The Subject
I think that Josh mentioned a little while ago on his blog that he wanted me to dish out the torrid tale of my latest film, The Subject.
Truly, when I say it’s a tormented tale, believe me. I could wax intellectual by writing several charmingly depressed paragraphs on the utter disappointment of my latest venture, but I won’t. One of my resolutions this semester is to become a more positive person inwardly, as well as outwardly.
It all started with my previous blunder, Wildlifeless. Maybe you recall the screenplay that was posted many months ago on Leonard Hughes? Well, Wildlifeless was going to be my project this semester for Cinematography class, and as I found the project getting out of hand back in February, I decided to place some boundaries upon myself. Namely, I resolved to set forth a date for my filming.
Setting down a date is both good and bad. It’s good because it forces you to start working like mad to get the entire production together. It makes things happen. But, it can be a very bad thing when nothing wants to happen, despite all your efforts. With the date of March 26th in sight, Wildlifeless was starting to prove itself a bear to get moving.
Sure, I had oodles of set-ups, storyboards, character descriptions and screenplay notes at my disposal. And yes, I had contacted numerous plant rental agencies throughout the valley. But no one called me back. My crew, despite my numerous efforts, fell flat at the notion. And I was starting to think that I had gotten myself in over my head.
About three weeks before filming, I decided to pull the plug on Wildlifeless. I can still remember my distaste on the ride home from a particularly fruitless greenhouse visit.
I had produced a nice little booklet for plant farms and greenhouses here in the valley entitled “Brock H. Brown’s Wildlifeless”. Inside the booklet was the full screenplay to Wildlifeless, a list of required plants, a secondary list of acceptable substitutes, and screencaps from my previous films, as well as a short pitch. The last page of the booklet was a list of numbers to contact me at. I wistfully stated, “looking forward to doing business with you” at the close of the proposal. No one took it.
After the whole thing imploded on me I remember walking through a store and seeing a card with a quote by Winston Churchill on it. It said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going”. So I decided to keep going.
However, let it be noted that I decided to keep going with a different battle plan. I decided to set Wildlifeless aside for a better time and instead shoot a story I had recently come up with entitled “The Subject”. I’d drop the outline for The Subject, but if I actually do film it in the coming weeks, I’d rather keep the story under wraps. I hope you understand.
Anyway, The Subject was still an ambitious tale to tell. But it was nowhere near the breadth and scope of Wildlifeless. Moreover, I rather liked the story. I did write another story during this period entitled “Hornsby and the Void Luminous”, but I’ve come to hate it. It’s so smart and intellectually funny it makes me sick. Of course, plenty of students at school thought it was great, but I just hate that screenplay with a passion. It was a cry for help in more ways then one. It said, “help, I’m floundering in cinematography” while at the same time saying “help, I’ll never be loved” and still managed to say “aren’t I terribly witty?” It was puerile crap.
Let me take a moment however to state that I love the title. It’s a great title. For those brief 5 seconds when my writing was on its game, I came up with one heck of a title.
After the festering disappointment that was “Hornsby” I came up with “The Subject”. At last! Here was a story that could stand next to “Wildlifeless”. Here was a story that expanded upon every one of my typical conventions, while at the same time inventing several new ones. This was not only possible, but it was desired.
When I told my classmates about this new story idea, several reacted quite positively. In fact, some people have professed it to be a better story then Wildlifeless. Wildlifeless only gets finer with age and I still desire it now more then ever. But, I’ve come to love The Subject in every way I wanted to love Hornsby.
With March 26th looming in the horizon, I hit the ground running. I had to compile my thoughts on the story, come up with strong cinematography ideas and get together props and actors in a scant few weeks. It was possible though. I felt it all coming together. And then something terrible happened (The first of several terrible things actually, and now that I look back upon it, I realize that it was in fact the most gentle of blows).
