Fourteener Films

I am new to this whole film making thing. Don’t get me wrong, I have my strengths. As an advertising professional. I’ve been involved in production for television commercials. I’ve storyboarded, written the copy, and even been on set for the lighting and shooting for a few hours. I did some work at a local access cable station too. I was able to spend several weekends sitting in the production booth and watching a television show get produced. Learning to run the audio board, watching the director, floor manager, camera all work was very educational.

But seriously, that was all completely different than the world I am entering. Just taking direction and letting all the people who actually do all of this for a living was easy. Now, I’m not just going to be riding a needle on a sound board but letting sound engineers really make sure it’s all working. I’m going to need to know what I’m doing.

Now, David is a producer with a technical theater background. He knows how to light a shot, set up a sound stage and all of that. Me? I am going to get to tinker with the camera for awhile. I am going to get into all of that techincal stuff and learn as much as I can. I have a lot to learn from my partner but I think it’s all stuff I can handle.

When it’s all said and done, my involvement in the creation of the story is what I am really excited about. This first project will sort of ease me in. David came up with the concept and really fleshed a lot of it out almost ten years ago. But since we are expanding a 90 to 100 minute movie into dozens of hours of self-contained episodes, there are a lot of plot and character decisions that may be made differently. Some devices used to convey a specific amount of information within the 90 minutes can be altered, expanded on, or eliminated completely. So while the goal of the story hasn’t changed, the creative direction has been given a completely new set of parameters within which to operate. Dozens of new possibilities to build plots, subplots, develop characters and detail their relationships. It also gives us countless new ways to achieve the goals we have to accomplish with this series.

Obviously, I am speaking to the other novices here. Telling a story with pictures is full of amazing possibility. For example, dialogue is MUCH less important than the twitch of a gaze, clenching of a jaw, shot of garbage blowing across an urban alley. So much can be explained with four silent seconds of film than can be established using several minutes of dialogue. While clever, believable dialogue is a good thing, I am learning that what makes dialogue good in a movie versus in a play versus in a novel are extraordinarily different.

To any novice, I highly recommend reading Syd Freeman’s book Four Screenplays. I also recommend the collection of classroom notes from legendary filmmaker and dean/professor of the revered film school California Institute of the Arts Sandy Mackendrick. The book is edited by Paul Cronin and titled On Filmmaking: An Introduction to the Craft of the Director. Both are amazing expositions on screenwriting and directing. If you can find a partner who’s been there before, I highly recommend that as well.

I am new to this whole film making thing. Don’t get me wrong, I have my strengths. But I think the greatest strength I have, the one that will get me farther than any other, is the knowledge and understanding that I don’t know anything yet.

When David first told me about The Weigh Station - the screenplay he wrote and partially produced several years ago, I was concerned.  I mean, I wasn’t worried about the viability of the story.  And given his experience, I wasn’t worried about anything logistical.  My concern was whether it would be too preachy.

Think of Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers or Any Given Sunday.  Both movies I was able to enjoy but I had to ignore the whiffle ball bat labeled “THE MESSAGE!!!!!!!!!!” that was constantly being smashed into my head.

If you look at the cover of the Natural Born Killers DVD, it says right on the box ‘the media made them superstars.’  In an improbable street interview, a hip kid says to the camera “We value human life.  But if we had to be serial killers, we’d be Mickey and Mallory.”

In Any Given Sunday we see Los Angeles Sharks quarterback Willie Beamon flexing and strutting through commercials.  We watch athletes pumping themselves full of drugs and throwing money around.  We watch a bunch of millionaire players cheer as the star running back cuts the new star quarterback’s car in half with a power saw.  In the end, we see stills of old, leather helmet football players diving selflessly into the fray.  We watch the current day star running back step out of bounds with four seconds on the clock – stopping the clock and giving his team one more play to win the game.  We cut to a quick shot of Al Pacino on the sideline yelling ‘unselfish!’ as if we didn’t understand what that step out of bounds meant.

THE MESSAGE!!!!!!!! I THINK YOU, AS AN AUDIENCE ARE TOO STUPID TO GET WHAT I AM SAYING SO I WILL MAKE IT SO LITERAL, A REMEDIAL HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH STUDENT COULD WRITE A DISSERTATION ON IT.

That was what I was worried about.  The feelings that inspired David to write The Weigh Station were directly from the affect of the events of September 11, 2001 took on him.   That was a powerfully affecting event for those of us who remember the planes hitting the Pentagon and the twin towers.  And while the events and their aftermath brought out the best in people across all racial, religious, economic, and political backgrounds, it also brought out some really bad, overdone music, television, poetry – as any major event will.

While, I never doubted David as an artist, I know how powerful emotion can color our perception and especially our self-perception.  So I was concerned to say the least.

When I began reading, I got more and more excited.  Here was a story revolving around very sensitive religious subjects in a decidedly irreverent way (the understatement here is like calling a hurricane “breezy and a tad moist”).  But I was enthralled with the plot line.  There were some parts where the shift in narrative view were a bit jarring but that could be because the script he gave me was cut and slashed and edited and re-edited.  So I think I read some parts that were cut out.

It was a very moving and exciting story line to work with.  The real challenge has been to figure out how we are going to stretch this out over a series of episodes.  But I think after several weeks of tossing story lines and structure ideas around, it’s beginning to gel.

Don’t mistake what I’m saying.  This isn’t a story about the events of Sept. 11.  The tragedy of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attack aren’t referenced in the series.  Those events were the catalyst.

But the questions are very real, very human.  David calls himself a recovering Catholic.  His view of the subject matter is colored by his experience in the church.  My upbringing was by a Protestant and a Buddhist.  So our backgrounds lend themselves to the sort of broader shift of accountability we are hoping to achieve with our show.

This is not a series about religion. We aren’t going to tell you what you should believe, or even what we believe.  We think that while you watch our characters’ journeys, you will come to the questions yourself.  Questions we ask ourselves and questions that those with the most staunch faith should still ask.

I’m rambling now.  But I am very excited about what we’re doing.  Oh and I get to say Horseshit without any Hail Marys. Just sayin.’