HopkinsCinemAddicts

Cocaine to London: Casting

In my previous blog post, I discussed me and my producers hitting a major milestone in the pre-production phase: launching our Seed&Spark page and beginning to fundraise for our project. It was a moment that took a lot of planning, hard work and energy out of me and while I wish I could say that it was met with a moment of peace and bliss… I would be gravely lying.

See, the reality of the situation is that finishing the Seed&Spark process gave me a weird feeling; an odd, unexplainable mix of adrenaline-fueled excitement and dread. Dread for how much more had to be done and how time had already ticked so far away. At this point we were already almost three months into the pre-production process and I was very proud of the progress, we still had a lot more to go. At this point, the excitement of first starting the process was starting to wane and all of our work ethics were going along with it. Also, classes were starting to ramp up in intensity and I knew this would affect everyone’s availability. So immediately the next day, fueled by both excitement and fear, I began on the other major aspect of the pre-production process: the casting.

In our initial meeting, my producers and I were able to create the Backstage page for the film and even before I finished the Seed&Spark, I finished up the necessary requirements for this page as it seemed easier and I wanted to make sure that we got started on casting as early as possible. The requirements for a Backstage account, are similar to See&Spark in some ways as they require elements like a logline, a list of genres, shoot dates, etc. However, with it being a casting site, most of the preliminary information is relative to the characters of the film. I had to explain each character, giving the applicants information about their physical features such as gender and race (if applicable), their required talents such as singing, playing guitar, yelling (all of which are very relevant to my script) and also just information on the character’s headspace so that the actor can give the best performance they can.

The homepage to our Backstage listing!

It is this ability to give a performance that is why we chose to use Backstage for this process. The other major aspect of creating our Backstage listing is the inclusion of Sides for each character. Sides are a small section of the script that the site shows to all applicants which allows them to record a virtual audition video to see both their acting skills as a whole, but also their synergy with the role itself. Luckily, I found that my script gave each character a lot of really big, important moments that require strong acting that I could send for each role. While the script would change throughout this process, rendering some of the Sides outdated, they still helped show the actor’s ability to portray the character and I was able to cast multiple people based on these Sides.

However, it is not all smooth. We were successfully able to cast two of our characters very easily in the antagonist and his father (the lead singer and drummer of the band respectively) but the other roles turned out to be much trickier. For one, there was a character of a Camera Guy who we successfully casted and then was sadly written out of the script a month later. We had to sadly tell the actor for the camera guy that his role had been cut which was disappointing considering his acting ability, but it did give us practice in giving people bad news, a reality we will have to become accustomed to. At the same time, we casted the role of the recording engineer, however recently learned that the timing would no longer work for her as she would have to travel a long way for the shoot and with the actor’s strike recently lifting, she did not want to miss out on opportunities in her own area. This also turned out to be okay in the end as luckily we had a lot of applicants for this role and are currently in the process of interviewing two more possible actors for the role.

A still from our first Zoom casting interview!

The most worrisome aspect of this casting process, an aspect that has still not been solved, is casting our last two characters: the mother character and her daughter… who is the lead of the film! Part of the worry is my own pickiness, with this lead having a lot of tough scenes that do not work if the performance is not as perfect as it could be, but one of the major issues with this casting was the amount of skills our lead needs to have. From playing the bass to playing the acoustic guitar to singing to being able to scream, we were already casting a shallow net made shallower by the fact that we wanted them to be within the area due to our struggling budget.

Now, usually I end these posts with a shift to how we learned from the experiences we completed and how they gave me excitement for the film, but the reality is… this casting process has really been pissing me off. I will instead end this post by speaking to the world of the Internet and requesting that if anyone is at all interested in filling our remaining roles or knows of people who would be, to message this email: [email protected]. Shameless plug, I know, I know, but we are getting desperate and why not use every platform I have.

Thank you in advance and sorry for the non-optimistic ending. Maybe next week, I’ll be less annoyed by the filmmaking process. Anyways, thanks for reading.

 

Until next time…

                        Devin

Sundown: Evening (Day Five)

After the roughest day in production, we had another break day. As always, I reflected on what happened the previous day and found silver linings. The day wasn’t all bad; the morning scene was successful, which featured Johns Hopkins’ own Dr. Jamie Young as our “psychiatrist” character. Furthermore, I was determined not to let one bad day of shooting ruin my energy for the rest of the shoot. I was especially excited for our final days as we planned to shoot all the scenes that were part of the original shorter script. The scenes that started it all.

The break was primarily used to take photos of my actors for “family photo” production design in the final location of the shoot, the main character’s childhood home. Here, I also got to talk more with my main actors and understand how they truly felt about the project—they were having a good time! Taking a relaxed moment to connect with my actors was vital for me and them to understand each other better, director to actor, and person to person. After the break day and a few conversations with my cast and crew, my attitude toward the remaining portion of the shoot improved. In my reflections, I understood (and continue to understand) that my mistakes and regrets about the film were lessons to learn from going forward.

Our final location was held at my paternal grandmother’s Baltimore apartment. She graciously let us invade her space for nearly twelve hours at a time, four days straight. The first day was focused on shooting the very first scene in the film, the opening conversation between the main character and his mother. Watching everything come together—the production design, the performance—I felt that my original artistic vision was genuinely coming to fruition. Later that night, we wrapped on one of my main actors. Directing him (and others) was a great push outside my comfort zone in working with non-student actors and adapting to various acting experience levels. Most importantly, my experience taught me many lessons in how to do what a good director does best: know what they want and how to get it.

Aug. 24 - “Young Mikey” and his mother

We began our fifth shooting day a bit later to get closer to the time of day we needed. We primarily focused on external shots that day, prompting us to move quickly with the ever-changing light. This day brought an obvious issue to my attention; the period my entire film centers around (sunset, or more aptly, sundown) lasts for a very short time. There was confusion on my part about what the lighting conditions would be at certain times and how long those conditions would last. As a result, we had to postpone filming one scene for over an hour since the reflection of the light outside at the story-accurate time of day was too strong. My Script Supervisor, Devin Andrada, was not happy with me regarding the continuity; but again, these are lessons learned for the future. Despite the issues, this shot was where my crew (specifically my camera and lighting team!) got to show off their skills with the setup and execution. Also, while waiting to shoot this scene, we got the quintessential sundown shot (not really, it was pre-sundown, early evening, but close enough).

Aug. 25 - Crew setting up for the window shot

The most exciting part of the day was starting work with my “Creature” actor for our one-shot scene. Here, the main character’s mother gets caught by the Creature, which we wanted to be able to execute creatively through a one-shot. Going through the prep for this was a challenge: clearing space for movement, blocking, framing, sound, and more. However, with each dry run and each take, the work began to pay off. We did about four or five runs of this scene, each with unique elements that could work well in the final film. This was our last shot of the night, which ended with us squealing over a take that worked, a shared success amongst the entire crew. More than any day before, I felt what I had been working to feel throughout the previous shoot days: a genuine sense of accomplishment that was validated by others’ enthusiasm.

Aug. 26 - Checking the front door, featuring my Sound Mixer, NIls

This sense of accomplishment carried me into the second-to-last day of production. The entire day was dedicated to the scene where the main character first encounters the Creature. The scene that started it all. We were staring down the barrel of an 8-hour day without much time for breaks; if we weren’t shooting, we were rehearsing, setting up for the next shot, or breaking down the previous one. I expected to be more stressed this day than on any of the others. I had anticipated it for so long. However, I felt more level-headed that day than I had felt on all the other days. I loved moving from shot to shot, setup to setup, as seamlessly as we did. The day ended with another one-shot where the main character meets the Creature for the first time. After 8 hours of work, the most significant part of our film was complete. I returned home well past midnight but felt more accomplished than ever. After three months of intense preparation and six days of shooting later, 80% of my short film was under my belt.

By this time, there was just one day left in our schedule. Approaching the end of production after an entire summer’s worth of work and anticipation was a bittersweet denouement. While I was eager to stop harboring self-doubts, finally get some rest, and generally move on, I also knew I would miss this experience for everything that it was. Sundown was coming to an end, and it was almost time for us to say goodbye.

Sundown: Morning (Day One)

When I awoke on the first morning of production, time felt unreal. It was a Friday, but it felt like a Monday. Day One. The beginning of what I had worked so hard to pull together over the past three months. I stayed up late to ensure everything was in order—printing scripts, shooting schedules, call sheets, everything. Soon, it was time for action.

Aug. 19: Late-night printing scripts. V4 with edits.

On day one, our call time was 9:00am at the Film Centre. Once I arrived, I met with my other leading actor (the adult version of my first actor), convened with my crew, and set prep into motion. Watching everything come together—camera setup, production design, hair and makeup, last-minute rehearsals—I was moving through my disbelief that something I had worked on tirelessly was coming to life. Meeting my actors was the biggest example of this; I loved finally connecting with my cast in person, going over lines, and feeling the energy they would bring their characters. I was not as nervous as I thought I would be stepping into the director role. I had my worries, sure, but I felt a natural ease in addressing everyone on set and commanding attention (in a non-intimidating way), mainly because I was given space to do so by my cast and crew. They trusted me, which was all I could ask for.

Back to reality—we needed to shoot! We began the day about 30 minutes behind schedule after arriving a bit late, so we worked quickly to set up a “therapist office” in the faculty and staff kitchen area. Once it was “all systems go,” pressing the record button, once to roll, once more to cut, was a transition past the point of no return—the first take, evidence that the film now existed in some way. Of course, I was then super particular about redoing the shot multiple times to make it “perfect” (whatever that meant). Already behind schedule, I was encouraged by my crew (particularly my Assistant Director, Mia DeAngelo) to move on, so we did. This scene, which exists about halfway through the film, had many elements: dialogue, multiple angles of said dialogue, lighting challenges, and more. It was the perfect way to test set dynamics and my directing style for the rest of the production.

Aug. 19: Our first scene in the “therapist office.”

After filming this scene, we had a much-needed lunch break while moving locations to shoot the last scene of the day and the movie’s final scene. This scene posed some challenges, considering how crucial it was to look and feel right. Even after messing around with lighting setup, character action, and camera framing, I’m not sure that the scene ended up where it needed to be. The instance of this feeling was, I soon learned, the first of many. Nonetheless, we wrapped in the early evening, saying goodbye to our supporting actress and moving equipment to our following shooting location before dispersing to our homes for the evening. The first night back set a dangerous precedent for production: wake up around 8am, go to set for no less than 8 hours, come home to work on production documents, and attempt sleep at 2am. This was my night, every night, without fail.

On day two, we were at my Assistant Camera’s house to shoot with my main actor at his “adult apartment.” We got to have fun shooting “nighttime” scenes in broad daylight, dirtying up a bedroom, and hiding our sound mixer in the shower for a bathroom scene. I originally planned to be in the space for two days, but I figured we could achieve everything in one very long day. However, we ran over schedule. I had to decide whether to keep people past wrap time for an hour or more or make sacrifices. Ultimately, I cut a relatively insignificant scene from the film, allowing us to finish on time.

Aug. 20: Day two, location two; bathroom of “adult apartment.”

With the extra day in our schedule, I held a production meeting with my crew to discuss plans for one of the most crucial scenes in the film: the climax, Scene 20. How painfully ironic that the climax of my film was the height of my experience on set-- for all the wrong reasons. First and foremost, this was the busiest day on set. Nearly all my cast and crew were present, totaling about 21 people on set throughout the day reporting to me. Second, this scene essentially functions as a set piece, requiring a lot of blocking and equipment prep beforehand. Even after 2 hours of rehearsal and my crew put in their best efforts to creatively light and shoot the scene, I came away from it feeling utterly defeated. I felt a painful shame as most of my cast and crew watched me fail to extract the performance I wanted. The imposter syndrome I had worked hard to stave off in the middle of the summer rushed back in the worst way.

Aug. 21: A camera/dolly blocking diagram for Scene 20.

Half of the film had been shot at this point, and I was disappointed with the most significant part of it. This was the culmination of my biggest failure in approaching Sundown: inadequate preparation. Even then, I’m not convinced that the failure wasn’t due in part to an unclear story, reflecting deeper insecurities about my project. Returning home, I felt a greater shame as I returned to my destructive routine of finalizing production documents the night before we shot. I spiraled into an identity crisis, ending my night seriously reevaluating my future in the film industry. This was my lowest point during production. However, I had no choice but to continue. As long as my cast and crew still trusted me to direct, I knew I had the support I needed to see the project through thick and thin. It was all I needed.

Sundown: Quiet Before the Storm (July)

Nowhere to go but up.

Coming off the tails of June, I dove into the rest of the necessary preparation work for Sundown. I knew I had to be efficient and purposeful with how I spent the remaining days of my summer before we shot, and time was fading fast. Much of what was left to do should have been started, if not completed, the month prior. This included— but was in no way limited to— creating a shot list, another round of script revisions, figuring out funding, holding preliminary conversations with my camera and lighting team, and above all else, casting.

In keeping with the theme of “things-that-should-have-been-done-in-June-but-weren’t,” I worked with John and Aarushi to set up casting through Backstage as quickly as we could. For Sundown (V3), I was able to get the number of characters reduced from 11 characters to 6, which I still thought was a bit much for the caliber of my production. Furthermore, with the story I wanted to tell, I had no idea how difficult (or easy?) it would be to find a talented, available, predominantly Black cast for an unpaid student short film in just a month. There was only one way to know, and we moved to find our answer when we launched on July 6.

July 2022 - A snippet of the Backstage casting page.

We actually received our first submission for one of our leads, “Adult Mikey,” the same day we launched our listing. It took me a few days to figure out how Backstage’s notification system worked, so I ultimately didn’t see it until a few days later. But still, so exciting! This eased my doubts about the feasibility of the task of casting I laid out for myself However, my enthusiasm was undercut by the issue of needing the applicants to fit the creative and logistical needs of Sundown. Over the next four or five weeks that the casting page would be open, we sifted through 18 total applications, of which we casted 3 out of our 6 roles. In late July, we posted an open call to our Instagram which procured our fourth role of the “Therapist.” We held 6 callback virtual auditions throughout the month, making sure to ask questions about experience, logistics, and other pertinent information necessary should they be on set. The other two cast members came from personal connections: one family member of mine, and a Hopkins professor (reveal to come in a future entry!).

July 2022 - Redacted audition notes about a few of the actors that came through Backstage.

Casting non-Hopkins students, and really, casting anyone in the far periphery of my immediate circle was a huge source of anxiety for me. Learning how to communicate with working actors, moving through the audition process, ultimately rejecting applicants— it was a daunting prospect for someone who is very sensitive about nearly every one of my interpersonal interactions. Am I making this actor uncomfortable? Am I being too incessant with my emails and messages? Does my actor secretly hate me? These were feelings that would ebb and flow over the next few weeks and into August as I prepared to execute the role and responsibilities of a director. Regardless, I trusted in the process (and myself) and moved forward. By early August, we had cast (and confirmed availability) with all six of our actors.

The next pertinent thing to accomplish was establishing a plan of action for camera and lighting. I only worked on the script revisions for the next version (V4) later in the month, but I wanted to create a storyboard for parts of the story that I knew would stay the same. I met twice with my Director of Photography, Sophia Lin, and my 1st Assistant Camera, Isabel Salas, trudging through the script for hours to draft a storyboard. It was important that I rope them in for this process since I wanted their vision and creative expertise to inform the visual language of the film. Collectively, we came up with a few ideas for shots that I was very excited to execute in the coming weeks. I sent the storyboard to my grip and electric team (Chime Nwogu and Christian Reidy, respectively) to get them thinking about any equipment necessary to pull off certain shots. Towards the end of the month, I implemented the last round of script revisions to create a near-final version of the script, which included some much-needed edits. After talking with my camera and lighting crew, initiating casting, and generally spending more time on the project as compared to June, I felt much better about the possibility of Sundown.

July 2022 - Working on script revisions and the storyboard while on a plane back home from Indiana.

There was still one last thing to do: figure out crowdfunding. The issue of creating a “compelling, well-written, unbelievably beautiful promo video” still stood. Looking at the time and resources I had, I made the decision to postpone the fundraising launch until post-production. This meant that I needed to secure more private funding, which I was thankfully able to do without much issue. With the main elements of pre-production set into motion, we were on our way to be prepared for our August 19 start date.

