Here’s a mini-documentary of our screening Q & A at Dances with Films 2014.
Tag Archives | #indiefilm
DAY 3- Stunts, Dogs, Car shots = TIME
The one thing every indie filmmaker wishes they had more of is TIME. You hear it over and over. But when you’re new at it, you don’t have any reference for what that means.
Brandon and I are first-time directors and when people warned, “Don’t do that, it’s gonna be really haaaaard”, we did what most first-time directors do and thought, sure it’s gonna be hard, but I love hard! Hard is what I live for. If it’s not hard I don’t even wanna do it! And that’s how we came to Day 3.
Lesson 1: Don’t do stunts with your leads the first week of production. Why? Because for the rest of the shoot, make-up has to cover up your lead actress’s bruises so she doesn’t look like a rotten banana. And even with make-up it’s not pretty and will limit the takes you can use in editing. Even worse, a sprained ankle, or a broken bone could put you out of commission permanently. Dumb.
Stunt rehearsal. Kasi Brown and Brandon Walter.
Luckily for us, the stunt portion of our day went swimmingly (despite the bruises), but took up way more time than we anticipated even though we had rehearsals the week before. This left little time for every other scene we scheduled on this close to 7 page day. We thought if we busted ass it would work out, but we also had a dog on set this day like almost every day. A dog IN the stunts. Yeah, I said it.
Lesson 2: Dogs. Avoid them. If you’re the writer as well as the director like we are, you have no one to blame but yourself. And although the doggy star of our film was my own dog (whom I had the luxury of training on my own time) like children, they have a very wide margin for error and take more… time.
They also like breaks, and snacks, they’re easily distracted, they take a long time to go poop, and even if it’s your own dog, the Humane Society shows up to protect the interests of your dog. More time and patience required. Which brings me to a very important point.
Laila and her “stunt double”
INDIE FILMMAKERS TAKE NOTE: The Humane Society no longer offers it’s services for free through SAG-AFTRA. They now (since January 01, 2014) charge $500/day for union and $1,200/day for non-union whenever you have an animal on set. Read about it here Humane Society Rates 2014 . Had that been the case when we shot GDG, we never would have been able to shoot it at all on our budget. If you’re poor and writing an indie film, start scratching out that animal role now.
So, we’ve survived the stunts and the dog, the sun is going down and we still have two scenes (1 1/8 pages, 4 actors including the directors)…in the car. There’s a couple challenges there, but we’ll stick to the car and talk about having directors as lead actors another day.
Lesson 3: Shooting dialogue in cars when you have no money for fancy stuff like process trailers and awesome camera mounts (complete with the CHP you need to maneuver the streets of LA legally) is asinine. Our good friend and fellow indie filmmaker Denis Hennelly, warned us about this early on in the screenwriting stage of production. He had some great advice. Any time you can write the actors getting out of the car and talking on the side of the road, or anywhere else, but in that car, DO IT. Why?
There are only so many seats in the car. If you have 4 actors, or 3 actors, there’s room for a sound guy (maybe if he’s tiny), or a director, the camera guy has to be there, so who is doing the 3rd and or 4th actor’s lines that you kicked out of the car? Someone has to drive and act at the same time. You can see the problem here, right? Bad sound, Bad direction, Bad acting, Compromised safety??? Take your pick. For the next 17 days we got schooled.
Rehearsal Car Scenes. Edward Winters, Kate Connor, Brandon Walter, Kasi Brown.
Having been through a day like that, I can honestly say I am much wiser for it. From now on when I write a script I will pause before I write a stunt, a dog, a child, or a car scene. I’ll politely remind myself of Day 3 and write for the budget I am working with, so that more time can be spent producing quality. And maybe someday I will be lucky enough to have one of these!
Process Trailer
Day 1-Directing Richard Riehle
I’m gonna shout it to the world. Richard Riehle is THE most fantastic actor to work with. For those of you who don’t know him by name, he’s one of those guys where you go, “Oh yeah, I love him, he’s in everything!”
This is my first feature film and I was lucky enough to have the honor of scoring such a seasoned pro through my hard working producers. From day 1, Richard showed up on set with a smile on his face and a hello for everybody. He never complained about the ULB rate, that he didn’t have the luxury of a trailer, he knew his lines to a t (with improv on top), and he was generous to his fellow actors. He also addressed me and my co-director Brandon in such a respectful way that it hit me on day 1, “Oh crap. I AM the director of this thing”. He made me want to be the best director I could be and I was honored to have him and his talents to cut my teeth on for the next 17 days.
Richard Riehle ‘Stan Janson’ is comforted by his ‘Secretary’ Rumi Murakami.
Day 1 – the Offices
Shaina Vorspan prepares to go to the boss’s office. Eric Clabeaux on sound.
