Santa Fe Independent Film Festival Happenings

I got word in September that Stygian was an official selection in the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival as a part of their New Mexico True Shorts program. 

When I first got the news, I was hit by a tidal wave of mixed feelings. Yeah, I was happy that Stygian made it into a festival - thrilled even - but the film from start to finish to now was such an emotional roller coaster that I wasn't sure what I was feeling.

I slept on it for a few nights and then I knew how I felt about it. I felt like I needed to go and see it. So I did. Tapped my social media/marketing manager to be my travel buddy, booked our tickets and bought a new pair of sunglasses to face the Santa Fe sun.

We flew out on the 14th so we'd be there for all the festivities. After a long day, though, we just grabbed our passes, some take out grub and then crashed to rest up for the next day. Despite the empty tanks from a full day of travel, we had good feelings about the days ahead.

We hit the Identity shorts section early in the day on the 15th to see what other films were in the festival. I was nervous going in, I wasn't sure how Stygian was going to stand next to some of these, but I've been told I'm my own worst critic. There were a couple of films in this program that really struck me. One in particular, about a Cuban boxer, was one that everyone seemed to think highly of. I left feeling pretty good about Stygian and even better when I saw I had an email that the first showing of the New Mexico True Shorts had sold out hours before it was due to be on. 

The second showing wouldn't fit on the marquee board, either, but it was at 8PM. Scout's honor.

Because of the sell out, we wound up missing the actual festival premiere of Stygian. Which was good because my production designer from Stygian, Hendrick, was able to join us for the second showing of the film. The film had an odd juxtaposition, sandwiched between a music video about cell phones and another called "Waffles and Blow" (wildly entertaining and likely self-explanatory in content), so as far as emotional impact went, we hit the crowd right in their gut. So much so that a few covered their eyes in the final scene (won't say why - spoiler alert!).

We were a little early. Waiting for the show to begin...

I left the screening feeling proud of myself and the film for the first time, and especially glad that I decided to attend in the first place. The rest of the festival went well. We explored Santa Fe a little, did some hiking, and did a little bit of random (meeting Pen Densham in a froyo shop, chatting and leaving with a copy of his screenwriting book, which looks awesome by the way) and not-so-random (Filmmaker's Brunch) networking.

The day we were headed out, I had a chance to get my thoughts together and have a good chat with my folks about the festival experience as a whole.

After the festival, I have a much better sense of myself as a filmmaker. It was great to see and hear how many people enjoyed Stygian, and it really solidified my good feelings about going to New Mexico and attending the festival. And getting to see the audience's reaction was a good reality check, too. It was really gratifying to see the emotional hits. 

To see Stygian up on the big screen and for it to stand up so well with the other films that it was shown with made the trip worth it. Sure, there were films that were better than Stygian, and in a different time of my life, I might have seen that and been envious. Now, though, I see them and it's inspiring. The right set of dominoes can fall, I just gotta keep plugging away. It felt good to see it up there and say, "You know what, this is a real thing and you know what, I can fucking do this."

There are still problems with Stygian and things that bothered me, but I can look at it with an objective eye now and actually find some things that I like. You can see the story and it's pretty clear what's up. Hendrick made a good point, too, in that Stygian is a very succinct film. The fat was trimmed and it doesn't feel bloated. A lot of short films have that problem, but thanks to some good advice, Stygian doesn't.

The festival was a good distraction from real life. Things have been a little hectic what with a move to LA (among a myriad other personal things) and I've been a wee bit depressed creatively and personally. Now, though, I feel like I can revamp and reboot. It's time to shift the focus to some other projects, which I'm feeling really good about, and start work on my first feature.  Santa Fe was the breath of fresh air and kick in the ass that I needed. This may have been the first red carpet I walked on, but I'll be damned if it's the last.

Myself and my sidekicks: Production Designer Hendrick Onderdonk and Social Media/Marketing Manager Megan Cooper. Photo credit: Santa Fe Independent Film Festival Photographers and Facebook Page

We did get a few good snaps, so if you're interested, the photo gallery is here.

