Things I learned at the IFP Filmmaker Conference: Day 1

OK, last month's post was nonsense, but I was too busy to write anything more meaningful.

This month has been busy too. I went to IFP's annual Filmmaker Conference this past month, and learned a hell of a lot. While I don't know if I'll have time to write up the depth of coverage I gave last year – and you can read someone else's notes anyway – I'll share with you some of the more memorable lessons I learned on each day of the conference.

We'll start with six things I learned Day 1 ...

#6. Comedy can be challenging to sell internationally, because it's culturally specific. That's why depressing or violent films sell internationally.

And you thought foreign audiences were just these gloomy snobs.

#5. There is a film festival devoted to Internet cat videos.

It's called the Internet Cat Video Festival, or CatVidFest for short, and it's based at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Its curator, Scott Stulen, spoke about the festival, which has drawn huge crowds.

Here's their Facebook and Twitter, and their website (they're coming to Rochester in December!) and at some point I would love to listen this SXSW seminar with the amusingly alarmist headline "Is This the End of Art?"

#4. If the storytelling is good, we feel the characters are like us. If the storytelling is poor, or has an agenda, we feel the characters are inscrutable.

That's actually a quote (or paraphrase) from George Saunders' book The Braindead Microphone. I confess to being unfamiliar with Saunders or his book, but a panelist dropped that quote during a panel about Call Me Kuchu, a documentary about LGBT issues in Uganda. I'm sure the panelist brought up the quote for its relevance to documentary filmmakers, but to me it seems even more relevant to fiction writers and narrative filmmakers.

At a different panel, this one on web comedy, moderator Todd Sklar said something not entirely different. He said that a key to a successful web series is having relatable characters, so that viewers who know people like that will want to share the series with other people.

#3. There are still new stories to be told. Just not in Hollywood.

A “New Black Voices” panel of African-American indie filmmakers brought up some interesting issues. One of the panelists, director Terence Nance (An Oversimplification of Her Beauty) said: “Even white films have trouble getting made. Nothing gets made out there unless it was on a lunchbox ten years ago.” Another panelist, director Shaka King (Newlyweeds) made a seemingly opposing observation: “There's been a shift where people don't know what happened ten years ago.”

But the moderator, writer Tambay Obenson, made what I thought was the most memorable remark as the panel ended. He commented on an article he'd read somewhere (after some Googling I think it's this Guardian piece by Paul Schrader) that complained about “narrative exhaustion” resulting from every story having already been told. Obenson said that his thought when reading this was “Maybe for you, white man. You've seen the complete breadth of your experience. But our stories haven't been told.”

I laughed loud and long at this, to the point where a black woman sitting in front of me turned around and stared at me in bafflement. But it wasn't mocking laughter. I was laughing because he was absolutely right.

I've always hated people who say “there are no new stories to tell.” Without exception, they are always people who have no ideas themselves, who have nothing to say and no stories they want to tell, and they are seeking some cosmic excuse for their own lack of talent or imagination.

But just because Hollywood keeps disinterring dead franchises, doesn't mean you have to be as dumb as they are. Tell the stories that haven't been told.

#2. People are still making original work. Just not at the movies so much.

Because I went to a big-name film school at a time when NYU- and USC-trained directors were still lionized, a part of my subconscious has been clinging to the old “get noticed by the system” model. And film buffs love to mourn the lost golden age of the film-brat 1970s and Indie-wood 1990s. But several panelists talked about the Internet and web series the same way people used to talk about independent film – as a venue for original and personal work.

It's strange. Hollywood seems more dependent than ever on old properties that, as Terence Nance put it, have already been on a lunchbox. Yet in the constantly-shifting indie world, I sometimes feel like my training in older formats and traditions can be liabilities.

At the web comedy panel, Todd Sklar said that he was always losing work to people who just made a short, or do web comedy. He said losing a feature directing job to someone who's only done shorts and web series, when you've done two features, is frustrating … but it makes sense, because shorts and web series can be watched more easily as samples of someone's work.

Sidenote: The week after the conference, I drove to Squeaky Wheel in Buffalo for a screening of the new indie film Computer Chess, a comedy-drama set in 1980 and filmed with vintage black-and-white video cameras from the era. During conversations after the screening, I overheard a film student say that he's studied big Hollywood movies, but now realizes he's probably never going to make big Hollywood movies and so he should study more indie films.

