ImpossibleFX - photography | filmmaking

August 3, 2008

On August 29th the 2008 CineSol 36 Hour Film Race will begin and Orange Media will be competing once again. Last year I edited the ten minute horror short film Gibby directed called The End.

This time, however, with Edward at the helm, they’ve asked me to serve as Director of Photography. It will be my responsibility to give whatever story we wind up creating its look and feel; its mood. I’ve asked the producers if we could get permission from the TV station where we work to borrow the big, heavy Panasonic P2 ENG cameras instead of the prosumer camcorders we’ve used before. The reason is I find the 2/3″ cameras have lower noise, better light sensitivity, more efficient control layout, truer colors and a higher dynamic range over the prosumer 1/3″ camcorders. Also, because of their greater weight and size, the big ENG cameras are sturdier and not as prone to inadvertent shake. Besides, bystanders don’t take you seriously when your camera can be held comfortably in one hand.

I’m not going to know which genre we are to work in until the 29th. The producers want premade storylines for each of the probable genres so we already have something thought out. I don’t know how well this will work out since it pretty much didn’t last year. Too much thought, too much development and too much arguement gave us the weak entry we submitted last year. The infighting has already begun as our producer/writers can’t seem to come up with anything they all like.

Too many cooks in the kitchen.

I think all this deliberation is unnecessary: I proved earlier in the week that one can come up with a fun and doable story given a set of random required variables in about five minutes, plus a rewrite.

While at lunch I asked Mariano to come up with a set of variables like the ones we might receive from the film race, where each item must be included in the film at least once. He came up with this:

Genre: romance
Location: hardware store
Prop: fishing net
Character: lawyer
Dialogue: “I’m getting too old for this.”

What can you come up with?

I immediately pondered the story of Lucas Able: a regular guy enjoying his weekend when his wife Jill tasks him with fixing the kitchen counter. Not having a simple hammer he visits the local HARDWARE STORE and buys the most amazing hammer he’s ever seen. In fact, after using the hammer to fix the counter, Lucas falls in love with it.

Jill grows suspicious of her generally lazy husband as he proceeds to “fix” everything in the house, obsessed with his new found affair. Jealous, Jill calls her friend Cathy, a LAWYER, seeking legal advice: Jill wants to know if it is against the law to murder a tool. Cathy assures her that you cannot kill a stupid innanimate object and the law does not recognize tooltricide as being unlawful. After hanging up, Cathy mutters “I’M GETTING TOO OLD FOR THIS” and comforts her stapler, admitting that she “didn’t mean you.”

The ROMANCE between Lucas and his hammer is made all too clear as Jill walks in on the couple’s secret romantic dinner together. In a rage, Jill kidnaps the hammer and a car chase ensues. Jill arrives with the hammer at an ocean jetty littered with fisherman, having every intent of releasing it to a watery grave when Lucas arrives and attempts to reason with her. Jill just wants to work things out with her estranged husband but in an act of weakness throws the hammer toward the ocean. Acting quickly, Lucas grabs a nearby FISHING NET and uses it to rescue his hammer as Jill trips and also begins to fall but then grabs onto the hammer as Lucas pulls them both to safety, collapsing into each other. “We can work this out,” assures Lucas.

That night, with candles and empty glasses of wine about the room, Lucas and Jill lay in bed together smiling. “See, honey? I told you we could work this out” says Lucas as both he and Jill begin to caress each other…and the hammer snuggling between them.

The end.

I came up with that in five minutes while munching on a Sonic burger. You need three actors, the items listed, two cars, a house (where a room can double as the lawyer’s office or home) and there’s an ocean jetty not an hour away from my location. Completely doable, fun and mildly entertaining with some funny action and a gentle twist at the end.

I like it so much I’ll probably want to make it after the film race is over.

All I’m saying is that this over planning and over thinking is a waste of creative energy that should be focused on the day of the event and is what killed us last year. They’re trying so hard to be perfect that they can’t have fun with the project and the result will likely be as soulless as The End was last year.

Because of this I am taking no part in the writers meetings, only contributing to the technical and artistic discussions of the coming film. Personally, I don’t care what story we wind up doing. I just want the director to tell me what the point of the story is and what mood he wants to convey and I will take it from there…hopefully knocking it out of the park, so to speak.