Production Diary: The Un-Supers Day 6

I felt weird before day 6 even started. Kind of uneasy and kind of anxious but I couldn’t really place what it was until it hit me out of the blue like a sack of bricks. I’m not one to get migraines, maybe once or twice a year, but when they hit, they hit me like a hammer and instead of the usual aura of wonky peripheral vision, it was something like a panic attack.

Part of what I learned from Stygian was that you have to keep people peppy and you have to keep them unaware of what’s going on beneath your chill exterior. I could do that to a certain degree here, but there were some things that I couldn’t help, this isn’t something that’s all that easy to hide. In any case, I was going to have to barrel through it. I threw on my sunglasses, took a handful of aspirin and got to work.

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Of all the weeks for this to happen, to this was one of the worst. Granted, none of the other weeks would’ve been good. But today, I had some reel bait — and a really cool shot in general — planned. There was a 5.5 page long segment where all the cast members sort of converge at the party after the weird stuff starts happening to them. I wanted to do all of that in one take. In order to do that, I was going to be on top of my game.

For the shot, we faced some of the same challenges that we faced the previous day re lenses. Ideally, we would’ve shot it on a long lens in a studio. It would have been done on a 35 or a 50. When you’re dealing with people in a corner on one side of the set and people in another corner on the other side of the set, you need a longer lens. There was a lot of action in there and in order to get it all, the 18 was going to be our only option.  But, when you consider how the room was laid out, getting it all in one take was an uphill battle.

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Sunglasses inside #migrainestyle

The AD this week, Jimbo, is a buddy of mine and he came up with a good way to get the shot based on the room layout and the lens we were using. I wanted to do it all in one take, but having an alternative wouldn’t hurt. Jimbo blocked some things out and suggested that we get hinge reverse shots. We would be able to get most of it in one take, but it would also allow for us to cut in pieces from other takes that we liked better than any of the long takes. This would help us in not being totally screwed if we wanted to add stuff in later. We ended up adding in one or two shots, but not a lot and I like the way it turned out.  In an ideal world, we would have been able to do this in a studio and had more than the 2 hours of prep time we did. We would have been able to block it more and run it more, maybe even have an entire day where we could block. However, with everyone’s work schedules, that was something that just wasn’t going to happen. The cutaways might work better in the end anyway, given the lens we had to use and how the room was shaped. It’s hard to be a genius auteur when you have virtually no time to prepare and you’re basically shooting everything guerrilla style.

I’m interested to see how things turn out when we get to editing it. Again, we wrapped a few hours early. Morale was really waning today among the crew, and especially myself. The mental toll is starting to show but with two weekends left, we just gotta push through and keep on keeping on.

Production Diary: The Un-Supers Day 5

Day five was one of the more challenging days. As per the usual, the sheer volume of pages that we had to get out as quickly as possible was looming over our heads. But we also had the issue of limited space in the apartment that we were shooting.

It's incredibly gracious of the folks whose apartments we're using to let us invade their spaces for a day. It's a lot to ask and anyone that's willing to let 20 strangers come into their home and move their stuff around is a saint. However, it's also frustrating. Photography was my bridge into film and so explains a lot of how I think about the shots I'm getting. I want things to be cinematic, but with the space, time and budget constraints, the first thing to go is shot composition.

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You can probably tell that 1.) the room we were in was very small and 2.) I'm a Rangers fan

On Day 5, we were shooting in a room that was at best 8'X15'. The camera was set up in the door way, we had crew crammed in the corners out of sight and there were 4 characters that we had to capture. We we had to use an 18mm out of necessity. This bothered me for a myriad reasons, but one in particular is because I love using long lenses. I love the depth of field, I love that long lenses make for gorgeous portraits. I love lenses that are longer than 50's. My favorite is the 85, but there was no way we were going to make that fly. We were going to have to use this 50 for close ups, MCU's, everything. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that we were using a Black Magic camera and it crops the picture.

The other reason that it bothered me is because you want to use your focal length creative purposes and not by necessity. You want to use a lens by virtue of the look it has. Yes, the size is important for a close up or a mid-close up, but you don't want to use it just because it's the only way you can get everything into a shot that you need.  Unfortunately, c'est la vie.