I'm glad that guy learned that lesson at a younger age than I did. And I'm glad I'm finally learning it too.

So stop complaining about how scripted cable TV shows have made people stop caring about movies. Make your own online movies … or series.

#1. It's all about the audience … or is it?

Listening to the advice given by the various panelists this year, I sensed a tension between the more traditional view of filmmaking (especially of the indie variety) as a vehicle for personal expression, and the idea that content really needs to have an audience in mind that can be expected to engage with that content. I guess that's the big difference between old and new media.

But the day's closing keynote speech by producer Jon Kilik seemed to suggest that filmmaking is – and has always been – full of contradiction. Responding to the famously pessimistic speeches made by Steven Soderbergh, and by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, about the imminent death of Hollywood cinema, Kilik said such end-of-industry predictions have been made before, but that there are now more ways to make movies and to get people to see them.

“For every tentpole,” he said, “there's a young filmmaker with a small cast and crew to create a uniquely personal vision. For every sequel, there's something fighting to be born. It's never been harder and it's never been easier – and it's probably always been that way. … Don't take yourself too seriously, and take yourself as seriously as death itself. Have both confidence and doubt – it keeps you awake and alert.”

As if trying to reconcile the needs of the audience with the needs of the auteur, Kilik also stated: “The only way to truly connect with an audience is to be as personal as you can be, and share that vision onscreen.”

To be continued ...

Me and my big mouth, huh?

It's been a frantic few months since my last post, when I boasted about being back in the saddle. Of course, my day job and personal stuff ended up occupying my time and energy. Well, it sort of gave me time to think about some bigger issues.

When urgent priorities need to be dealt with, I tend to get very single-minded and deny myself the little pleasures in life. I'm starting to realize that this is not the best coping strategy, and that one needs these little perks and pick-me-ups in order to stay balanced. So I've been letting myself go to the movies – particularly independent movies – a little more often lately.

On August 16 I drove to Buffalo for an animation festival in Buffalo River Fest Park, hosted by the fine folks from Squeaky Wheel. It was a good mix of comedies, dramas and experimental work, and it also reminded me how much I love seeing films in non-traditional venues, especially outdoors on a nice night.

This past Sunday, I saw a couple of the films in Project 5, the Little Theatre's mini-festival of films in limited release. The Color Wheel was a smartmouthed comedy-drama about the dysfunctional relationship between a struggling twentysomething actress and her slacker brother. It was shot on old-school grainy black-and-white film, which made it seem like a nostalgic throwback to films like Clerks and Stranger Than Paradise ... but with the more fluid shooting style of a modern movie, instead of the camera being nailed to the floor in a medium shot. I can only assume that titling a black-and-white film The Color Wheel was an act of conscious irony.

There seems to be a mini-boom in indie writer-actresses recently. To the club that so far includes Brit Marling (Another Earth, Sound of My Voice) and Zoe Kazan (Ruby Sparks) can now be added Carlen Altman, who not only plays the female lead but also co-wrote the script with Alex Ross Perry, who (it gets better) plays her brother in addition to directing the film.

I enjoyed the snarky machine-gun bickering between Altman and Perry, when I thought that it was a reflection of the strained life-long relationship between two siblings. It seemed to get a little one-note once I realized that all the other characters in the film (especially Altman's professor ex-boyfriend) talked in the exact same manner. There is also a Neil LaBute-worthy shock twist at the end that left me more disgusted than amused by these two characters. It's the kind of twist you almost expect in an indier-than-thou movie like this, despite writer-star Altman's character constantly expressing her worries about doing something cliché. Despite these quibbles, the film was funny and a breath of grungy fresh air. I enjoyed seeing a film that felt real, rather than slick and packaged.

The other Project 5 movie I saw was the Canadian sci-fi/horror film Beyond the Black Rainbow. I've been wanting to see this one ever since a friend posted a link to the trailer, which made clear that the film was a stylistic throwback to 1983, the year in which it was set.

