Interview Cont’d

Here are a few more of the questions and answers from my interview with Keith Sanders:

KEITH: It looks like the film will take about a year to complete, what drives you to take on a project this big?

JI: Including the scriptwriting process it’s actually a total of more like three years (and the origins of this project go back almost four [see below in question 3]). One of the biggest things I’ve walked away from this experience with is the stout conviction that I can do this for the rest of my life at the expense of a lot more than just time.

With this project, I was driven by the desire to tell a story that is, at its core, inherently dramatic – but it’s wrapped in the absurdity of spandex so it’s often times hilarious as well. Adding the elements of superheros and backyard birthday parties into a world with real characters and real emotion just highlights the drama with the comedy and vice versa and humanizes the whole thing to an extent that maybe I didn’t even anticipate. In addition, the comic book-inspired subject matter is ripe with opportunities for dynamic visual storytelling. It gives my crew and I an opportunity to try things that incorporate visual and narrative concepts that maybe aren’t usually seen in student work.

KEITH: What has been the biggest challenge?

JI: My biggest challenge is internal, I think – dealing with compromise. Coping with the knowledge that you can’t always get exactly what you planned or wanted to get and that sometimes it’s important to shift gears and somehow get only what you need. The end of a shooting day is a huge emotional release for me, whether or not I get everything I wanted. I suspect it’s the same for Jake. One of the reasons we work so well together is that we’re both ruthlessly hard on ourselves and we always expect better. Frequently we’re told by those with qualified opinions that we’re doing the best job as director and DP that this school has ever seen, student or otherwise. That does little to console me when I had to give up a beautiful shot – or Jake when he didn’t have time to bring in another light or effectively block the sun as it makes its way across our scene and progressively mucks up our visual continuity. We both understand that every scene is important and we never approached any of them as less important than another and we never stopped caring about doing a better job tomorrow. The second I think I’ve made it because somebody praises what I’m doing – the second I think that’s a reason to stop getting better – I might as well go sell shoes.

Last couple’a questions next time – JI

That’s a Wrap.

It’s a little late in the game to be writing a wrap blog but I felt I needed a little time to distance myself from the intensity of production before ruminating or waxing poetic about the experience. I disappeared to the woods for a few days immediately following the wrap party and found a little zen. When I got back I had an email from a Mr. Keith Sanders who edits the Television Academy’s newsletter “Off Camera,” and he happened to be writing an article about SHPC. Below (and probably over the course of the next few days) I’ll post his questions and my full responses, as they wound up giving quite a bit of insight into the process.

KEITH: Tell me about a typical day for you during shooting

JI: A typical day for me was about 17 to 18 hours long. I’d arrive on set shortly after the initial crew call, shoot for 13 hours with an hour break in the middle, then Jake and I would return to the production office to spend usually up to five hours planning the next day and storyboarding the shots. Every shot of the film was storyboarded with the exception of pickup shots added during the day, and 9 times out of 10 we shot exactly what I’d drawn the night before. It was this level of preparedness that allowed us to average just under 15 shots per day, and to get a total of 415 shots for the entire movie.

On set my responsibilities range from shaping performance with the actors to setting up the camera choreoghraphy and talent blocking, to choreographyat Jake calls “triage,” which entails combining shots or losing them altogether in the interest of time. I couldn’t possibly do this as effectively if Jake and I hadn’t planned and drawn every shot of the day the night before. (More on this in my blog entry “the shot process and letting go” – JI)

After ruminating on the experience, I realize that everyone’s job is to support and enhance the story. From actor to grip, we all do this in different ways. For me as director, the most technical description of my job is to effectively give the editor Kim Duong (and myself) the absolute most possible usable footage so she and I can build the best version of the story.

To the surprise of some, I don’t spend that much time coaching my actors on set. I spoke with most of my talent one on one during preproduction then shaped them a little in rehearsals, but a big part of my process is to allow the actor or actress to breathe their own life into the character. This, sometimes to my surprise, makes them more real than I might have expected. Randy Blair, for instance, who plays the lead role of hero Eugene Stimpson, brings an intensity and a realism to the role that I’m not sure I intended in the script. However, almost right after seeing his treatment of the character, I readjusted my thinking to support it and incorporate it and now Eugene goes through a surprising range of REAL emotions for a movie as ridiculously titled as Super Hero Party Clown.