There were other logistical issues to deal with too, like the lighting (and the space for the equipment) and the sound (taped to the wall). But again, you do what you gotta to make it work. In this case, we were able to get 8 shots banged out before we broke for lunch -- an hour early at that -- and then waited for the sun to go down to get some more shots done in the alley behind our location. What's crazy though was that some of my favorite shots and the ones that soothed my soul the most as far as all of this has gone were the ones that we shot guerilla style in the alley. We got some real emotional hits between two of the actors and it really made me feel like I was doing my job as a director and doing it well.

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Shooting in the alley

In the end, we managed to finish the day early, which is a blessing and a curse in and of itself, and welcomed but frustrating. It's a weird feeling. We almost need to end the days early to keep morale up and the more we crank through things and get em out fast, the better we're able to do that. But grip and rip has never been my style. It doesn't allow me adequate time to really direct the talent or rehearse or block as much as I'd like. And given the limitations that we've already encountered as far as preproduction and rehearsal that we were able to do before filming, that lack of on set direction could cost us in the end. But that's a story for another post. It's good to know that I can grip and rip, but in the end, I'd rather not.

Production Diary: The Un-Supers Day 4

4/19/2015

Day four had the potential to be a helluva day.  It was hot off the heels of day 3 - a day that I ended after 11.5 pages shot in 11 hours, covered in cat hair and knees screaming bloody murder.

We needed to black out windows since the party we were shooting was taking place at night. Now, this got us in trouble last time (see: Day 2 on how NOT to piss off landlords). We put garbage bags up on the front door and left a note with a happy face on it asking for understanding. Thankfully, it was received.

There was also the challenge of extras. We needed extras on day 4, even more than we needed for day 3, and it was dubious if we were going to get the number that we needed them and when we'd be able to get them. They trickled in through the day and by the time we got to shooting em, we only had to use 2 crew members as stand-ins.

The third matter was the nature of what we were shooting. Long takes on a Steadicam do not an easy day make, especially not with a lot of people. But with our extras in position we went with it. We got some good shots, and a few that I think I'll be cutting into my reel.

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It was packed full of scenes and the shot list was crazy but we got there early, got the set lit and decked and got to work. The first half of the day was a little rushed, but we got a key shot in before lunch that allowed for the after-lunch shooting to go a lot smoother.

We finished the day about an hour early and headed home. On the cab ride home, I realized one of the things that made things a little easier to handle and crank out. Sure, we had a lot to do this weekend. It ain't every set you're on where you knock out 20 pages over 21 hours in 2 days of shooting for a total of 34 shots. At least, I hope it isn't. Anyway. I owe a lot to the crew, but the talent deserves a shout out, too.

When you're working with a lot of people, getting to the point where they read well as a group together onscreen can take extra time, and that's time that we don't have. Because everyone here is working because they want to (re they're doing it in their free time and not being paid), no one really has it in their schedules to have dedicated rehearsal time. We all have jobs, some of us have more flexibility than others, but when it comes down to it, the weekends are really the only we got. This group, though, has been working together for a while and they know each other. They're all buddies and the script is written to play off their personalities and their existing relationships with each other so they read as buddies and not just a rag tag bunch of actors thrown together day of.

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Production Diary: The Un-Supers Day 3

4/18/2015

When we shot last weekend, we got lucky. Both Saturday and Sunday we were wrapped and headed home at least two hours early. We shot at a pretty good pace and got some good takes in despite some logistical difficulties.

This weekend, though, everything would be different.

I spent an entire afternoon early in the week figuring out the shot list and sent it to the AD for his take on things. On the whole, we would have to get through about 20 pages of the script, about 1/4 of it, this weekend alone. On Saturday, we were looking at having to get at least 20 different shots. Sunday we're gonna halve that and get 8, but Sunday's shots were long and would include a lot of extras.

Blocking in preparation for the arrival of the extras.

They were going to be long days. We had to shave time where we could. While I built in shots that could be cut if absolutely necessary,  I didn't want to if I didn't have to. We set decked as much as we could the night before and got there earlier than planned on Saturday morning to finish decking and to pre-light.

The good news was, we were knocking out shots. About three hours in, we were ahead of schedule.

It's on days of shoots like these that I appreciate having an AD who knows his stuff. CJ is a buddy of mine and we've worked on sets before. Our styles of ADing aren't exactly the same, but we share a few techniques. When it comes to jam-packed days, having an AD that can crack the whip and keep things moving while still maintaining the respect of the cast and crew is vital. Finding a good balance between planning ahead and going with the flow is integral, too, but I'll cover that in a later post.