Imagine if Stanley Kubrick and Dario Argento had teamed up in 1983 to do a remake of THX 1138, and you might have some idea what this movie is like. Artfully shot and deliberately paced, and designed with lurid reds and yellows, this is basically a film about a teenage girl trying to escape from a futuristic research lab/psych ward, with some cutaways and flashbacks depicting the Alvin Toffler-esque guru who's been trying to control her.

The film's claustrophobic setting and relatively small cast, plus its uncanny retro atmosphere (the vast sets and lurid red-and-yellow color scheme give an uncanny sense that this was really filmed in the 70s or early 80s) combine to create an overpowering feel of dread and menace.

The pacing sags a bit in the middle, and the tone of extreme melodrama had the audience openly laughing at some points. A 1966 flashback, seemingly meant to provide an origin-story, left me utterly baffled (though it was gorgeously – and appropriately – shot in extreme black-and-white). A lowbrow scene with two horror-movie-victim hick campers was so hilariously out of sync with the Eurotrashy art-house tone of the rest of the movie that I genuinely don't know whether it was meant to be as funny as it was. Overall, though, I found the film mesmerizing and mind-blowing. I can't imagine how such a strange and unique film got made (and it can't possibly be as expensive as it looks), but I'm sure glad it did. And I hope to hell there's a soundtrack album of the score.

I've always liked it when indie art films and dramas have a sci-fi or fantasy element. That might be my favorite type of film, and I'm glad that subgenre seems to be making a comeback. I guess I have to mention Another Earth, Sound of My Voice and Ruby Sparks again, since they seem to be part of this recent trend, along with Safety Not Guaranteed and Beasts of the Southern Wild.

Speaking of sci-fi and fantasy, some weeks ago I finally joined the rest of the world and saw Joss Whedon's The Avengers. Like many people I find superhero movies a bit played out (and many indie film buffs are coming to loath them – check out almost any IndieWire article or editorial in recent months), but Whedon's film put the fun back in the genre.

It was such a relief to see a superhero movie without the “society won't accept me” subtext that's been kind of bringing the genre down recently. I get that there's a big chunk of the comic-book audience that can relate to the idea of being considered a social outcast. But if superheroes really existed, why would they be persecuted? Wouldn't they be considered pretty awesome?

Fortunately, Whedon felt the same way. His Avengers aren't being beaten down by the Man – their biggest enemies are themselves and their own egos. Well, that and the alien armada they have to fight off. As one might expect from the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this was a film about characters who are empowered – which superheroes really ought to be anyway.

Seeing all of these movies – after a long drought when I wasn't keeping up with movies at all – really refreshed my love for the medium. And it also helped me to realize where my passion lies.

There seems to be kind of an internet rivalry recently between nerds and hipsters – between the kind of guys who are into sci-fi and cosplay, and the kind of guys who are into garage bands and vintage clothing. I've heard it argued that nerds are sincere in their interests, whereas hipsters are ironic and mocking and therefore fake. But I'm not sure I see it that way. Nerds seem to be sarcastic and angry a lot of the time, and highly obsessed with the pop-culture of the past (because it represents their childhood). Hipsters, on the other hand, seem to be genuinely seeking out what's new and not-yet-mainstream.

I used to feel the opposite. When I had to read Waiting for Godot back in college, I was coincidentally reading a different book for fun: Medea: Harlan's World, an unusual book that resulted from Harlan Ellison gathering some fellow SF writers together to collaborate on an invented universe, then write some short stories taking place within it. While my college-age self considered Godot a pointless exercise in ennui and defeatism, Medea represented intelligent and creative people pooling their geek talents to actually accomplish something.

The geek/nerd world and the arty/indie world each have aspects that appeal to me. As at least one columnist has put it, the two culture are yin and yang. But I used to think that the two cultures kind of overlapped. 2001: A Space Odyssey was admired by hard-SF engineering types and pot-smoking hippies alike. David Cronenberg has horror fans as well as arthouse fans. Monty Python, Doctor Who and Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy were as appealing to PBS-watching Anglophiles as they were to LARPers. Even George Lucas was influenced as much by Akira Kurosawa as by Flash Gordon.

But in recent years, the two cultures have split away from each other, like the Skeksis and Mystics in The Dark Crystal. I'd rather not have to choose between them, but if I must, then I'm afraid that these days I side more with the hipsters. Whereas nerds are largely concerned with group loyalty (everything always has to be pleasing to “the fans”), hipsters are at least trying to be individuals, and I guess that speaks to me more.