July ended on a much better note than June as my confidence in the project—and myself— had been somewhat restored. Despite being constantly ping-ponged between work and my internship, I wanted to put my all into Sundown for the rest of the time I had left. This month presented personal and technical challenges as I explored uncharted territories with casting, budgeting, and general preparation for a short film. I knew that I was in for more challenges and surprises (both pleasant and less-than-so) in the weeks to come. Nonetheless, I had full faith in my cast and crew and we moved forward into August with a plan of action and the will to make it happen.

Opening Night Re-examines and Refracts the "Aging Actress" Trope

“I’ll do just about anything to make my character more authentic. I always have.” 

John Cassavetes’ Opening Night (1977) is about a woman whose life is dedicated to performance. Myrtle Gordon subsumes herself in her acting roles. She has no children; her romantic relationships are with her co-star and her director; she has no age to which she will admit, lest her aging jeopardize her career. In her latest play, she stars as Virginia, an aging actress. After a car accident takes place outside the theater after a performance and a young fan is killed, Myrtle begins to hallucinate the young girl as she herself descends further into alcoholism and unreality. Myrtle speaks, like Gena Rowlands’ characters in Cassavetes’ films often do and are, like a mad person who believes she is the only sane one in the room. 

She may be the only sane one in a room of occultists preparing for a seance led by the playwright’s psychic, but her proclamations of self-knowledge are as forthcoming and easy to comprehend as they are tragically revealing of Myrtle’s own blind spots. In sacrificing herself for roles - not sleeping enough, drinking, smoking, all to “get into character” - she indulges in the hedonistic pleasures afforded her by the vocation of inhabiting another person. In pursuit of a character’s authenticity, Myrtle has lost herself; she is unable to see the young woman she once was in Virginia, the “second woman.” Because she inhabits every character so fully, Myrtle’s loss of self impedes her acting. Thus, the straightforward trope of the aging actress is reflected back upon itself, exposing the discrepancies between the artistic rendering and the reality. 

Myrtle moves between stage sets and real-life locales constantly, and themes established in the outside world recur in the narrative of the play. In Virginia’s apartment, two enormous black-and-white photographs of an old woman in a headscarf adorn the walls. Her face is etched with wrinkles, the quintessential babushka; the domineering presence of the photographs beats the play’s audience over the head with its theme of aging womanhood while serving as a clear juxtaposition with Myrtle/Virginia, whose “old” age is less obvious, more well-preserved than “decrepit.” We see the fine lines on Myrtle’s face only when she winces as she knocks back a drink in a close-up, a donning of armor before facing the audience. 

Myrtle is not as old as Virginia, and she identifies this to Sarah Goode, the playwright (played by 1930s movie star Joan Blondell, whose own career imbues the casting with the connotation of the washed-up starlet archetype) as a major sticking point in her artistic process. “You have me up there having hot flashes - I don’t have hot flashes!” Myrtle refers to herself as her character, indicating her increasing difficulty with separating the two, and implicitly accuses Sarah of humiliating her by writing such an old woman for her to play. Myrtle’s worries seem vain and ridiculous, like those of so many vain, ridiculous actresses who care more about how they appear than how accurately they portray the character: a variation on Norma Desmond, the butt of the joke. It’s a culturally accepted phenomenon, and it largely lets Hollywood off the hook for the superficial standards of practice that drive women to such hysterics. Myrtle explains it all: if she plays this role convincingly, her fate is sealed as an old actress relegated to old-woman roles. No matter how good this play might be, no matter how complex and rich of a character Virginia is, she is not an ingenue in the traditional sense and Myrtle will never be such an ingenue again. 

The paradoxical lucidity with which Myrtle analyzes her relationship to Nancy, the young fan killed in an accident outside the theater, further distinguishes her from the crazy actress trope while confirming that she is sort of textbook “crazy,” hallucinating the dead girl as a paragon of desirable youth who says things like, “I like to fuck. I like when men look at me.” Unable to let go of this version of herself who probably never was - first eighteen, then seventeen, impossibly young and beautiful and scarily willing to be used by men in ways that many aspiring actresses rationalize to themselves again and again - Myrtle conjures her and tortures herself with the phantom. When Nancy confronts Myrtle, it is the confirmation of Myrtle’s worst fears about her aging self through the eyes of the younger woman she “killed,” perhaps so no one would rise up, All About Eve -style, in her place? 

In the manner of an experimental character study, Opening Night atomizes and comments on the wider tendency of the actress to make everything about herself, the solipsism required by the profession that dramatizes every aspect of life, encouraged and pilloried by the people who want her to perform, who write plays and direct her in them. The car accident has a lingering effect on Myrtle because it is an awful thing that she witnessed and subsequently internalized, but also because the people in the car with her (her husband, Manny, the play’s director; and her co-star and stage husband, played by Cassavetes) tell the chauffeur to keep driving.

Mandy Dreams of LSD (Eric)

Nic Cage is my favorite actor of all time, and thanks to his questionable financial responsibility, he seems to take any movie offer thrown his way. In 2018, Cage lent his voice to two animated movies, appeared in one documentary, and acted in six feature films, one of which was Mandy. Directed by Panos Cosmatos, Mandy is a nightmarish revenge thriller, imbued with as much unhinged emotion as it is with psychedelic color. In other words, it is the perfect vehicle for Cage’s often over-the-top acting style. Playing the role of a reclusive, recovering alcoholic whose wife is kidnapped and burned alive by a Manson-esque cult, Nic Cage operates at maximum Cage-ness for the duration of his bloody rampage, and it’s a whole lot of fun.

While Nic Cage was perfectly cast for Mandy, the movie would not be what it is without Cosmatos’ vision and the skill with which he laces psychedelic drugs into the film itself. Drugs appear in most movies as plot devices, sold and bought and used by characters in order to move the narrative along. Replacing the cocaine in Scarface (1983) with cheeseburgers would not make any practical sense, but the plot would remain essentially the same. In addition, countless other movies attempt to depict or replicate mind-altering drug experiences through visual effects and camera techniques. For example, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) uses close ups with wide angle lenses to create a disorienting effect, and special effects are used to make patterns in the carpet move as they might appear to during a real acid trip. Many science fiction movies take inspiration from psychedelic experiences to convey a sense of otherworldliness, as evidenced by the “Star Gate” sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and the countless other versions of the endless light tunnel. Most similar to Mandy in its attempt to craft a world dependent on psychedelics is Enter the Void (2009), yet the intimate camera of Enter the Void provides the film with a sense of realism that is noticeably lacking in Mandy. Mandy is the first example of a movie I’ve seen in which the mise-en-scene is wholly inspired by psychedelic drugs and in which both character actions and the movie universe are dependent on the presence of such drugs.

In this way, it could be hypothesized that the world of Mandy is actually the collective internal experience of its characters. The very beginning of the movie features no drugs, but the mise-en-scene in these opening scenes acts as a prologue to the full blown hallucinogenic heart of the rest of the film. The saturated lighting and double-exposures, though muted in presentation, are still apparent in the opening. In the scene in which Nic Cage’s character first takes the fantasy acid, the film presents what appears to be a montage of images within the character’s mind. These images strongly resemble the actual setting of the film, and in the final scene, Nic Cage drives away under a colorful, fantasy horizon. Once the drugs are introduced in the plot, many sequences take on a rhythmic, dreamlike quality reminiscent of Stan Brakhage’s Dog Star Man (1961-1964). This is despite the very literal violence that occurs in the plot, which includes a chainsaw duel and a skull crushing. The plot is presented in a very linear fashion, yet the film works to meld scenes together, which limits the role of time and emphasizes the movie’s hallucinogenic nature. The saturated lighting, fade-ins and fade-outs, double-exposures, and dream sequences cooperate with the fantastical special effects to produce a film that both explores and inhabits hallucination.

A State of Emergency (Ceci)

In my last post, I stated that the law of physics states that everything that can go wrong the week before a shoot, will go wrong. I was right, but not because I wanted to be. If I thought missing props were bad, it didn’t compare to the 44 hours beforehand.

44 hours before we were set to shoot, I got an email from my lead actress:

“This email is in regards to the Unawakened short film…. I will no longer be able to be apart of the film. I’m so so sorry for the inconvenience this has caused.”

My entire body froze. I took a shallow, panicked, breath. What could I do? What should I do? I wanted to scream. I did scream. My thoughts raced. I sat on the ground and cried for a brief moment. But I didn’t have time to wallow in self-despair. Not when I had film to film in 43 hours. I picked myself up. It was time to make a decision. The clock was ticking. I called my DPs.

“We have an emergency.”

The next twelve hours that ensued were complete and utter chaos. Out of respect for the schedule of my cast and crew, I set a 24 hour limit to figure out whether we were going to shoot that weekend or postpone the entire project. I weighed the pros and cons of both options for several hours.

Pros of delaying the shoot:

1. I’d have more time to sort this problem out
2. I could recast more thoroughly

Cons of delaying the shoot:

1. Locations have been set
2. Crew has been determined and scheduled
3. Talent (barring the lead) has been contacted and scheduled (the lead male coming from out of state)

There are a lot of moving parts that come together for a shoot, and they take a ton of planning to get them all to operate as one machine. As I started to talk through pushing the schedule back even just one week, the parts started to fall to the wayside. I would lose crew – most importantly one of my DPs. Locations would have to be re-determined. Casting and scheduling would have to be completely reorganized. I had to shoot this weekend.

I determined that I had to shoot this weekend, even though I wasn’t quite sure how that would work out. I started by going back through the people who had been interested in the project on Backstage and then started reaching out to groups within the Hopkins community.

“Hi, my name is Ceci. Due to an emergency I have to recast the lead role for my senior thesis and I think you’d be a great fit for the role. Can I talk to you about your availability for the upcoming weekends …” the cold calls started.

After three hours of sending emails, posting notices, and calling people, a text message popped up from one of my friends. “My friend reached out to me saying she was interested in your project. I think she’s a good fit. Can I give her your number?” Half an hour later I was on the phone with her. The next morning I met her for coffee.

I sat with her and explained the premise and the commitment. “Does that all sound good to you?” It wasn’t until she nodded and agreed that my whole body relaxed and I let out a sigh of relief.

I smiled. We had figured it out. The shoot would go on.

Casting Call (Ceci)

“I accept the role! Thank you.” I let out a sigh of relief. Casting? Exhausting. Getting the final confirmation email? Priceless. Let’s back up though – casting? How did we get here? Where did this process start?

The short answer is: it depends. I wrote my own script, so this process, for me, started nearly two years ago. However, the casting process started a few months ago.  The first thing I did when I wanted to start the casting process was I created an account on the largest casting site available: Backstage. I posted casting descriptions for the two principal roles that I was looking for and then waited. And waited. And waited. I watched as people started applying for the roles (which was equal parts thrilling and terrifying). I was constantly monitoring my email and inviting people to come audition for me. On Backstage I ended up having 118 people submit for the two roles. What a decision I had in front of me!

After posting the casting descriptions and inviting people to come audition for me, I then had to set up the actual auditions. I started booking rooms and setting up times, and then deciding who was going to be in the room with me to make these decisions. I knew I needed at least one other person to run auditions with me. I had scheduled my auditions to be at the Film Centre, which is a swipe-access building. If I needed to be in the audition room, I needed someone to be downstairs to let in the people auditioning. I also wanted my Directors of Photography to have a say in the casting process. I had one of them set up the camera so that we could record the auditions and then had a casting assistant swipe people into the building and send them upstairs.

I scheduled two audition days, from 9 am – 4:30 pm. Auditions can often lend themselves to be frustrating and exhausting – people cancel their audition slots, they’re running late, they don’t show up, or they get lost. The list goes on and on. It seems like the process is pretty much doomed to not run smoothly. But you stay for the end result; at the end of the day, you’re getting your cast. And this is the reason we go through all of this.

 

By the end of the second day of casting, I looked at my crew: “we can cast this.” We had found talent. We had made final decisions. What a relief.

The process wasn’t quite over though. Now we had to send out acceptances! Less exciting - we also had to send out rejections. It’s hard to write a rejection letter to someone regardless, but it’s especially hard to write it when you know someone was excited about the opportunity. Luckily, I was still looking for extras for the shoot, so I was able to offer the ability to be on set, even if it wasn’t for a principal role.

Within 48 hours I had received confirmation from the two principal roles and the one smaller role that I was casting. After a process that lasted nearly 3 months – from posting the first casting description to receiving the last confirmation email – it was incredible to finally have a basis to start shooting.

Next up: scheduling, scheduling, scheduling.

 

Dr. Strangelove Revisited or How I Learned to Keep Worrying Indefinitely. (Gabe)

For my final post of the semester I want to take a moment to discuss a film that in our current political climate seems as relevant as when it was first released during the Cold War. Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film, Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, is a potent indictment of the ever-growing power of the military industrial complex in America, and a dark assessment of where this may lead us.

When watching this film, I was first struck by the fact that it is shot entirely in black and white. This directoral decision creates a sense of detachment from reality, just by virtue of its color palate. The separation between the world of the film, and our world itself, is misleading, and perhaps intentionally so. By deliberately creating a dimension of fictionality for this black comedy the viewer is freed to enjoy the humor of the piece without being entirely browbeaten by its political themes. In turn, the comic relief creates space for its harder hitting elements, such as the turn to fascism at the film’s conclusion, to resonate with viewers. In so doing, the audience has not been desensitized by the rest of the movie, and the comedy’s juxtaposition with heavier aspects of the plot and subject matter, makes the film as a whole more easily digestible for a wider audience, thereby increasing its chances of disseminating its message.

The next thing to grip me was the decision to cast Peter Sellers in three very different roles. While it is obviously an incredible task for a performer to delve fully into the minds of multiple, competing characters in the same film, I thought that thematically it suggested the blurring of lines between different groups in society, ultimately proposing that the characters might not be so inseparable as they initially seem. The three characters Sellers plays are a British ranking officer, who is utterly ineffectual and does nothing substantial to undo Ripper’s belicosity. Next there is the American president, an effeminate buffoon who can’t control his country’s nuclear arsenal. And finally, Dr. Strangelove himself, a Nazi nuclear scientist who defected to the United States following World War II. While their significance might not be immediately apparent, I thought the decision to cast these three characters with the same actor creates a link between them and suggests a sense of shared complicity in the events that unfold. If all three of these men are ultimately the same actor underneath the makeup and accents, then perhaps the characters themselves might are also not so different from one another. It might not take much for their differences to melt fully away, exposing the single, scared human, who lies beneath.

This connection between characters heightens the film’s disconcerting ending. When all seems lost and the atomic bomb has dropped, triggering the Soviet “doomsday device,” everybody in the Situation Room turns to Dr. Strangelove for guidance. This moment is chilling, for all it takes to make the government of the United States gravitate towards fascism, is fear of death and losing military supremacy. I thought this spoke to the true, insidious nature of fascist ideology. Furthermore, it struck me as an indictment of human behavior as a whole. In the film, these are the people who have been elected to represent the interests of the American public, but when their own lives are imperiled they flock to an unabashed Nazi for comfort and advice, even while he is frantically and uncontrollably saluting Hitler, and leap at the chance to save themselves. When Dr. Strangelove suggests a plan for living underground in mineshafts, they agree. In fact, their cowardly and enthusiastic abandonment of American ideals for the comfort of fascism is so empowering to the wheel-chair-bound Dr. Strangelove, that his legs are healed, prompting him to stand and exclaim the final words of the film, “Mein Führer, I can walk.”

Part of what makes this ending so jarring is the sense of inevitability in the prior events. Once things are set in motion there is little chance of stopping the attack, which smoothly transitions to a grateful acceptance of fascist policies. Here it just takes the relatively small push of a single general acting alone, to shift the entire course of human history. While it may seem a ridiculous possibility to the optimistic inhabitants of our modern world, this no longer feels so far-fetched. At the risk of betraying my own political biases, it is worth noting that this film made me seriously consider the checks and balances we have in place for taking unilateral military action, and how, when considered against the reality of a nuclear war’s consequences, they are a very small comfort. This is where, for me, the film finds its greatest success. Years after its creation, Dr. Strangelove provokes sober thought about our current political environment and way of seeing our place in the world. In my opinion, this should be among the goals of filmmakers everywhere: to show the world as they see it, so that others can join them in societal self-examination. Perhaps in so doing we can improve our country and the world at large, but sixty-three years after its creation, this film has not lost a bit of resonance, and I don’t know whether to find that comforting or profoundly alarming.

