No Budget Film School

Back in January, I participated in a conversation on DIY filmmaking with Workbook Project founder Lance Weiler (Head Trauma) and Mark Stolaroff (producer and founder of the No Budget Film School). I enjoyed the discussion and certainly learned a few things myself. Mark recently notified me that his No Budget Film School is holding a two-day immersion workshop entitled, "The Art & Science of No-Budget Filmmaking" in Los Angeles next weekend (8/25 & 8/26), so I thought I'd pass the word along.

I haven't attended one of these workshops myself, so I can't directly endorse it. I will say, though, that the list of confirmed Guest Speakers -- which includes Peter Broderick (President, Paradigm Consulting; former President, Next Wave Films), Craig Zobel (Director, Great World Of Sound - 2007 Sundance), and Ti West (Director, The Roost; Trigger Man) looks promising.

And it's not terribly expensive as far as these things go. The two-day workshop is $275 in advance; $200 if you're a college student with ID. When you consider that all paid attendees of the workshop receive Axium Scheduling and Axium Budgeting software for free (reportedly a $400 value) it might end up being a pretty good bargain.

If you're in L.A. and you're debating whether or not to go, you might give that conference between Lance, Mark, and me a listen. If you like what Mark has to say, check out the workshop.

Hooray for Nollywood!

Intrepid reader Ben Hartman alerted me to a fine, if all too short, article in Wired about the third largest film industry in the world. Where is that, you ask? Nigeria. The article is really a tease -- and an effective one at that -- for two recent US-produced documentaries, Welcome to Nollywood and This is Nollywood.

Until I can get my hands on those documentaries, and some actual Nollywood movies, here are some articles that I enjoyed reading today as I educated myself about the Nigerian film industry.

Cinema of Nigeria page on Wikipedia.

Welcome to Nollywood. An extensive article from The Guardian.

Nollywood drought at Fespaco. BBC article discusses allegations of snoobery at Africa's most prestigious film festival towards Nollywood pix.

Step Aside, L.A. and Bombay, for Nollywood. NYT article from 2002(!).

The Nollywood Phenomenom. Article found on the World Intellectual Property Association website (WIPO's website tells me that it is a "specialized agency of the United Nations").

Freeware for Filmmakers

FreeGeekery sent me word that they had recently drafted a post entitled "15 Must-Have Freeware Programs for Filmmakers." A quick glance at the list tells me that only 10 of these will work on a Mac, but all the better for me to link to this. So much of what I write about is Mac-centric; it's nice to write about something for folks using Windows. (Plus, Mac users already have iMovie, iDVD, and Garageband. There's really not much of a reason for us to be crabby.)

I cleaned out my Applications folder a few days ago, which had me thinking I should write a post about the Mac shareware I enjoy. FreeGeekery's post has me thinking that might be useful. Stay tuned...

Open Thread: Superstitions

I'm back from Knoxville, where I just spent the last month prepping and then shooting a new project. I'm way too close to things to say much about it -- what it is, how it went, and so on -- right now. As it gets closer to completion I will talk more about it, no doubt. Aside from not having any distance on the thing, the fact is that I'm just generally reluctant to talk about works-in-progress. This probably seems like an odd trait for a "film blogger" to have. If so, hey, guilty as charged. That fact remains that the only thing I like less than talking about a film I've just shot (but not edited) is a film I'm in the process of writing. I don't have a problem talking about the project with collaborators -- that would be counter-productive (and very frustrating for others, I'm sure). Mainly, it's just a reluctance for me to attempt to define a creative project for others before it has defined itself to me.

The reluctance is also based in superstition. It seems like every time I say something semi-definitively about a film I'm making (especially during production) I'm eating my words within minutes. (A recent example: "I'm glad we've now decided which camera we're renting and we can move onto other things!")

On the flip side, I have certain rituals that I need to do before writing a project. And there are lucky objects: a brand of pens, old t-shirts, baseball caps.

I know I'm not alone. A lot of artists (filmmakers, writers, choreographers, etc.) that I've known are superstitious people -- practically as superstitious as baseball players. The cinematographer of a couple of films I made always wore the same t-shirt on the first day of filming. It was a promotional film from a successfuly 90s indie comedy (which shall remain nameless). He loathed the film, actually, but he wore the t-shirt because he figured it would remind him that no matter what, we could make something better.

But enough about me. What about you? Drop a comment if you have superstitions when writing, prepping, filming, or finishing a project -- or if you know a good story about someone that does.

Dialect Resources for Actors and Directors

The lead actress of the new film I'm working on is doing some dialect research. She shared this link with me, and I just have to share it here. It's the International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA). From their website, an explanation of the purpose:

The International Dialects of English Archive, IDEA, was created in 1997 as a repository of primary source recordings for actors and other artists in the performing arts. Its home is the Department of Theatre and Film at the University Of Kansas, in Lawrence, KS, USA; while associate editors form a global network. All recordings are in English, are of native speakers, and you will find both English language dialects and English spoken in the accents of other languages. The recordings are downloadable and playable for both PC and Macintosh computers.

It's an amazing audio archive of dialects from around the United States. Maybe this is old news to actors, but it's new to me, and quite exciting.

And, just in case you were wondering, we've been listening to Tennessee Eight.

Costuming Forms and Resources

Wardrobing on my previous films has often amounted to browsing through each actor's closet and, if they're lucky, making a quick stop by the Goodwill. For my new project, though, there are about 20 characters, not to mention 150 extras, all of whom we have to dress for a mid-19th century masquerade ball.

Just kidding.

In all seriousness, we're going to have to do a little costuming for the new project I'm working on. It's nothing elaborate -- just a uniform for a baseball player -- but a even single costume means taking measurements. I found the following forms online, and they've been useful for me. Maybe they'll be useful for you.

How To Take Measurements

Measurement Form

The first form listed above comes from The Costumer, a costume rental house.