I want to have my mind blown. I want to see and read things that expand my horizons. I thought science fiction was by definition about that – Captain Kirk exploring strange new worlds, Duke Leto saying that without change, something sleeps inside us – but maybe that's changed. Nerds like to see already-established worlds and familiar characters. That's why there are so many sequels and remakes nowadays. Nerds like to explore, and master, the worlds that are created by others. Which is fine. But as a writer and filmmaker, I'd much rather create worlds and characters and stories of my own, as all of my cinematic heroes have done.

I still like superheroes and aliens and so on, but not to the exclusion of everything else that movies are capable of. It seems the media is always arbitrarily deciding where the most important culture currently lives – from the hippies in Haight-Ashbury, to the punks at CBGB's, to the grunge rockers in Seattle – and now they've settled on Comic-Con as the epicenter of everything. In a few years it might move on to something else. But in the rush to cash in on these subcultures, it can get forgotten that there are other cultures and other tastes that shouldn't be overlooked.

The blessing and curse of the Internet is that every kind of culture is out there, but you won't find it if you don't think to look for it. It's too easy to get stuck in a rut, visiting the same handful of sites and listening to the same trollish arguments, because you don't know what else is out there. You can lose touch with other cultures that could expand your horizons. It's easy to complain about the culture you find on the Internet when you haven't even looked around to see what alternatives are out there. Lord knows I'm guilty of this.

I feel like, after far too many years trapped by nostalgia, I'm finally opening my eyes to the possibilities that are available in life. Maybe I'm reaching an age where things seem clear, after years of things seeming to get foggier. You have to let go to move forward.

I've continued to work on an itinerary for my road trip of screenings, and I'm very close to announcing it. I hope to have it up before the end of the week. Stay tuned ...

Buffalo Premiere

Yesterday – October 23 – was the Buffalo premiere of Saberfrog, held at Squeaky Wheel Media Arts Center, a fitting choice since it had been the shooting location for the finale of the movie, filmed on Day 2 of production.

I'd spent the previous two weekends plastering Buffalo with flyers, and also promoted the film at the Buffalo Comicon convention and at the monthly Buffalo Movie-Video Makers meeting. In doing so I encountered a lot of enthusiasm for the movie, based on the premise and the flyer, and based on this I was looking forward to a big turnout.

Saturday evening turned out to be grim and rainy, however, and this probably kept a lot of people away. The showing was still a modest success – enough people showed up that I made back the cost of renting the space, plus a (tiny) profit.

The film's two lead actors, Liz Mariani (now back in the States) and Wendy Foster, were present at the showing. Several friends of John Karyus were also there, including a mutual friend from RIT. Overall, the audience – though less raucous than the Rochester audience – seemed to really dig Saberfrog. Of all the scenes in the movie, Terrance's one-man play and Bert's online video mashup got the biggest laughs.

The Squeaky Wheel projectionist, Mark, complimented me on the film afterwards, and said that there were other competing events going on in Buffalo that weekend that might have kept the turnout from being higher. He also said it was refreshing to see a low-budget film that put some care into the sound. This was something of a relief to hear, as the quality of location audio had been wildly uneven and I'd worked long and hard to fix as many audio problems as I could during production. While my jaded ear can still hear the remaining flaws, casual moviegoers seem not to notice them.

I'm planning to continue four-walling theaters and alternative venues for the movie, but the farther away I get from the film's home “base”, the harder it's going to be to promote screenings, let alone attend them in person. Promotion of the Rochester and Buffalo screenings was very grassroots – putting up flyers, spreading the word among friends and friends-of-friends – with emphasis on the film's local origins. Drawing a crowd in other cities is going to require much more aggressive marketing, including traditional media – news articles and print/radio/TV interviews.

A much simpler approach would be to just get the film into festivals, although the cost of getting rejected at multiple festivals is comparable to the cost of renting a space yourself – and if you rent a space yourself, you can charge admission and make at least some of that money back. Still, the film has proven itself as a crowd-pleaser, so maybe I'll have some halfway decent luck on the festival circuit.