(Pseudo) Silence: A Short Study of Visual Comedy (Faith)

This year is the 100th anniversary of one of the greatest silent comedian’s first on-screen appearance—in 1917, a young Buster Keaton was featured in Fatty Arbuckle’s two-reeler The Butcher Boy, beginning his career in film. Coincidentally, this year also saw my first exposure to Keaton’s work; after watching The General, the director was transformed in my mind from a distant figure of history to a true genius of comedy. Though his greatest films are nearing a century old, I was struck with their lasting comedic power. Keaton’s films captured my interest on both a historic and cinematic level, but held my interest through something harder to describe: a kind of dual quality of familiarity and novelty. Some instinct seemed to draw me towards these films as undeniably funny, and yet, when I consider recent comedies, I saw nothing quite like Keaton’s work. I wanted to know more about how silent comedy has influenced films and what modern comedies can learn from its techniques. Delving into this topic quickly took me to the works of Jacques Tati, a filmmaker who was directly influenced by Keaton, and whose work Keaton praised repeatedly. To see where similarities and evolutions in comedy were present in the directors’ works, I decided to take a closer look at the films widely regarded to be each’s masterpiece—for Keaton, The General (1926); for Tati, Play Time (1967).

One of the most obvious similarities between these films is the relative lack of dialogue. Of course, this is partly because The General is silent, but Keaton also deliberately kept his use of title cards far below that of his competitors. In Play Time, a similar aversion to dialogue doesn't erase character speech altogether, but makes what little appears mostly nonsynchronous. This stylistic choice makes the sparse dialogue, whether it's the tittering of the tour group or ruckus of nightclub patrons, feel more like another component of the shot, rather than part of the narrative. This decision adds a particular sense of depersonalization to Play Time’s modern setting, but for both directors allowed a focus on more cinematic elements of comedy. Of course this didn’t entirely exclude sound—sound effects (or the lack thereof) are used in both films in the service of gags, and are always come hand in hand with the director’s understanding of how to play with perspective within the frame. A perfect example from The General is when protagonist Johnnie Gray (Keaton) rides his train across the front lines of battle, remaining oblivious to the war being waged right behind him simply because his back is turned. Using the lack of sound effects to his advantage, Keaton suggests that Johnnie’s perception is limited to that of the audience—what the viewer can’t hear is accepted as silent, and we’re able to both marvel at and believe in his ignorance. This interaction of sound and perspective appears throughout Tati’s films, and is used to masterful effect in Play Time. One scene early in the film follows Monsieur Hulot (Tati) as he waits in a sleek, modern office building. Tati exploits the environment—here, the clear glass walls—to repeatedly withhold the sound of Hulot’s motions. This initially postpones the audience hearing the sound of the squeaking chairs, for instance, and subverts our expectations of synchronous sound when Hulot begins slipping on the waxed tile floors. Instead of hearing the scuffles of his strained movements, our sound perspective is moved outside the building, where we hear only passing traffic. This manipulation of sound is simple but effective, as the audience is left with both the gleeful task of filling in these sonic blanks as well as the implication that Hulot is on display to the city around him.

For both directors, geometry is a crucial part of both their artful cinematography and the construction of jokes. Though the implications of each world is different, both Tati and Keaton construct highly stylized and perfectly orchestrated environments, the mechanics of which are exploited for our amusement. In one scene in Play Time, the camera rests outside a modern apartment building, where we see multiple families sit down to watch TV in a cutaway view made possible by their massive single-pane windows. Tati turns the camera degrees to the left and right, establishing each family’s positions as they sit in front of their screens. As the camera returns to the initial angle, however, the barriers of the apartment walls become invisible, and we’re suddenly able to imagine that the families are watching each other, rather than TV, combining their actions and reactions in unexpected ways. All the while, beneath the scene is Tati’s commentary on the ways in which modern technology structure lives and limit connection; though it seems that the families are interacting, the truth remains that they are each physically separate, confined by the box of their own window.

Though it has an entirely different tone from this scene of Tati’s, Keaton’s classic cannon gag in The General similarly utilizes the geometry of the film world in order to surprise us. By a series of unfortunate circumstances, train engineer Johnnie Gray (Keaton) finds himself hanging off of a moving engine, in the line of fire of a cannon being pulled along behind him. Everything about the geography of this scene is used to increase our anticipation: sharp lines and symmetric framing trap Johnnie in his situation; constant forward motion builds tension; the futility of Johnnie’s small and rapid movements contrast with the unrelenting stillness of the massive cannon. What ends the gag and saves our hero is an expected change in geometry—a curve in the railroad tracks sends the cannonball off at an angle, just missing Johnnie and nearly striking his enemies’ train instead.

This scene also works as a microcosm for the film’s take on the world, a view which The General shares with Keaton’s other works. Johnnie, though he has a different name and inhabits a different setting, is essentially the same as Keaton’s other protagonists: a plucky young man in a bewildering and hostile environment which can only be conquered with a combination of human ingenuity and sheer luck. Keaton uses the frame of the Civil War to create an underdog protagonist (meaning, unfortunately, that Johnnie wears the uniform of the Confederacy) and exploits the technology of the time in service of gags—principally through trains, but with other military equipment as well. Beyond this, however, the film’s setting is ultimately unimportant; it’s the greater greater struggle against an automated world which defines Keaton’s comedy. In contrast, Tati’s Monsieur Hulot is a constant throughout his films, down to his signature coat and pipe. This difference is vital to developing some of Tati’s themes: namely, the stark ways in which Hulot is at odds with his modern environment, constantly teetering on the brink of being utterly left behind. Whereas Johnnie is a literal engineer of his world, always able to move himself through his surroundings with determination and a little elbow grease, Hulot feels more like a tourist in his own life, moving with an uncertain rhythm between one attraction to the next. Play Time is also uniquely tied to its setting, as Tati uses Paris to draw our attention to the obliviousness of the tour group—the camera only ever glimpses the Eiffel Tower or Arc de Triomphe in the reflections on the gleaming glass doors the women pass through—and comment on the commercialization of culture—the travel agency features the same dull-looking skyscraper in its posters for France, America, and India. And unlike Keaton, Tati doesn’t try to suggest that his world is conquerable; Hulot doesn’t save the day and get the girl, after all. Instead, Tati uses the film to show us the absurdity of modern life and encourage us, if we can’t change it, to at least revel in it. If this idea wasn’t already evident in the core of the film, the final scene punctuates it perfectly. Given Tati’s artistic touch, we watch as the ritualized chaos of a endless traffic circle becomes a carousel, a symphony of pattern and sound that is all at once ridiculous, biting, and beautiful.

While Keaton and Tati certainly crafted very different worlds in these films, they nonetheless share striking similarities in their cultivation of cinematic comedy. Since the arrival of sound films, comedies have had dialogue as something to lean on for laughs. I find that too often, comedies simply feature characters delivering lines, letting us forget that we’re watching a movie rather than trying to exploit the medium to any artistic ends. Keaton’s origins in the silent era clearly pushed him towards these innovations, but Tati is the perfect example of how this legacy can persist, evolve, and flourish—if only directors are willing to look beyond dialogue and play with silence.

August: Dukes County (Gabe)

As my summer internship came to an end, I traveled to my family’s home on Martha’s Vineyard where I planned to spend the last hours of freedom hidden from the real world. Just getting on the ferry felt like a release, and by the time I’d gotten to our small and remote cottage, I was in full-blown vacation mode. Gin and (far too much) tonic was rapidly poured into a pink glass and the quiet wrapped itself around me. Without cell service or wifi there was no way of connecting with the mainland: the racing rats of LA could not follow me. It was nice.

But after 48 hours, the quiet set in. I spent my days herding goats (actually) and my nights stretching out on the sand and enjoying my seclusion. I had some movies saved on my computer, and I finally decided to watch one I’d been avoiding. I’m not sure why it takes me so long to get around to watching certain films, but August: Osage County has been on my computer since it came out, and I hadn’t even tried to start it. Maybe my subconscious had a preemptive allergic reaction to the British actors’ half-hearted Oklahoma accents. In any event, I took my spiritual benadryl and pressed play. Here’s what I thought.

In this film, the incisive, yet drug-addicted matriarch presides deliriously over the collapse of her family, while one of her children tries to unsuccessfully hold the pieces together and limit the mother’s collateral damage. Not really anything new there, except for the scope of the depravity. The plot and structure have all the standard, recycled components of a typical, American realist production, but it attempts to differentiate itself through the size of the disaster. In most ways, it translates as a hick Long Day’s Journey into Night with roid-rage.

I was most immediately struck by the hefty imbalance between its stunning performances and surprisingly thin plotline. It felt like a series of free-flowing character studies, underpinned by a plot barely thick enough to carry its protagonists toward their inevitable emotional crises. Yet I didn’t care about any of the plot’s shortcomings, because I was watching some of the greatest actors of all time share a screen. Sam Shephard (RIP), Chris Cooper, and Margo Martindale brought the house down, along with the film’s unsung hero: Juliane Nicholson. Meryl, as everybody can assume, puts on a masterclass in dynamic play while surrounded by some of her greatest dramatic contemporaries. In fact, the only letdown of the film was Benedict Cumberbatch, whose blind stabs at talkin’ southern lived up to my uncharitable expectations.

Finally watching this film made me question why it had taken me so long to get around to it. I knew everything about the cast years ago. I love these performers, but my personal inertia had conquered my curiosity. I decided to just get around to watching good movies without delay, instead of letting preconceptions about how dark and intense the film would be keep me from its exploration. It was a long overdue resolution, and when I get around to watching 12 Years a Slave in five years I look forward to remaking it. 

Production Diary #5 (Hee Won)

Production diary 5

         In my last post, I talked about the disasters that surrounded our miscalculation of the cherry blossoms’ peak bloom. We needed the cherry blossoms but cherry blossoms were blooming earlier than planned. We were not ready to shoot but we went down to DC anyways thinking that we are going to figure something out when we got there. We did, but it wasn’t easy.

         Deciding whether or not we should go to DC to film cherry blossoms was not easy. We did not have any of our actors with us. In our script, Ghunja looks at the cherry blossoms, and in  our storyboard, we have a back shot of her looking at the fully bloomed cherry blossoms. As I mentioned in the previous post, we called our actor to ask if she would be available, but she could not come down on such short notice. We brainstormed what we could possibly to do to make this work. One solution we thought of was to get a body-double. We knew it was not the best idea, since the a body double would be very noticeable to the audience, with the numerous tracking shots of our actor’s back that throughout the film. However, we decided to look for someone anyway, a 5’6 female who wears size 8 shoes. After sending hundreds of Facebook messages we managed to find one person who could match. However, she was only available from 11am to 3pm which was a very narrow time window, considering we had to drive to DC, park our car, get the equipment out, film everything, and drive back.

Another big problem was that we didn’t have anyone to help us shoot. We needed at least one or two people to help us carry equipment but everyone was busy or had class. If we were to go to DC, it would be just Sue and me and we would have to be back by 4pm because we both had classes that we could not miss. Also, we could not get the digital back up camera that we wanted. Although our we are shooting on 16mm, we wanted to get some shots on digital just in case. We were thinking about using either the Black Magic or Canon C300 for the back up camera but neither of them were available for that date. We were able reserve a Canon 5D Mark II in the end, but we weren’t ecstatic because we wanted a camera that could shoot 4K.

         We could not make a decision right away because there were so many complications. We only had five hours to do everything and it seemed almost impossible. On Wednesday night, after exchanging a couple of serious texts we decided to go to DC by ourselves. We knew that things would not go smoothly but we thought that it would still be worth it. Because we could not guarantee that we would be back before 3pm, we told our body double not to come. We decided to get a lot of POV shots and B roll of the cherry blossoms. Before I went to sleep, I packed everything that I needed for the shoot in my living room and wrote down all the shots that I needed. I was tossing and turning all night and get much sleep because I was terrified.  

         As soon as I woke up the next morning, I headed to Gilman 35 to check all the equipment that I needed. I checked the cameras, batteries, tripods and anything that could possibly go wrong. Just looking at all the equipment Sue and I would have to carry made me want to cry, but I took out all the equipment one by one thinking that everything was going to be okay. We had all the equipment loaded in the car by 11:30 am and headed for DC.

         By 12pm we were very happy with the situation. The weather was great, we were on schedule and nothing was wrong with the equipment. Because everything was going so well, I started to feel uneasy. Sue told me to shut up when I told her that something would go wrong during the shoot.

         When we got to the National Mall, we realized that I was right after all. We thought that the location would not be crowded because it was 3pm on a Thursday, but we could not have been more wrong. The streets were filled with tourists and none of the parking lots had spaces. This was a huge problem because we did not have PAs to control pedestrians as we were filming and we needed couple of wide shots that looked pretty empty. On top of that, the traffic was horrible because there were so many cars and people walking on the roads. We lost about an hour just looking for parking and we were getting nervous because it was already almost 2pm when we miraculously found a place to park. We needed to shoot everything in an hour with all the equipment that we had.

  

       In the end, we got some B-roll of the cherry blossoms and got some footage from near the tidal basin area. It was very challenging and time-consuming with so many people trying to take selfies and group photos near us. It was also exhausting because we had a very heavy camera, a tripod, and equipment. It was a hassle, but we managed to get the most important scenes on film. We wanted to shoot more but we had to get back to Homewood as soon as possible and we were already late. During the shoot, we had some issues with the gate; we saw dust particles in the frame when we were shooting towards the end and could not figure out exactly where it was. We won’t find out how everything turned out until late April when we get our film is processed, so it is very frightening and thrilling at the same time.

         We left the parking lot at about 3:15pm, thinking that we will probably be 20 minutes late for class. We were wrong again. The traffic was so bad that it was 5pm when we got back to Homewood campus. We were an hour late for class.

         One most important takeaway from this hectic shoot was that you just have to be prepared for the worst situations. I have three more shooting days left, in less than 10 days, and one of them requires scenes that take place on a moving train. How exciting. (but actually not).

Production Diary 2 (Hee Won)

         Just when I committed to making this film, realistic questions slapped me in the face. Specifically questions about: casting, location scouting, and story boarding.

         At first, when I thought I would not be able to make this film and decided to forget about it, one of the big questions that discouraged me was casting. How am I ever going to find a grandmother, in her 70s, who is Korean, who would be willing to act for a college student’s film with no monetary compensation whatsoever?

         Sue and I searched all over the internet hoping to find some kind of Korean acting community in DC/Baltimore Area but we weren’t successful. Then, we decided to broaden our search and look for grandmothers living in the Baltimore Area. We made a visit to the Greenmount Korean Senior Center hoping we would be able to recruit a member of the community to act in our film. We met with the director of the senior center and emailed her about the project two days later,  but have yet to get a response. We plan to continue with out efforts to find the perfect grandmother, or any grandmother for that matter.

         After the yet unresolved issue of casting, our next immediate problem is location scouting; we need to shoot in a row house, at Penn Station, Union Station and the National Mall. We anticipated that getting permission to shoot inside the train stations would be difficult as it would raise safety concerns with the respective authorities. We contacted both the MTA Baltimore Office and the DC Union Station Office, but still haven’t received a reply. We plan to send another email , or give them a call, or even ask in person, if necessary to get permission to shoot inside the train station and inside the train.

         One other location that is giving us a hard time is the house. We assumed it would be easy to find a house for our shoot because we have friends who live in row houses. However, we could not have been more wrong. None of the five places we went to see seemed suitable for our film. They were either too big or too small, too fraternity-esque or too collegiate. Realizing that we may never be able to find a house that is appropriate for our film within our friend group, we looked for a house on the internet, on AirBnB. Although it sounds crazy, we were able to find couple of houses that matched our vision of the house in our story. Now, we are narrowing down our choices for the house. The tasks of contacting the owners, persuading them to let us use the house for little compensation, convincing them know that this is not a pornography but a student short film remain.

         To be very honest, the past two weeks have been very stressful because it felt like everything was falling apart. We did not hear back from potential casting opportunities and the locations that we hoped for just didn’t seem to fit.  I dreamed multiple times about finding the right grandma and finding the perfect house for the film, only to wake up devastated that they were only dreams. Despite this, one thing that motivated me to work harder was our storyboard.

         One major decision that we had to make after we decided to move forward with this project, was the format we were going to shoot in. I sent my advisor, John Mann, our rough draft of the script last Fall and he suggested that we shoot on film. However, I was hesitant because I had many bad memories with film. I saw everything that could possibly go wrong with shooting on film in two intermediate film courses last spring: there was a piece of hair in one person’s project the whole time and another had to be re-shot in its entirety because it was shot at the wrong frame rate. At times, the camera would suddenly stop after working fine for hours, and the lighting would completely ruin some parts of the film. However, at the same time, I was really enticed by the idea of shooting my project on 16mm.  