The second form comes from MIT's OpenCourseWare website, specifically their Fall 2004 course entitled Costume Design for the Theater. I browsed the site for a few minutes. It looks like it could be a great, and free, resource for budding costumers.

Also, while I'm on the subject, MovieMaker Magazine had a pretty good article about low budget costuming last summer.

Finally, if you're serious about looking at the art of the costume designer, it's tough to go wrong with Screencraft: Costume Design. It is a good book and, as an added bonus, there's a large photo of Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman on the cover. Meow!

A Long Weekend of Short Filmmaking at William & Mary: Pt. 1

The College of William & Mary brought me to Williamsburg, Virginia this weekend to participate in a "long weekend of short filmmaking." It's been a busy, and rewarding, weekend. Friday, after arriving to town, I was a judge at 24Speed, William & Mary's variation on those twenty-four hour filmmaking contests that have grown in popularity throughout the country.

In this case, eight teams of six filmmakers each were provided the same line of dialogue (a line from one of last year's videos: "I'm not taking you out, I'm taking you down") and a 1920s yearbook from the college's archives, which they had to use as a prop. After a drawing in which they received two film genres at random each team had to choose one genre in which to work. They then had 24 hours to produce a three-to-five minute video.

By the time of the screening the place was packed. Each of the eight videos had their charms and their share of cleverness. Of course, all of them had their rough spots, too -- what video produced in 24 hours wouldn't? It's funny, though, how those "rough spots" (some out of sync dialogue, say, or let's-roll-with-the-first-and-only-take-performances) become charming in and of themselves when you consider the context of how quickly these things were produced.

After watching all the videos, the two other judges and I had a healthy debate about the merits of the eight videos. Every video, to its credit, managed to produce at least a handful of laughs, jolts, or cringes.

Speaking only for myself, as a judge I was looking for videos that had adequate craft, for starters. Beyond that, though, I wasn't necessarily looking for the best shot or best edited video. I was looking for videos that gave me a fresh take on the genre instead of merely rehashing it. That might sound like a tall order, but there were more than a couple that did this.

Ultimately, after forty-five minutes, the other two judges and I had settled on the prize winners. The winner was a mockumentary that used consistently smart deep-focus cinematography to execute its jokes with a lot of subtlety; an honorable mention was awarded to some ambitious students that came this close to nailing their chosen genre, the musical. That's right, in 24 hours they wrote, scored, shot and edited a musical. It was rough around the edges, sure, but it definitely had me eager to see what these guys could accomplish in 48 hours, and that's worth something.

***

That night, after the screening was over, I realized that I had experienced a change of heart about competitions like 24Speed. In the past, to be perfectly frank, I've had some reservations about the benefits of such competitions. I guess I feared that the 24 hour time constraint reinforced bad habits (mainly, thinking that making a film is something you can rush through) and emphasized competition over collaboration. I see, now, that I've been wrong.

First, the competitive nature (at least at this one) was entirely overshadowed by the fun everyone was having. That was great to see. Competition can push people to do better work, even (especially?) with art. You just can't take it too seriously.

Secondly, and even more importantly, I see now that what these competitions can do is remind us that there are times when it's better to make something as quickly as possible just to do it.

More than anything else, watching these videos (and meeting the students that produced them so quickly) I was reminded of the collaborations I have undertaken in the past with friends on videos for Termite TV. To an outsider, such projects might seem "insignificant," but I always learned something by making them, even if the final product sometimes ended up being kinda rough.

This afternoon, browsing Termite TV's website, I ran across a quote from Manny Farber's "White Elephant Art vs Termite Art" essay, which reads as a kind of found poem for what I saw at 24Speed: a peculiar fact about termite-tapeworm-fungus-moss art is that it moves always forward, eating its own boundaries, and likely as not, leaves nothing in its path but evidence of eager, industrious, unkempt activities

***

Part 2 of W&M's Long Weekend of Short Filmmaking coming soon...

ADDENDUM:All of the entries for the contest are now online for viewing by the general public.

Life (and Filmmaking) During Wartime

Let this article serve to remind us that, whatever production troubles we might be enduring producing one of our films, it could be a lot rougher. From an LA Times article about Mohamed Daradji's Ahlaam, a fiction film shot in Iraq that is now screening at festivals:

The last straw: a chaotic 24-hour period in December 2004 when Daradji and several crew members achieved a sort of modern Iraq trifecta — kidnapped and bullied by Sunni Muslim gunmen, then kidnapped again and bullied by Shiite Muslim gunmen, and finally jailed and interrogated by American soldiers.

As inspiring as it is to read about Daradji's attempts to make art in the face of war, sadly, the bleaker news is this, says the article's author:

Daradji's film may end up being the last movie to come out of Iraq for a while. The country's artistic life experienced a brief resurgence in the year after the U.S.-led invasion, with musicians, painters and actors all striving to restore Baghdad's legacy as one of the Arab world's cultural capitals. That trend has died as Iraq descends into civil war, with much of the educated, artistic class fleeing the country.

When you read something like this it certainly makes even the most astounding filmmaker "war stories" (e.g., comments like Coppola's "This movie isn't about Vietnam. It is Vietnam") look pretty silly.

[via GreenCine]

James Longley: SRF Interview

'You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people,' he told the president. 'You will own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. You'll own it all.' Privately, Powell and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage called this the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it.

-- from Plan of Attack by Bob Woodward

While the title of James Longley's mesmerizing new documentary, Iraq in Fragments, literally conjures images of the now-infamous "Pottery Barn rule", the connection runs much deeper than the title. Like Colin Powell's admonition to the president, James Longley's film actually considers the situation of the Iraqis. I say "actually" because, though it may seem like an obvious consideration, Iraq in Fragments is, to the best of my knowledge, the only American documentary about Iraq -- and this year has seen several of those -- that focuses solely on the citizens of that fractured nation

Divided into three discrete segments (hence the title's double-meaning), Iraq in Fragments first follows a fatherless 11 year old working in a Baghdad garage. The second section chronicles the growth of the militant followers of Muqtada al-Sadr. The film closes with a portrait of a family of Kurdish farmers. It's an illuminating approach, one that prevents it or us from making generalizations about how Iraq's citizens, have, and haven't, been transformed by the war. I imagine it will also help American audiences understand, at least a little, how American forces are viewed -- as occupiers by some, as liberators by others. Certainly, the time Longley spent with his subjects (well over a year, and 300+ hours shot) helps provide a perspective that's been absent from what we see on the nightly news.