I'm already working on future screenings, though, and I'll let you know what happens next …

16mm awesomeness in three cities

When I was a kid, we used to watch short films in class, generally prefaced by a title card that said “from the Reynolds Collection of the Rochester Public Library” or words to that effect. Many of these were educational films of the sort so often parodied in commercials and comedy shows. But some were just … odd. They may have been comedies, or art films, or animations, or various combinations thereof, but the purpose of showing these films in class seems elusive in hindsight.

The most famous of these was Hardware Wars, which had a decent afterlife on cable and video, but many of the others are now obscure. Some I can still kind of remember if I think about it enough, while others have largely faded from my memory.

These kinds of films showed up not only in class, but in more public settings as well. The Rochester Museum and Science Center's Eisenhardt Auditorium had weekend shows of kid's movies (I remember seeing animated films based on the Paddington Bear books and Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat). A robotic-dinosaur exhibit that came to the RMSC in the mid-80s was accompanied, in one room, by a set of dinosaur-related films, including Will Vinton's famous Siskel-and-Ebert parody Dinosaur and a more realistic stop-motion film from the National Film Board of Canada. (I – or, more likely, my mom – actually videotaped these films from the audience with our giant camcorder, back in the days when no one thought to object to such behavior; maybe I can still find that tape if I dig through enough boxes.) When my family traveled to Toronto to see the Ontario Science Center, my favorite “exhibit” was a small booth that showed the stream-of-consciousness clay-animated film Clay, Or The Origin of Species.

I can remember when a local library branch put on a little animation festival in a room upstairs. The films themselves included Jiri Trnka's stop-motion film The Hand, in which a stop-motion puppet is relentlessly pursued by a marauding human hand; an art-film parody called The Critic, in which the voice of Mel Brooks heckles an abstract film in humorous proto-MST3K fashion; and a Disney adaptation of Peter and the Wolf. There were two other films whose titles are unknown to me – a time-lapse movie of a building under construction, which I guess counts as an animated film; and a film about an urban family attending a funeral, seen from the point of view of the youngest family, and depicted in a constantly flowing art style that was probably created using finger paint. [Update: I've since seen the latter film again: it's The Street by Caroline Leaf.] Those are the five I can still remember, over a quarter-century later; whatever other films might have been in the program are now long-forgotten by me.

The 70s and (early to mid-)80s must have been the boom time for such things; back then, you would still see obscure short films padding out the running time between movies on cable, and of course Sesame Street and The Electric Company had their share of whimsical, borderline-experimental animation. Yet I seldom seemed to meet people from other areas who had similar memories of seeing oddball animated films in class or elsewhere. This left me wondering if the Rochester area – or perhaps my grade school in particular – was somehow unique in exposing its students to oddball short films that seemed to come from nowhere. Even as the home video boom made movies more accessible, and the Internet made it easier to dig up information on even the most esoteric topics, these obscure 70s/80s films seemed to drift into the dreamlike haze of fading childhood memories.

But these films had a huge impact on me as a kid. They always looked handmade; anyone who owned a home movie camera with single-frame capabilities could theoretically make one. The fact that these films were made by no one you'd ever heard of, and shown in environments other than regular movie theaters, must have also intrigued my young brain somehow. I credit these unsung films with inspiring me to make my own films.

Some time in the late 90s/early 2000s, the Rochester library donated its 16mm film collection to the Visual Studies Workshop, a school/art gallery (associated with SUNY Brockport) which also played host to the occasional underground film event. Yet except for a single multimedia show early on (in which old industrial films were played as background), the VSW never seemed to do anything with that vast and mysterious collection for years afterward.

My interest in “ephemeral” films (as I guess they're called now) was rekindled a couple years ago when Skip Elsheimer, manager of the AV Geeks film collection, came to town to put on a show at the George Eastman House. Lo and behold, here were exactly the sorts of weird and wonderful films I saw as a kid, even if the particular titles were new to me – such as Shake Hands With Danger, a workplace-safety industrial film whose title song has become an Internet phenomenon; and Malakapalakadoo, Skip Too, a truly bizarre clay animation intended to encourage children to use their imaginations. When I later went to the AV Geeks website and browsed their list of films, I found titles that I did recall from back in the day, such as The Wave (a film about students forming a paramilitary clique) and an adaptation of Shirley Jackson's The Lottery. I slept better at night knowing that films like these were still out there, still remembered, and still loved.