(Picture of my Introduction to Film Production Final Project)

         Although I knew it would be painful to deal with all the problems caused by shooting on film, I also love how it looks. There is something amazing about how sunlight looks on film, and the grainy look of the film itself is beautiful. I brought this up with Sue and we talked about the pros and cons of shooting on 16mm. We came up with fifteen cons one pro of shooting on 16mm. The cons were that everything that could go wrong and the single pro was that it might look incredible and go really well with the feel of the project. After lying on the floor for ten minutes thinking about what to do, we made the decision to shoot on film. Partly because we knew that we would never be able to shoot on 16mm after we graduate, and mostly because we envisioned cherry blossoms on film with sunlight lingering in between the branches and we were sold.

 

         Because we decided to shoot on film, we really need plan what and how  we are going to shoot, and creating the perfect storyboard became crucial. We started storyboarding two weeks ago and it hasn’t been easy since neither of us are experienced artists. We met everyday last week to finish our storyboard and just finished it. The only thing that kept us going was the excitement that came with storyboarding. We couldn’t exactly translate what we have in mind on the page, but the process of coming up with compositions arguing over what kind of shot it should be and deciding how to transition from one scene to another was a lot of fun. At times, we got stuck on one shot for more than 30 minutes and got tired and frustrated, but there were also moments where we were ecstatic because we came up with a brilliant framing.  

         The fact that we still do not have the cast and the locations locked down is stressful, but I think Sue and I will figure it out some how. I still jokingly tell Sue that we should just give up every time something is not working with our film. Then Sue slaps my back and gives me mean looks and we start working again. I knew going in that it was going to be difficult and it hasn’t proven me wrong, but I find a delightful little joy in the process and this keeps me going and gets me excited to work again.

To Manifest the Vision (Nicola)

In honor of my last post, I’m going to go a slightly different direction than usual. Instead of examine a specific film, I’m going to go behind the scenes a little bit and discuss my personal experience with the medium.

You see, in addition to other classes, my course load this semester included not one, but two different film production courses, as well as a feature-length screenwriting class. I’ve spent the past few months lugging cameras, tripods, and light kits back and forth between the Digital Media Center and my apartment, sending emails to various TA’s and potential volunteers, and madly typing out words that I could only pray formed a coherent string of thought (or, at the very least, were eligible for some sort of nouveau interpretation). Between contorting myself into awkward positions to get just the right shot, audibly swearing at Premiere Pro, and bribing my four-year-old actress with hot chocolate (and extra whipped cream, of course), there were some fairly undignified moments. For that matter, there may or may not have been an excess of character casualties in my screenplay when I discovered, in the wee hours of the morning, exactly how much time remained before the 10am deadline.

But for all the emailing and flailing, stressing and obsessing, crying and sighing, I’m glad for the experience. Granted, with the power of retrospect, there are certain things I would have done a bit differently, but hindsight is 20/20, right?

The fact of the matter is, up until this semester, the visual medium was something from which I was removed. Yes, I’d taken film analysis courses and written short scripts, but I was still very much within the realm of words. When it came to the hands-on stuff – the actual making of the vision into reality – I remained on the periphery. And I was comfortable there. In fact, growing up in a household filled with incredibly gifted artists, I’d actively avoided the visual route in order to reduce stressful familial competition. I searched for my own realm of expertise – something I could excel at in my own right without being compared to my family members – which is how I came to love writing.

Writing is a powerful medium – it allows authors to insert characters, places, and worlds into other people’s minds without ever having to lift their fingers higher than a few centimeters off the keyboard. For us writers, the ordeal of creation takes place entirely inside our own heads (which isn’t to say it’s not a loud and bloody battle in there; they don’t say ‘kill your darlings’ for nothing), which means we have a certain amount of liberty when it comes to the realities of our world. If we require a dog to perform some miraculous feat of daring, or perhaps desire a slightly-too-convenient beam of moonlight to burst forth from behind the clouds, it's a quick matter of a tickety-tack-tack on our laptop. But writing something into existence and actually finding a way to bring it to life are two entirely different things. Depending on the film’s budget, it might even prove impossible. In my experience writing scripts, I’ve come to the conclusion that dealing with the strict parameters of reality requires writers to truly question their own work. The writer’s world is stripped of its rosy hue and she is confronted with a starker universe – a universe where plot holes and flaws in character logic are unable to hide behind passages of beautiful prose. Coming from a person who is chronically loquacious, I’d say such a limiting experience is a very important experience to have.

I was, I admit, a little overambitious with the amount of film courses I took on this semester, but due to the immersive nature of the experience, I got a chance to sample a broad variety of roles involved in producing a film. I learned so much – so much more than I ever thought I would – and I produced things that I never thought I was capable of. I’d never so much as picked up a T5i before this semester (let alone sat down with editing equipment), and previously, when people started talking about apertures and shutter speed, I would stop whatever I was doing and back away slowly. Yes, they’re student films, and yes, they’re short, and yes, there are a lot of aspects that could use improvement – but they’re mine. I’m coming away from this experience with a heightened knowledge of film and a definitive desire to grab the camera and shoot some more footage.

(Stills from NERVOSA)

 (Stills from Stolen Petals)

Well… maybe after a good long nap.

Before I sign off for good, I’ve assembled a short list of the things I’ve taken away from this experience that you might not find in a textbook.

1. When it comes to finding volunteers, diplomacy is key, but so are complimentary pastries, cookies, and coffee.
2. If you’re filming and you see something that looks cool – shoot it. Even if you don’t use it in your current project, you might glean some inspiration from it or find a place for it in a different piece further down the road. And if you don’t? Well, then you have some cool footage in your library.
3. B-roll footage will save your neck.
4. However long you think it will take to shoot something, multiply it by two.
5. Give yourself parameters. I often find that I’m more creative when my freedom is restricted because it forces me to use my ingenuity.
6. Try to divide your filming days so that you have an opportunity to start editing the first round of footage before going back and filming the next round. This will give you a good idea about whether or not there’s anything you should change or reshoot (note: there always is).
7. When your professor writes “FILM IS CHAOS” on the chalkboard in giant letters, he knows what he is talking about. Things will go wrong. This is okay.
8. Your ego is your enemy. Don’t be scared of criticism – learn from it.
9. Whether or not you're an anxious person, use whatever anxiety you have to your advantage. When you ask someone for feedback on your piece, remain in the room as they watch it. You’ll find that you, yourself, are more aware of certain issues depending on who the audience member is and what your subconscious thinks they will be most attentive to.

And last but not least:

10. Filmmaking is a collaborative experience. The amount of work that goes into producing a film – even a short one – is crazy. To make a film is to make something bigger than yourself – enjoy the experience and make some new friends while you’re at it!

Well, that’s about it for me! Thanks for a great semester!

On Directing, Part 2: Last-Minute Rewrites (For the Better) (Andrea)

And so, production continued…

Day 4: Saturday, January 24
Location: JHU Levering Conference Room
Scenes: 7, 8
Characters: Ray, Mom, Uncle Nick, Aunt Lis, Uncle Phil, Uncle Elliott, Grandma
Crew Call: 10am; Cast Call: 11am

This day of production was easier from the start with two quick scenes. First, an argument between Aunt Lis and Grandma about her veil, and second, the actual wedding––a quick, thrown-together affair in a conference room during Lis’s lunch break. Production Designers Lauren and Danielle knew that they had to create an authentic wedding that looked at once hasty and rushed, but not lazy from a production standpoint. They bought Dollar Store supplies to dress the table and walls and used the whiteboard in the room to write “Just Married!”

Dave (Uncle Phil) as the groom, Todd (Uncle Nick) as the minister, and the great production design around them.

This was also the first time that we had a real, live fish in the film. Tony picked up Bernard and five “stunt doubles” at Petco. As production wore on, we realized each fish had a different personality, and unfortunately the one that we used this day wasn’t lively enough. Getting any close-ups of the fish was near impossible; he would only lie down at the bottom of the bowl. We switched to a different Bernard (by accident) the next day and stuck with him for rest of the shoot. Zach even took him home on the last day of production. 

Bernard, in his glamour shot. 

The best part of this scene, for me, was the costumes. Lis got to wear a white pantsuit, which we picked up at Marshall’s and kept the tags on to return later. Todd showed up with a fish-patterned tie, which fit the theme perfectly. Zach was dressed in an orange shirt and blue pants, which accidentally complemented Bernard’s own colors. Martha’s outfit, a lavender dress, became a motif in the film; we tried to put some lavender in each scene to hint that there was a little bit of Grandma everywhere.

Sue (Hair/Make-Up) does a tight bun for Salwa (Lis).

We had lots of time to relax, and took this day at a slow pace. We shot lots of b-roll and tried the wedding scene two ways, one with a comedic argument between Lis and Phil, and then a more silent take.

Day 5: Sunday, January 25
Location: JHU Center for Social Concern / Hamlyn Apartments
Scenes: 4, 1, 2
Characters: Ray, Mom, Uncle Nick, Uncle Diego, Secretary  + background
Crew Call: 8am; Cast Call: 9am

We knew going into this day that it was going to be another tough one. We scheduled a company move halfway through the day from the Center for Social Concern to an apartment north of campus. The office we were using was empty, and the apartment room was a mess. The production designers first had to set up the bare office to look like a real one, then run over to the apartment to begin clearing it out. I think I’m most proud of their work on the apartment––the pictures, trinkets and drawings in Ray’s “room” transformed it from a messy college student’s to a believable child’s. 

A sneak peek of some of the cool production design in Ray's room.

The morning passed without much incident. Scene 4 was a flashback to Uncle Diego’s office, where Ray plays a game and overhears a conversation between his uncles. We had hired a young actress, Hannah, who had auditioned for Lis. She seemed nervous and jumpy when talking to me, but lost that when the camera was on her. 

Zach (Ray) slates the shot with Jose (Uncle Diego) and Mina (2nd 2nd AD).

Our problems started in the afternoon. I sent our grips, Josh and Victor, home from set, thinking that the apartment was too small to fit them and we had a good handle on lighting. But the room was a little trickier than I had thought––there was only one window in the corner, and the area near the bed where we wanted to shoot was too dark. Kristen (2nd AD) and Brandon (AC) had to use LEDs and flags to brighten up the room, but getting it perfect took almost an hour after we got to the location, which was maddening.

Kristen (2nd AD), as our C-stand for the LED in the cramped bathroom scene.

This was also when Zach reached his peak of disagreeability. It was a long day, and he would constantly run offset or play games on his phone. When I would ask him to perform an action or sit up or get into place, he would completely ignore me. Will and Corey eventually had to start directing him too. At the end of the day, Zach wasn’t only just tired, but he was frustrated, messing up his lines so we would have to run take after take. When I thanked Zach after we wrapped, he brushed past me and slammed the door on the way of out the apartment. I don’t blame him for being tired, but I think that he was realizing that maybe set life wasn’t for him––or maybe I wasn’t the right director for him. 

Zach (Ray) also liked to stare down Bernard. They became real friends. 

Day 6: Saturday, January 31
Location: Car / Tropical Fish
Scenes: 10/11/12
Characters: Ray, Grandma
Crew Call: 8am; Cast Call: 9am

This was the last day of shooting, but when we pulled up to our first location, Tropical Fish, the door was locked and there was a sign: “Family emergency, sorry. Be back later.” We repeatedly called, knocked––nothing. Once our cast arrived, we knew that we had to do something; we couldn’t sit on the streets of East Baltimore without a plan. We drove back to my apartment on a whim, trying to figure out what to do on the way. 

Zach (Ray) in the backseat of the car, with his best friend Bernard.

We were filming Grandma’s flashback today, and the sequence was originally split into two scenes: one in the fish store and another in a car. As soon as we got to my apartment, Will and Tony started rewriting the script to cover the entire sequence in the car. We had also planned to get a plastic bag to hold Bernard from the pet store, but since that didn’t work out, we had to send Tony back out to Petco. And so, with some creative scheduling, we shot Martha’s lines first without Zach, waited for the plastic bag, then shot Zach’s lines. In the car, there was only room for Corey (DP) and Adriana (Sound Op), along with Martha as the driver, so I had to let Corey direct this one.

Corey (DP) and Martha (Grandma) in the car. Yes, we did manage to fit a tripod in the front seat.

After the last shot around 1pm, we managed to reach Tropical Fish on the phone. They were open again, so we drove over immediately. We made the decision to shoot the scene silent, in only two shots, because of time and also because the dialogue previously written for the fish store was covered in the car scene already. Shooting this scene silent was the best snap decision we made all day. The bubbles made great sound, and the scene worked better with a silent Grandma.

We took a group photo in Tropical Fish, after we completely wrapped for the entire production:

The last day's cast and crew.

Production for Bernard Died was exhausting, and seemed at times like it was impossible. But that all went away when we would see the footage at the end of each day. No matter the hardships we encountered, we always managed to make it look and sound and feel all right. The little-script-that-could was now a film.

(Also, a huge shout-out to our amazing set photographer Gillian, who took all of the photos in these last two blog posts. You can see more of them on our page, facebook.com/bernarddied.)

All the luck in production,
Andrea

On Directing, Part 1: When "One More Take" Became a Lie (Andrea)

It’s time to talk about the real stuff: the production. I think that the easiest way is to break it down by days. And so… 

Day 1: Saturday, January 17
Location: Lassahn Funeral Home
Scenes: 6, 3, 5
Characters: Ray, Mom, Uncle Nick, Uncle Diego, Mariana, Aunt Lis, Uncle Phil + background
Crew Call: 8am; Cast Call: 9am 

For the first day of production, I wanted to pick scenes that were low key to shoot for a couple reasons. The first was that it was Zach’s first day on a film set… ever. I was worried that if I worked him too hard, he may quit and not come back to finish the film. Also, second, my directing philosophy is to start off with the easy stuff and build up to the hard, more emotional scenes. Scene 6 was mostly a lot of blocking. During the scene, the family has an argument by their car as Ray buries his fish outside. The scene would be shot so that the focus was on Ray, with the family blurred in the background Scenes 3 and 5 were also fairly easy since they both were in the lobby of the funeral home, and the dialogue was short and quick.

Tony, Will and I drove to set in the morning, picking up all of our crew at 7:30am for the ride out to Kingsville, a half an hour away from Hopkins. As soon as I walked in the door, I faced my first crisis. Eddie, our sound mixer, had forgot a crucial XLR cable, and he lived an hour and a half away from Lassahn. He immediately took off to wait outside a nearby music store until it opened at 10am so he could buy a new one, which cost us money and time.

Me, directing Zach (Ray). No easy task.

When he got back, we shot Scene 6 smoothly. It was cold outside around 40 degrees, but this was our only exterior shot of the entire shoot. We only had to freeze for just a few hours and reminded everyone that this was the only outdoor scene, to boost morale. During this scene, Zach was surprisingly easy to work with and took my direction well. He was beginning to understand that sometimes we needed him to perform his actions and dialogue more than once when something was wrong with the camera, which we were learning he didn’t have the patience for.

Jose (Uncle Diego) and Dave (Uncle Phil), outside of the funeral home.

The rest of the family (Nick, Diego, Lis, Phil and Mom) was acting out an argument in the background of Zach’s action. This was by far the most complicated scene we blocked. Dave had to get out of a car, come around and hit his mark in time to say his lines. Jose and Salwa also needed to exit the funeral home and join the family in time for their lines too––all while staying visible to the camera. This also needed to be framed behind Zach, who was in-focus and took up a majority of the frame. Motion for the camera is different than in real life, since everything needs to look good for the frame. Thankfully, our actors were professionals and understood the importance of hitting their marks and cheating towards the camera, but it was something that I was still learning as I went through the scene.

Time for dead Bernard's close-up.

After we shot Scene 6, the lens adapter on our camera (the Digital Bolex D16) broke. We had to use pliers to rip it off so we could continue using the camera. This meant that we were restricted to only two lenses for the rest of the weekend, until Corey (DP) could order a new adapter over the week. It wasn’t awful, but it did limit the range of shots that we could shoot––factoring in the focus and depth of field.

The offending camera: the Digital Bolex D16.

