Remember all of those cancellations? The ones that really screwed up our schedule? Well, I tracked down one of them. ;
24 May 2011
Conversations with Lucas: Kris & Lindy Boustedt (part 2)
In part 2, Kris and Lindy talk about the value of adding collaborators to your team, be it editors or writers or whatnot, and trusting them to add something valuable to the process.
23 May 2011
Conversations with Lucas: Kris and Lindy Boustedt
Fresh off the filming of THE SUMMER HOME, I sat down with the co-directors to talk about a variety of things related to this, and other projects.
22 May 2011
21 May 2011
Tom & Friends
All of these people were really, really nice. Even the movie star.
more to come
Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.
more to come
Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.
A Shot List on the fly
THE SUMMER HOME is being shot on an island. Only, neither the director(s) or the DP has seen the location. So, they've got to come up with one the night before.
HICKS ON STICKS, eh
You think your film is taking forever? Mike has been working on HICKS ON STICKS for 12 years. 12!
Super 8
A very hung-over Michael Babiarz shows us his Super 8 workflow for HICKS ON STICKS and explains why he does this instead of using a fancy new DSLR.
19 May 2011
Back in the U.S.A.
Really, they should make it easier to get to the Duty Free Shop. How am I supposed to buy cheap booze if I can't get there?
18 May 2011
Vancouver Craft Beer Week
The most common production we hear from here at A Year Without Rent is documentaries that are in editing. It makes sense--docs take forever to edit. Thing is, it's not really that visually interesting to watch someone stare at a computer screen. So generally speaking, we always tell people to get back to us when they have something specific in their editing schedule (maybe a re-shoot? or vocal dubbing? foley work? something concrete, with dates). Or, if the project sounds really compelling, we see if we'll be in their neighborhood and can just stop by.
One of those projects is Michael Babiarz's HICKS ON STICKS, a documentary about a Canadian skateboarding tour twelve years (12!) in the making. Michael lives in Vancouver, so it was always in the back of our minds that if we found our way to Vancouver, then we should definitely get in touch.
Mike, being the go-getter that he was, beat us to the punch, tweeting that he was pretty sure he could get tickets to Vancouver Craft Beer Week, if I was so inclined.
As soon as we got to the event, it became clear that Mike did not, in fact, have tickets to the event (that we were an hour late for, due to a very close hockey game). Actually, the owner of the bar (pictured below) was under the impression that we were videotaping the event, which was news to both of us. But, I had a camera, and he had a camera, and so we videotaped the event. And by videotaped, I mean that we took pictures and capitalized on plenty of chances to drink free craft beer.
No one had a clue. The owner of the bar pretended he had heard about me somehow (we didn't believe him). We got pretty drunk on free beer, and the next day, Mike showed me the Super 8 setup for HICKS ON STICKS.
Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.
Vancouver Craft Beer Week, eh?
A drunk Michael Babiarz (PLAY WITH FIRE, HICKS ON STICKS) and I have somehow managed to crash a $50 a ticket event during Vancouver Craft Beer Week. They think we're filming the event. We aren't.
17 May 2011
15 May 2011
Dust Bowl Blues
Can you create the look of dust with common, every day objects you find in a house you're borrowing?
Maybe?
Maybe?
14 May 2011
13 May 2011
Hiking
I'm told you can see the U.S.A. from here.
Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.
11 May 2011
10 May 2011
My Not-So-Valid Passport, Part 2
So how hard is it to get a passport when you're on the other side of the country and have to drive to Canada the next day?
09 May 2011
Filmmaker Magazine
The second Filmmaker Magazine post is up. You should go read it. But if you need convincing, here's a sample...
Read the rest here.
Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.
As the costs of production come down, and the barriers to distribution fall, it’ll be interesting to see how filmmakers react. Sure, all the walls are crumbling, but so are all the built-in excuses. You can’t blame your budget anymore. Or the programmers at Sundance. It’s just you and your work on a screen somewhere. No place to hide.