Why am I writing about all this now? Well, such is the revival that these films are enjoying that I have been able see such films as they were meant to be seen – on 16mm in an alternative venue – in three different cities over a seven-day period, without even realizing it until later.


BUFFALO

The adventure began on Sunday, October 10, when I went to Squeaky Wheel in Buffalo to see a show of experimental animation that was being presented as part of the Buffalo Film Festival. Squeaky's website explained that this was actually a traveling animation show, separate from the Buffalo festival, and co-managed by Larry Cuba, who did the computer-animated Death Star plans for the original Star Wars. Cuba would be at the event in person, and showing three of his own experimental films from the 1970s/80s.

That the event had such low attendance is a measure of how far the arty world and the geek world have drifted apart from each other. This was a free event, and the equation of “free event” plus “guy who did special effects for Star Wars” probably could have draw every fan within a 200-mile radius if only that audience had heard of the event and/or had any taste for abstract animation. It's too bad because, in my brain, the two worlds still seem linked somehow. George Lucas' background was in experimental filmmaking before he went down the Power-Of-Myth road, and to me there's not really a big difference between an abstract 1970s computer animation and, say, Pong or Asteroids; it's all pioneering stuff from the early days of digital imagery.

I'd lost my appetite for purely abstract films after being force-fed too much of it in college, but I still dig the 70s ones, partly because they have a certain innocence to them (with none of the anger or pretentiousness that seemed to take over in later years) and partly because they tend to have groovy soundtracks. Cuba's three films, and some other old-school animations that he also screened, were an enjoyable blast from the past.


TORONTO

A mere five days later – on Friday – I decided to hoof it to Toronto for an evening to catch a film screening or two. I'd received Facebook notices about a couple different screenings going on that evening. One was a film festival event, and I thought it might be a good opportunity to network and spread the word about Saberfrog. The other was the regular Friday-night screening at Trash Palace, an industrial building (apparently used as a small press during the week) that screens 16mm films on Friday night. It was the latter that I ended up attending.

I'd been to Trash Palace once before, for the same reason – there were a couple different screenings I wanted to go to in Toronto, but Trash Palace was the only one I could make it in time for. Last time they were presenting what was supposedly a show of rare early student films from people like Tim Burton, Brad Bird and John Lasseter – a bit misleading, as these turned out to be live-action student films made by someone else, but gave minor credit (art direction or “Thanks to”) to Lasseter et al. Nonetheless, I got a taste of the Trash Palace experience and enjoyed it immensely, especially since other people brought their own 16mm student work to screen, which meant films I knew I would not have heard of and would never see again.

This time, the main event was a 1970s crime flick called Puppet on a String. The best way I can think of to describe this film is to say that it was like a blaxploitation film with an all-white cast. The film took place in Amsterdam, the main character was an American born in Holland (played by an actor with a Dutch-sounding name), and the cast seemed to generally be Brits (particularly the hero's obligatory you're-not-playing-by-the-rules superior), yet the film was full of Shaft-style badass music and fight scenes, including a rather impressive motorboat chase through the streets of Amsterdam.

The film was preceded by some pretty cool 1970s kung-fu trailers, with titles like The Chinese Professionals, Triple Iron, Black Dragon, and Black Samurai (those last two may have been the same film under two different titles).


ROCHESTER

I returned home to Rochester, and attended a 16mm screening the very next day at Visual Studies Workshop. Yes, VSW has finally begun unleashing its sweet collection of celluloid obscurity onto the public.

This was the second of what promises to be a monthly show at VSW; the first had had a specifically education/classroom theme, whereas this one was entitled “There Is No Reality” and was devoted to some of the more surreal and out-there films in the collection. Yeah.

The films included two Norman McLaren animations about moving lines (not quite as dull as it sounds, and actually quite hypnotic); the music video for the Dr. Demento-approved novelty song “Fish Heads”; and Help! My Snowman's Burning Down, a Richard Lester-esque film about a guy sitting in a bathtub on a New York pier and having various Magritte-like adventures.