My casting director, whom I will not name at this time, decided that he didn’t want to arrange an audition for my film. He didn’t want to even help me cull out actors from an extensive list of possible candidates. In short, he completely bowed out. This was a blow to me for a couple of reasons: A) this guy wasn’t just some nameless student in my mind (although he is now); he was the guy who helped me cast Pantomiming. He did a good job in helping me find what I wanted. To discover him as an incompetent heap on this picture was a blow among blows. I don’t like the guy, but I respect him for doing a fine job for me in the past. B) In performing a king favor among favors, I agreed to act in a film he was shooting for Directing class. I rarely act. In fact, at the moment there are only a handful of people I’d act for. He wasn’t one of them. But I did it anyway, as a gesture of kindness. C) I was filming in one week.
So, as you can imagine, I was in a bind. I quickly set to work looking for actors to play the part.
Let me just step aside a moment here and make light of something positive that did come out of these disquieting events. During this period I had planned to be shopping for costumes and props. I couldn’t very well do it now that I was engrossed in casting the entire film. Then, in the ultimate gesture of kindness, Joshua and Angie Provost stepped in and helped me gather the essential props for the film. And man, they did a fantastic job. Angie made a paper-doll (one of the most essential props in the film) that completely overshot all my finest expectations. And Josh? Well, he picked up some of the coolest looking black goggles I have ever seen. In short, they really came through when no one else would. I was deeply pleased and moved by their help. If the film ever does get made, they and several other people who helped at this time are getting heavily credited. They can request my help any day.
Okay, now it’s time to jump back into the depression. The Subject was falling apart. I was floundering in the acting department when Gabe decided to step in and help. He even auditioned for the part, and played it splendidly. But, one more monkey wrench was thrown into my plans.
Weeks before the shoot I had reserved the studio at the school. In fact, I’m not going to lie; I had written The Subject with the school’s studio in mind for the piece. I had originally planned to film Wildlifeless in the studio by building an entire jungle (yeah, now that I read that sentence, it’s no wonder the film fell apart), but now I could use it as my mental institution.
But, with a little less then a week before the shoot, I lost the location. How? The school had conveniently lost my paper work. Let me say that I don’t hold them responsible. It was a mistake, and if I had been a smarter person, I would have made several copies of the paperwork. I didn’t. But I learned from my error and I’m actually pleased that I pulled something important out from a harrowing process.
With the shoot only a day away, I decided to pull the plug, yet again. It was worthless at this point. And why bother trying? If I cobbled something together in the mere hours before the shoot, it would have been a cobbled mess. It would have gone against all the fine planning I had done weeks before. Instead I spent the weekend alone shooting a hundred feet of random cinematography ideas I wanted to test. I’ve never been so lonely in my entire life.
The Subject wasn’t down for the count however. I decided to take one of my fellow cinematography students up on his offer and borrow some of his shooting time in the studio the following weekend. This student had also reserved the studio for an entire day, but he only needed it for half a day. I could pick up the rest of his time and shoot most, if not all, of my movie. It was yet another gesture of kindness, and I accepted.
That week, things started to swing up. Gabe had to bow out on account of his wife Rebeckah being ready to have her baby, but I managed to pick up another fine young actor who was willing to play the part. I was extremely excited to work with this actor on account of the fact that he could take directions. He knew the actor’s language well. And the more I learn about directing, the more I prefer to work with actors who know the language and who can take directions (the way they’re supposed to be taken).
That’s part of why I wanted to work with Gabe – I had finally learned how to give directions properly, and he had been trained to take them properly all along. But this actor could take directions too!
Anyway, things were working out. My biggest gripe during the time was that I was getting a nasty cold and sneezing rather profusely. But I wasn’t really nervous. Even the night before the shoot, I was ready to get the thing done and over with.
That night, I woke up with a nosebleed. I used to get nosebleeds when I was younger, but I hadn’t gotten one in quite some time. I’m not kidding when I say that I was a little taken back by it. I got it to stop rather easily though, and went back to sleep still anxious for the shoot.
When I arrived on the shoot the next day, I could tell that I was sick. I felt it in my bones. But I also had a maddened desire to get through the day intact. I wanted to help my friend out on his shoot and also pull through a successful turn on my own shoot. I wanted to walk away from the studio that day feeling like a conqueror.
