24 posts tagged “short film”

Last weekend (August 8-10), version two of the Monmouth Film Collective participated in the Portland, Oregon 48 Hour Film Project. We successfully finished our film and got it in on time (the event ran from 7:00 on Friday to 7:30 on Sunday; we got the film delivered by 7:00).

Our genre was historical fiction, and the Portland elements were:

• Character: Jake or Jane Gravenstein, wellness practioner.
• Line of dialogue: “Okay, I think I got it straight.”
• Prop: jumper cables.

This year's experience was immediately different from last year's in that the genre we drew was both more intimidating and more constraining. Fantasy, the genre we drew in 2007, is nothing but artistic license. Historical fiction comes with more limits, and more of a burden in terms of “getting it right.”

We decided on a 1930s, Great Depression story involving a family, three kids and a dad, looking for a place to stay and falling into the web of a maybe crazy, maybe craven “inventor” claiming to have a magical “healing machine”. I jumped on the idea because I immediately envisioned the family walking along a dusty railway. The writers did much more with the idea, obviously. It was also relatively easier to imagine at least roughly being able to approximate the look and feel of the period.

Naturally, the weather did not really cooperate. It rained over night, and was alternately sunny and cloudy all day on Saturday. Getting the “dust bowl” look and feel was not going to happen, but fortunately it being August, there was a lot of gold and brown in the landscape in any event. In other respects, the constantly changing light was a challenge for the photography, but I think we were able to work around it sufficiently to give us a consistent look when we needed it.

I remember being pretty happy with last year's film. I wouldn't say I was unhappy with this year's, which we titled “The Decision”, but it is more uneven, and there are more things I wish I had done a little different, particularly in editing. Our genre and our story was, ultimately, more ambitious this year. So, whereas last year, the low rent approach that is almost necessitated by the strictures of the event really worked, this year it became a source of frustration. On the other hand, the best moments in the new film are better than those from last year's.

This has nothing to do with the fine work of cast and crew. Our team was a mix of old and new faces, and we worked together well. I think that work is well-represented in the final film. I just can't help feeling that the end work is less than the talents and ambitions of the team.

This year's Monmouth Film Collective was, in addition to myself: Maren Bradley Anderson, David Berrier, Tristan Berrier, Rachel Bridgewater, Anne-Marie Deitering, David Doellinger, Ben Grimes, Jordan Hofer, Jason Kirtland, Bill Madden, Jesse Madden, Mark Madland, Orion Metzner, Chris Olsenius, Emily Plec, Charley Waller, and Rosanne Waller.

Watch last year's film, “DreemRz, Inc.”
See photos from this year.
This year's film coming soon. (It's now here).

I have been quietly putting together another version of the Willamette Valley Film Collective to participate in the 2008 International Documentary Challenge. This will be the third time I've done this. With some urging from Anne-Marie, I was thinking about not organizing an entry this year, but then David Doellinger, a WVFC veteran, expressed his enthusiasm for giving it another go, and that's all it took to tip me in the other direction.

One difference between this year and the previous two is that I am limiting my own involvement to producer and editor, rather than taking on those roles plus that of director and co-photographer as well. Partly, this is out of curiosity. Almost from the beginning of my venture into filmmaking, I've wanted to experience the process from the perspective of a photographer or editor independent of also acting as director. Partly, this is due to feeling overworked and over stressed due to added responsibilities on campus this year. And partly it is because I want to give other participants the experience of taking on other roles. David will be directing this year. His wife, Erin Marr, will be one of, or the, primary photographers (her likely co-photographer is William Bragg, who was DP for the Monmouth Film Collective in last summer's 48 Hour Film Project).