Two of the films in the program were slightly familiar to me: K9000: A Space Oddity, a goofy animation about a dog who's captured by scientists (or whoever they are) and sent into space in a rocket ship to encounter a bunch of weird crap; and Why Me?, a National Film Board of Canada cartoon about the stages of acceptance faced by the terminally ill. Stills from both of these had been featured in the late-70s edition of Kit Laybourne's The Animation Book, which was a bible to me as a teenager; in fact, that book used storyboards and other development materials from Why Me? as examples. This was actually the second time I'd seen Why Me?, though I can't remember if I saw it in college or on cable TV.

The finale of the program, a 1970 film called Hello Mustache, was far more obscure; in fact, the guy curating the show said that he had been able to find out almost nothing about the film, “except that we have a copy.” This was a black-and-white, dialogue-heavy film about a hippie male (complete with poncho and brimmed hat) and a square female. Well, supposedly square, since she's wearing an outfit I didn't know was ever considered ordinary – a loud necktie with dress shirt, a vertically striped miniskirt, and white go-go boots. (I quite liked that look, though, and hope that it comes back; it didn't hurt that the actress wearing it was extremely cute.)

Both characters were Jewish New Yorkers, and it seemed like the film was trying to be a surreal/whimsical look at relationships in an Annie Hall-esque manner, but somehow ended up less like Woody Allen and more like David Lynch. This was partly due to the shadowy black—and-white photography, and partly due to the sheer strangeness of the dialogue. The opening scene of the film was just a black screen (with a small, moving white blob that may or may not have been just a scratch on the print) accompanied by a lengthy offscreen phone conversation between the two leads; I thought at first that the entire film would be like this. The ending of the film is equally memorable – the lead actress standing in the doorway of her apartment, at the end of a dimly hit hallway, forlornly calling the hippie – “Alan … Aaaaalaaaaan...” – like a mythical siren.

The sexual themes in both Hello Mustache and Help! My Snowman's Burning Down made me realize that there must be even more strange films in the Rochester library's collection than the ones I saw in class as a kid. Somehow I'd always assumed the films in that collection were all educational or otherwise kid-friendly, simply because those were the ones I would have seen. But clearly there are even deeper waters to be explored.

The enigma of Hello Mustache was as fascinating as the movie: Who made it, and why? Was this a theater piece that someone decided to commit to celluloid? Was this a student film, or funded by a grant? Did these people ever make any other movies? Where are they now, and are they even still alive? How did the Rochester library come to possess a copy – was it donated, or did they purchase it, and in either case how did the library come to know about the film in the first place? Was any of this at all unusual for the time, or was 16mm filmmaking (complete with optical sound) as common back then as, say, YouTube postings today? So many tantalizing mysteries.

The other great thing about seeing 60s/70s curiosities like Hello Mustache and K9000: A Space Oddity is that it reminded me why I was attracted to filmmaking in the first place. Nowadays, it seems, both Hollywood and the audience (now narrowly defined as the ComiCon audience only) seem to have mutually concluded that any new movie must now be based on something you already know before you even set foot in the theater – it must be a remake of a movie you've already seen, or a novel you've already read ... or a comic book, or a video game, or an old TV show … and must contain absolutely no artistic, creative or personal stamp.

But twenty, thirty, forty years ago, it was the opposite. Film was the medium where anything was possible.

25 Months Ago: Day 2

DAY 2 – June 29, 2008

Day 2 of production on “Saberfrog” was spent shooting a sequence that took place in a private, ad hoc screening room. When I was writing the script, I pictured the location as a dingy, menacing warehouse – the kind of place that 80s action movies and “Torchwood” episodes always seem to end up at.

But an existing, functional screening room was more convenient, and Squeaky Wheel in Buffalo fit the bill. Squeaky Wheel staff member Brian Milbrand kindly let us take down some of the folksier touches – the string of Christmas lights hanging on the screen, and a “Cinema” sign hanging on the back wall – to capture at least part of the grungy atmosphere we were aiming for.

Shooting in Buffalo meant a long car journey for all but two of the actors (Liz and Karyus, both of whom were living in Buffalo at the time anyway). This was a long and pivotal scene in the script, and the only scene for which I scheduled an entire 8 hours. Most scenes in “Saberfrog” would be shot in 4 hours or less, with available light whenever possible, but this scene was an all-day epic featuring six major speaking parts, four extras in effects makeup, atmospheric lighting, and an abstract video playing in the background, plus action and lengthy speeches.