We took a lunch break (lasagna and salad from Giovanna’s) and started on Scenes 3 and 5 in the afternoon. At this time, Tony had brought us the Film & Media Studies dolly: a large, cumbersome, orange nightmare that weighed a ton, but gave us some of the smoothest (and most cinematic) shots in the film. Corey (DP) and I both really wanted a slow push in on Zach to start Scene 3, which meant running the scene over and over again and coordinating blocking and performance all at once. This is when I began to notice that Zach was more antsy in the afternoon, after all of the food from lunch. He wouldn’t sit still and became difficult to work with.

Zach (Ray) liked pretending he was director, with Corey (DP) and Brandon (AC).

Scene 5 was the first time I had seen Fatima (Mariana) act, which was a huge risk. I hadn’t had the chance to work with her on her lines at all until we got to set, but she ended up performing them naturally.

One of the biggest mistakes we made on this day was our open call for extras. We called for them at 9am and 1pm, thinking we wouldn’t get any––as what typically happens when you try to get people to act all day unpaid in the background. But we didn’t expect for ten of them to show up, ready to be placed, when we only needed about four for the entire day. Thankfully, Will (1st AD) was great at keeping them happy throughout the day, with the promise of free food.

We wrapped Day 1 feeling really optimistic about the footage, the cast and the crew.

Day 2: Sunday, January 18
Location: Lassahn Funeral Home
Scenes: 15/16/17, 9/13
Characters: Ray, Mom, Uncle Nick, Uncle Diego, Mariana, Aunt Lis, Uncle Phil, Uncle Elliott + background
Crew Call & Cast Call: …it got messed up.

Yes. We were driving to Lassahn around 8am that morning in the rain. About two minutes away from the funeral home, a police car blocked Belair Road. Cars were detouring around, and we pulled over to the side of the road. Will, who had made it to Lasshan before us, called and said that there was black ice on the road, and he had seen a couple accidents. The police seemed to have decided to close off the road in the few minutes between our cars, and Tony and I, along with Eddie and his car of crew, couldn’t get to the funeral home.

With Corey directing me, we tried to take every possible detour, but police blocked them all off. On one road, we watched a car slide backwards downhill, completely out of control. We stopped off at a Starbucks around 9am, and I started calling all of our cast and crew, pushing the call time by two hours so that cast wouldn’t arrive until 11am. When Tony called me to tell me he had found a way to the funeral home, we got back in our car and followed a new detour, finally arriving at 10am to lots of applause.

The pushed call time presented us with a challenge: how to make up 2 hours of work and shooting. We had initially scheduled a pretty light day, overall; Scene 15/16/17 only had four shots, and Scenes 9 and 13 were the same setup as the bookends of a flashback. But Will, as the 1st AD, was stressed since his job was to keep us on time, and that meant the pressure was on Corey and me to make up the time. It would’ve been impossible to call off the day and reschedule, seeing as our actors were busy immediately after our scheduled shoot days. There was no room for flexibility, and we had no choice but to make up the lost time.

Using Julia (Script Supervisor) as a stand-in for our tracking shots.

Scenes 15/16/17 were condensed into one and consisted of two long tracking shots: one forwards––chasing Ray as he runs down the hallway––and one backwards––as he leaves the wake with Mom. The shot had to coordinate background action, dolly movement, and Ray’s speed. We must have done dozens of takes of each because something was wrong each time; either Zach looked at the camera, the dolly’s movement went out of control, or the focus was off. Of course, this also meant we were even more behind schedule, and also when Zach learned that when I told him we had to run the take “one more time,” it was a lie. We didn’t end up eating lunch until 3pm, and only had until 5pm when we lost daylight to make up the time.

The memorial to Grandma, made by our production designers.

As if the day could get worse after lunch, I also had my own problems to deal with: I’d been having chronic chest pains for a while, and they got so bad that I had to take a step back on directing. Scenes 9 and 13 passed in a blur for me, giving direction only when absolutely necessary and letting Corey and Will take the lead. We combined the two scenes––a simple conversation between Ray and Uncle Elliott––and shot them in one take, allowing for a short pause between the scenes as the camera rolled. This was our first scene with Jason, someone else I’d never worked with before that day, but he was a natural talent. The scene looked beautiful overall.

With Day 2 wrapped, we felt good, but a little shaken by the panic that morning. So we were prepared for anything that Day 3 threw at us.

Day 3: Monday, January 19
Location: Lassahn Funeral Home
Scene: 14, 18
Characters: Ray, Mom, Uncle Nick, Uncle Diego, Mariana, Aunt Lis, Uncle Phil, Uncle Elliott, Grandma + background
Crew Call: 8am; Cast Call: 9am 

On this day, we were already behind schedule before we even got there. That was because Scenes 14 and 18 were going to be ambitious to do in one day.

Scene 14 was scheduled to shoot first. For one, this was the scene for the monologues of Nick and Lis––aka the most emotional moments of the script––and it was going to take some time to get the performances right. Secondly, Scene 14 had a lot of background action, with a ton of actors placed in the chapel that had to act and move correctly every take. And thirdly, something we were majorly concerned about: around noon, there was going to be a viewing in the opposite side of the funeral home, and we were warned that music would be playing, which would interfere with our sound recording. We would need to record all major dialogue before that happened.

A nice photo of Tony (Writer/Producer) and Jason (Uncle Elliott).

Basically, we were set up to lose Scene 14 from the start. But I really owe it to Will, Corey, and our grips, Josh and Victor, for making the day run so efficiently. They were always one step ahead. The next shot would be composed and lit immediately after the previous broke down, and Will was always anticipating where background would be, directing their actions immediately and smoothly. This meant that all I had to worry about were the performances.

Me, directing things, and Corey (DP), shooting things.

At the beginning of the day, for Scene 14, Corey suggested that we shoot it handheld to reflect the shaky nature of the emotional content and also compensate for our lost wider lenses––even though I only initially wanted tripod throughout the entire film. I was hesitant, but then opened up to the idea. The mobility of Corey’s shoulder-mount gave us wider options of shots for the intensely complicated motion and composition of Scene 14, which was also the longest. 

By far the most difficult aspect of this day was directing the actors. As I mentioned, these were the toughest performances for the actors, and the most intense scene for the characters, as they all take turns saying goodbye to their mother. I didn’t want this goodbye to Grandma to be sentimental. This meant taming back the emotions to a realistic level, enough so that it wasn’t sappy. Because we were behind schedule, and almost every scene had Ray in it, this was a very long, very tiring day for Zach. He was sugared out (from the Coke that Tony gave him at lunch), exhausted, and not willing to work after half of the day. It was a struggle to even get him to stand in place, let alone act. Ironically, this is also when Zach gave one of his best performances of the film later on in Scene 18.

Salwa (Aunt Lis) and Dave (Uncle Phil) smile/stare for the camera.

Scene 14 was also when I realized that the background actors could be more of a hindrance than a help sometimes. One of the ladies, positioned behind Zach in one of our shots, kept looking at the camera and ruining our takes. Another young man, an “aspiring filmmaker,” kept bothering the crew and giving Will advice on how to run set. Another man approached me on my lunch break to snap about how much longer he was going to be on-set. One woman wanted travel reimbursement for the three hours she drove to our set. Again, this all could have been avoided by not using an open call for actors, but in total we had around twenty background for the day and filled the chapel entirely, for which I’m very grateful.

Zach (Ray) liked riding the dolly more than acting.

Scene 18 was spent playing catch-up and bargaining with Zach to get him to run more takes. Martha, who played Grandma, was perfectly content to lie in the coffin as long as it was necessary. Jason kept checking in on her and talking to her between takes to make sure she was okay, so my time and energy could be focused on persuading Zach to act. At some point in the day, Will took over coaxing him into acting since he had stopped listening to me. Three days straight of shooting for nine hours was getting to him, but thankfully we’d have a long break after this.

Martha (Grandma) takes a selfie in the casket. One of the more surreal moments on-set.

We finished the day feeling euphoric and thanking the owners of Lasshan, who had gratefully turned off the music for the viewing so we could shoot undisturbed. I am not exaggerating a bit when I say this film would not have happened if not for their generosity.

Full cast and crew photo!

Even though it was exhausting, the feeling of wrapping the three toughest days of production was amazing. This was the first time that the scenes I’d been thinking about for the past nine months were real, tangible things––things that had once only been abstract concepts, pictures in my head. It was thrilling to actually see them––see the tracking shots, Zach’s performances, the production design, the forty plus people making it happen, and even the fish in the shampoo bottle. This was what it felt like to see something in your head manifest itself in reality, almost magically.

Stay tuned for Days 4-6.

Sound, camera, slate, action,
Andrea

On Casting: Why Smiling Matters (Andrea)

There are many directors who love the casting process. I am not one of them.

I know from the first time that an actor speaks whether he or she will fit the role, and it’s rare that I can be convinced to change my mind. The headshots and resumes are pointless to me, because I can remember the faces of those I liked, and I forget the ones I didn’t––but sometimes it’s a little trickier than that. Someone who looks the part can have an awful reading, or someone who reads perfectly can have a hard-to-work-with personality or schedule––all of which are deal-breakers. Although you do eventually end up with your cast, it is a bit like a puzzle. This is because you need your cast to not only act, but also to work together. And it can be hard to jam all those pieces together.

Going into casting Bernard Died, our main problem was that we had to cast a family. This meant that once we found our dream actor for the character of Ray, it would decide everything else about the rest of the cast––the race, look, likability. Tony and I put out calls for all ages and races to see what we got. We had two casting dates: October 4 and October 25, with callbacks on November 1. It was a cold read, which meant that we gave the script pages to the actors when they got to the audition. In all, we had 66 auditions, and 15 people were called back. We recorded our auditions so we could re-watch them later (also: where all the stills in this post come from!), and set up an email account ([email protected]) to communicate with the actors who RSVP'd.

The graphic we used in our casting calls, featuring Tony's real-life goldfish.

Out of the 66, many were bad, American Idol-style. One kid was too scared to audition and ended up crying in the corner of the room. Another had a laminated crab claw-shaped resume. Women as old as thirty came in to audition for a 15-year-old’s part. Another kid repetitively emailed us asking whether we were also casting for Teen Beach Movie 2. Really, nothing was off-limits.

But still there were many auditions that weren’t bad––that were actually really good. And those are the people we cast. Here’s a breakdown of how we ended up casting each of our characters, the good and the bad.

Ray Goby: As the main character of the film, Ray was the most important, casting-wise. We decided that whomever we casted for Ray would determine the rest of the family––race, hair color, everything. The fourth little boy that we saw on the morning of our first open call was Zach. He was dressed in an adorable button-down checkered shirt, with his hair combed to the side. When we explained that Ray’s character was somber and serious, his mom said, “You’re not like that, are you, Zackie?” and he shook his head and started to laugh. His happy personality, along with a good reading, convinced us that he could be Ray.

Just to be safe, we called back two other boys alongside Zach to read for us. One of the little boys looked the part, but his voice was deep and shy––and didn’t smile at us once. The other kid, we quickly learned, would be miserable to work with. He got up in the middle of the callback and starting running around the room, drawing on the chalkboards and “mooing” like a cow. He wouldn’t listen to even his father, who was yelling at him to come sit down. Unfortunately, Zach never showed up that day, and Tony and I started panicking that we hadn’t found our Ray yet.

The next day, I got a call from Zach’s mom saying that they were at the audition but nobody was there. It turned out that they had misread the date in my email. I ran down to the Mattin Center and auditioned Zach, and I am so glad that I did. He was everything we were looking for. He also smiled a lot.

Zach, in his hastily-arranged callback.

Mom: I remembered Kara from her emails leading up to the audition. She was courteous, used proper grammar (which is rarer in casting than you think it would be), and asked questions about her potential character so she could come prepared. She struck me as a mother when she walked in the room and, as I soon learned, she had a young son in real life. Kara gave a terrific reading––but what really impressed me was her attitude. She was the calmest and kindest person in callbacks, just like we pictured our Mom character.

Kara, in her first audition. She was always smiling.

Uncle Nick: Todd was one of the first men that we saw in the morning of our first audition, and Tony and I looked to each other after his reading and said, “That’s Uncle Nick.” He was clearly a seasoned actor, but he warned us that his schedule may not allow him to film with us––he was in a play for the rest of 2014 and wouldn’t be free until January. He was one of the reasons that we rearranged our shooting schedule, pushing everything back to January in the hopes that he would be able to act. He did.

Uncle Reish and Priya: These characters were a challenge. Reish and Priya needed to be related and, as written, they were Indian. After our auditions, we had only seen one Indian girl for Priya and none for Reish. On the second date of auditions, Jose walked in––another person who had been very invested in our project since he saw our call for actors––and we knew he was Reish after his reading. However, he was Hispanic, and we had only seen one Hispanic girl for Priya’s role––and when I offered her the part, she never got back to me. We couldn’t lose Jose just because of Priya’s character. Last minute, Tony found the roommate of one of his Hopkins friends named Fatima, who we never auditioned for the sake of time but turned out to be an excellent actress. (Also, the names of the characters were ultimately changed to Uncle Diego and Mariana.)

Jose, with his relaxed leather jacket and beanie. His attitude was very chill.

Aunt Lis and Uncle Phil: Although Lis’ character was a principal in the script and Phil was more secondary, what really convinced us that Salwa and Dave came together as a pair was their callback. We had all five family members in the room together, and the two invented their whole back-story for us as we got the camera rolling––about their wedding night, honeymoon, and martial issues. It was hilarious, with so much personality. Salwa’s monologue in her private callback also convinced us that she was easily the best candidate for Lis that we had seen all day.

The family in callbacks: Todd, Dave, Salwa, Kara and Jose.

Grandma: Martha was a SAG-actress that I had picked out from our email exchanges from the start––courteous and invested in the script. She gave a very strong initial audition, and during our callbacks, she also worked well with our young Rays––which was a big factor for us, since Grandma’s character needed to have a good connection with the lead. In reality, we were torn between her and another actress, but when I gave the other actress direction, she butchered the performance. By default, the part went to Martha, and I’m glad that it did.

Martha, giving an animated first reading.

Uncle Elliott: Casting this character was a bit of a nightmare. After going through auditions and callbacks, we still hadn’t seen anyone we would like to consider for Elliott’s role. It was getting close to production in January when we casted another SAG-actor. The Tuesday before the first shoot day on Saturday, he was called in for acting on the TV show TURN on our most important shoot day, so I had to fire him. I spoke with another actor on Wednesday, who promised me he could fill the role, but I woke up to an email on Thursday saying he would also have to cancel. In a last-ditch effort, I called up a Hopkins friend named Jason who was flying back from Los Angeles on our first shoot day, and he agreed to play the part. We rearranged our shooting schedule a bit to fit him in, and he ended up being one of the best casting choices we made––even though also one of the most stressful.

It may seem like I loved every actor and had no regrets in my casting decisions––because it’s true. They learned from each other, taught me things about directing, formed friendships, and were a lot of fun to work with on-set––always surprising me with their kindness, patience and ability. Most of all, they really did become a big family at the end, just like their characters.

So, I guess I’m glad I sat through 66 auditions to get to the couple that mattered.

All the luck in casting,
Andrea

Finding the Right Fit (Josh)

    At the same time as location scouting, the most important aspect of a pre-production has to take place, casting!  It’s great having a place to film the movie, but without anyone to shoot, all that effort will be for naught.  As with locations, we had written ourselves a very challenging situation.  We needed to cast two young, older teenage boys, one of whom had to be sixteen, the other eighteen.  The role required characters to run up and down steep slopes, bathe in a muddy river, and do a stunt that gives the illusion of a stab wound. 

Multiple factors were then necessary for us to correctly decide on a cast member:     

     1)  They each had to be a good actor- this may seem obvious but this is always difficult to find and it is too easy a trap to cast someone based on their availability instead of their talent.  A decision where talent is not number one will lead to a bad film, plain and simple.

    2)  They had to be pleasant- One of the issues that can ruin a film is an actor who does not actually want to work on the movie.  They will be waiting for the day to pass and put in no effort in their performance.  In addition, negative demeanor with the crew could cause unnecessary friction.  One of the key things to look for in an audition is an actor who’s attitude will enhance the morale on the film.

    3)  They needed to look the parts- A clear distinction between a good casting choice and a poor one is if the actor actually resembles the character in the script.  When they don’t, the entire film comes off as unrealistic.  The illusion gets ruined.

