Hello faithful Blog readers. No, I haven't dropped off the face of the planet, but I have dropped into the final week of pre-production on a feature film that I am both the producer and director of photography.
This is the feature directorial debut of my best friend, Jamie Neese. It's a film called Two Million Stupid Women (which is not nearly as misogynistic as it sounds, I promise), written by Los Angeles playwright Amy Heidish. I have produced and photographed most of Jamie's director's reel; shorts that he has made since 1996, including the short that landed him as a top ten finalist in the last round of Project Greenlight before it's overdue demise. I have been a producer, in development and pre-production stages, on three feature films with Jamie - all of which came close to a stage of production (one up to two weeks before photography) before falling through for one reason or another. Some with 'A' List talent (such as Kirsten Dunst) and some with partial financing in place, or guaranteed if certain talent signed on. These project, for one reason or another, never came to fruition.
Jamie and I have talked for several years about putting aside all the BS that is associated with 'Hollywood' style productions and just making a movie. Although we talked about it - every time we started down that path, the production inevitably grows into a 'Hollywood' production and slips through our fingers. It's extremely difficult, when you find great material, to not try to 'do the best we can' and elevate the level of production. But each step closer you get to 'Hollywood' is one more rickety step up a crumbling ladder that is destined to collapse from under you.
It's important to clarify this 'Hollywood' idea a bit. It's also important to explain that I am, unabashedly, a commercial filmmaker. I am a proponent of the 'Hollywood' system. I believe it it, I've always striven to reach the pantheon of 'Hollywood' films. I much prefer the films of Steven Spielberg to the films of Jim Jarmush. I'd rather sit through a film by Robert Zemeckis than a film by David Lynch. Those have always been my tastes and aesthetics.
What do I mean by slipping into the 'Hollywood' arena? Well - this is what happens. After 20 years of working professionally in the film business, certain inalienable truths are ingrained in your head. A base common denominator of what a film, and film production, is about. It, of course, always starts with the script. You have to have a great script; one that you believe in and - almost more importantly - one that YOU want to see as a film. Then you find actors - and, right away, this is your first slippery slope. Well, if this script is really THAT good - wouldn't it be better with an 'A' List actor? What if Tom Hanks would be interested? The moment you open that door - you're in a world of pain in which less than 1% of films actually get made. Let's move past that and say you have some great actor friends, who are incredibly talented and you're going to cast them (you Indie rebel, you...). Great. So now you have a great script and a great cast. Gotta get those locations. So you beg, borrow, steal, plead, persuade, bribe and coerce land owners to allow you to shoot on and within their properties. Sweet. Now... You have to get a camera. Well, you've got this great script, and this great cast and these great locations... You've got to get the right camera. Be that film, or digital. If you get the best camera, you've got to get the best DP. And then get the best production designer. And you've got to get the right lighting for this - so you'll need a grip/electric truck. Now you need a grip/electric crew. Need makeup and, wow, with all these people you need a UPM... and it grows. Suddenly it's an out-of-control snow ball rolling down a steep mountain. Notice I didn't even include money in that diatribe above... that's a whole nother can of beans...
So when Jamie sent me the script for Two Million Stupid Women in April of 2007, I set it aside for a bit. I was busy trying to find my own project and he just wanted an opinion; it could wait. By July, I finally had the time to read the script on a plane flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco to shoot for my documentary CamGirls. I read most of it at LAX waiting for the flight, more on the plane and finished it off in the hotel room in San Fran.
I loved it. It's unorthodox, but funny as all hell. I fired off a late-night e-mail to Jamie telling him this was the perfect project for him.
In September, we talked about it again and he asked me to produce the film for him. He decided that he was going to set out and just get this film made - by hook or by crook. Inspired by his friend, British director Paul Williams (London to Brighton), Jamie decided he could cobble together enough money to return to our mutual independent, low-budget roots, and get this film made. We talked a lot about the style and the Mumble Core films (LOL, Hannah Takes the Stairs, The Puffy Chair) films that were causing a stir. Two Million was a script that called out to be shot in an ultra-realistic, almost documentary style. We decided to approach this production in a wholly 'stripped-down' fashion. NO FRILLS. We would work entirely non-union, including actors. We would work with primarily natural light and primarily handheld. The film should have an immediacy to it, a sense of being a voyeur on this journey and discovering the story as we venture through it.
In October we met with Steven Bordelon, our mutual friend who read the script and loved it
. Steve came on to be our executive producer and set out to find the funds. By mid-October we teamed up with producer Jason Robinson and had our funding secured. We brought on casting director Jackie Sollitto and started seeing new actors in early November. Just after the first of the year in 2008, we locked our final cast member - and found an extraordinary cast.
Tonight, as I write this, I've returned from a 13 hour tech scout of all our locations. The production runs from Ventura to Pasadena with several stops between (Los Angeles, Glendale, Woodland Hills). It is an extraordinarily micro-budget film and it's been an extreme challenge to sort out the logistics to produce a film of this size and scope on a budget that never ceases to cause chins to hit the floor.
Over the next three weeks, I'll chronicle the production here and keep y'all up to date on the happenings. We start production on Sunday, February 3 and wrap on Friday, February 15. 12 days. I've been very fortunate that Panasonic has lent us their new HPX3000 P2 camera, and we've rented a second from Birns and Sawyer in Los Angeles. I've teamed up with longtime friend Jayson Crothers to share the photographic duties and, come Sunday, I get to set my producing had aside and (mostly) become a DP again (I officially 'retired' as a DP in 2005 - after 8 years - to produce and direct). It's an incredibly exciting and liberating project. Quite candidly, five years ago, when I was still a DP, I would never have the guts to approach a film with this mentality. We'll be doing practically no lighting, shooting in clubs and bars and cars. This will be a test, for sure, for Panasonic's new AVC-Intra codec and their flagship native 1080 camera, and I'll be compiling my experience with the camera into a review for a future issue of DV.
So the Blogs here will change a bit in the next few weeks. They'll become much more journal like and much less classroom like. Succeed or fail, I'll be sharing the experiences here - so come on back for the juicy details.
All the best,
Jay Holben
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Previous Blogs:
10/09/2007 Who is This Guy?
10/12/2007 The Camera Conundrum
10/16/2007 The Digital Seduction
10/19/2007 Why I Teach
10/23/2007 More Detail on 24p
10/26/2007 DV101 Continued: Polarizers
10/30/2007 Spooky Digital Photography
11/02/2007 Smoke and Fog Part One
11/06/2007 Smoke and Fog Part Two
11/09/2007 Film Look: Widescreen Part One
11/13/2007 Film Look: Widescreen Part Two
11/16/2007 Film Look: Widescreen Part Three
11/20/2007 Adventures in Lighting
11/20/2007 First Time DV
12/03/2007 Choosing the Canon XL2
12/07/2007 DV Expo Follow-ups Part 1: More on the Doc Filmmaking Panel
12/11/2007 Electricity 101
12/11/2007 Electricity 101: Part II
12/18/2007 Electricity 101: Part III
12/21/2007 Electricity 101: Part IV
12/18/2007 Making a Hand Dimmer
01/04/2008 Electricity and Shopping List
01/08/2008 Color Temperature
01/15/2008 Location Lighting Part I
01/18/2008 Location Lighting Part II
01/22/2008 Exposure Part I
01/25/2008 Exposure Part II