Wildlifeless

Well, now that the deed is done (or, the difficult part of it anyway), we might as well talk about it at some great length. After a few months of preparation, Matter of Chance shot the majority of Wildlifeless on June 30th at Balboa Park in San Diego. It was a long and harrowing day, one that resulted in my (and I believe to some extent, the rest of the crew’s) renewed doubt towards any filmmaking skill that I may possess.
First, let’s get the messy business out of the way. The day before the shoot, we lost our main actor. This was deeply devastating to me since I had cast the actor months in advance and spent some time building this film’s character with him. Moreover, I was somewhat appreciative of his application of the Method and his (seeming) interest in the story.
The morning of our departure for San Diego however, I made a fatal communication error with him, which resulted in his departure from the project. Needless to say, this event really put a bleak cloud over the weekend. I blame myself for amplifying that cloud however, as at that point, I think I stopped appearing to care about the movie.
Thankfully, Josh came to the rescue with the suggestion that we contact Joe Garcia (his father in-law and the guy who played Pierro in Leonardo) for the part. Joe, while not an actor by reputation, seemed to take direction well and most certainly looked the part. He didn’t have the advantage of training and 3-months of character development behind him, but he did get the general idea. And of course, he had worked with us before, so any misstep in communication I made with him would be shrugged off as a normal hiccup in the daily production routine. With the new actor onboard, the Matter of Chance team set-off for San Diego.
That night I slept fitfully. Sharing a hotel room with Joe, I opted to sleep on the living-room couch and let him have the bedroom all to himself. This was a good idea, because I tossed and turned for most of the night. Despite trying to fantasize of a life much simpler as I lay there on that couch, I often returned to depressed thoughts of how my little opus had begun. I woke up at 5:30 and decided to take a walk around the hotel after a shower.
San Diego was really amazing when I stepped outside. It was chilly, but bustling with activity. I could see gigantic cranes off in the distance, as well as ships and the bridge leading towards Coronado (where I desperately wanted to go). I must admit, I considered simply walking away and enjoying the city that day. But I couldn’t bring myself to do something like that…especially since we had put so much preparation and money into this project. It just wouldn’t have been honorable. And besides, I needed a ride home.
After Josh and I roused the crew, we headed over to Balboa to walk through the park with the plant supervisor and the film commission’s employee.
Surprisingly, we were given free reign to do pretty much anything we wanted in the park. There was the general rule of “don’t cut down any major plants”, but aside from that, we could do whatever we had to in order to get our shot. As long as we left the park in good order, the city of San Diego was happy with our arrival. I found this welcoming spirit to be deeply heartening. If it hadn’t been such a tremendous venture for such a small production company as ours…I would film in San Diego more often. Without a doubt, it will always be my second home and base of operations.
Josh and I brought the cast to the park next. While Angie put the makeup on Alexander Khan and Joe - Josh, Alex and Gabe set up the first shot – a sweeping single take of the jungle as Winston and Ali emerge from their tent.
This shot actually had the most potential out of all the visuals in the film. If pulled off right, it would be quite impressive, even by most professional’s standards. Unfortunately, we didn’t pull it off quite as well as I would have liked. The main reason for this lies in a missing screw to the fluid-tripod’s head. We needed that screw in order to get the camera on the tripod head. But, because we were missing it, we had to resort to using another head on the tripod…one far less slick. What was supposed to be a very smooth, gliding shot, now has many bumps. Even the best of takes is questionable in a few key areas. I don’t blame anyone for this problem – but I would like to avoid it in the future.
The rest of the morning’s shots were more or less tainted by this issue. While I don’t think the group was daunted by this problem (aside from Gabe, the rest probably didn’t even realize what was going on), Josh and I were profoundly depressed. During the lunch break, we both admitted as much. I also admitted that while everyone was working incredibly hard, we were severely understaffed. Two to three more people would have eased the shooting tremendously. I think we would have been able to move faster and get more takes in if we had a few extra staffers. Alas, we made do with our small, but faithful crew.
The morning’s shots involved Winston and Ali’s first encounter with the tiger along a jungle pathway. The majority of the film’s complex shots lied in this sequence, including our first use of the crane. While the cast broke for lunch, the crew set to work preparing the crane for the rest of the sequence. I took this time to look over my director’s notes and ensure that I was getting every nuance I had written about. Josh, Gabe and Alex tested the first crane shot once, and one of Josh’s connections in San Diego dropped by to talk digital with him. Finally, the cast returned with sandwiches for the crew, which we ate as we worked.