My original vision for these experiences was for the "collective" part of the team name to be a driving force for what we did, but what I discovered in the first year is that people aren't actually comfortable with that. Not everyone wants to work the camera or make decisions, etc. Maybe this is due to feeling intimidated by the equipment or lack of confidence. I don't know, but I did learn a valuable lesson about the differences between collaborative and collectivist work. People don't have to be "equal" to be valued or satisfied by their participation in a project like this. And the truth is the second year when I took more of a traditional directorial role was a better experience, and led to a better film, than the previous year when I had a more, well, communist vision of the process, something which just created tension from unresolved expectations of everyone wanting to take a turn on the camera and so on.

Read about last year's event (the post about 2006 is no longer online).

As noted in my previous post, screenings for the entries in the Portland 48 Hour Film Project were held last week. Our film, "DreemRz, Inc," screened on Wednesday, and those who went had very positive reports. People laughed and cheered, and some gave an "awww" to the end.

I can honestly write that awards and external validation do not play a huge role in my initial thinking about these kinds of projects or my attempts at filmmaking more generally (of course I have the luxury of a "day job" that not only enables me to do things like participate in the 48 Hour Film Project, but also lets me benefit from such things professionally). However, a film necessarily implies an audience, and one of the things I like about the 48 Hour Film Project's city-by-city format is that it pretty well guarantees each team that finishes at least one night where their film will be shown on a big screen, in a theater, and in front of an audience made up mostly of strangers.

While I don't go into a project thinking about awards and recognition, as the process comes to a conclusion, it's difficult not to begin thinking about such things, particularly if you're happy with what you've done, or, if the experience was such a good one that it buoys up your estimation of the work you've done beyond what's realistic or reasonable. I am myself not terribly experienced as a filmmaker, and mostly I find myself working with inexperienced crew and cast (where applicable) and with certain limitations of time and technology. These factors make it easy to put aside thoughts of actually working for awards. At the same time, I would hate to think that a time would come when I would do anything but make films that I find personally satisfying.

"DreemRz, Inc." was almost entirely fun to make, and from the kick off on Friday night I felt as if we were doing pretty good work. As these initial feelings were met by good audience reports, I've become more anxious than anticipated about the awards and recognition part of the 48 Hour Film Project. Intellectually, I still think that being among the best of the Portland entries seems unlikely, but that doesn't necessarily temper the emotional and visceral desire to be in that group. I was so buzzed by the first word I got on last week's screening that I slept terribly that night. Yesterday, I learned that our film was not the audience favorite in our screening group. Again, not a surprise, and not just because of the Monmouth Film Collective's amateurism, but, as a practical matter, we simply weren't going to be able to work the ballot like other teams. Tonight we find out about the rest of the  "Best of" selections, all of which will screen this coming Thursday at the Hollywood. I don't rationally expect "DreemRz, Inc" to be among the chosen. I am pretty well certain that, whatever the merits of our film, it likely isn't among the very best of PDX. However, understanding that isn't going to keep me from anxiously checking my e-mail tonight to see if we slip in somehow. Whatever happens, not only was the journey on this project it's own reward, but I remain happy with the final product even as I'm all too conscious of its flaws (some of which I plan to correct or mitigate before releasing it into the wild).

UPDATE: As anticipated, "DreemRz, Inc." was not chosen for the "Best of" screening in Portland's 48 Hour Film Project. To the extent that this is a let down at all, and it isn't much of one for the reasons outlined above, it is because we'll miss out on the second screening at the Hollywood. Having missed the first show, I would have liked to the chance to see it on the big screen with a good audience, and would have liked others on the team to get that experience, too. The upside here is that the future of the film is now firmly in our own hands.

I'm happy to say that the Monmouth Film Collective was one of the teams to successfully finish their film in the Portland 48 Hour Film Project. All teams had the same required elements: a character named Roy or Rachel Schwarz, quality control expert, a line of dialogue, "Do you smell what I smell?", and a balloon for a prop. The genre we drew was "Fantasy." We got the genre and elements thanks to Rachel Bridgewater and Jason Kirtland who attended the kick off at the Jupiter Hotel in Portland while the rest of the team awaited our draw in Monmouth (which, for those of you not from western Oregon, is located about 70 miles to the southwest of Portland).