The arrival of the extras added an element of chaos that we hadn't had to deal with before. They were fun to work with, they all seemed excited to be there and I gotta hand it to CJ, he kept everyone reigned in. More people meant more takes which meant more time. It wasn't our fault, but we weren't ahead of schedule anymore.

Despite falling behind, we were still able to wrap an hour early. That's what happens when you have an experienced crew.

Production Diary: The Un-Supers Day 2

4/12/2015

The first half of the day was meant to be shot in the basement/laundry of one of the producer's friend's apartments. For the first two hours of the day, things went smoothly, but things, as they often do, took a turn.

Neighbors called the landlord of the complex and he drove in to see what was going on. He was not pleased. While he told the producer he would be calling the cops on account of our trespassing and not getting a hold of him, the producer apologized and reminded him that she had the tenant's permission, the neighbors had been notified and she had in fact tried to get in contact with him. He flicked on the lights and told us in no uncertain terms to leave.

After a quick conversation with the AD, my buddy CJ, everything appeared to be copacetic. We had permission to be there until 6, at which point we'd be headed up to tenant's apartment and wouldn't be in anyone's way. Everything was good to go.

We went to get another take when the producer got a call from her friend whose apartment we were using, the landlord had called him and reamed him, we needed to leave - NOW. The landlord was angry and if we didn't get out, he was going to call the cops. It was bad news.

The saddest pile of equipment ever, waiting to be loaded into cars and taxis after getting kicked out of our location. Photo credit: Megan Cooper

We hastily packed up and began an emergency company move to one of the few locations we could secure permission for on the spot - the producer's apartment.  We made a quick drive across the suburbs and started getting set in the tiny back hallway of the producer's apartment. Here, though, the news was worse. Because of the stark difference between the previous location and this one, everything we'd shot had to be scratched. Four hours went down the drain and we were going to have to reblock, reshoot and restage everything.

It was looking like the day was going to run long, but thanks to some quick thinking during a pow wow with the AD and the cinematographer, we made some minor changes to the script and the action and got to work. We powered through shots and wasted as little time as we could.

This isn't the first time I'd ever lost a location, maybe it won't be the last. But if there was anything that I learned from the first time around, it's that the show must go on. The odds certainly weren't stacked against use as much as they were in White Sands, but it all comes down to how you work with your circumstances, because your circumstances aren't always going to work for you.

We rocked out and at the end of the day, we finished up about two hours early. And that was with the addition of an outtake shot to have a little fun with a few of our actors. Not bad for a surprise company move in the middle of the day.

Production Diary: The Un-Supers Day 1

4/11/2015

Months of pre-pro finally paid off because today we started shooting the Reutan Collective's web series, The Un-Supers.

Overall, it was a solid day. We were shooting in an apartment that belongs to friends of the producer, Sarah. They were cool with us being there and stayed all day to observe and help with anything necessary. I was a little worried going in because it was a tight space and we had a fair number of people. I think we worked well with what we had though. Two of the cast members provided us with a home cooked pasta dinner, which kept us going through the end of the day.

Some of the scenes got a little loud (they're fight scenes, it's to be expected) but the neighbors didn't seem too concerned. Toward the end of the night, one of them did come by to see what was going on, but was more intrigued than anything.

Working on one of the fight scenes. Figuring out the physics and logistics behind an actress playing almost-dead.

While we did have some issues with noise from the neighbors, a rather vocal dog outside and airplanes, we had no choice but to power through. We could control everything in the apartment, but when it came to the sound outside, there was nothing we could do. Sure, it was irritating, but we made it work. It's something to keep in mind for shoots down the road though. Just like renting a new apartment, knowing what's going on outside your own four walls is something to take note of.

Locations for free or cheap are great, but for any shoot, you have a choice between three factors: make it good, make it cheap or make it fast. You get to pick two. If you get all three, you've stumbled upon a miracle and should rejoice in your luck. Three factors make for three choices, for us, the budget limits us, but there can be other factors that limit the way you choose your combination of two. But that will be covered another day.

Checking the monitor.