While Iraq in Fragments would be noteworthy for its content, the film also happens to feature striking cinema verite cinematography and edgy editing, which gives the film a quality that is more poetry than prose. The style creates an impressionistic sketch of what it might feel like to be in Iraq, without (in my opinion) grossly aestheticizing the pain, rage, and hope he finds there.

The combination of style and substance has been met with critical praise. At Sundance, where it premiered, Longley took home honors for directing, editing, and cinematography -- a first for a single film. Since then its laurels include Best Documentary awards at major film festivals (Full Frame, Thessaloniki, and Chicago, among others), as well as a Gotham Award.

That Longley did most of the work (e.g., cinematography, editing, music, etc) single-handedly will make the film's achievement that much more impressive for some. Longley, though, suggests that working this way was precisely how he was able to achieve things.

We emailed back and forth last week, soon after Iraq in Fragments was short-listed for the Best Documentary Oscar.

***

You have "film school" training, but you chose to study in Russia. Can you talk a little about your training at the VGIK?

VGIK is a good school -- and it used to be even better back in the heyday of the Soviet Union. From my perspective in the early 1990s, it offered a chance to film inexpensively on 35mm. Also, there's a huge selection of 35mm prints playing at all hours in the 5-6 cinema screens in the main building -- so it's like attending a continuous film festival. Many of the professors are quite experienced and gifted, and the student body is talented. It was nice to have a different angle on filmmaking for a while -- something closer to Tarkovsky and Eisenstein than to Spielberg -- and to be surrounded with people who felt the same way. But most of all, it was a good chance to try my hand at making a documentary film under the difficult circumstances of a Moscow winter (Portrait of a Boy with Dog -- co-directed with Robin Hessman) and confirming that filmmaking was what I wanted to do with my life.

The director's "voice" is so strong in Iraq in Fragments -- through the poetic imagery and impressionistic editing -- but any political opinions you might have can only be inferred by audiences. This really sets it apart from a lot of other documentaries -- from the Michael Moore and Robert Greenwald (Outfoxed, etc) movies to less strident fare like An Inconvenient Truth. Still, I suspect that when you've screened the film for audiences at festivals people have asked you your opinions about Iraq. What do you tell them? Personally, I thought the Iraq war was a bad idea. But that's just my opinion, and everybody has opinions. With my film, I wanted to do something more than simply tell people what I think: I wanted to convey a broader sense of what was happening in Iraq during the two years I was there, and to put a human face on the country -- to let people experience the place a bit. I'm not sure whether I was ultimately successful, but I tried.

One of the most conspicuous decisions you've made -- one many critics have cited in their praise for the film, one of the things that distinguishes it from some other Iraq documentaries released this year -- is your choice to focus on Iraqis, not Americans. US soldiers only make very brief appearances, and none (to the best of my memory) ever speak. Likewise, I don't remember any contractors or Western journalists making appearances. Was that the plan from the beginning, or did you shoot footage documenting those perspectives, too?

My original goal was to make a film about Iraqis -- I tried to start this project before the war, but was unable to begin until after -- and when the war ended my goal hadn't changed. I knew that the perspective of US soldiers and even US journalists was already being recorded by other filmmakers, and I had no desire to duplicate their efforts. And in any case, I prefer to focus on under represented perspectives, of which the Iraqis' is certainly one. It's the harder film to make in many ways, but I think also the most important. After all, the Americans will eventually leave Iraq; the Iraqis will stay.

What interactions did you have with other Americans while there? Were you on the radar? Under the radar? Under the radar, I think. I didn't have a lot of interaction with US troops, mostly because I wasn't filming them and I almost never went onto US bases. I never went to the Green Zone, for example -- don't know what it looks like on the inside. A lot of my journalist/filmmaker friends spent at least part of their time in Iraq embedded with US troops, but I chose to stay outside the wire.

Like the military, you're clearly a Westerner and, though you weren't carrying a gun, you were carrying a video camera. Why or how do you think you were able to blend in like "furniture" as you say in your production notes? Was it just a matter of putting in the time, or were there other factors? It's mostly a matter of spending enough time and moving very patiently. I really didn't stand out as a Westerner -- with a beard and a suntan, many people thought I was from Iran when I was filming in Najaf. They would come up to me and start speaking in Farsi. But mostly I just took a lot of time to get to know people and know the location before doing a lot of filming work -- in all the places I filmed, I did weeks/months of prep work, letting locals get used to me. And I was just extremely lucky, also -- I came at the right time and left at the right time. And somehow I managed to walk between the raindrops.

Are you still in touch with your subjects, especially the kids in the first and last segments? I haven't been able to keep up with everyone; last time I heard from Mohammed Haithem he was working for his uncles in Baghdad. The Kurdish farming family is still in much the same situation as when I filmed them. The Sadr movement is famously contentious.

Has anyone that is in the movie seen it? If not, will there be any oppportunities for that? So far nobody in the film has seen it. It's very difficult to send packages to people in Iraq now, very difficult to move around even in a city like Baghdad, even for locals. Also, most people in Iraq don't have DVD players that they could watch the film with. Video CD has been the format of choice in Iraq for the last 10 years or so, and DVD is only just starting to appear in places like the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq.