We came up with a story centered around a quality control expert at a "dream factory," DreemRz, Inc., who is having to fight declining quality in the dreams being put out by the company. We went with Rachel instead of Roy. Rachel was played by Meghan Flickinger, who played "Pam" in 5 Cups of Coffee. Her antagonist was "Richard Upright, VP for quality control" played by David Berrier, a member of Pentacle Theater in Salem. The scenario devised by the writers, headed by Maren Anderson, writer of 5 Cups, and including Shane Hosea and Jason McBane, had Rachel trying to convince Upright that the dreams being put out by DreemRz, Inc. were no longer helping the company's customers effectively work through their personal problems, refresh their mental abilities, and develop as people. Upright's focus is on production and profit. To him a dream is a dream. To Rachel dreams are for individual dreamers. Ultimately, she confronts a horrific dream being sent to a little girl. She decides to stop it no matter what the cost to her job. The writers wrote up the dream making process as being like film making, so she races from department to department before finally catching up to the horrible dream in shipping. We used the balloons as dream delivery devices. In trying to convince Upright that the dreams are no good, she "shows" him a number of dreams, including one involving a fish that made for an organic use of the required line.

One of the initial challenges we had to work out on the set was how to incorporate the dreams into the dialogue between Rachel and Upright. Our production designer, Jordan Hofer, searched around the shooting location, at the Willamette Academy Offices in Salem, thanks to photographer William Bragg, and found a round vase and a green calculator that could sort of disguised if you showed the back instead of the front. We went with the vase because it caught the light well. In editing I used Final Cut's "ripple dissolve" to signify a shift into dreams. In the end, the vase pretty much looks like a vase, but it was, I think the best way to create room for the dream sequences.

The shoot was very extemporaneous and the film's ending was in constant evolution right up to the conclusion of shooting. We had to make a lot of decisions on the fly, due not only to time constraints, but also in response to what was happening as we shot. Sometimes the way we shot one scene seemed to make other scenes superfluous, so we would skip them and move on. Jordan's kid, Anna, was cast in the role of the little girl Rachel is trying to save. As they say, "never work with kids and animals." She was feeling overwhelmed by the production and we had to adjust to her mood (this turned out for the better, I think, as I like our ending).

If there is one thing I wished we had done differently it was in how we shot the dialogue between Rachel and Upright. We had a tighter angle on Rachel than Richard. This posed some challenges in editing and some of the cuts between them are a little too jumpy. Had we shot some tighter footage of Upright, too, that would have made this easier (of course, I am not entirely comfortable with the classic, shot-reverse shot style of shooting and editing dialogue. This style provides the audience with an omniscient point of view, but it feels awkward and unnatural to me. When we talk to people, we generally look at them head-on. When we observe conversations, we see the conversants together, and often in profile or from the back. We do not get to see both sides of the discussion from essentially the same vantage point. This is something I am going to keep turning over in my head for awhile).

The work done by the team was exceptional, particularly given how much we all had to get to know each other while we worked. David was excellent, effectively evoking Bill Lumbergh without engaging in imitation. Meghan was also excellent, playing Rachel with a quiet determination. The other actors, Samantha Berrier, Brett McKay, and Jesse Madden, had to get into character on a moment's notice and helped to give the dream sequences, shot at the  IKE Box in Salem, especially, the sort of low rent surreality that we needed. Others on the crew also pitched in with the acting when needed, and Jordan's wife, Armelle was drafted at the last minute to help Anna with the ending. One advantage of our script was it gave us license to reuse people in different roles. I empathize with the writers on a project like this. Even more than usual some of their best work no doubt got left behind as time pressures demanded a certain amount of ad-libbing and cutting of scenes. Still, the architecture and key ideas are down to Maren, Shane, and Jason. Jennifer Richards produced superb music, especially our main theme, which, combined with Bill Madden's artwork for the credits, starts the film with a real Michel Gondry-vibe. Jordan's work on the dream shipping room was first rate. His choice of black and red for the balloons and reworking of the room to make it unrecognizable as a recycled location were both inspired. Norris Lee was very helpful, willing to do any small job to keep the production moving. Will, already a skilled still photographer, was great to work with as DP. He was ready with advice and willing to experiment with me. Anne-Marie did the essential work of reviewing and downloading footage, a task that pretty much isolated her from the rest of the group. She was also instrumental in giving me feedback during primary editing. Jason and Rachel, in addition to being invaluable for the kick off, helped to make sure we got our film in on time when we ran into trouble printing to video on a MiniDV tape and had to burn data files to DVDs instead. These kinds of events are really about the process and I thoroughly enjoyed myself, even the rough patches.