Producing an indie feature is never an easy feat. As is often the case, stretching the dollar as far as it can go can be the most difficult aspect. In the studio world, a script is given to the production department and they go line by line in the budget filling in all the blanks with dollars allotted for every item from producer gifts to location reps, and arrive at a budget number. But in the indie world its called reverse budgeting – where you start with a budget number and work backwards – filling in the blanks according to what you can get for free, and what you actually have to pay for – oh the whoas of #lowbudgetfilmmaking!
It goes without saying we could not afford a location rep, or even a full days’ rental of a bar, or an office space, or even a full second camera package! But #wherethereisawill! Day one of our schedule started at an office in Van Nuys and ended at another in North Hollywood. Luckily the second location had already been found by one of our directors @KasiABrown – an oxygen tank refill office no less #brilliant so we had the one location left to find… within a 10 minute drive… with adequate parking for our truck, crew, and a bus full of cast… and who would accept less than $100/ hour. So the hunt began. We tried looking online, or posting an ad on Craigslist #freaks #desperate, or calling around, so finally I just starting driving around. I was on the hunt for run-down commercial areas and properties with dirty windows, or run down offices that looked like the place hadn’t been touched in months. After assembling this list, I arranged meetings with the managers to view the properties and eventually found a location. The final location? *drumroll* – a property rental company’s main offices! It was perfect! It had all the props, the mise en scene, a separate room for hair/ make-up, and the space for our scenes to unfold.
Also I should note that we had an excellent Day One thanks to our wonderful crew and cast that kept the creativity flowing and our energy as high as Colorado Girl Scouts.
Production Begins Today!
Today is our first day of shooting our feature film. It’s been a long journey and we are very excited to begin. We’ve assembled a great crew and awesome cast. We’re going to be shooting some office scenes today with Mark Teich We decided to start the week with days that we are not acting in so we can just be directors and get used to it.
Pictured below are Kasi and Charles (1st AD).
Casting for Gone Doggy Gone in Full Swing
Laila vets actors
Remember how the character of Becky Connor on Roseanne was played by Lecy Goranson and then inexplicably replaced by Sarah Chalke without so much as a mention. Remember how that made you feel? Well, we’re not going to do that to you. Here at Gone Doggy Gone, we are going to tell you what happened to the cast that originally was to play three of our lead characters, so you can understand why they are on the Indiegogo video we produced back in September of 2012, but not appearing in our movie. Allison Summers who was to play Jill moved to Atlanta to pursue a different career and became unavailable to us. Kim Kenny (Kat) also got another job that conflicted with the amount of days we would need her and Matt Lowe (Dan) moved on to pursue other interests in the time that lapsed in acquiring our funding. While we are sad to see our friends in comedy go, we understand that this is the nature of independent film. People come and go when funding isn’t in place for a lengthy duration.
We are now auditioning actors to fill those roles as well as day players. It has been awesome witnessing all of the talent there is out there and we look forward to working with some amazing actors.
On Surfing and Independent Filmmaking
I cannot help but compare my recent introduction to surfing to my current experience in Independent feature filmmaking. When Brandon and I mused about the possibilities of producing the feature we wrote, I told myself that this time I would sit back, be creative, direct the film, act in it, but NOT be involved in the mind numbing, brain splitting, production end of things. I’d done it before for a short film, ‘A Woman Reported‘ (Sundance 2004) and it was rewarding, I could do it, but this time I was going to just be an “artist”. I pictured myself mussing up my hair over endless cups of coffee, making script changes, worrying over character choices, but never scheduling, budgeting, number crunching. NEVER AGAIN is what I said. Ha! As the weeks closed in and no lowly paid “passionate about the project” producer showed their face, Brandon and I realized that if we wanted to go forward with the film, we’d have to buck up and take up the reigns.
Which brings me to the surfing. Being an athletic person, I sort of pictured myself paddling out into the great blue yonder and effortlessly taking smooth waves toward white sandy beaches. Wrong. It’s more like paddle, paddle, gasp, paddle, paddle, Holy Shits a huge freaking wave is cooommiiiing— Oh, I’m on top of it and I might be fine…nope glugluglgluglgluglgug. Oh my God I’m alive! And back we go again in case it’s not so bad next time. That’s how the producing hit us. We had no idea how to use any of the programs (Movie Magic Scheduling, Budgeting) but people were asking us questions like, “what’s your budget”? and “if I give you money, what’s my investment”? Also, actors we respect were reading the script and loving it and asking what their time committment was going to be. Just as we learned one thing, we’d realize we’d scheduled it wrong and have to start over. It was exhausting and more than one nervous breakdown was had, but we are both wholeheartedly thankful that we were shoved into the swell and forced to learn the hard way, because only through drowning do we understand what we are getting ourselves into and truly appreciate the ride.