Did you have any reservations about screening the film publicly without screening it for your subjects first? Some documentarians consider this an essential part of their enterprise, while others argue that it can compromise the integrity of the piece. I have never screened documentary work for the subjects before releasing it to the public -- but that may be partly due to the specifics of what/where I'm filming. I'm not against the idea of showing the film to the subjects to get their reaction, certainly, but I also don't consider it a mandatory step. I film with people for such a long time that I become very confident of my portrayal by the end of it. I often showed the people in the film sections of material as I was filming in Iraq, but I've never had a chance to show them the completed work, thus far. It's not so easy to send a DVD to a house in Baghdad now, and even if I did -- they don't have DVD players.

HBO was involved with the project, as was the Sundance Institute. When and how did financing for the film come about? HBO acquired the TV rights to Iraq in Fragments in summer of 2006, after it was completed. They have been very helpful in promoting the release of the film, and I expect they will screen the film on Cinemax in 2007. I applied for a Sundance production grant while still filming in Iraq, and after going through several rounds of review with them, they came forward with a grant in autumn 2005. They were instrumental in the completion of the film, and also selected Iraq in Fragments for the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, which was the perfect place to premiere it.

The credits of both Iraq in Fragments and your previous film, Gaza Strip, list you as the producer, director, cinematographer, sound, music and editor. You seem to have willed both movies into existence virtually single-handedly. Do you like working this way, or is it more of a necessity? And, either way, what do you find it affords you, and are there things you feel you can't do on your own? It's partly necessity -- because I was using my own money to pay for the entire pre-production and production period of the film, and partly because I know what I like and I know how to use a camera. I like to make things, and it's not difficult for me. It's what I enjoy most. If you're working with other people, sometimes you'll put their needs before the filmmaking process -- I might not have filmed for two years in Iraq if I had been collaborating with another person full time from the start. Doing your own work lets you make fewer compromises in a difficult filming environment. That said, of course I did work with a lot of other people on the film -- there are about twelve different translators / fixers, and two other editors (Billy McMillin and Fiona Otway), John Sinno came on board to co-produce after production, etc -- so it is a collaborative process, but one in which I didn't ask other people to participate in the full two and a half years of pre-production and production. For that period, I simply brought on Iraqi translators in various locations in Iraq and worked with them as long as I was in their area. I never asked anyone to go through the whole journey along with me, because most people wouldn't have wanted to in the first place.

As you can probably guess from the name of this website, a lot of the people reading this are interested in self-sufficient filmmaking methods such as yours. Do you have any tips for them -- philosophical or technical? When filming with these small video cameras, always try to find a way to keep the iris wide open. Your material will look much better.

***

For more details on the production history of Iraq in Fragments, check out Longley's production notes. Also, Kimberly Reed's fine interview with Longley in DV Magazine goes into detail about the production process and provides specifics about the equipment used. The quality of Reed's article led me to avoid (for the most part) asking overlapping or similar questions in this interview, in fact.

A Swarm of Angels

Matt over at FresHDV had an interesting post the other day about A Swarm of Angels, which is a self-described attempt to create "cult cinema for the Internet era." On one level, this isn't that different than what I wrote about in my last post: Filmmakers using the internet to raise funds for a project that harnesses the collaborative nature and spirit of the internet. Still, some key differences make me skeptical about its potential for success, at least compared with a project like Lost in Light on Have Money Will Vlog:

First, instead of trying to raise $1500, they're trying to raise a little over half a million dollars. I have no doubt that it is possible to raise that kind of money over the internet, but this project is essentially asking people to pay about $18 to participate. Maybe that's reasonable? Personally, I would rather give money to a more personal project like Lost in Light

Secondly, the project is trying to enlist 1000 people to help create it. Again, I think you can find this many people to collaborate on a project. Firefox, Wikipedia... these are great examples of internet, open-source collaboration. But are 1000 heads better than one (or even 20) when it comes to feature filmmaking? Snakes on a Plane, as one previous example, isn't exactly Exhibit A for the so-called "wisdom of crowds."

Reservations aside, I'll be interested to see the project evolve and I wish the best of luck to the participants. All one thousand of you.

Hello, Dolly

Yeah, yeah, even I groaned at the title to this post. But hey, it's no worse than the title of the article I'm linking to, is it? Studio Daily's, ahem, "Roll With It" article covers all the means of moving your camera that were announced at NAB this year. If you can move past the puns (sorry, another one!) you'll find some interesting stuff. From what I can tell by the photos, my favorite is the Scooter Shooter. It's an equipment cart that doubles as a dolly once you've unloaded it. Great for small crew shoots. The $2600 price tag seems a little much, but it's about $2000 less than what a Matthews doorway dolly willl set you back. The concept is a 10, though, and I'm sure enterprising DIYers out there could build this thing for about $200. If you do, let me know and I'll post (or link to) your findings.

In the meantime, if you want to move your camera like Murnau or Resnais, check out the dollies.

[Via DV Guru]

Google Earth Movies

I was screening the rough cut of a friend's documentary the other day and, in this doc, there was a map shot that had the "Ken Burns effect." It seemed somewhat out of place in the movie, so after about 30 seconds of digging I found someone that had figured out how to do what I was going to propose: Capture Google Earth movies to video. And now the link is passed along to you.

No Time to Waste: 48-Hour PSA Project

A while back I wrote about a 48 hour documentary project, now along comes a 48-hour PSA project that is the brainchild of Asian Arts Initiative Executive Director Gayle Isa and Sara Zia Ebrahimi, who shared some thoughts on this site about film co-ops. Because of the meetings, the event is largely Philadelphia-based, but if you're interested in participating you might send them an email (info below) to inquire if you can play along. (They're planning on uploading to BlipTV, after all.)

One of the more interesting aspects of this 48-hour project is that, as far as I can tell, it's non-competitive. While I'm sure the collective nature of the project will push everyone to do their best work (wanting to "top" each other, etc.) the emphasis, in the end, is on the making work and the collective spirit that comes from participation in such a thing. A small change, but a big difference that is entirely appropriate for a project dealing with this subject matter.