My philosophy is that, when shooting a low-budget movie, it's important to begin with the most important scenes, the most complex scenes, and the scenes with all the actors together. That way, you are eventually left with simpler scenes that are easier to shoot, or less important scenes that you can afford to cut. This is important if you fall behind schedule or the cast have other commitments.

I normally have a quick n' dirty, guerrilla approach to shooting, but I was determined to put in the extra effort to frame and choreograph this pivotal scene well. Blue gels and tilted “Batman” angles were my tools for giving the scene atmosphere, and Karyus (a fellow film school grad with plenty of real-world crew experience) helped immensely in achieving this. When you see the finished scene, you'll spot an anteroom with a shelf full of videotapes. Karyus noted with amusement that the tapes were of a public access show circa 1993, which we both agreed was perfect for the underground ambience we were going for.

This was the first day of shooting for J.D. Edmond, in the lead role of Josh; and also for John Sindoni, in the supporting role of Dr. Garrison, a professor from Josh's college memories (I'm phrasing this carefully so as not to give too much away). The first half of the day was spent shooting a stretch of dialogue between J.D. and J.S., while Tom Gleason was busy putting effects makeup on the extras: Shawn Gleason (his brother), Jen Avila, Jessica Lerkins and Beth Clark.

J.D. and J.S. blew me away. I'd envisioned their encounter as slightly absurd and over-the-top, but they brought real drama and gravitas to the scene, elevating it beyond what I'd imagined. J.S. spent this part of the scene standing and walking towards J.D. while speaking, and I took care to reframe and refocus for each section of the speech. Now this is directing! Enough of that handheld crap!

The rest of the cast were left idle until after lunch. On Liz's recommendation, I bought everyone takeout from Falafel Bar on Elmwood Ave. Liz and I went to fetch the food so that the others could finish their makeup and go over their lines.

After lunch, we filmed some shots that featured an abstract video being projected. I'd spent the previous night (or was it that very morning?) chopping this material together out of random junkyard footage I'd recorded for a music video but never used. This pre-recorded sequence played on a miniDV deck connected to the video projector, and after most takes I would rewind the deck so that this background footage wouldn't run out during a take. When Karyus saw these randomly assembled shots, separated by the occasional gap of blackness, he laughed out loud and said “It looks like a thesis!” Again, this was exactly what I was going for.

By this point, cruel reality was setting in: The amount of time I'd lovingly spent on the dialogue between J.D. and J.S. meant that I had only a few hours left to shoot a massive amount of important material. I can still remember standing there, a horrible grimace on my face, as I struggled to restructure the scene in my head and think of shots that I could achieve quickly in the time remaining, and what shots I could live without (or recreate later). Working as fast as possible – sometimes by shooting one take and one take only – we managed to finish up a mere 45 minutes after the completion time I'd agreed upon with Squeaky. I think they would have let us stay a little later, but I didn't want to abuse their generosity.

Whereas Day 1 felt like a triumph, Day 2 left me feeling frustrated. More recently, Tom and I had a conversation about that day, and he observed that if I'd had someone else taking on more of the production duties I would have been able to get more done. The great thing about digital filmmaking is that you can do it all yourself … but that doesn't necessarily mean you should.

The rushed shoot compromised this sequence in some ways. There were several important shots – and lines – that I just didn't get, and would eventually have to shoot back in Rochester, using tight framing to disguise the change in location. A key dialogue exchange between Reuben and Liz, which was supposed to be pivotal to Liz's character, ended up being improvised because it was simpler to shoot it that way, costing the scene some of its nuance.

But in other ways, the scene was made tighter and better by the limits of time. The scene I'd written was full of complex actions and effects that would have been more suited to a Hollywood epic than to the cheap, mumblecore-on-LSD indie film that I was making. The ticking clock forced me to strip the scene to its dramatic essentials, and I believe that what I ended up having to shoot was, on the whole, sharper and more dramatic than what I'd written and planned. This unfortunately meant that Tom's effects makeup was featured less prominently than planned, but it was necessary to prioritize the plot and characters over the effects – which is just how it should be, especially on an indie film.

This was the most challenging day of shooting, though. From here, things would mostly get easier; in fact, the next day's shoot was much simpler …