The afternoon’s shots blew by at a much quicker pace. Even the crane shots went by fairly quickly and without much gripe. There are a few shots that I would have liked executed better, but I am largely happy with this work.
After we put the crane away, Josh and I switched to a radical change in cinematography style. This new style, suggested in my notes on the film’s final portion and developed by Josh, involved handheld camerawork, extremely close angles and a fast shutter speed. I am sure that Josh is cringing at this paragraph, because the techniques are in fact a little more intricate then I have described, but you get the general picture. This portion of the film was deeply radical and very stylistically different. It was also incredibly easy to film. While the Spielbergian camerawork took us several hours to complete, I doubt that this stuff took more than 45 minutes. It was also very fun to shoot as well for Josh, Joe and I. Included in this set was the film’s final sequence – a showdown between Joe’s character and the film’s antagonistic force. I won’t expound upon the details of this sequence as it is quite crucial to the surprise of the film’s finale, but the filming went well. It was especially interesting to shot this part because we were staging it in a secluded area of the park that we didn’t expect to get permission to shoot in.
Following this, we filmed a few final scenes in Day for Night with Alexander Khan. When those scenes were in the can, Alex rushed Alexander and his mother Lisa Khan to the airport (just in time for their flight!). Meanwhile, the rest of us began the long task of cleanup.
As Josh and I put away the camera equipment, I apologized to Josh. In my estimation, the day had gone quite badly. I always feel that each film I make unfolds itself as a crisis situation, a feeling that can mainly be attributed to my larger ambitions and lacking manpower. In short, I am making and planning movies that should really have crews of 25…instead of 8. Josh shrugged this apology off however. I think he was too tired to view the day as a failure. And yet, I could sense some depression in his attitude. The question of whether that was genuine or projected upon him by myself, I do not wish answered.
It was frantic. It was hell. It chewed us up and spit us out. I don’t feel like I bonded with anybody because I was so worried about the project’s execution, and I felt like a criminal for doing this to everyone. What’s worse is that I’m not particularly strong, so whatever grunt work there was, I wasn’t fit for. Added to that was fact that I still blamed myself for the previous misfire with the film’s original actor. I wasn’t displeased with Joe’s presence (actually, I was quite uplifted by his attitude), but I felt incompetent for tarnishing earlier work. I blame myself for that.
And yet, I have to remember filmic law. Bad things happen on film sets. A plethora of things can, and usually will, go wrong. I learned that from The Subject. The problem is that we don’t have the money or manpower to drown out such mistakes. And so, we on the set of Wildlifeless had to live with them.
That is why, on the way home, I felt like I had failed. I didn’t believe that Josh or Alex, or Gabe or anyone else on the set had failed. I knew that I had.
The next morning, Josh e-mailed me and told me that he had looked at the footage and that it was great. I was somewhat pleased by this, but I had to see for myself.

After watching the footage on Sunday, I was both happy and depressed. It all looks really neat…and it also looks really rough. I felt that there was a good film lying in there somewhere. We just needed to dig it out.
This suspicion was confirmed when Josh and I set to cutting the trailer. Really, with some quick correction and editing, the footage we picked for the trailer glowed. It really is fantastic stuff. Suspenseful too. We must have watched the trailer 10 times and laughed each time. Not only that, but I also sensed a kind of tone and style in the footage that was reminiscent of my other work. I wasn’t aware of such a thing in pre-production, but there seems to be a flavor in the work that implies a certain sensibility. I also think that Josh has been given a powerful set of new tools (Dolly + Crane) to use in the next few films. Wildlifeless was simply the gateway. Just don't get ready to call me the new Kipling yet.
We still have a few things to shoot before we can complete the picture. Alexander Khan and his family are leaving the states for a month…and Josh and I are probably going to wait to film the rest of the movie until they get back. By that time, I will have access to SCC’s studios. A month seems like a terribly long time…but we’ll have the filming finished mid-August and the movie should be ready by September. I think Josh and I want it to tour the festival circuit anyway, so the extra wait really isn’t such a bad thing considering the fact that this film will be making the rounds until summer 2007.
So, when will you get a chance to view the trailer, dear reader?

In the next two weeks at a special screening. Where? I cannot say. But, if you keep yourself tapped in to the locale Phoenix film scene, you can probably guess where and when the Wildlifeless trailer will be unleashed.