No Time to Waste The 48-hour PSA Project Confronting War

This is a call out to local artists, activists, filmmakers, musicians, poets, carpenters, office workers, janitors—anyone! who is frustrated with any of the wars this country is engaged in, at home or abroad, and wants to send a message to the world about it—a digital message. The 48-hour PSA Project will bring together people in the Philadelphia area to create 30-60 second public service announcements against war within a 48-hour period. At the end of the 48 hours the videos will be posted on the Internet and available for viewing by millions of people worldwide. Join us for a digital mobilization where instead of posters and signs our digital media conveys our message!

How it works:

Individuals will group together in "pods" of 4-8 people. Each pod should have at least one person who fits each of these specifications:

    access to a video camera 

    access to editing software such as Final Cut Pro or iMovie and working knowledge of editing.

    We also recommend selecting roles for each person in your group based on your needs (camera operator, script writer, narrator, researcher, etc.) before the 48-hour period begins.

All pods will meet up on Saturday September 9th in the morning for a brief introduction to the project. They will each have 48 hours to come up with a concept, shoot it, edit it, and compress it for web uploading. A public event and screening of all the PSAs will occur on Monday evening, September 11th. The PSAs will also eventually be compiled onto a DVD that will be available for distribution.

How to enter: Please email the "Group Application" form below to psas_against_war@hotmail.com. You will receive a confirmation email as well as more detailed information on the project and the 48-hour weekend.

If you are interested in participating but don't have enough other people to group with, please email the "Request to Join a Group" form below to psas_against_war@hotmail.com. We will put you in contact with others so that you can all participate!

**Group applications are due by Monday September 3rd.**

How much does it cost? $5 per individual, and two days of your time. Money goes toward breakfast Saturday morning, a miniDV tape, and administrative expenses.

When and where? Participants will meet up on Saturday, September 9th at 9:30am at the Asian Arts Initiative, 1315 Cherry Street, 2nd floor. The project ends at 9:30am on September 11th. More details will be given once your group has registered.

Tom Schroeppel: SRF Interview

You won't find Tom Schroeppel's face adorning the cover of Film Comment, Filmmaker, MovieMaker or any other film magazines that champion American cinema, yet, in his own way, Schroeppel has exerted a quiet influence on aspiring filmmakers in film schools across the country for the last twenty-five years. How? As the author of The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video, one of the simplest -- and by simplest, I mean best -- textbooks to cover the basics of motion picture production. When you get a copy of Bare Bones in your hands the first thing you realize is that Schroeppel's not kidding with the title. It starts with the brown (think: "paper bag") cover and block lettering. Open the book and you find text in double-spaced 12 point Courier font and simple hand-drawn images. The content is standard film/video textbook stuff, only it's distilled to its most essential, readable essence. It's like the film textbook equivalent of one of those incredible, out-of-nowhere independent films from the late 70s or early 80s. What it lacks in production values it more than makes up for in content and handmade charm. But don't take my word for it -- no less than Nestor Almendros called it "a marvel of clarity and conciseness."

In true "self-reliant" fashion, Schroeppel took the DIY route to publishing and distributing the book. What's unusual, though, are his sales, which are approaching 120,000 copies sold. When you stop to think about the number of student filmmakers that have learned about such basic concepts as "color temperature" or the "rule of thirds" from him, well, that's what I mean when I say quiet influence.

After I decided to use Bare Bones this fall for the production courses I'm teaching at Virginia Tech, I approached Tom about doing an interview. Happily, he agreed, and over the last few days we emailed back and forth about his 89 page/$8.95 wonder, and its sequel, Video Goals: Getting Results with Pictures and Sound.

 

***

How did The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video come about?

In the late 1970s I was pretty busy shooting and editing TV commercials and industrial sales films in Miami. During the same period I was traveling to Ecuador a couple times a year to train camerapersons at a small TV network there. One day as I was drawing on a Little Havana restaurant napkin to explain a setup to a client, I realized that this was the same thing I had explained in Spanish the previous week in Quito. I decided to translate my training notes back into English and print them in a version I could give to clients.

I based the content of The Bare Bones Camera Course on what I was teaching in Ecuador. This is turn was based on what I had learned at the Army Motion Picture Photography School at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. (I was an Army cameraman and later a Signal Corps officer.) Both environments required quick but thorough knowledge of basic camerawork.

The Army Motion Picture Photography School sounds fascinating. How did you get that assignment? Did you have an interest in motion pictures before you went?

In 1966 I was drafted after I dropped out of graduate school. I wanted to avoid the infantry, so I extended my enlistment from two to three years in order to qualify for motion picture training. For me, it was the most interesting thing the Army had to offer. I came from a family of avid amateur still and movie photographers, so making a living taking pictures was always in the back of my mind.

Is the school still around?

I'm pretty sure the school no longer exists, under that name anyway, although I'm sure the Army is still training photographers and doing a very good job of it. Army education has, in my opinion, two great things going for it: first, they assume you know absolutely nothing about the subject; secondly, they constantly verify that you thoroughly understand and can use what you're being taught. At the mopic school, our training started with silver halide crystals on a piece of film and ended up eight weeks later shooting dual-system sound with a 35mm Mitchell studio camera the size of a Volkswagen. Every day we would have a lecture, shoot assignments based on the lecture, then go back to the classroom and have the previous day's footage (which was processed overnight) critiqued by our teachers, then edit that footage and be critiqued again. I didn't realize it at the time but we were implementing the well-known quality-control cycle of Plan-Do-Check-Act. So, returning to the book, how did you approach writing it?

Over the summer of 1979 I jotted down notes and drew stick figures and eventually put together the first version of the book, typing it on my IBM Selectric typewriter. My industry friends thought it was pretty good, so I had some copies printed and stapled and passed them around.

I started thinking about getting a real publisher to buy my book. To get more input, I placed a classified ad in the American Film Institute Education Newsletter, which went to film teachers; in the ad I offered a free copy of the final published version of my book in exchange for criticism of my rough draft. One hundred teachers asked for copies and 30 of them wrote back and said they wanted to use the book--even in its current stick figure form--as a textbook. I contracted with a local animation house to overdraw my stick figures with better art and had 1000 copies of the book printed, which I started selling to colleges.