    In order to meet the challenge of this demographic, we needed to broaden the scope of our search as much as possible.  In addition to posting casting calls on DragonukConnects and Mandy, we also emailed a number of local theatres, schools, and camps.  These resources helped broaden our pool of possible actors, which made it easier to make a good decision.  After auditioning a large number of talent, we came up with our cast, Parker Damm, and our lead, Mitch Holson.  With locations and casting resolved, two of the major hurdles of pre-production had passed.

So Many Firsts (Ingrid)

    

    There’s nothing glossy about The Charles Theater. Look up, and you’ll see exposed rafters and piping. Look left and right, and you’ll see water-damaged brick walls, worn-out furniture, and antiquated film equipment. The decorations—the larger-than-life sized penguin statue and the smaller-than-life sized stuffed leopard donning sunglasses—do not make much sense. The Charles is not glamorous; it doesn’t pander. Its aura suggests history. It’s authentic, it’s simple; it exists for quality film.

    Last weekend was a weekend of firsts for me. I did something I do, well, never. I ventured beyond the Hopkins bubble and dabbled in the Baltimore film community. I regret not having done so earlier. In fact, this was my first real theater experience in Baltimore (a pathetic confession from a Film and Media Studies major).

    How coincidental that on a weekend of firsts for me, I chose to watch a movie all about firsts. The Spectacular Now (2013), directed by James Ponsoldt, centers around Sutter Keely (played by Miles Teller) and Aimee Finecky (played by Shailene Woodley), two seniors in high school, who, during this limbo period of life, find each other. The film highlights their coming-of-age events: Aimee’s first sip of alcohol, her first time having sex, Sutter’s first encounter with his estranged dad, his first identity crisis, and their first tastes of independence and responsibility, their first experience with true love. But it’s not a perfect love. Sutter is far from sure about a single aspect of his life. His relationship with Aimee is no exception. His confusion is one we all can remember; a confusion we’ve all resolved at some point in our lives in the same way Sutter does—with the motto, “living in the now.” It’s a naiveté everyone can relate to.

    At every stage in life, your perception of time is constantly morphing. During childhood, every day is a countdown to the next birthday, the first day of school, the next performance, musical recital, or little-league game. When it comes time for high school, you anticipate new things. Life becomes measured by part-time jobs, by proms, by relationships. But at the same time, your life begins to feel like a waiting game, qualified by the impending reality of college and of the future. “I don’t see what’s so great about being an adult. Are you happy?” Sutter says to his geometry teacher, who is reprimanding him on his failure to perform in class. It’s a strange thing to have to accept—to have to grow up and learn when things like high school geometry seem inapplicable to real world situations.

    A big part of what makes this film so convincing is the casting. Sutter Keely and Aimee Finecky look like us. They could have easily been in our high school class. Shailene Woodley is not made-up. Her long, unkempt hair is tied up messily for half the film; her clothing is bland, and almost always wrinkled. On top of that, her performance is believable. In tight close-ups, we notice every slight change in expression. We see her nervous eyes darting around, every spasm in her cheeks, her insecure gestures; we hear the uncertainty in her voice, her timid giggles between sentences. Our heart goes out to Aimee when we discover her dad passed away from a drug overdose and she works six days a week running a paper route for her mother to pay half the bills. Despite her dreams of moving to Philadelphia and attending college there, she is pressured to stay at home to help support her family. The overall depiction is stunningly real.

    Opposite Aimee, is Sutter, a character who I found extremely interesting. At eighteen, he is still a boy in every sense of the word. His carefree youth is apparent: his baby cheeks, his acne, his voice cracks, his early and irresponsible predilection for whiskey. He comes from a broken family; a home where his mom works double-shifts and keeps any information about his missing dad and the divorce away from him. Despite this, Sutter has an adolescent cockiness, an easy-going, class-clown attitude that makes him undeniably charming. It’s intriguing because he puts on this devil-may-care, invincible façade and yet is arguably the most clueless, troubled, and emotional character in the film. He avoids conversations about the future at all costs. It takes an unlikely companionship with Aimee and an eye-opening encounter with his dad to help him find direction.

    One particularly touching scene for me is the long take of Aimee and Sutter’s conversation through the woods. Their stream of consciousness conversation begins innocent but deepens, as they share their hindered desires and unstable familial relationships. It develops into a beautifully natural and awkward exchange about their experiences with relationships and ends with their first kiss. This stereotypically epic and pivotal moment is instead, portrayed with subtlety, composed of only diegetic sounds and crafted in a way that doesn’t linger or exaggerate. This is one of the many sweet and true moments of the film.

    The emotional climax is when Sutter reconnects with his long-lost dad. Sutter’s hopes are high. His idolization of his dad manifests in a built-up fantasy based on all the good memories from his childhood. The meeting, however, is disappointing from the start. When Sutter shows up at his dad’s shabby condo, a disheveled, unshaven, tapped-out man answers the door. Sutter’s dad openly forgets that they had made plans over the phone and appears unexcited to be reunited with his son. It only goes downhill from there. Their conversation continues at a local bar, where his dad remains uninterested the whole time. When Sutter asks about what went wrong with his parents’ marriage, his dad admits to having cheated and having left voluntarily. To make matters worse, Sutter’s dad justifies by saying, “I don’t live in the past, I live in the now.” In that jarring moment, Sutter realizes his dad is a selfish, unmotivated washup. Sutter sees his own life mantra, “living in the now,” play out abysmally in a man he had admired throughout his childhood. In learning about his past and reconstructing a more accurate image of his dad, Sutter is finally able to yank himself out of complacency.

    The Spectacular Now was like chicken noodle soup—soothing and comforting in a way very few romantic dramas and comedies have been for me. It was a complete departure for the string of meaningless, unwitty, unrealistic movies of this genre that have plagued theaters in the past few years. For a jaded viewer, it is a breath of fresh air—pure, genuine, and inspiring. Above all, this movie was perhaps the first time in a while I have felt this strong of a connection to the characters. I came out of the movie thinking, “they understand; someone understands.” And maybe that’s because it speaks to something that’s still fresh in my memory; I only have two years between high school and right now. But I think on some level, everyone can look back and relate to The Spectacular Now. It’s real characters, real dialogue, and real circumstances appeal to a universal experience. 

Ten Under 15 (Natasha)

    I have a bit of a thing for people's top ten lists.  Favorite films (though I rarely read all the way through lists that include Avatar, The Boondock Saints, The Departed and other "meh" movies posing as triumphs), favorite travel destinations, sushi rolls, lipsticks--anything, really.  There's something appealing about the brevity and finality of such a limited list when "favorite" status is at stake.  But unlike most list-makers, I will endeavor to defend my top three choices, and perhaps the explanation will give a sense of how I chose the group and why each of these kids deserves multiple viewings.  So here is my ten-best list of children's performances in film (the eponymous Ethan of "Laughing Baby Ethan" was excluded solely because that's more of a documentary short):

I.  Quvenzhané Wallis – Hushpuppy, Beasts of the Southern Wild - age 6, first role

II.  Tatum O’Neal – Addie Loggins, Paper Moon – age 9, first role

III.  Jean-Pierre Léaud – Antoine Doinel, The 400 Blows (Les 400 coups) – age 14, first role

IV.  Henry Thomas – Elliott, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial – age 10, third role

V.  Drew Barrymore – Gertie, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial – age 6, fourth role

VI.  Mary Badham – Scout, To Kill a Mockingbird – age 9, first role

VII.  Natalie Portman – Marty, Beautiful Girls – age 14, fourth role

VIII.  Shirley Temple – Marthy Jane, Little Miss Marker – age 4, twenty-fourth role

IX.  Hugh O’Conor – young Christy Brown, My Left Foot – age 14, fifth role

X.  Elle Fanning – Ruth Cole, The Door in the Floor – age 4, sixth role

I.   In this astounding film—the first for “Venzhané,” Dwight Henry (as her father Wink) and director Benh Zeitlin—the powerhouse performance by the absurdly cute Louisiana Kindergartener is a revelation.  While New Orleans pastry chef Dwight Henry’s debut performance is beautiful and heartrending, this is Hushpuppy’s tale and the preternaturally talented Quvenzhané never misses an opportunity to carry the film.  Hushpuppy is tough, but her lineless face is the hardened front that hides a child's curiosity, an artistic spirit and a fascination with animals.  Yet Hushpuppy rises to the tasks of bolstering her father’s declining health, weathering a devastating hurricane and flood, escaping the mandatory evacuation rescue center, staring down mythic beasts, sharing a hard-won, nostalgic last meal with her father and becoming an orphan in only a few days.  All the while, Quvenzhané rises to the even greater task of realizing Hushpuppy, the heroine of the decade.  (Extra points to her for how many times she’s had to spell her name for interviewers since the film’s release.)

II.   If Hushpuppy is tough, Addie Loggins is pure steel, ranking Tatum O’Neal a very close second to Quvenzhané.  Tatum’s groundbreaking Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress is one of the most deserved Oscars ever awarded (not that that’s saying much--and she definitely should have been considered lead actress), for in her first role ever she stars across from her real-life atrocious father Ryan O’Neal, playing somewhat atrocious father figure “Moses Pray” to her powerhouse orphaned heroine.  Her disapproving frown is so penetrating it makes you want to hide under a rock til the end of time, yet her constant squint makes it seem like she’s always on the verge of smiling, softening her flinty affect just a bit.  Though she learns the literal tricks of the trade from lost-boy conman Moses, Addie soon comes to beat him at his own game; her conning acumen and inexorable resolve to collect debts distinguish her as the savviest, least childlike kid in cinema.  She is an absolute wonder.  Too bad her parents didn’t appreciate her.

III.   I had a hard time ranking Jean-Pierre third here, because his first role is one of the most harrowing in all cinema and his face of abandonment is enough to break your heart, but perhaps the 14-year-old wouldn't mind taking bronze after a couple of elementary school girls (I think J-P would be un gentilhomme about it).  A misguided, mistreated boy with only one friend in all of Paris--René (played by the incredible one-film wonder Patrick Auffay, who should probably be on this list), Antoine's well-dressed, businesslike partner in cutting their punitive school and going to the movies.  Since Antoine Doinel is a vaguely autobiographical character for director/film devotee François Truffaut, the shot of the two boys gazing in wonder at the cinémathèque screen speaks volumes about Truffaut's childhood relationship with movie houses; but the image also reveals what a talent Jean-Pierre really is.  The utter fascination on his face, his obvious enthrallment with the film prove what a joy it is for Antoine to escape his own disheartening life for a few hours.  Berated on all sides, he has no respite from psychological torture, abusive hands or shrieked insults--all the world seems to raise one voice to tell him he's a failure.  So in the tragic, jarring final scene, when he runs away from his destructive "correctional" boarding school and makes it to the shore, in that last zoom towards his face as he recognizes that nothing has changed, that he still has absolutely nowhere to go, we see both Antoine's hopeless desperation and Jean-Pierre's outrageous thespian skill.  No wonder they put that shot on the poster.

 

 

~ Natasha Hirschfeld

Points from a Screening (Natasha)

    John Huston's 1948 epic of avarice Treasure of the Sierra Madre felt like the fastest 2 hours and 6 minutes I've spent before a screen.  The film blew by in a sandstorm from one hopeless desert vista to the next, leaving me with only cursory first impressions and a total sense of wonder.  The film may have inspired too much awe for me to comprehend it after only one viewing, so for now here's what remained when the sand settled:

I.    Humphrey Bogart's Fred C. Dobbs follows a sordid trajectory unlike that of most morally compromised Bogart characters.  Dobbs is so far from heroic he barely passes for antihero before the gold quest, and once he starts mining he begins to tread a villainous path hitherto unknown to Bogey:  He goes insane and suffers an unavenged murder alone in the desert.  It is thrilling to see what Humphrey can do when he swaps his tux for filthy rags.  This is Bogart at his cruelest and most evil, his wildest and most deranged, and it is outstanding.  When he finally reveals his most hidden talent, that maniacal chuckle, it's hard to understand why this man was not simply typecast as a crazed villain--his mad cackle is the absolute archetype of evil laughs.

II.    The endlessly wise, affable Howard, played by the director's father Walter Huston, is a hugely successful instance of cinematic nepotism.  Whether the flashes of paternal nature in the old prospector stem from his thespian talents or the director's own experience, Howard emerges as the only truly grounded figure in the film, surviving the unfortunate Dobbs through vast knowledge of the terrain and man's psyche and a rare capacity for altruism.

III.    The shootout between the Americans on the train and the bandits by the tracks immediately recalls a similar general arrangement in Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes, released ten years earlier.  Though here the heroic marksman wears a sharp necktie instead of a soiled neckerchief, Michael Redgrave's Gilbert bears a striking resemblance to Dobbs in the wild-eyed delight he takes in picking off his enemies.  The train is no stranger to cinema, but here the traincar plays the unusual role of battlefield trench in both films, separating besieged passengers from very hostile environments while still immobilizing them on the tracks in an exceedingly easy target.

 IV.    Another influential desert saga, Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles from 1974 pays homage to Treasure during the recruitment of Mexican bandits for the enemy's forces.  "Badges?  We don't need no stinking badges!" the first bandit exclaims as Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman) offers him an initiation pin, similar to El Jefe's (Manuel Donde) angry retort to Dobbs before their magnificent mountainside shootout. The villains in this desert are scarcely more comical than those galloping over the Sierra Madre, whose grotesque cartoonish faces grow even more perverse in sweaty, toothy low-angle close-ups; but the senseless acts of the cackling desert assassins who lay Dobbs and his treasure to waste elicit a different kind of laughter, less riotous guffaw than defeated, baffled chuckle.

    What a film!

 

 

~ Natasha Hirschfeld

 

American Gangster and the Tragic Antihero (Natasha)

    2007 was a great year--a mere two months after we adopted Roy, our handsome French Bulldog, American Gangster was released.  My favorite among Ridley Scott's directorial triumphs, beating out Alien, Blade Runner and Gladiator for the title, this film is an absolute masterpiece.  As you may have surmised from my post on Luther last fall, I have a raging crush on Idris Elba.  You may then wonder how I could be so enamored of a movie in which his character is unceremoniously shot in the head and left splayed out and bleeding on a Harlem sidewalk.  The answer is that it's all right, because Denzel Washington is the shooter.  Oh, Denzel.  

    Denzel’s Frank Lucas is a king in a court of thieves, a businessman dependent on junkies, gangsters and peacocks.  An innovative drug dealer, Frank trumps his competitors with “a product that’s better than the competition at a price that’s lower than the competition.”  He manages such a feat through familial connection—his cousin in the Army—that allows him to traffic heroin from an eerie Vietnamese plantation reminiscent of Colonel Kurtz’s territory to JFK Airport on military planes, in the coffins of fallen soldiers. When Frank’s trademark “Blue Magic” finally infiltrates Harlem (in tins of powdered baby formula, a harrowing image), brand loyalty and mass overdosing ensue.

    Cornering the heroin market despite countless deaths by the superpotent drug, Frank rises from gangster's driver to American Gangster after his beloved boss dies and he finally puts his own entrepreneurial spirit to work.  But Frank is slated to become something more than his employer Bumpy Johnson ever could, because Bumpy “never owned his own company.  White man owned it, so they owned him,” he explains to his brothers/new business partners on an edifying stroll through Harlem (during which he lays Idris out right in front of the entire neighborhood).  As a black man in the heroin trade, Frank is a true pioneer, forcing notoriously racist Mafiosos to bow to him to make a profit, baffling bigoted Feds who cannot even countenance Richie’s idea of Frank as a drug superpower.

    The only reason the meticulous, endlessly responsible Frank even pops up on Richie's radar is because Frank is too easily threatened by Richie’s investigation of the deadly Blue Magic.  Through Richie’s mafia-mired close friend Joey Sadano (played to perfection by Ritchie Coster), Frank offers the nosy detective a massive ski chalet in Aspen because he is fully accustomed to bribing crooked DEA agents.  Unfortunately for Frank and his empire, Richie is the most honest, most curious cop in the tri-state area, so Joey’s desperate warning to “leave Frank Lucas alone” only piques Richie’s interest in the name.  It doesn’t help that Frank’s well-meaning wife gives him a garish mink coat with matching hat, which he wears quite uncomfortably to a highly publicized prizefight.  It is precisely this kind of attention-grabbing gangster attire that Frank avoids, even slaps his brother around for wearing, because his only ambition greater than success is anonymity.  But out of obligation to his wife, he keeps the whole outfit on as he takes the best seats in the house and rouses the watchful Richie’s attention.  Had he just followed his own rules, he might have run Harlem forever; but as happens so often in this film, Frank’s perilous devotion to family puts his business in danger.  (It is impossible not to empathize with him on this point, though—Ruby Dee as Mama Lucas is hands down the most adorable yet commanding mother ever realized on the screen.)