Randy made Eugene a real person with real problems and insecurities, real resentment and weaknesses, and real strengths. It’s arguably all in the script but Randy pulled it out of the subtext and onto the screen with such believability that audiences will have a real human being to cheer for, and not just a construct of the mechanisms of film – someone you have to care about because he’s the main character.

What people sometimes don’t realize is that, equally as important as the actor is the movement of the camera in relation to the actor. Otherwise we might as well be working in theatre. What film allows us is to selectively decide the absolute best view for the emotion. When asked by his lead actress for coaching on the delivery of a line, Hitchcock once remarked that he didn’t care how she said the line as long as she said it where he told her to.

I’m not so intense as that; as a matter of fact I’ll often get really specific about the pronunciation of a word or the rhythm of a sentence because so much of that is important to conveying the right emotion. Cadence and timing – saying the exact right line during the perfect camera movement – it all goes back to the two things that I believe separate film as a medium; the existence of the camera as an element of the story, and the process of editing. If you’re directing and you don’t think in terms of providing your editor with usable material – if that process completely escapes you – then it’s possible that you’re not doing your job.

Hitchcock never even looked through the lens – he’d done all of his work before hand and so shooting it was boring to him; it was all edited in his head.

I’m not quite there yet: I shoot to give myself and my editor options because if you’re shooting footage that can’t cut together then you’re wasting everyone’s time on a shot that you can’t use.

More of the interview to come – JI

Last Days of SHPC

I’m sitting in the SJSU University Theater on day 30 – our last day of production on Super Hero Party Clown. around 1AM this morning we wrapped Mr. Randy Blair, our hero, and his sidekick Zack Sutherland for the last time and sent them on their way.

Randy in Action

Zack is Hilarious

It’s a bittersweet feeling. These two actors are literally the heart of the film. Randy was on set all day every day for 29 days straight and now he quietly returns to New York. Zack wasn’t around quite as much but when he was he often had to wait several hours  between shots. I’m blessed that these two talented actors would devote so much of their time and energy to conveying on screen a friendship that is literally the crutch of the film.

Today it’s a few lingering green screen shots on stage at the university where a handful of us started almost 8 weeks ago shooting test footage. After this is probably up to 9 months of post-production (over which time I will post continual updates), festivals and promotions, and the slow realization that production is over and I’ll have to return to my nine to five retail job while I look for my next big opportunity.

By all qualified accounts I’ve done a good job with this film but I can’t help but feel the encroaching pressure of producing the best-possible final product. It’s important to me to validate the immense effort and commitment of time and emotion and personal hardship of the people involved – a group of competent pseudo-professionals without whom this project could never have come to fruition. Thanks are in order for sure but I’ll save them for a more personal delivery.

For now, to the cast and crew: thank you. You’ve afforded me an incredible opportunity and provided me and this project with a quality of work that sets us above the bar for what would otherwise be a common student film. I owe you guys everything and in return you have my commitment of a final product to be proud of and an everlasting gratitude.

Cheers,

JI

Tim Ngo

Not every job on a movie set is glamorous. It takes a lot of menial, tedious, and downright boring tasks to keep the machine running at peak efficiency. The important thing is that enough people stay dedicated and motivated enough to perform such tasks. No one exemplifies this as completely as Tim Ngo.

Tim is a man who gets stuck with the worst of the worst jobs on set. As transportation coordinator and conscripted 2nd AD, Tim frequently gets stuck driving talent home to Fremont from SJ (half hour each way) or more consistently – spending the day quietly away from set watching the equipment or driving people to and from campus. More often than not Tim eats lunch alone, sits alone with the grip truck all day and spends his OWN gas money driving people around.

Tim never gets to be near the action. He spends his whole day not even seeing the camera and yet every single time I happen to wander far enough to see him sitting vigilant at his post he’s in a cheerful mood and he’s smiling. I can be yanking my hair out about the delay on the next setup and storming off set for a moment of furious fresh air and there’s Tim – whose day is painfully less eventful than mine and far slower – ready to jump in with an offbeat peace of comedy or something downright weird but NEVER a negative comment. He’s as noble as he is committed to the cause and he’s one of the truest believers in what he does.