Read the rest here.
Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.
My Not-So-Valid Passport
While I'm sure living out of a car seems really glamorous, there's issues at play that you wouldn't normally think about. Like, what happens when the interior of your car gets wet somehow and destroys stuff? Then what do you do?
06 May 2011
Project follow-up
Earlier this year (don't ask me when), I worked a day on a lesbian musical, maybe you remember, maybe you don't.
Anyway, the film has been invited to premiere at the Frameline International Film Festival in San Francisco and they're raising money over at Indiegogo. So...check it out.
Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.
05 May 2011
Dawn Mikkelson's SMOOCH
I'm standing on Rick Vaicius' lawn in Pepin, Wisconsin, eating a brat and drinking beer when he asks what the next project is.
"Oh, it's this documentary in Minneapolis about kissing."
"You mean SMOOCH?"
"Yeah."
"That's not about kissing."
Such is the tenuous grasp I sometimes have on what these films I'm working on are about. I get the gist of it and I usually remember part of it. Anyway, what's important is that I show up at the right place at the right time. Beyond that, I don't really need to know what's going on. It doesn't affect what I'm going to do anyway.
Anyway, Rick was right. SMOOCH is not about kissing. And I was right, it sort of is.
You see, there's The Smooch Project, a "heart-lifting effort to collect 10,000 photographs of the affectionately-inclined from around the world." Go to the webpage. There's lots of cute pictures.
An off-shoot of that is Dawn Mikkelson's documentary SMOOCH, a film that aims to show "stories of reconciliation, forgiveness and healing from some of the most conflict-ridden nations in the world."
I'm in town for the documentary part.
The team for the day (other than myself) is pretty small: director (and proud backer) Dawn Mikkelson and interns Monte Swann and Heidi Tungseth, and that's probably for the best because we're in the storage unit of an apartment complex. Yes, the storage unit.
As people come through the building's art crawl to get their Smooch pictures taken, we tell them about the documentary and try and convince them to come back into the scary room to talk about forgiveness on-camera. It's pretty simple, really. The trick is just convincing normal people to do something like this.
Once we've loaded in, there isn't a whole lot to it. The talking head interviews are pretty straightforward. As long as people stay on their marks and don't do anything weird, it's just a matter of capturing emotions and asking the right questions.
It was all pretty basic stuff--fodder for the YouTube channel--and then a middle aged woman in a wheelchair rolled in and blew us away. You could feel the film exploding all around the room. I don't want to get into the details, but it was a powerful, powerful story. You could easily do a whole film on her. And that's awesome, but it doesn't really fit with the narrative the film has been following.
So what then does a documentary do when the world it has built implodes? I guess we'll see.
Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.
04 May 2011
Day 3 of Dave Bullis' GAME OVER
Lots of films have bad days. Some of them are just slightly annoying, while others end up being a full-fledged clusterfuck. You can't get rid of them entirely, you just have to hope it isn't too bad and doesn't have a domino effect on the whole project, as one really terrible day can kill a film.
Assuming you survive, one of the big tests is how the production responds. Does it rally, making up the difference and then some? Or does it kind of sputter along, not making things worse, but not really fixing anything either?
You may recall that Day 2 on GAME OVER was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Very little went well and, honestly, I thought we were minutes away from a meltdown at a couple of different points. So how did the production respond? Let's take a look.
The Night Before
As soon as filming wrapped for the night, there was an impromptu meeting far from earshot between several production heads. I don't imagine it was a pleasant conversation.
Which is how myself, director Dave Bullis, 1st AD Zach Zimmerman, 2nd AD Michael O'Donnell, and the only PA worth a damn (Eric Torbio) ended up in Dave's living room, trying to sort thing out over cheesesteaks.
My theory: the production lacks a motor to keep all the different departments moving forward. A number of times in Day 2, things got bogged down (or stopped completely) for no reason whatsoever. That's not good.
