Production Journal, Bunker

We’re a little over three weeks from shooting my short film, Bunker. Nerve-wracked as hell and not sleeping much.

I know, I know, the conventional wisdom is you’re supposed to never reveal what’s behind the curtain and all that. In the years I’ve been seriously studying the art and business of making movies, I’ve hunted out a lot in the way of production journals and whatnot, because there’s value to be gained from the stories of people who already do what you’d like to be doing. There’s such a wealth of knowledge out there, and certainly some at the top of the industry who’ve been generous with sharing their knowledge with the rest of us. But what I’m most interested in is reading transparently honest captures from other filmmakers about what they’re doing, RIGHT NOW as they’re working on their movies. What’s your process? What works for you? What was a disaster? I want to hear about the mistakes you made along the way and how you solved the inevitable problems. I love Christine Vachon’s books, but I’d also love to read a live journal of Killer Films’ current productions.

I, not having any handlers at this junction, can write pretty much whatever I like down as I’m working on this film. So, this week in Adventures in Filmmaking, or, How I Learned that Making a Movie, While Fun, is Also Very, Very, Very Stressful:

* DP was one of the first positions I filled on the crew. I asked around for recommendations, posted on the NW Film Forum callboard, got a slew of potentials in. Interviewed four guys, hired a guy, done. Back in September, right? Because I am a plan-ahead sort of girl and I know Seattle crew tends to stay very busy. Great, so we’re set on that front, got our DP and our 1stAC and our camera. But then the DP ran into unavoidable schedule conflicts in November, so we regrettably had to part ways. Which sucked because I had the rest of the crew lined up and ready to go, and we have a production schedule that is pretty much set in stone at this point, unless we scrap the entire schedule and start over with it, and pray that everyone is still available. Serious wrench in the works, which caused me to very nearly have an all-out panic attack.

* Spent much of last week sending out a bunch of feelers to other potential DP candidates and getting nowhere. Everyone’s schedules are full. And then at roughly 1AM I jerked awake and remembered that somewhere deep in my inbox there was an email from a cinematographer who’d sent his stuff in the first time around. He was the only one of the candidates who we didn’t end up calling for an interview who followed up to ask why, and to reiterate his interest in the project. So I got up, dug his email out of the trenches, and took another look at his reel. Crap, why didn’t we interview him the first time? His reel is great! How did he slip through the cracks? Was he still available? I emailed him to let him know we were hiring for the position again and, thankfully, he didn’t hate me for not interviewing him the first time around, and even more miraculously, he was available. All that was left was to sit down with him face-to-face and see how we got on. Did that yesterday, and we clicked great. He’d had an intuition that he was supposed to shoot this film. He was right. He’s my guy, and he is already on the ball lining up his team. Thank you, oh gods and saints of indie filmmaking.

*A word about art direction. I know, you shouldn’t handle art direction yourself, you should hire an art director or production designer. I hear you. And when I make a feature down the road, I promise I will. But I do have a fair amount of background in visual design, and a very clear vision in my head for what the art direction for this particular film needs to look like. I have a series of original oil paintings by a fabulous artist that she is giving us permission to use in the film, as one of the characters is a painter. I have a teapot collection. I have an orange couch lined up. I have an artist commissioned to custom draw a couple of pieces that are crucial to the story. There’s a very specific and distinct look that I want this film to have, and if you know nothing else about me by now, you probably know that in addition to my annoying manic tendencies and occasional mood swings, I am hyper-organized and more than a little of a control freak. We are investing, for us, quite a lot of money in this little short that’s intended to be a point of career transition, and it has to look just so.

So I spent most of last weekend calling on funky consignment shops, securing agreements to rent a few pieces of furniture that we need, and haunting Goodwill and Value Village tracking down things like old picture frames, and blue glass bottles, and other such things. At Goodwill in Shoreline, I scored a pair of green throw rugs that are PERFECT and eliminate the need to track down a turquoise round. We also chose paint colors for painting the long, white, boring hallway of the house in which we are shooting. And most importantly, having determined that I was not going to find what I wanted in the way of an entertainment center for the set because I had such a specific picture in my head for it, I sketched up what I wanted and very sweetly asked Mike if he thought he could perhaps build it for me, seeing as how he’s all manly and has this awesome collection of tools taking up space in our garage. And he could, and he did! Now it is built and just needs to be stained to match some existing pieces in the house and we are all set.

* Pinterest and props. One of the tools I’ve found really useful in working on the visual design of Bunker is Pinterest, which lets you surf around for images other people have “pinned,” or images from your own sources, or from the web, to what they call “boards.” People use boards in different ways and for different reasons, but for Bunker I’ve been using it extensively to define the visual design of the film. Here’s my Pinterest board for the Bunker artistic design, so you can see what I’m talking about. This has been invaluable to me, as I can pull up my board on my iPhone when I’m out and about and see where I am with things, and I have also gleaned many ideas using Pinterest as a starting point. For instance, finding ribbon-covered lampshades there led to me exploring how hard it would be to custom-make the lamps for the set, which is what I’m working on this week. Good stuff if you are a visual person.

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