Among students of film you're best known for your books, but those books are the result of a long career in film and video. Can you tell me about that work? I worked for many years out of Miami, primarily shooting and editing TV commercials for local, national and Latin American clients, plus a lot of industrials and training films. Later I did more writing and directing. My one foray onto the national stage was when I wrote, directed and shot more than 100 episodes of a syndicated children's magazine show called Kidsworld. What were, for you, the most memorable or creatively satisfying projects? I enjoyed Kidsworld because I was given a lot of independence in the production and I enjoyed working with kids. I made a documentary on my own in Peru called Cuzco...In the Valley of the Incas, which won some awards. The great majority of my work was in TV commercials, sales films and industrial training films. My corporate clients, especially, gave me a lot of creative leeway and most of the time I had fun.

Your website claims you've sold 117,000 copies of Bare Bones. I don't know much about the publishing business, much less self-publishing, but that sounds like a heck of a lot. Can you talk a little bit about self-publishing and self-distributing the book? Who uses it? How did you first market the book?

First of all, the 117,000 number refers to both of my books: The Bare Bones Camera Course and Video Goals. As of today, July 12, 2006, I've sold about 104,000 Bare Bones books and about 14,000 Video Goals. Over the course of the 27 years Bare Bones has been in print, that comes out to an average of 3851 books a year. I sold a lot fewer in the early years and I sell a lot more now. My main customers are colleges; I've sold to more than 400 so far. Lately I've started to sell books to secondary schools, as they get into video instruction and production.

I submitted The Bare Bones Camera Course to every publisher I could find and no one wanted it. It was too short, too simple, not marketable. Then I found a book, How To Get Happily Published, by Judith Appelbaum and Nancy Evans, which I enthusiastically recommend to any would-be author. The second half of this book discusses self-publication. The basic idea is that if you have a niche book, know your market and are willing to invest in book printing, advertising, and order fullfillment, then self-publishing can be a good thing.

The first few years I mailed flyers to the chairpersons of film departments listed in a published guide to colleges that teach film. I reproduced some of the book pages and included favorable quotes from the teachers who were already using The Bare Bones Camera Course. Lately, I haven't advertised at all; with so many copies of my book floating around, word of mouth seems to be working well.

When I picked up Bare Bones for the first time I was impressed with the blurb on the back cover from one of my all-time favorite cinematographers, the late Nestor Almendros. How did that come about?

A good friend and fellow editor in Miami, Julio Roldán, worked with Nestor Almendros in Cuba and was still in touch with him. At Julio's urging, I wrote Mr. Almendros a fan letter and sent him a copy of my book. He wrote me back, praising The Bare Bones Camera Course, and later graciously gave me permission to use his quote, translated into English, on the back of the book.

Your second book, Video Goals: Getting Results with Pictures and Sound seems to overlap some of the same concepts as the first. I like Video Goals, but I am curious why you made it a separate book instead of simply expanding Bare Bones?

Video Goals contains information I used in various talks over the years. I first thought of adding this information to The Bare Bones Camera Course, but teachers said they preferred keeping the first book as simple and basic as possible. So I decided to make a separate book dealing with the overall production process as I experienced it. Since production includes camerawork, I had to provide some information that overlapped with The Bare Bones Camera Course.

One of the most charming aspects of both books are the drawings used to illustrate concepts of framing and cutting. At first, their rudimentary nature was a turn-off, but I then I gradually grew to like them. Aside from obviously keeping down the costs of printing the book, I realized that because they aren't actual photographs of real people and places -- that is, because they don't represent a specific reality -- the drawings allow you to focus on the conceptual points you're making about, say, the rule of thirds. Had you thought about this, or was it just a practical matter?

I wish I was that smart, but I'm not! I originally wanted to hire actors, rent a stage and shoot stills for all my illustrations, but I didn't have the money. So, as I mentioned earlier, I worked with an animator friend to have my original stick figures overdrawn. Since, I've been told by people who design books that drawings are probably the best way to teach principles of photography, because they contain no extraneous details. The other advantage is that, unlike photos, drawings aren't so dated. If I'd used 1979 actors and cameras, I would have had to reshoot all the illustrations several times over the years.

[Click here to see one of Tom's original drawings from 1979.]

As for the text, do you still revise using a typewriter?

My IBM Selectric died some years ago, so I've made the few revisions in the book on my computer, using a Courier font.

Through your books you've played a role in the education of countless filmmakers. Have any of them ever contacted you? From time to time individuals write to thank me for The Bare Bones Camera Course. It's always nice to know that something you've created has helped another person in some way.

Do you have any words of wisdom that you'd like to share with filmmakers -- beginning or advanced -- that might know you through your books and that are reading this? It all comes down to your audience. Know your audience, then make your movie for your audience. Also, don't be afraid to ask for criticism, because it will always help you; even if some idiot says your work is terrible, you will have learned that you're not reaching the idiots out there, which is probably a good thing.

The LOL Team: SRF Interview

The biggest joke in LOL, Joe Swanberg's second feature, may be the one that the filmmaker plays on the audience. Neither romantic (though there's plenty of frank sexual content), nor a comedy (though there are many funny moments), LOL feels less like the rom-com that its title suggests and more like a digital age mash-up of Jean Renoir's Rules of the Game and David Cronenberg's Crash "“ on the one hand, a humanistic, if occasionally bitter, social critique disguised as an ensemble comedy and, on the other hand, a chilly, unsentimental look at the ways that our fascination with technology (in this case, cell phones and the internet) keeps us apart when it's meant to bring us together. While Swanberg's lo-fi digital images and casual sense of plotting may not achieve the cinematic heights of either of the aforementioned masterworks, LOL has a charm all its own. Some of that charm, no doubt, is a product of its production history: The whole thing was made by Swanberg and his friends in Chicago without a script for a mere $3000. What's even more impressive, though, is how the movie starts as a comedy of awkwardness and gradually molts into a bleak satire with a mature, dramatic punch. For this, credit goes to the non-professional performers and Swanberg's sharp editing of his improvised source material.

