Film School (30 page)

By the end of the weekend, Dan and I are sunburned and tired. My feet are blistered because we've walked so much. We got every scene on my shot list. We're on budget, and everything is looking good.

W
hen we look at the dailies on Tuesday, I'm not nervous. I've spent enough time shooting that I know our exposures are right, and I trust Dan's camera work. I trust him enough that when he recommended we slightly overexpose the film by one half-stop, so as to give everything a hyperbright, slightly washed-out look, I agree to it. (We later learn we could have done the same thing in postproduction, but, alas, another thing learned too late.)

I simply know we're going to have knockout dailies.

And we do. As soon as the first frame fills the screen, it's gorgeous. Dan and I have now established our reputation in class thanks to THE ORPHAN. And with the first day of dailies, we cement that reputation. The scenery is just outstanding. The slight overexposure means we're pushing a tremendous amount of light onto the screen, and the slightly washed-out look adds to the grittiness of the location. The actors look good, the truck looks great, and every scene we've shot is just dandy.

We shot one scene of the three surveyors hiking up a razorback ridge. They look tired, just one day of work in a thousand. They're in silhouette against the intensely bright sky. I had composed the shot like a scene from THE SEVENTH SEAL, and as the scene plays out, Pablo comments, “That looks like something from a Bergman film.” I punch Dan in the leg I'm so gleeful.

Pablo loves everything. The cinematography instructor has nothing but positives. The class wants to know where we shot.

Dan and I are euphoric.

There's a simple observation in literature that a devil makes better drama than an angel. On the first week and the second, there's no drama in the making of this film. In fact, the second week goes even better than the first. Pablo is only concerned that my story is too big for a five-minute-and-forty-second film and that we won't get the needed number of shots with our eleven hundred feet. I'm conscious of conserving our precious film, and so is Dan. We shoot very little on the front of each roll. Our footage of color charts and ID boards—there for the photo processors—is very brief. We're aware that we're probably pissing off the FotoKem lab techs who are processing our film, but we know it allows us to squeeze another few feet from a reel. We also keep close tabs on the film counter on the camera. When we're running low on film, I deliberately shoot a scene that is short, so we don't run out of film in the middle of a take and thus waste it.

Most important, I limit reshoots on a take. If a take looks good, I'll shoot only a second take at most. On several occasions, I shoot just one take and move on. We'll shoot the same scene but from a different angle in order to give us something to work with in editing. But always, I am trying to conserve film. It's like squeezing every last drop out of a tank of gas. It's something I did a lot when I rode a motorcycle, and we're getting a lot more out of each roll than some of the other partnerships.

In the first half of 508, while we were working on THE ORPHAN, one of the other partnerships completed its first weekend shot list with plenty of film left. Instead of saving the remaining film or shooting additional scenes, they simply squandered the film by firing off the camera on a long take of silly behavior. Dan and I looked at that and shook our heads. It was foolish, like pouring precious water on the ground during a cross-desert hike.

T
he second round of dailies comes, and our footage is again gorgeous. In fact, this time it's even better. We look at the footage of our flying toilet paper—we ran the camera at maximum speed. The more a camera is overcranked, the more an image appears to be going in slow motion when played at the usual twenty-four frames per second. We are lucky to have received a camera with a slightly oversized motor (the old Arriflexes are not totally standardized), and we can film at sixty frames per second. Because we're shooting in lots of light, we don't have to worry about underexposing the film. We simply open up the aperture the necessary amount. The result is that our toilet paper roll flying through the desert sky looks completely magnificent, regal even. The tail slowly waves in the breeze at the slow-mo speed. It reminds me of royal banners with their long silk tails.

“I stand corrected about the toilet paper,” Pablo says in class. “It's really rather remarkable how good that looks.” Pablo is a dozen years older than I am, and he's been teaching for much of his career. That he's impressed by our footage is exceptionally encouraging.

We have so much footage from so many scenes that for our second week of rough cuts we have a fairly lengthy film already. Like all the partnerships, we still need to get the all-important third week.