    While Frank does suffer at the hands of justice, his downfall is only semi-permanent because he takes his tormentors with him.  Identifying every crooked, blackmailing, bribe-snatching cop led by the iniquitous Detective Trupo (a supremely hateful, mustachioed Josh Brolin) who shot his dog, Frank catalyzes the prosecution of an outrageous 75% of New York DEA. Consequently, his 70-year prison sentence is brought down to a mere 15, after which only a few gray hairs and a dated suit suggest Frank has missed a beat. Despite the fact that he is a drug dealer, despite the proliferation of graphic overdose scenes, despite our first introduction to Frank, when he lights a man on fire before shooting him to death, we root for Frank.  We have no choice--he is too inspiring, too self-made, his motivations are too noble and his success too unlikely, his will too strong and his enemies too deplorable for us to wish him anything but greatness.  My heart leaps out of my chest when he steps out of prison and reveals to Richie that he could recapture the Harlem drug trade in a moment, and I’m not entirely ashamed to say I wish he would.

 

 

~ Natasha Hirschfeld

Kathryn's Characters (Natasha)

    His name is James Cameron, the bravest pioneer!
    No budget too steep, no sea too deep
    Who's that?  It's him!  James Cameron!

    James Cameron, explorer of the sea!
    With a dying thirst to be the first
    Could it be?  Yeah that's him!  James Cameron!

    So goes the director's very apt theme song in "Raising the Bar," this week's episode of South Park.  None will marvel at just how brief Cameron's two-year marriage to fellow director Kathryn Bigelow was, considering his credits include films of Titanic (ha!) proportions while hers are markedly smaller and quieter, with nary a Fern Gully appropriation in the bunch (I'm talkin' to you, Avatar).  It's possible their joint effort on Point Break kept them together those 27 months.  Perhaps the film's tagline, "100% pure adrenaline," secretly applied to the fatally thrilling volatility of Camelow.  Perhaps not.

    Neither Kathryn nor James is by any means a great director, but her work is infinitely more interesting than his in terms of character portrayal and development.  Two of her films in particular (both very post-marriage) warrant multiple screenings for their troubled antiheroes: Sarah Polley as Maren Hontvedt in 2000's jumbled but sometimes satisfying The Weight of Water and Jeremy Renner as Sergeant First Class William James in The Hurt Locker (2008), the film that earned the Academy Award for Best Picture and made Bigelow the first female Best Director.

    Sarah first.  Hers was the only character I cared about in The Weight of Water, but I cared about her enough to make up for all the others.  The film's temporally bifurcated storyline leaves much to be desired from the modern-day characters--Sean Penn as a humorless, self-obsessed writer, Elizabeth Hurley his attempted accomplice to adultery, Catherine McCormack his inexplicably insecure photojournalist wife and Josh Lucas her admiring brother-in-law. Through little fault of the actors' own, these troubled couples make the modern-day storyline a mere distraction from the gripping plot of 1873. Sarah Polley's turn as an incestuous murderer very nearly leads one to forget her character Maren is an incestuous murderer.  Her simultaneously stoic and passionate performance elicits such empathy that I found myself trying to explain away even her most twisted moments.

    Maren truly never had a chance at any semblance of happiness.  Her incestuous relationship with her brother, which began in their very early adolescence, screwed her up permanently, and her cruel older sister made everything worse by telling their father:  He swiftly paired Maren up with an unremarkable stranger and sent them from Germany to an uninhabited island off the northeast coast of America. Her eventual axe murder of her older sister and mindless sister-in-law is equal parts desperation and retribution.  And her damning accusation that her arthritic former boarder committed both murders and tried to kill her, too... well, she kind of lost me there. But he did attack her sister-in-law at one point, so at least she did not martyr an entirely pure man?  The two murders are somehow not tragic because they are the sole instance of her agency and self-interest, two traits her family, era and circumstances never before allowed her to express.  In addition, her victims are practically one-dimensional compared to her; it is as if she is offing simpler, less sentient beings than herself.

    In terms of direction, the film is amorphous and the modern characters ill-explained; but what Kathryn Bigelow's direction lacks in clarity, Sarah Polley's performance makes up for in potency.  It is a bonus that Polley's face is just fascinating--calmly beautiful, but always hinting so subtly at the soul-crushing emotional repression Maren must practice in her achingly lonely, stunted life.

    Now for Jeremy (oh Jeremy, would that you weren't so small!  Unfortunately this six-foot-tall CinemAddict can't sustain a full crush on a man of your 5'7"-ish frame.  So we both lose).  S.W.A.T., 28 Weeks Later, The Town--what movie hasn't he improved exponentially? Renner's talents are on full display in The Hurt Locker. James is the leader of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal team during the Iraq War, and he faces each bomb defusing with such lighthearted professionalism that one cannot imagine him ever straying from the job he seems born to do.  And indeed, he cannot stray: Hopelessly dependent on the thrill of facing death and saving lives, Sergeant James barely exists outside Baghdad. His brief foray into civilian life shows how ill-equipped he is for a simple trip to the grocery store, how stifled he is by the monotony of clearing out rain gutters, how impossible it is for him to sustain human relationships outside barracks in the desert. Renner's portrayal fortifies the tragic character with a sense of purpose and of pride, making James a frightful weapon--mechanical at times, and completely self-destructive--rather than a victim of war.  In short (pun intended), Renner is perfect.

    While The Hurt Locker was widely praised as a cinematic triumph, it was more character study than story.  This is because Kathryn Bigelow is not a great director.  But clearly she possesses the vital ability to engage her actors and make them as great as they can possibly be, so maybe she is great by association.  Having your three stars stand cheering and beaming behind you as you accept your Oscar has to mean something.

 

 

~ Natasha Hirschfeld

Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle Fundamental Physical Comedy Pitted Against the Agile Acrobatic Buster Keaton in The Bell Boy. (Helen)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    At the tail end of the 19^th century, Joseph “Buster” Keaton tumbled into a life of stunt work at the tender age of three joining his parents as the third member of their Vaudeville act, The Three Keatons. After being tossed around stage as his father’s prop, Buster quickly learned how to take a pratfall, as well as developing other skills of stunt etiquette. At the age of twenty-one, Buster left the family business in order to transition to the meteoric silver screen.  Buster was immediately apprenticed to silent comedy veteran Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle as a fellow funnyman with vaudevillian beginnings. Arbuckle had been in the film industry for ten years prior to meeting Buster and was at this point, the lead actor, head writer, and director of short films for Paramount Pictures[1]. 

    The Bell Boy (1918) was one of the first couple of silent shorts where Buster and Arbuckle worked exclusively side by side. Although Buster sees more screen time in this film than usual, he still plays second fiddle to Arbuckle. Buster and Arbuckle both two inept bell boys with various responsibilities ranging from the mundane, carrying luggage and mopping the floor, to the utterly ridiculous, artfully barbering and managing a horse drawn elevator gone awry. Essential to silent comedies of the time, there is also a romantic interest (played by Alice Lake) that both Buster and Arbuckle initially fight over, but then work together using an elaborate scheme to woo for Arbuckle. In this case, Buster and the hotel clerk, Al St. John stage a bank robbery so Arbuckle can heroically intervene and in doing so, sweep the girl off her feet. Of course, at the time of the feigned robbery a gang of brutish criminals actually hold up the bank.

    This silent film, like Arbuckle’s other shorts, exemplifies his distinct comedic presence while showcasing the skill of his counterpart Buster. The heart of Arbuckle’s gags was in his robust, clumsy nature and the bizarre agility of his pratfalls. He believed in using simple and often predictable visual cues rather than complex ones for the sake of what he believed was the dim-witted moviegoer[2].  The first couple stunts consist of Arbuckle and Buster taking a fall after an unfortunate placement of luggage later followed by a similar tumble over a bucket of soapy water (a gag that resonates throughout the film). When a strange bearded patron checks into the hotel, Arbuckle offers him his barber services.  In this sequence Arbuckle armed with comically large scissors and a straight razor transform this mystery guest into a dead ringer for Civil War General Ulysses S. Grant, then with a few snips he becomes Abraham Lincoln, and with a close shave finally Keiser Wilhelm (each caricature followed by a title slide leaving no doubt which painfully obvious historical depiction is which.) Meanwhile Buster and St. John are tumbling all over the heavily soaped floors.  The most impressive stunt which takes places in the elevator, is one of the only opportunities Buster is able to show off his acrobatic prowess other than a brief moment of jumping over the bank walls to elude the criminals. The emphasis is still placed on Arbuckle as he repeatedly tries to push Buster back into the elevator car with a 2x4 before his head is crushed between the two floors. When the car falls back to the ground floor, the love interest is propelled into the air after stepping on the unfortunately placed board. Buster jumps onto Arbuckle’s shoulders and crawls up the wall to retrieve the girl from the moose head perch. Arbuckle catches the girl and then leaves Buster to fend for himself. Using the 2 x 4 as a springboard, Buster defies gravity and manages several masterful feats eventually crashing and knocking over St. John who has tried to saw the board in attempt to save him. After the arduous rescue from the moosehead, Arbuckle and his love interest Miss Cuticle who is the hotel’s manicurist skip the hotel’s work day to take a romantic carriage ride. At this point, the movie might have ended since Arbuckle is cozy in the carriage and gets a kiss from Miss Cuticle.

    In order to further secure his love interest affections, Arbuckle devises a plan to which he can emerge as a hero by foiling a robbery.  The plot takes a departure to the absurd as Arbuckle enlists the aid of Buster, his bellboy counterpart, and hotel clerk, St. John. Director Arbuckle demonstrates his comedic sensibility in this next scene.  Buster in league with St. John are behind the hotel counter preparing for their scheme by throwing pick axes, shovels and all manner of tools from a seemingly endless arsenal.  Once outfitted, our two bungling burglars head to the bank where they encounter the real criminals. Delayed by the encounter, Buster and St. John fly around the bank like gymnasts.  Of course, you might wonder how they will finally reconnect with Arbuckle who seems to be doing quite well on the dance floor with Miss Cuticle. Arbuckle ventures into the bank we assume to check on the progress of his wayward friends. And after another scuffle, and two ceramic pots to the face, Arbuckle sends the buglers out of the bank by ripping a door off its hinges and throwing it at the lot of them. After an elaborate chase scene, they are apprehended in the hotel lobby and Arbuckle is rewarded with glory, a cash reward, and the affection of the girl he was attempting to impress.

    This film is very important to Buster's history as this one of the first films where Arbuckle lets Buster assume a major role. Arbuckle excels by using his stature in simple rough and tumble gags with little to no deviation (except for a brief bizarre nod to pop culture icons in the barber shop scene).  Seemingly limited by straight-man role, Buster still wows with the aerobatic feats and stupendous stunts all the while carrying a slightly melancholy expression that hints at something more. Although Arbuckle and Buster have distinct comedic styles (taking note that Buster's is still developing and Arbuckle had the last say as writer and director of the film) they seamlessly complement each other by providing the audience with separate but necessary visual elements. While Arbuckle has found his niche in silent comedy, Buster will go to create more complex and profoundly athletic stunts while further developing his signature stone face expression and soulful eyes that continues to captivate audiences, commanding their attention to hang on every hint of a smile, frown, or sigh.

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Bibliography:

[1] Keaton, Buster, and Charles Samuels. "Ch. 1." My Wonderful World of Slapstick. New York, NY: Da Capo, 1982. Print.

[2] Telotte, J. P., Arbuckle Escapes: The Pattern of Fatty Arbuckle's Comedy , Journal of Popular Film and Television, 15:4 (1988:Winter) p.172-179

Photo Credit:

Dr. Macro

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It's alive! Jenn... (Diana)

Production Journal #3

     This is part 2 if my previous blog where I posted about my actor Oscar and his audition for my next film project. Recently, I met with a potential actress or (non-actress) named Jenn who auditioned for the role of Oscar's girlfriend Olivia. Like Oscar, Jenn has never had any acting experience and I quickly reassured her that she should not worry about it. Similarly to Oscar's audition, I asked Jenn to go through the one scene of dialogue I had written and to read straight through it. Once she was able to get a feel of the scene and of her character, I asked her to put down the script and just talk with me in character. I wanted her to respond in any way she thought her character would and the result was something that I didn't at all expect.

Jennifer Saaty - Still from her audition footage

    When I originally wrote the script, the first dialogue scene between the couple was supposed to reflect their stressed relationship. My idea was that their interaction introduced the viewer to an already strained relationship. In the scene, Olivia (the main characters girlfriend) wakes up the hung over Oscar who has slept through work and is on the verge of being fired. The exchange between the two reflects how frustrated and jaded Olivia has become with Oscar and how she's at the end of her rope with him. My original idea was for the dialogue to be an angry back and forth between the two of them as she tries to convince him to get up and get back on track. The way I had it written, Olivia was so angry towards Oscar that I began to wonder why they have ever been together in the first place? It just wasn't believable, the dialogue had no human voice. What I really wanted to get across was that the two characters, though going through a rough patch, where sill in love with each other and were still hoping for things to get better. I wanted to express this through the films visuals and the physical gestures of the actors, but my dialogue wasn't expressing this and that needed to change. 

 

 

Sweet Jenn - Stills from Jenn's audition footage

 

    The second Jenn put herself into the role, everything changed. Her take on the character was sweet and tender hearted while still discontent with her boyfriend. She was able to humanize her character as well as Oscar's, just by being herself. I find this approach to the character and her situation much more powerful then I had originally written it because the contrast between the characters sweetness and the bitterness of the failing relationship I think makes a bigger and more realistic statement. 

    This wednesday, I'm going to bring both my actors together so that I can see how they interact with one another. If all goes well, I can make my final decisions on casting and move on to finally shooting the film. I'm also still working on the title. As soon as I figure it out I will let you know!

Diana

It's alive! Oscar... (Diana)

Production Journal #2

    It's all happening! This weekend I met with my actor Oscar and we went over the script for my latest film project. We started off the audition with a direct read of the script. When I wrote the dialogue for the film, I decided that I wanted what the characters were saying to be totally natural and organic. I approached the script as a guideline; a skeleton the actors could use to build upon and play with. As Oscar read off of the script, it seemed forced and almost stiff. It was hard for him to get into the character. That's when I decided to do away with the script and just talk.I asked Oscar to put down his lines and just converse with me in character. This is when we made the most progress. 

 

Still from Oscar's Audition Reel - Oscar Gonzalo Aspillaga

     The character he's playing, who's also named Oscar, is a deeply complex and torn person. His life is slowly falling apart because of his inability to control his drinking. It's affecting his work and most importantly the relationship between him and his girlfriend Olivia who's becoming increasingly frustrated and is at her wits end. At the same time, his alcoholic dead-beat father is trying to get back into his life. Eventually, Oscar's denial of his drinking problem begins to dissolve as he becomes more and more like the father who he's spent his whole life rejecting. During the more improvisational part of the audition, Oscar was able to really open up to his character and try to understand him. It was great to see him take the character and make it his own in such a short period of time. Oscar has breathed life into this role and has brought the film into existence. Without actors the characters don't exist; they lay stillborn on the page. Now, thanks to Oscar, it's alive!   This friday I will be meeting with my friend Jennifer who's auditioning for the part of Olivia in the film. I will be recording the audition so that I can edit it and put it together as well. Expect it to be posted sometime over the weekend! 

Until next time,

Diana

Out of Time: The Passion of Joan of Arc (Kelsey)

Carl Theodor Dreyer directed The Passion of Joan of Arc in 1928.  And yet, despite this unequivocal fact, the film does not belong to the year 1928.  It doesn't seem to concretely belong anywhere; indeed, the film is strangely atemporal.  Instead, the film belongs to a world where a close up can be stretched out over 85 minutes; where an entire world can be built on the physiognomy of a face.  And this world is built upon the face of Maria Falconetti, a face unadorned by make up but imbued with the ability to turn the most subtle of facial ticks into a moment of emotional anagnorisis.  The entire film is like a prolonged flash of revelation, and though Falconetti's eyes get increasingly wider and more desperate, they never stop conjuring up that which remains unspoken.