So thank you, Tim – you have my very sincerest gratitude.

JI

The shot process and letting go

It’s what Jake (our Cinematographer) and I often refer to as the delirious hours – after we wrap each shooting day we generally eat for an hour or so and then return to HQ to design and schedule the following days’ shots. That means 13 hours on set and another 3 and a half or so in the office.

Usually we start by identifying the coverage that we absolutely need to tell the story, followed by the “flavor”shots which add complexity, interest, and style to our sequences. They also add time to our day. Some times we’ll add what we call star shots – shots with stars drawn on them to indicate that they’re not needed but would be very cool to get. Needless to say, a day when we get all of our shots AND our star shots is a very happy day.

A shot of Eugene and Garth pulling into a parking spot.

After talking briefly about coverage, I set about composing and drawing the shots in the form of storyboards. We average around 14 shots per 12 hour day. We’ve gotten as many as 19 in any given day. Every single shot (except for pickups) gets story boarded and shot listed and 9 times out of 10 we shoot exactly what’s on the board. Sometimes we can’t get to them or the situation (location, actor availability, etc) is such that we need to augment what’s been drawn or (even better) we realize with a simple camera movement we’re able to combine two shots into one or completely ignore one.

The point is that when we plan this way we have a better day even when things go horribly and inevitably wrong. Someone said plan your dive, dive your plan. The worst thing is having to let go of a shot that you really wanted – or worse, one that you needed. Filming this movie has been a process of intense emotional investment for me and giving up on a shot because of time constraints can be devastating. That’s why Jake and I agree that it’s important to meet after each shoot and plan the next day, even if it’s at the expense of 4 or so hours of sleep.

Picture Wrap On Shelby Barnes

Over the weekend we picture wrapped the first of our main talent: miss Shelby Barnes. It’s a sad occasion for a couple of reasons.

The first of which is that working with Shelby, particularly on this project, means a lot to me. As long as I’ve had what might be referred to as a career in film (student, amateur, independent or otherwise) Shelby has been my go-to actress and good friend. She’s starred in both of my most successful shorts (Stache and The Twins McCallister – both CampusMovieFest award winners) and she played Emily in the original Super Hero Party Clown 10-minute short, viewable here:

The second reason it’s sad to send her off is strictly from a filmmaking standpoint: if we missed something or wanted to get a pickup shot or felt it was necessary to write a new scene for Emily or re-shoot an old one… we can’t. She’s gone!

That’s a scary thought but it’s a sobering one. We’re done with Emily; her existence as a fictional construct is now sealed in its entirety on film (or hard drive… whatever). It is what it is, I guess.

We move now into our last two weeks of shooting still relatively on schedule. 12 days left out of 28. Forging on.

JI

Fight Scene!

Just wrapped shooting on my first fight scene. It’s a fantasy sequence where our protagonist imagines himself fighting crime as Arachnid-Man. It’s the first of three fight scenes left to be shot, although in thinking about it I’m realizing there are a lot more stunts in this film than I originally was conscious of. It’s easy to write “Todd tackles Eugene through a fence” and then just sit back an wait for that day in the schedule and say “OK, sh*t… how do we do this?”

It just goes back to how lucky I am working on a shoot with willing and capable people like my producer James Jeffrey, production designer John York, and an able-bodied stunt man in the form of the indestructible (and unwavering) Myles Gilbert.

In any case, the fight scene was a resounding success even though we were four hours late getting it all.

Pictures up soon: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jjeffreys/collections/72157621240280006/

The Party Blog Begins

Check out some highlights from the set of Super Hero Party Clown:

Figured I’d start off by posting a video of some clips from the first half of shooting Super Hero Party Clown. As we progress through the rest of the film I’ll do my best to provide updates, anecdotes and highlights from set. From time to time there will be posts from the Cinematographer Jake Humbert and maybe a couple of other guest authors.

Fore more set videos from behind-the-scenes director, check out our youtube account at: http://www.youtube.com/user/SHPCBTS#play/all/uploads-all/1/l8fOArBVLJo

Cheers,

JI