As I lie awake at night, I go over why this film is so much more enjoyable for me than THE ORPHAN:

We're using adult actors. We're not having to pamper or cajole them or flatter their mother. I can joke with them, be direct with them, treat them like adults.

We're outside. We're shooting a Western, essentially, and we all comment how downright pleasant it is to be out of Los Angeles. It's sunny and warm, and we're all getting tan. I feel a tiny bit like John Ford must have felt when he directed one of his sweeping Westerns. We're lucky because it's gorgeous fall weather.

The script is fun. There's a lot of action and a range of behavior, from sleeping to fighting, from boredom to high anxiety.

Our food. It's quantum leaps better. We mostly ate one meal of Subway sandwiches in Dan's apartment during our long days of shooting there, and one time we ate leftovers on a Sunday. We never broke for dinner until it was late. I was always hungry. Now we're eating huge lunches of top-quality food prepared by Irene and Carl. I know our meals are as good as those served on any film set anywhere. When the cast and crew are dining on huge piles of Carl's smoked beef ribs and fresh-baked buns and Irene's homemade potato salad and tossed spinach salad and a peach cobbler, topped off by lots of lemonade and soda and Gatorade, it's a happy cast and crew.

Plus, we eat family style, all of us lined up at a big picnic table, and we gel as a group. The actors and Dan and Mikey and I all share jokes and stories. We are joined one time by Robert the surveyor. Another time by Carl and Irene. We become a tight-knit group during our weekends in the desert, and the meals help create an environment that makes everyone want to drive a hundred miles roundtrip and work for free. We eat like it's our best meal of the week. And maybe it is. If an army travels on its stomach, a film set lives or dies with good catering. The largest item in my budget is food, and it is worth every penny.

But the biggest reason I'm having so much more fun is this: I'm in charge. Being a director is simply liberating. No joke, the view is much better for the lead dog than the second dog.

T
he final shooting weekend is approaching. Before that, we meet our actors individually at a doctor's office, a recital room at USC, and the same Catholic church where I shot my second 507 film. It's a busy week. Dan and I are getting along famously. There's no tension. It's as if the acrimony from the first half of the semester happened another lifetime ago. We're having such a good time together we start getting . . . smug. Another classmate tells of his troubles with his filming partner, and later Dan and I shake our heads.
Tsk tsk tsk, they really ought to work things out
.

Dan and I now realize we're going to have two excellent films in 508. With THE ORPHAN, we rose from the dead in the final days. With my film, we're rolling from day one. To extend the earlier football analogy, we're again in the fourth quarter, but this time we're ahead 49-0. We both feel we've got our mojo working, both of us, seamlessly together. Dan is confident about his camera work. I'm comfortable with my story. We confer about camera placement, future editing options, pace. It's a great learning experience. I treat every shot like an unsolved riddle: Where would be the best place to put the camera? What should the actor spacing be? How are the actors performing? How much film can we spend on this scene?

It's so much more fun and challenging than 507. Then I was alone. When floundering, there wasn't anyone to ask for help, for advice, for feedback. Now with Dan (and Mikey, who provides a running stream of entertaining, unsolicited commentary), I can bounce ideas off someone. In filmmaking, two heads are better than one. Lots of people feel filmmaking is a province of the auteur—the lone genius who rules supreme. I couldn't have made my film without Dan's help, simple as that. Sometimes I disregarded his suggestions, more times than not I incorporated them. It's not democracy, of course. Being a director means I
direct
and get to have the final word. It's a great deal of fun.

On Friday, I get ready for the weekend shooting. I again drive to Vasquez Rocks by myself to scout the location. I've been doing it before every weekend shoot. After all these days in the park, I'm getting to know the topography well, and I find some dramatic locations to stage the final action sequences.

I drive back to Carl and Irene's and spend the night going over shot lists and storyboards. At about 9
P.M.
, my obsessive-compulsive bug bites me and I check over our equipment one more time. I've got the camera case even though Dan is supposed to be in charge of it. In a strange twist of fate, Dan's apartment is now the uninhabitable one. His landlord is spraying for termites, and Dan is staying at a hotel in Hollywood. Because he'd be in a hotel, I agreed to take the camera and tripod.