The film, if the opening titles are to be believed, dutifully follows the written record of the trial, imprisonment, and death of fabled martyr Joan of Arc.  She is not the only character shot almost exclusively in close-up; the men who decide her fate are shot in a similarly close range, though admittedly to very different effect.  If the camerawork acts as an hour an a half long elegy to Joan, it is effectively putting the men who judge her on trial.  They are captured in harsh black and white tones and even harsher facial expressions.  They are the ugly, jeering men whose faces keep no secrets but tell only lies, and the camera pans across their faces as if they were Roman portrait busts riddled with imperfections, at home in a museum but never at home in Joan's psyche. 

And it is in Joan's psyche that the film takes place: these leering men stand in for the Satanic visions they constantly accuse Joan of having, and the look in Joan's eyes as they turn upward towards heaven does in fact seem to emanate the ethereal.  And these awful faces get closer and closer until they seem to close in on Joan entirely, violating her space and the space of the film.  And all of this is filmed with extreme attention to detail: from the warts on the faces of her accusers to the insects that occasionally land on Joan's face.  And it is this strange detail, enlarged and crystal clear, that allows the film to escape any form of realism.  By creating a film based on minutiae, tiny little flaws and facial movements that would be unremarkable in a wider shot become absurd and surreal, and through attention to the mundane, the film is able to portray the ethereal.     

In the last scene of the film, Joan is burned at the stake.  As flames engulf her tiny body and her shorn head, the camera pans across a different sort of people: not the judges who assigned this fate to Joan, but regular people, openly weeping at the sight before them.  And the claustrophobic close-ups all of the sudden seem a bit less claustrophobic, as Joan begins to disappear into the smoke and tears roll down the faces of grown men.  The image of birds soaring across the sky is intercut with the flames of the stake and the mounting anger of the people.  And with this moment of emotional synchronicity, the disparate close-ups are no longer at odds.  It is as though the discordant elements of Joan's tale have come together, and the film, which oftentimes feels like an 85 minute reconstruction of a second, is finally able to end.  And the stake goes up in flames, and Joan is finally set free.     

 

Willie Dynamite Saved My Life (Christen)

    In light of the death of another one of my favorite screen legends, Rudy Ray Moore a.k.a. Dolemite, I decided to write about the direction of black cinema. And by direction, I mean a complete U-turn. The revolutionary era of Blaxploitation may have ended with insistence from groups like the NAACP because of the portrayal of blatant stereotypes, but the genre went beyond stories that glorified pimps and hoodlums. The protagonists also consisted of vengeance seeking heroes and heroines that wanted to rid the city of the bad guys in the most visually stunning way possible. Actors such as Richard Roundtree (Shaft), Pam Grier (Coffy) and Jim Kelly (Black Belt Jones) were the only black action stars audiences had over 30 years ago, and their films are just as cool to watch today in the privacy of one's own home.

   Take, for instance, Larry Cohen's classic Black Caesar (1973). Copious racial slurs aside, the theme of the black gangster film wasn't different from those that starred James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson: gangsters, and the crooked cops that do business with them, are bad news and should be brought to justice...or at least shot. Tommy Gibbs, played by Fred Williamson, is "Black Caesar" and rises to the top of the crime underworld by killing a lot of corrupt white men and taking what belongs to them. He is a brutish husband to his wife Helen, played by the beautiful Gloria Hendry, and lies to his childhood friend Joe (Philip Roye) about giving the money he acquires back to the black community. Because Tommy got beat up by a bad cop at the beginning of the movie because of a misunderstanding, you want to feel sorry for him; however, this movie is a lesson on where being hellbent on gaining power and revenge will get you: nowhere but down with a bullet lodged somewhere in your mid-section. It should end fatally for our protagonist, but Cohen would have it that Gibbs survives being shot and beaten by a gang of youths to return that same year for a sequel, Hell Up In Harlem (1973). Ah, the magic (and efficiency) of blaxploitation! What also sets this film apart from The Public Enemy, however, was its impressive soundtrack composed and performed by the late, great James Brown. Funk and soul music was a staple of blaxploitation films that blacks could associate with, because the songs had important messages beyond the films they were contained in. Including Curtis Mayfield and Isaac Hayes, funk and soul musicians composed soundtracks for their generation, not just the fiction on the big screen. 

    There is a bevy of other black films that were made in the '70s and weren't credited as blaxploitation flicks, were meaningful in black cinema history. Black actresses were getting nominated for Best Leading Actress Academy Awards for the first time since Dorothy Dandridge in 1954; Diana Ross and Cicely Tyson in 1972 for Lady Sings the Blues and Sounder, respectively, and Diahann Carroll in 1974 for Claudine. Richard Pryor was gaining notoriety as a raunchy stand-up comedian who wasn't afraid to talk about race relations at length, and has many films to his credit he wrote and/or appeared in that helped him achieve cult status. The same Gloria Hendry that was in Black Caesar landed the role as the first black Bond girl to lock lips with the agent in the film Live and Let Die (1973); granted, the film was heavily influenced by the blaxploitation surge, but it showed that James Bond didn't discriminate when it came to romancing women. The 70's were such a vibrant, crucial time for black cinema. Black people were writers, directors, actors and producers of work that created meaning for an entire generation; a meaning that can still be understood and appreciated today.

    After the '70s, however, there was a seeming loss of interest in the black movie industry that was never restimulated. In the 1980s there was an influx of movies about breakdancing, and at the very end of the decade Spike Lee was able to squeeze in his landmark social commentary Do the Right Thing (1989). Where did all those black film pioneers go?! There is a movie produced in the late '80s that I appreciated by actor/director/writer Robert Townsend called Hollywood Shuffle (1987). Townsend plays Bobby Taylor, a young black actor who dreams of making a name for himself in Hollywood, despite the naysayers at his job and in his own family. However, during the audition process for terribly written a movie, he realizes he may have to sacrifice his integrity to work for a white Hollywood that wants him to act like Eddie Murphy, as opposed to just act. Hollywood Shuffle takes a no holds barred look at how stereotypes are still present for black actors in cinema, despite the suggestion that the end of blaxploitation era improved the image of blacks on the big and small screens. I respect that Townsend made this movie practically out of his own pocket, and it woke me up enough to write this piece and ask: where do we go from here?

 

     It's been 21 years since Hollywood Shuffle and black actors are winning Academy Awards and Golden Globes in bigger numbers than ever before; they're also being critically acclaimed for their performances as drug addicts and dealers ("The Wire"). Also, most of the roles available to black actors are in bio-pics about popular musicians and athletes overcoming racism and/or poverty; I feel like I'm watching the same movie over and over again. Another problem is that Hollywood is slow to become color blind in casting blacks in leads for modern day romantic-comedies as if interracial relationships in this country exist in small numbers. And what happened to the intelligent, butt-kicking black action heroes I can only see in "Soul Cinema" DVD collections? As a future filmmaker/actor, I'm hoping I can have a hand in changing this, even if only a little bit. Spike Lee can't do this by himself.

                                                                                                                                               

Paul Newman is an Aquarius? That makes sense. (Christen)

I have a horrible memory, but there are some things that stick out in my mind like a thorn on a rosebush. The first time I saw a Paul Leonard Newman film was on his 79th birthday when Turner Classic Movies ran a marathon in his honor. I turned it on near the end of Somebody Up There Likes Me, Newman’s first starring role in a major film. In it, Newman plays Rocky Graziano who goes through a troubled life and ends up being a successful boxer. Having missed the beginning, I was first hesitant to keep watching; however, I’m a sucker for a beautiful face. By the end of the day I spent with Paul Newman, it became less about his looks and more about how entrancing it was to watch him work; to watch him talk to someone onscreen, or even sit in silence was mesmerizing. Something about Paul Newman made me want to see more and more of him.

That same day, I was on a computer and trying to find out everything I could about Paul Newman. By the end of the day, thanks to imdb.com, I knew: his birthday (January 26, 1925, making him an Aquarius—I’ve been big on astrology since middle school), where he grew up (Shaker Heights, Ohio), where he studied drama (Kenyon College, Yale University and the Actor’s Studio in New York) and that he is the godfather of Jake Gyllenhaal (how, I don’t know). After several months and a few more praiseworthy Paul Newman films, I was applying to Kenyon University in a vain attempt to follow in his thespian footsteps. Getting accepted was a great honor, but Gambier, Ohio (where Kenyon is located) was a little too…quiet for me.

Because I didn’t know Newman personally, I can’t say all the qualities he possessed for certain. Nevertheless, I could see a lot of other Aquarian characteristics Goodman spoke of in the parts Newman played. Newman plays Eddie Felson in The Hustler (1961), and he takes on one of his most tragic roles. What makes him so interesting is the fact that Eddie possesses one positive Aquarian trait (devotion to his goal of beating “Minnesota Fats”), but he has negative traits (stubbornness and conceit) working against him. His tenacity keeps him from developing a lasting relationship with Sarah Packard (played by Piper Laurie), even though they seem like they could have saved each other. “Physical fulfillment leaves Aquarius emotionally empty and still wistful, failing to sense the Oneness with the mate—the final truth of love”.

In Hud (1963) Newman plays the title character as genuinely as possible. Aside from his performance, Patricia Neal and Melvyn Douglas unquestionably earn their Academy Awards for their supporting roles. It’s one of those movies that was filmed in black and white when it didn’t have to be, but it makes so much sense that it was. This is my roundabout way of saying, if you haven’t seen this movie, see it; if you can, see it on as large a screen as possible so when the camera pans the Texas landscape, you get the effect cinematographer James Wong Howe wanted it to have. Anyway, back to my Newman-Aquarian theory. Aquarians are said to be rebels, and Hud Bannon is a rebel in every sense of the word: he sleeps with married women, tries to take the family ranch from under his aging father’s nose, and gets into a fist fight nearly every time he goes into town. If you look at Newman throughout the film, you see him making every move impulsively; he says and does whatever he wants, regardless of the consequences. Goodman says, “If more conservative people are offended by the Uranus (the ruling planet of Aquarius) behavior, the Aquarian individualist laughs off their disapproval.”

Skipping a decade, I saw The Sting (1973) and couldn’t wait for every time Newman would come onscreen. Newman plays experienced con artist Henry Gondorff, and he possesses several key Aquarian traits, including far-sighted and intelligent.  He was a supporting actor to Robert Redford’s lead, but the most memorable scene in the film for me is Gondorff’s poker playing scene with the bad guy, Doyle Lonnegan (played by Robert Shaw). Gondorff has the authority that Newman’s characters usually have, or at least pretend they have, which is something no one else can pull off. I’m scared to give too much more of the movie away for those that haven’t seen it, but if you watch it closely, you can see that Newman put a lot of work into this role even though his screen time is minimal. “Aquarius knows that the rigid rules of today’s society must sooner or later be compromised.”

Paul Newman inspired me to find a part of myself in the roles I play. Another Aquarian trait that I know I can attribute to Newman is brilliance; that is something I’ve seen in every part he’s explored on film.

Remembering Paul Newman (Chris M)

Soon I will submit my usual post, but first I wanted to at least briefly mention the recent passing of Paul Newman.  There are so many ways you can remember him, both on and off the screen.  You can remember him for all the changes he brought to the world; in total, his donations to a number of charities have exceeded two hundred million dollars.  His “Hole in the Wall Gang” camps have brought happiness to thousands and thousands of seriously ill children.  You can remember him for his numerous memorable roles on screen.  I love to talk about how characters can touch us deeply.  Newman, always an actor before a movie star, had an incredible way of making the viewer attach to his characters.  Hud (“Hud,” Ritt, 1963) was one such character (one of my favorites).  Hud is a young, rough and tough, hot tempered cowboy that drives a pink Cadillac.  He’s the kind of character you hate to love.  To me, Hud stands out as one of the most lovable, conflicting characters in cinema.  Hud was just one of many of Paul Newman’s unforgettable roles.  We will all have our own ways of remembering him.  I will remember how he used his smile, his perfectly delivered lines, and his true ability to act, to make his characters connect to his viewers.

Street Symphonies (and Period Piece Cacophonies): Keitel and DiCaprio as Scorsese's Leading Men (Christen)

Regardless of the few projects he probably should have left alone, Scorsese has made a lasting impression in the gangster genre with two films made over thirty years apart. After I finished The Departed (2006) and watched Mean Streets (1973) for the third time, I resolved that Scorsese’s gangster films were gospel to my eyes. Both films are marked by impressive casts, which are led by Leonardo DiCaprio and Harvey Keitel, respectively, as well as the reverence Scorsese shows to his early film influences. Scorsese’s first feature length film, Who’s That Knocking At My Door (1968), also stars Harvey Keitel and it screams inspiration from French cinema; however, there are definitely the starting patterns of Scorsese’s interest in religion as a thematic concern and the infamous use of his personal record collection. The movie is about a young man in New York City, J.R. (played by Harvey Keitel), and his relationship to a girl with no name (played by Zina Bethune). Their relationship is innocent enough until she confides in him that she was raped before they started dating. For the rest of the film we see J.R. stumble through this conflict between his love for the Girl and his resentment toward her, which produces few memorable moments other than the eyebrow raising final scene. For me, the best scene in the film is after she tells him what happened to her; this particular scene brings out a lot of genuine hurt in Harvey Keitel that you wouldn’t expect from such a young actor. Considering he had to play against a pretty stale Zina Bethune, I have to applaud Keitel for being able to work with anything. In acting classes, I’ve learned that if you listen to the other person in a scene, your dialogue will be golden; you can see Keitel hearing what she’s said and then taking it in, slow to understand at first and then faster, his confused fury gaining momentum. In the end, this screenplay doesn’t give him much; I think Mean Streets is infinitely better.

 Mean Streets starts with a black frame and a voice (Martin Scorsese’s) saying: “You don't make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit and you know it.” Charlie (Keitel) then wakes up in a sweat, as if he just suffered a bad dream; but we’ve seen only darkness, and we only hear the words that pull Charlie out of this darkness and guide his actions for the rest of the film. Charlie wants to do his own penance as opposed to saying the ‘Hail Marys’ and ‘Our Fathers’ that the priests give to sinners looking for guidance. He tries to look out for his loud-mouthed, juvenile friend Johnny Boy (played by Robert DeNiro) and maintain a secret relationship with Johnny’s cousin, Teresa, all while trying to pull off some upward mobility by collecting owed money for his uncle. Harvey Keitel does a lot as Charlie that is worth watching again and again; in fact, the entire cast works ridiculously well together, which makes it an instant classic. Scorsese is speaking more in this film than in Who’s That Knocking At My Door, as we see him playing with his notorious tracking shot, red lighting and his affection for New York City in so many shots.

Thirty-three years later, The Departed boasts an almost entirely male cast list that still blows my mind and Scorsese makes a move up north to Boston as his featured locale. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s Scorsese’s most recent gangster film and it is downright wonderful. Before I watched it, I had some qualms about Leonardo DiCaprio playing a lead role and that’s because Leo in Scorsese’s hands equals me falling asleep. I may be the only person in the world that thought Gangs of New York (2002) and The Aviator (2004) were kind of on the mundane side (again the Academy Awards and I totally disagree), but I don’t think Scorsese was being reasonable when he invested in the belief that DiCaprio could help well-rounded actors like Daniel Day-Lewis and Cate Blanchett carry a film. A young Harvey Keitel probably would have knocked DiCaprio’s Howard Hughes out of the park, but the world will never know. Suffice it to say, I think Scorsese finally cast DiCaprio appropriately as Billy Costigan in The Departed, which got Scorsese the long awaited Best Director Academy Award.

Then, just as I was patting Scorsese on the back for a job well done, he went and made a choice I may never forgive him for: he cast Leonardo DiCaprio as Theodore Roosevelt in an upcoming biopic. I nodded off just thinking about it! Leo, Marty and period films do not mix; I’m especially concerned with period films about mortal legends like Teddy. Coincidentally, I learned a good deal about Theodore Roosevelt this summer from a good friend; I learned that Teddy Roosevelt was probably the most awe-inspiring president to exist…ever. I won’t go into details here, but he truly led a remarkable life and I’m not sure if DiCaprio can handle it. In order for Leonardo to earn this role, in my eyes, he would have to take a crash course in Teddy-ism. He needs to create and join a cavalry regiment to the same extent as the Rough Riders, as well as wrestle a bear. If Leo can survive, then he may have what it takes to tell the tale of a truly remarkable man. In other words, Harvey Keitel is probably up for playing the part.