I offer to be more assertive on-set when things start to slow down.
Day 3
One thing discussed at the meeting the night before was the utter worthlessness of several of the film's PA's (other than Eric). Apparently, they were recruited from a local high school and essentially spent the entire day leaning up against a wall, doing whatever it is kids do these days. This isn't entirely their fault, as I'm pretty sure no one was really in charge of them. That's part of it, but I know for a fact they were given things to do and just didn't feel like it.
So, since they weren't doing anything, every time I walked by a PA leaning up against a wall, I gave them something to do. Some of it was important. Some of it wasn't. I had one PA tape a trail from the set to the Green Room, since people were constantly getting lost. They spent a lot of time running messages back to the Green Room for us, stuff like how long until we'd need an actor. They were mostly ok with it, except for this exchange:
Me: "You a PA?"
PA: "Yeah"
Me: "I need you to get [coffee order] for the DP and AC."
He started to chuckle.
Me: "It's not fucking funny. Go. Now."
He got the message (but screwed up the coffee order). More importantly, it scared him into be slightly helpful, instead of just one more mouth to feed. And when I told Dave that I had started yelling at his PAs, he smiled.
"Awesome."
Sometimes you've just got to have a bad guy, and who better than the person who's leaving town as soon as the production is over?
Motivation is high, as everyone knows that the production is under the gun, time-wise. Things move at a decent clip, not frenetic, not slow. New on set for day 3 is photographer and cinematographer Marvin Burwell, who loans me a wide-angle lens to play with.
And so, not really knowing how to shoot effectively with a wide-angle lens (this is why I get a cinematographer), I wander around until actress Tammy Jean (who's playing the DJ in the party for the new video game system) gives me a few pointers. Then, Marvin checks in to give me a few more.
I don't think a whole lot of it until a couple of days later when I do my standard basic research of everyone I might potentially write about (I find some interesting tidbits that way), and discover that Tammy was (is?) a Playboy model, something no one bothered to tell me. I'll let you do the NSFW Googling at your discretion.
The day moves along. The time for lunch comes and goes. We keep filming. Finally, we break for lunch. Only, there is no lunch. The crew wanders around the holding area, snacking on carrots and whatnot. 15 minutes. Still no lunch. The producers don't know where it is. Neither does the director. No one does. I lay down on a wrestling mat they were using for some stunt practice. 30 minutes passes. It's 40 minutes before the decision is made to start setting up for the first post-lunch shot. 5 minutes later the food shows up. All that momentum gained during the day is lost. A ravenous crew eats and rushes back to work. By this point, the day is almost over. We won't get our pages. Obviously, another day of filming is going to be needed, but when?
Actor Kenneth McGregor has to leave in 20 minutes, but his big stunt move is still left. He starts taking over, making sure they get it before he has to leave, directing the other actors. Clearly he's done this before. We get the stunt. Kenneth runs to the car. We shoot a few more setups and then we have to be out. In no way are they done.
Will it cut together? Honestly, I don't know. They'll need at least another day of filming, maybe more. As for me, I've got to be on the road. So while that's not a wrap for GAME OVER, it is for me.
Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.
New Hope
A thank you, from me to you, for the chance to do something that otherwise wouldn't have been possible.
So far...
visited 16 states (32%)
Create your own visited map of The United States
Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.
03 May 2011
A SMOOCH Explosion (Implosion?)
It's not often on this trip that I get to be in the room when something happens that fundamentally changes a film. Usually that happens either long before I show up, or long after I leave. ;
But here, I got lucky.
But here, I got lucky.
SMOOCH
You want glamour?
We're filming part of Dawn Mikkelson's documentary SMOOCH in a storage unit. ;
We're filming part of Dawn Mikkelson's documentary SMOOCH in a storage unit. ;
01 May 2011
Point A --> Point B
We'd really rather break this up into a couple of smaller trips. So if you've got a couch...
Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.
Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.
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