That night, I open the camera case and plug in the power outlet. I turn on the motor, and the old Arriflex purrs like a kitten as usual. I spin the motor to top speed to test it and before I can turn the knob all the way to the right, the motor emits a quick
ffffffzt
and goes dead. A little smoke curls out of the camera. Oh crap.

For thirty minutes, I fiddle with the camera, trying to find the problem. It clearly seems to be the motor. I smell burned wiring. I'm hoping I can find a short but no luck.

I call Dan. He's not picking up his cell. He's probably in bed already. I call my cinematography instructor. He's at home, and at first he sounds surprised I'm calling him so late at night. He's not a repairman, and he suggests finding another camera. He suggests calling his teaching assistant. I do, and he sounds like I just woke him up. I did. He's just gotten back from a weeklong shoot and is exhausted. He groggily tells me there should be a backup camera available. He tells me whom to contact. I call them, but they're gone. I leave a message.

It's now getting to be 11
P.M.
on a Friday night and our camera is dead. No camera, no shooting. We have a call at 8
A.M.
at Vasquez Rocks. We have a full day of shooting, and it will be our last full day because several of the actors can't make it Sunday.

If I don't have a camera, I am completely and totally screwed. I feel a big blast of that old 507 anxiety. I'm wondering if the early good luck I had shooting for 508 was just a cruel joke. Nothing has gone wrong until now. It seems insane. I've been hypervigilant with our actors, with Dan, with everything. And now a supposedly super-reliable mechanical camera goes belly-up right before we shoot.

I'd call the Russian repairman, even if it meant waking him up, but no one has his number and he's not hired as an on-call technician. I don't even know his last name, so I can't search for his address. Finally, I get a return call from the person with whom I'd left the message. She wasn't on call, she says, another guy was. I feel I'm getting the royal runaround. Then she says the other guy's name. Anthony Kuntz.

I ask:
The
Anthony Kuntz, the tall, bespectacled writer of outlandish sci-fi spectaculars who's in my screenwriting class? The one and only, she says. I call Anthony and he groggily answers the phone. He's asleep, too. Aren't film students supposed to be night owls? So much for Friday-night partying. He yawns and tells me I woke him up, but, yeah, he's got an extra camera. I tell him I live in La Cañada. “No problem,” he says. “I've got to be at USC at 6
A.M.
for a shoot so I'll drive it to your place before that.”

I want to hug my pillow when I go to bed. My body is so drenched with adrenaline it takes several hours to fall asleep. Then I sleep fitfully, hoping Anthony doesn't oversleep.

He doesn't. At 5:30
A.M.
, exactly when he said he would, Anthony pulls up in his car. He's got another Arriflex in his trunk. It's like a handoff between spies on a dark street. I kiss him on the cheek, which I don't think he appreciates.

I'm so relieved, so thrilled; I have a big breakfast and get ready for the last full day of shooting.

When we gather outside the gates of Vasquez Rocks, I hand Dan the replacement camera. He inspects it. It's even more scratched and worn than our previous one. We hope the thing works.

One by one, the actors arrive. The actress is late, but that's no problem. We only need her for a few hours. We continue shooting, and when she arrives, we move to the accident scene. The park officials have been gracious enough to let us drive onto parts of the park where no other vehicles are allowed. It's great because we are able to shoot in a secluded area, directly under a high cliff. The cliff will be where a fight takes place. It's also a natural location to shoot down on the truck. The camera angles will look as if we're using a boom to elevate the camera.

The last day's shoot goes perfectly once more. We go through scenes one by one. The actors are so receptive to directorial instruction. Their characters all have their arcs, with the boss' being the most pronounced. At first, he's a taciturn old salt. Then he shows his greedy side; when he's stealing the roll of toilet paper, he's wild-eyed. Finally, after the accident, he's contrite. Jeffrey, who's playing the boss, is in his thirties, a recent transfer from Texas, where he worked first as an engineer, then as a professional guitar player and music teacher. Now he's in Los Angles to act, and he's got a small nest egg he earned in Houston that allows him to pursue his dream in La-La Land. He's had a few small TV roles so far.