Our film, titled "DreemRz, Inc," screens in a group tonight at the Hollywood Theater in Portland at 7:15. Sadly, I can't make it, but other members of the team are going and I'll be sure to pass on their thoughts and reactions. In the meantime, check out Bill's art for the opening title:

Title-art

The 48 Hour Film Project, Portland, Oregon, begins this coming Friday evening. I gathered the team together for a pre-production meeting this past Sunday. Because of the timing of the competition, I've had to reach out to a lot of new people, that is, folks I haven't worked with on other projects like the International Documentary Challenge (IDC). While this adds a "getting to know everyone" curve to the production, it was clear from Sunday's meeting that this team has a lot of energy and some useful resources and experiences to contribute. I am very interested to experience this kind of a format with a scripted film. Nonetheless, I'm hoping to apply lessons from the IDC to the coming weekend. I'll give a full report on all the whos and whats after the project is over.

Initially, I resisted placing 5 Cups of Coffee online, but in searching for a videosharing service to call home, and seeing the relative quality of YouAreTV (as well as their integration of Creative Commons licenses, and wide limits on file size), I decided to compress and upload the film to test the service. The upshot is that 5 Cups is now available for online viewing. For the best experience, put the player on pause and let the video download most of the way before starting playback.

I remain convinced that the web is not the ideal environment for viewing the film - too many long takes, a running time that is substantially longer than the norm for online vids - but given the relative quality on YouAreTV and the possibility of getting the work seen by a larger and more diverse audience, I think that the trade-offs are probably worth it. I've uploaded a couple of other videos, too, including an alternate version of the Rally for Choice short. The source for the YouTube version is a highly compressed MP4, while the YouAreTV iteration is from a far less compressed Quicktime Movie. It is interesting to note the ways in which the latter is and isn't superior to the former.

5 Cups of Coffee archive on Vox.
5 Cups blog.

When 5 Cups of Coffee was finished (or, as I've learned, we decided that it was finished) we sent it out to a few festivals and premiered it at Western Oregon, where most of the cast and crew go to school or work (those who don't fit either category, are connected to WOU in some way). The film got accepted into the local Mid-Valley Video Festival, but was not selected by the remaining three we submitted to. Initially, I very much wanted to get into at least one out-of-area fest, but now that some time has past, that seems less important. Submitting films to festivals takes time and money. I, of course, knew this, but did not really appreciate it until I began looking around for events, putting packages together and trying to scrape up the cash for entry fees. The rush of having the film finished and released into the world has passed - even though I remain basically happy and proud of it. It will continue to have a public life in the collections at our local libraries, and possibly on local cable (and perhaps online, but from doing research on making videos for the web, and looking at the clips posted on this very site, I'm not sure that it's a work meant for online viewing). More on both of those as they do (or do not) happen. In any event, I am of more of a mind to get to work on other projects than I am to keep beating the pavement for 5 Cups. In the immediate term, I am working on a number of documentary/geography projects and Maren and I have occasional talks regarding the next narrative work. Will post updates here as usual.