After premiering in March at South by Southwest (where it was very warmly received), LOL had its East Coast premiere at the Philadelphia Film Festival. The night after its first screening in Philly, I had dinner with Swanberg and two of his collaborators, Chris Wells and Kevin Bewersdorf. All three, as actors behind the improv, are credited as "co-writers." (Bewersdorf also composed the soundtrack.) Among other things, we talked about improvisation, choosing one's collaborators, and making a feature on the cheap.

Here's some of that conversation:

Kevin Bewersdorf: The process [of making a film with Joe Swanberg] is basically just maximizing accidents. Make as many accidents happen as possible because the accidents will be genuine. Sometimes it's a technical nightmare because Joe will just be like, "Alright. We step out here. Here's the mic. Let's just start shooting. Let's just go and do it. Let's just do it." And I'll be like "No, wait, Joe, I mean, the light's not enough here. We're not going to be able to hear the mic." And Joe's just, "No, let's just go. Just shoot, just shoot."

Chris Wells: I feel exactly the same way. We did the phone sex scene, before I knew it the camera was rolling and I was already sort of doing it. Joe didn't give me any time to think about it, which is probably better. I think that's how Joe can get performances [as good as those he gets]. People don't think about it.

So: How do you maximize accidents?

Joe Swanberg: Well it's something that I just realized on the first film [Kissing on the Mouth] that I was making. Things started getting knocked over. And I started thinking about how nothing ever gets knocked over in movies. So in my first movie, multiple times, somebody will open up a cupboard and something will fall out of it. Or they'll do something and a thing of laundry detergent will get knocked off of the washing machine. Or I'll accidentally bump the table and a thing will fall over on it. And so then I started thinking, "Why don't things ever fall over in movies?" They do, but then they don't use that take.

Kevin: So it's not really accidental, in that you choose to use the take where the accident occurred. It's deliberate.

Joe: Yeah. Right. But I specifically set up a scene with enough misinformation that people are going to have to invent things that aren't there. I'll explain a scene to a point, but then I'll leave crucial information out so that the actor will have to actually be thinking while they're in the scene. They can't just go through it [pre-rehearsed]. As Kevin was saying [at the LOL Q+A at the Philadelphia premiere], the second or third time [you do the scene] then you start to react to what you did the first time. But the first time there's gotta be stuff that both of the people don't know so that they have to be on the spot and think of it. For instance, I put Kevin and Tipper [Newton, who plays a girl named Walter] on the porch and I said, "Tipper your parents live in St. Louis and, Kevin, you're trying to get to St. Louis. Now go!"

Kevin: Or, for example, in the scene where I'm going to film Tipper making noises, you didn't tell Tipper that's what I was going to do. You said to Tipper, "He's going to ask you to do something. Do it. And Kevin will film it." So it's about keeping people in the dark just enough.

Joe: ...enough that they're comfortable, but not enough that they know what they're going to do before hand.

Because if all you say is, "He's going to ask you to do something," then she might say, "no" in the scene. Instead, she knows she's gotta say "yes", but she doesn't know what she's saying "yes" to. And that keeps the way she says it fresh.

Joe: That's a good point. If you leave it totally up to chance, it could go horribly wrong.

Kevin: You have to have the skeleton set up. But you don't know how anything hangs on it. Chris: I feel like with my [scenes] it was interesting because I kind of knew the direction the scenes were going to go, but Greta [Gerwig, Chris' co-star] didn't. And I was really talking to her on the phone. So I would just call her up in the middle of her day and she'd start talking to me and I would know where the scene was going to go and she wouldn't, but it would have to go in a different direction because I was reacting to her lack of knowledge. So what I thought the scene would be would end up being something completely different than what I expected.

Joe: But she always knew we were filming. Otherwise, that's exploitation, and that's not what I'm interested in. I want everybody to be aware of the process and aware that it's happening, but unaware of certain crucial information.

Kevin: The other important thing is that Joe's whole style as a director is to be completely invisible. He gives NO direction. His direction is either "Yes it was fine" or "No, do it again." No other direction at all of any kind. Not "do this in this way." Or "More feeling." Or "Slower." Or anything. It's either working or it's not working, and if it's not working we continue to do it. And if it is, then it's fine. And that's why, for some people, it's awful.

Joe: Well, for professionals, it is.

Kevin: And that's why you can't use professional actors. Because unless they're being told what to do they don't know how to feel, they don't know what to do. Because they have all these little tricks and techniques in this little bag of tricks that they've learned. I mean I have great respect for actors, but with non-professionals you can't tell them what to do because then they'll be acting, and then they'll be bad actors. If you have non-professionals and you tell them nothing, then they won't be acting.

Joe: I like professional actors, just not in my movies.

Does it not strike you as unusual that you've found people that are willing to work so hard for you? Joe: No, because it's a backwards process. I cast people who... I found the people and then we found the movie. I didn't have the movie in my head and then I found the people. So really, had I been working with Chris and had he not been in that relationship with Greta that was like that, then the movie would be different because his character would be different. To me it seems perfectly natural that the movie ends up the way it is because I cast the people first and then we all make the movies together. LOL is the only way LOL could end up being. It's these specific people, at these specific points in their life, and this specific point in time, with this technology. There's no vision before it starts.

But on a bigger level, you found people that for six months are saying, "I'm coming along for the ride. And I don't know where it's going. And I'm going to do this." That is what is amazing. This is not something to take for granted. Joe: I don't know. I'm lucky I guess. I can't answer because I have no technique or method other than saying, "Please help me" and then people help me.

Chris: Joe's movies are all so fun for because he's making them out of your own pocket, with his own money.

Joe: I think that is a nice level to it. I'm losing money [making films]. I'm not making money on it. There's a different vibe to everything that happens.

