Coffee and Celluloid

American Teen and How it Was Made [Documentary]

Posted August 27th, 2008 at 12:55 am by C47

I loved this movie. It was by far my favorite film at Full Frame. I’ve noted before how I’m on the fence about going into narratives or docs. This proved you can accomplish both.

Following four high school seniors, American Teen was like watching all the best high school classics - Sixteen Candles, Fast Times, Risky Business, Mean Girls - but it’s all true.

The film feels so much like one of the above movies that I forgot these were real people, my age, that had a history before the film and a life after.

This main shock came when I looked at their Facebook fan pages and they had the usual ‘my life in an album’ pictures. This is just a testament to how well the film was made.

Hopefully this will be one of those few docs that will break its way into the mainstream and hold its own against the Hollywood blockbusters.

I really wondered how Nanette Burstein, the director, got such candid shots and access to these teen’s lives, so the Q&A was quite enlightening.

There were lots of pre-interviews and location scouting to find high schools that would cooperate. In the end 10 high schools agreed. They did a casting call to pick who they would follow.

They started following quite a few students, but once the school year and stories unfolded, Nanette was able to focus on who she would feature.

In the beginning the students were still getting used to having a camera follow them, so none of the footage was usable.

Eventually they got used to the camera, and a second camera crew was around all the time, allowing for some nice cutting. Nanette had a small camera on her just in case.

Some of the most intimate moments caught (like filming the girlfriend of one of the main characters cheating on him during a late night swim) were a matter of coincidence and being at the right place. There were a lot of times when the students didn’t want her filming, but what they thought was private didn’t really interest Nanette.

I did stumble across this photo, which looks like they had some serious toys for B-roll (and a serious budget).

I strongly encourage you to watch this any way possible. It’s on a limited theater run, and if it’s not playing near you, since A&E produced it they’ll be screening it.

And of course there’s Netflix. The only thing there isn’t is an excuse, so check it out.

[This post is part of a series about the documentaries I saw at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival]

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Posted in Documentary, Movies | No Comments

I Shoot in Three Days. Don’t Panic.

Posted July 28th, 2008 at 8:51 pm by C47

I shoot my thesis in three days. I’ve been going with my “everything works out” attitude, and I know it will, but I won’t lie. I’m starting to panic.

I just need a few simple things, such as a cast and locations. Locations look a little more promising than casting. They at least can’t leave Tallahassee for the summer. I should just cast with Legos.

My film is a mix of Mean Girls meets Psycho meets Weeds (new favorite show, but I swear I started watching it after I wrote my script). Whenever someone asks what the film is about I describe it with genre or reference films, such as “a high school dark comedy.”

Unlike my last film (”guy sells his soul for the corner office”), there are two distinct parts to the story which I haven’t figured out how to squeeze into one sentence¹.

It’s about a girl, Amy Dupree, who’s stuck in suburbia. To earn money for college, she takes the SATs for rich students for a couple grand. Later, a scholarship comes up that would solve a lot of her problems, but it goes to Jenny Hicks, the Rachel McAdams equivalent. To sabotage her, Amy fucks up her SAT test which she was just hired to take.

This was all a flashback, told in a constantly moving Gossip Girl-esque style (yes, I watch GG, among other sexuality questioning material). Start up the next act, Amy’s walking down the street when she’s abducted by Bunny, Jenny’s mom. The film turns into a torture scene and showdown in a suburban home.

So I haven’t quite figured out how to put those two very different halves in one sentence. The best I have is slightly vague. “It’s about a girl who will do anything to escape suburbia.”

Location scouting and auditions today. It’ll all work out, right?

Update: I wrote this earlier today and just finished location scouting and auditions. Things are working out. More TK.

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I think any pitch longer than a sentence and you’ve lost them ↩

Posted in Casting, Directing, Location Scouting, Preparation, Thesis Films | No Comments

The Visitor and Geoffrey Gilmore [4 of 5]

Posted July 10th, 2008 at 6:34 pm by C47

This is part four of a five part adventure that involves driving Geoffrey Gilmore (the Director of the Sundance Film Festival) around Tallahassee, Diet Cokes, private jets, The Visitor, tea, a 4 am flight, and of course, coffee. Part one and Part two, and Part three.

Friday felt a lot like Thursday. Geoffrey was going to screen the mystery film again, but this time for all the film students.

The movie was The Visitor, from Tom McCarthy, who also did The Station Agent. After The Station Agent, he got the usual studio offers to do films, but turned them down. When he decided to do The Visitor, he was adamant that the lead had to be Richard Jenkins. I thought he was a fairly known actor, mainly from watching him on Six Feet Under, but apparently not.

The original financiersÂ were going to fund the film as long as the lead was someone more famous than Jenkins. McCarthy was adamant that it had to be him, and he lost the investors. Eventually it was funded by one of the founders of eBay.

Like the casting in The Station Agent, Jenkins was great and perfect for the roll, and it touched on a lot of good issues (immigration, cultures, mid-life change). Afterward, questions were brought up about how to market this film. From the issues I mentioned, it covers a lot of topics and isn’t a straight ‘life changing story’ or ‘love story’ or ‘culture clash story.’

I feel like the trailer does a pretty good job of summing the film up, incorporating all the topics instead of just covering one and marketing it to different groups.

This is a crap year for independent films, and The Visitor will be one of the few indy films to get critical acclaim, be well received by audiences, and a decent box office.

Later that night, I drove Geoffrey and his entourage to the University President’s House for dinner. I went and got a Joey Bag of Donuts at Moe’s (I think I got the better deal, because the following day the Dean was sick with food poisoning).

It would have been neat to go inside the house, but apparently I didn’t miss much after it was noted that the interior design was kind of lacking¹.

This night there was no after party, and I was successfully able to drop Geoffrey off at his hotel for the evening.

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After checking out that video I see what was meant. They have a library with no books. ↩

Posted in Career, Film Business, Film School | No Comments

Pre-Production on The Great One [Producing]

Posted July 1st, 2008 at 8:59 am by C47

As noted before, it’s back to producing mode. This is the same director that I produced The Treasonist for (where I got a free bus and Dodge Magnum).

Here’s the one-line synopsis:

A messenger in the Napoleonic Wars contemplates his future after accidentally discovering he is destined to become a great artist.

This is what I’ve mainly been working on:

Casting

Aaron (the director) looks through our actor database to find people he likes. I set up the auditions (and keep us synchronized with Google Calendar), they come in, have a read, we talk and then make a decision. The choices have been pretty slim to find someone that looks right and can pull of a convincing Russian accent.

And of course we need extras. Aaron’s an After Effects whiz, so we only need about 10 and he’ll replicate them to create 10,000.

Locations

I’m really excited because this is the first film I’ve produced where there are multiple locations and the director didn’t have a specific place in mind.

Our main locations needed are a field and tent interior. The tent will be on the sound stage. We’ll actually be using two fields, one for the large daytime scenes, and another for a night scene. The night field is a wooded backyard, so we can draw power from the house for lights (since we don’t get generators).

Here’s a video of some of the possible locations. The first is the backyard field. The second is one we found just driving around.

We did find a promising park, and they were fine with filming except we couldn’t have weapons of any so