he is some enigma like Joshua, but because he’s such a large — in the sense of generous — person.

I first worked with him on the short film, Arc of a Bird, which had a seed of inspiration for Cass. At the time, he was rolling off of filming Dark Knight and had spent time with Heath Ledger as one of Joker’s gang. (I remember quite vividly, after we filmed Arc, watching his 70 foot close-up on the Omnimax screen.)

When he came on set there was no swagger about having just come from working with “Chris” (i.e. Nolan). If he was less impressed with our meager short film budget and set up, he never showed a hint of condescension. If asked, he might share a story about the set or his fellow actors, but he was focused on Right Now, trying to figure out the part of Joshua. He clearly enjoys is the give-and-take with other actors. He’ll often respond to someone else’s line read with: “Yeah, yeah. That’s great. And then I say…”

On the way to set Tuesday, I remarked on the enormous water bottle he was carrying that had barely a half cup of water left. “Did you drink all that this morning?” I asked. “Oh, man. It’s CRAZY. My pee is like orange juice right now. I’m DEFINITELY drinking as much water as I can today.”

As I say, he’s a man who shares.

We were moving from one location to another and spotted a couch/bench sitting in front of a series of murals. (We did not set this shot up.) We discussed getting a shot of Joshua sketching there and I begin casting about for a piece of cardboard for him to sit on, rather than the damp who-knows-where-this-has-been blue covering. “Don’t worry about it,” he said and before we even had time to put down sticks and set up camera he was ON the couch, sketching a plant. Just like Joshua.

When we talk about an actor’s performance in a film, we usually think about “believability”. People can say someone “nailed” a role or “embodied” a particular character. But the notion of “performance” also means they’re involved with other players, with other members of the cast and crew. Imagine a group of five players and asking just one of them to change a detail — and at the same time, asking the other four to do just what they did, step into the scene or look a particular way, again.

In the case of Rachel Hilson, playing the lead role of Cass, we have someone who has the professionalism of actresses twice her age. On the fourth or fifth take, as you work with another actor on their blocking or delivery of a line, Rachel hits her marks and delivers her lines in a way that is smart and consistent.

Oh yeah. And then there’s the believability part. Yesterday, filming a scene in a shelter at a bus stop, she was asked to deliver a line that will probably be featured as voice-over to a still photography from a memory. After telling a brief story, her character in flashback is about to be assaulted and Rachel was asked to deliver the line “STOP!” forcefully, as if she was being attacked. Just that one word.

When we were done with the fourth take, the sound guy turned to me and said: “I had tears in my eyes on that one.” I had too.

Riding a hired bus north on Woodward on the first day of our shoot, I looked down and saw this 12-volt battery and thought: This may be the best icon for Ron Forsythe, our DP, that I could imagine.

I’ve known Ron now for almost four years. Seeing his name, emblazoned on the battery he had brought along with him to Detroit as part of his own kit for the film, I imagined an actual line of batteries being that would power films and capture the essence of what he brings to a production.

To underscore what I mean, here is what he said when asked him about this particular battery that bears his name: “Oh. Well. It takes the 12 volt DC and runs it to that inverter over there and makes it a square wave AC current. We’re running the BarFlys and DIVAs off that because obviously we’re mobile and don’t have access to a main power source. Pretty basic.”

Not only does the guy care about a stray highlight in a frame, not only does he care about nuances of color and shadow, he KNOWS the details to make that happen. And because he knows, he does not suffer fools. Like the best, working battery, both his Positive and Negative posts are in balance and alignment. He has a clear sense of aesthetics rooted in the practical craft to achieve a certain a specific look and feel.

And without our Ron Forsythe battery, this production would be completely in the dark.