Kevin: People know that Joe is not profiting, that Joe's not just using us. No one feels used because everyone knows that Joe isn't like some Hollywood dude saying, "Hey want to make me a million dollars and be in my movie for free, Trix?"

Chris: There's a huge level of comfort of working for someone who knows he's going to lose money -- he's taking the hit for it -- and just wants to do it because he really, really wants to do it.

It almost has this sort of innocence of those movies from the Thirties where the characters are like, "Hey, let's put on a show!" Because you're all going to do this, you're doing it because you want to tell a story. And you don't even know which story.

Chris: We all start out with friendships I think. Joe knew Kevin from high school. Joe and I have known each other for the last couple of years, and while Joe didn't know Tipper that well, everyone becomes friends through the process of making the movie.

Kevin: I thought LOL would suck. Even until I saw the rough cut. I thought LOL would be terrible. I still did it just because it would be fun to do. I'd get to hang out with these other people. It was like a sport, almost. Like hunting.

Joe: And if your team loses at the end of the day then.

Kevin: . it's a fun game. I didn't feel like I had that much to lose. And being skeptical in the whole thing from the beginning, felt like, if it was bad, well, I was skeptical all along. so I was right. (laughs)

Chris: The movie was made almost like [writing a] paper. There were a lot of different drafts of it. It wasn't like a traditional movie where to go back and to do re-shoots is a big deal, or costs a lot of money or is really difficult. Because for Joe it's no more difficult than anything else he ever shot.

Joe: I was editing as we went anyway.

Chris: Yeah, exactly. I got a copy of the movie in November and I watched it through as it was, and I was like, "Well, my character needs a scene here and here and here, and this is what these scenes need to be." And then we could go back and weave that into the story and just make sure the continuity matches, and then its like we intended that from the beginning.

Joe, one thing you mentioned at the Q+A at the Philadelphia premiere was that while shooting the film is a collaborative process, ultimately the process ends with you, in your bedroom, editing alone.

Joe: That's the one aspect where I'm not really looking for collaboration. I show the movie to Kevin and Chris along the way so that they can tell me what's working and what's not.... I'll always do the first pass without showing it or asking anything like that. And I feel like that's where the director credit comes in. Technically, LOL will always say a film by the three of us, but I think my editing is where I'm doing my directing. Not on set.... Editing is really fun for me. It's the part of the process that I'm most passionate about.

Talk about the technology you used to make the movie.

Joe: We made the movie with one camera and two microphones.

Kevin: And the microphone was hooked up to a pole by a rubber band.

Joe: We didn't have a boom operator. We just had a 3-legged music stand with a rubber band holding a shotgun mic and a 25-foot XLR cable.

Chris: And you ended up buying a new wireless mic, which was one one-sixth of our budget.

Joe: The most in the budget was the wireless microphone. I bought the wireless microphone, I have a Sony PD-150, and there's 30 DVCAM tapes, and there's a 25-foot XLR cable, and there's the shotgun mic that comes with the PD150.

Kevin: And [we weren't even] shooting progressive. Just shooting interlaced.

Joe: Standard 30 frame interlaced. That's the entire package. And then I have a single clamp light with a dimmer switch, just in case, that I usually carry with me. In two hands I can hold everything use to make both my feature films. But that's the way that allows me to walk to somebody's house and shoot and then walk back home and edit that footage 5 minutes later. I don't need to mobilize the troops to shoot a scene. I just need to take my camera case, take my mic pole, and walk somewhere and shoot. I need to be mobile because as soon as it takes two people to transport my stuff somewhere then I need to plan it a day beforehand, and as soon as I need to plan it a day beforehand I'm thinking too much about it. It's not going to happen spontaneously anymore.

So the stuff with Tipper, where Kevin's playing the music at her house, I said, " I know this girl Ann Wells, and I want this girl to play Tipper's roommate, because I know what she looks like and I kind of know how she acts and aesthetically I want that. So I called this girl, Ann Wells -- and it's such a throwaway role, but I knew I wanted that girl to be that throwaway role -- so I called her and she was like, "I don't know if I can do it." and so I said, "Tell me an hour that you have free, and she said "Ok, if we can do it between four o'clock and five o'clock then we can do it." So I said to Kevin, be at Tipper's house at four o'clock. I'm going to be there at 4. We got there at 4:00. We shot from to 4:00 to 4:45.

Kevin: I held out my t-shirt and he white balanced on it. And then we started shooting.

Joe: As soon as we got there. I was rolling as Kevin was unpacking. And then at 4:45 I drove Ann to where she needed to be. And that was the scene. We even shot two scenes.

Kevin: That's another way, going back to maximizing accidents: If you have that kind of restriction on time. Joe could have said, "I want to take my time. Let's not use Ann Wells. We'll use someone else, and take our time and shoot it." Instead, Joe was like, "If we just go and shoot it, then maybe some things will happen.

And if it doesn't work out, you've only lost 45 minutes.

Joe: Absolutely.

Kevin: That's the whole philosophy of the movie. Instead of investing $100,000 to do it you invest $3000.

Joe: If I''m funding something with my own money, like, even when it started to climb up to multiple thousands I was feeling like "Ok, it's time to wrap it up." The financial aspect is becoming too large. The failure rate is so high: No movies get distribution anymore, so many are made, and stuff like that. If I spend $3000 hopefully it can make some money and I can split it with everybody. But if it doesn't, then I've only lost $3000. As soon as the money gets into $10,000 and $15,000" then you're playing the lottery and your odds get less and less with each $5000 increment.

Chris: Especially when you can make [the film] for $3000!

Joe: But that goes back to what you were saying earlier: I need to find people like Kevin and Chris to make it for $3000.

Kevin: The only reason that I did it was because I knew that his last film was in a festival and I was thinking that if this did get into festivals, that I'd get to go for free, and stay at hotels and chill out and drink.

And you're living the dream now.

Kevin: And that's what I'm doing.