As noted previously, the Willamette Valley Film Collective reconvened to take on the International Documentary Challenge once again. This year's experience was both easier and harder than 2006.

What made this challenge easier was largely having done it once already. Realizing that there is little that one can do until the clock starts ticking helped to focus our advance preparations. And, indeed, the shoot went pretty well - efficient, organized, people working well together. Our genre, "Art", and our chief subject, David Ensminger/the "Bop Apocalypse to Blitzkrieg Bop" exhibit at WOU's Hamersly Library, also helped to make this year's production run with more focus and purpose than last year's (as fun as the alpacas and their people were, it was difficult to structure our approach, and there was much more in the way of random videography that then had to be sorted through later. Trying to fit the topic into the "Sports" genre with the theme of "Freedom" didn't help either. "Art", "faith", and "punk" were a much nicer collective of concepts to work with).

However, I think that confidence about the shoot led to an overly lax approach to editing, or maybe it was just a lack of energy, trying to pull this project off while classes were still in session, at work. We should have been reviewing and downloading footage from the very beginning. Instead, I/we left it until the Sunday before the deadline. The net result: Anne-Marie and I were editing until 5:00 AM on Monday. That said, I don't think we cut corners where it mattered. We did make one risky choice, and that was to set the bursts of music in the final film at a noticeably higher level than the conversation. Like the visual design, which looks very stiched together, cut-and-pasted from different media, this was meant to nod in the direction of our subject: punk is supposed to be loud and assaultive, and we wanted to capture that. However, I've found that this does not necessarily translate in the viewing experience. Once I explain the concept, everyone has an "ahhh" moment, but I think that we're so used to seamlessness and "perfection" in film, that it is hard not to assume that a wildly variable soundtrack is a "mistake." We'll see. In any case, Kerry Kincanon did great work on Sunday picking out music clips to use in the film. I can only imagine how much longer we would have been at work if he hadn't put in the time to select and excerpt the songs.

For the record, the 2007 Willamette Valley Film collective were, besides myself: Maren Bradley Anderson, Anne-Marie Deitering, David Doellinger, Meghan Flickinger, Kimberly Jensen, Kerry Kincanon, Doug Smith, and Robin Smith.

As promised, here are some thoughts on the Mid-Valley Video Festival. First I should say that I was only able to attend the program that included 5 Cups of Coffee. The overlap with the Oscars was unfortunate for us in that preparing for our party pretty well took up Saturday and Sunday, leaving only Friday (or one day) for the festival. I would have liked to have seen the "adult" shorts program at the very least.

It was weird and interesting to see the film with a group of strangers, especially one not really tailor-made for the work. While it is true that our film does not have profanity or explicit sex or violence, it is an "adult" film in the sense of dealing with themes that most younger kids simply won't relate to. Still, despite the child demographic, I felt as though we had the theater's attention. An couple right in front of us, perhaps in their twenties, got quite excited by the music credits, which was gratifying as I think that the music from Rich and Doug (and his band) helps to elevate 5 Cups, and I am happy to make a contribution, however minor, to the intertwining of independent film/video with independent, local music. I was also glad that friends, family, and colleagues got another chance to see the film on a big screen.

While I'm not sure that we got the best possible audience, I did think that the festival organizers generally did a good job of pacing the program. The only real misstep was ending the show with an abstract work of animation and electronic music; the problem wasn't so much with the piece itself as where it appeared in the program, at the end and after a light comedic and silly piece about a guy in a frontier saloon whose best friends are the stuffed animals and heads that adorn the room.

Most of all, though, I genuinely felt that our film held up well to being viewed alongside other works and in front of an "alien" crowd, and that made the experience worthwhile.

As reported on the 5 Cups blog, the film has been selected into the competition at the Mid-Valley Video Festival in Salem, Oregon. It will screen as part of the "kid-friendly" shorts program on Friday, 23 February, 4:00 at the Northern Lights Theater Pub. Admission is $3.00.