As we wrapped up my friend’s shoot however, I got a second nosebleed. This time around it was much more serious. The blood was quite dark, and after half an hour of pressure, the bleeding wouldn’t stop. Actually, it was getting thicker.
I must confess, I was just going to stuff cotton balls and tissue up my nose and keep going. That would have been capitally stupid however, and Josh convinced me to get to the hospital.
We left immediately and met my parents at the hospital, who waited with me for five hours while I bled out in the waiting room. When we finally went back, the doctor decided to cauterize my nose. Cauterization, you will recall, is when they use a hot soldering iron to wield a blood vein shut. It worked like a charm. Aside from the discomfort of having a hot iron shoved up my nose, there was also the final discomfort of a rather beautiful young nurse (around my age actually) watching the doctor shove packets of gauze and gelled tissue up my bloodied nose. As she turned away in disgust I thought to myself, “Hey, when I loose, I loose hard baby”.
So how did I feel when the whole thing was done? Terrible. Utterly defeated. I had overcome casting issues and location difficulties, only to have my very life thrown on the line. This film was out to kill me. In one final grand swoop to bag my determination and quell my enthusiasm, it decided to resort to petty violence.
All in all, I have no problem looking back on the incident and recalling the tale. Granted, I learned some important lesions from the event.
If I were a smarter man, I would have used the cinematography class for what it was purposed: to shoot a couple hundred feet of tests for grander story ideas. I probably would have shot a hundred feet of film as test shots for The Subject and a hundred feet of test shots for Wildlifeless (in additional to digital video tests). And then, I would have used them as references for when I actually decided to do the films.
Also, I wouldn’t have let myself get so glum. I really loathed myself during the whole fiasco. Maybe that contributed to my downfall, but I don’t think it did. I just think it made the blows all the harsher.
In closing, I’ve learned important lessons that will stick with me for life. 1) Always remain positive. 2) The finest stories lurk just behind the worst. 3) Shoot plenty of film and/or digital tests before committing to big ideas. 4) Never give up.
Those are important lessons to learn…hard ones too. I don’t regret anything though. In fact, I’m rather glad it all came crashing down. It will always be…memorable. And hey, I did end up resorting to writing several “charmingly depressed paragraphs”. But I enjoyed writing them.
Catch Me If You Can: Spielberg’s definitive capper movie. Based off the real life story of con artist Frank Abagnale Jr., this film tracks the manhunt for Abagnale from two opposing points of view: Abagnale’s own and that of his hell-bent pursuer, Carl Hanratty. With a sharp sense of humor and a clipped pace, “Catch Me If You Can” is not particularly stunning or epic, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s merely an exercise in both tone and pace. 
Minority Report: Minority Report was a film that was lifted off a story by Philip K. Dick and retold in film noir perspective. Featuring Tom Cruise and Colin Farrell in what may be his only tongue-in-cheek performance; Minority Report toyed with the idea of what it would mean to give up your privacy in return for a guaranteed kind of safety. Although Spielberg may not have pushed this concept as strongly as he could have, the film still features a tight narrative plus several interesting plot devices. Its vision of the future is also delightfully dark; abound with dancing cereal boxes, convicts stored away in tombstone like chambers, and police nightsticks that induce vomiting.
Yet that’s why it was so chilling! Spielberg’s “footage" looks more like an ILM test model for the tripods. 
3. The atmosphere. If this film succeeds especially well in one particular area, it succeeds in creating a suffocating, vivid, strung-out atmosphere. With every scene set entirely at night, this film never lets up for a moment on the enclosed, overwhelming harshness of the city. Everyone is either crammed away in a dingy little apartment, an ice cream truck or a restaurant that barely has enough room to stand up in, let alone sit down. (Most of the time, this seems to be achieved with a telephoto lens, which never lets up on the actors) Someone commented on IMDB that this establishes a proficient commentary on the backlash of modern life, also known as “The Walkman Syndrome”. A key sequence in the film, showing a main character spacing out while a terrible fight breaks out behind her, underscores this theory perfectly. 
