Beginnings and Endings

9 November 2004. It's been forty-eight days since we finished shooting on 22 September, and what do I have to show for it? Not much. As we neared the end of production I was oft heard to remark that I intended to take a month off just to clear my head before diving into the editing process. Well, it's been a month and then some, and I'm finally getting some things done.

In the hopes of reassuring the cast and crew that I still exist and intend on finishing this project, Adam and I have made some improvements to the site. We removed some stuff, like the "picture of the day" section that never got used once. We added this blog feature so I can attempt stave off the insatiable curiosity of those querulous hordes (including you, dear reader) who shrink from no opportunity to demand a progress update. Henceforth, any and all who ask about the film shall be directed, with a haughty wave of my impatient hand, to this blog.

"So," you might be inclined to ask, spreading your hands and pitching your voice in mock frustration, "what have you been up to this whole time?"

The last shoot was at the apartment complex (which shall remain nameless to protect the guilty), where we redressed the rental office to portray an oppressive corporate waiting room in the Big Apple. It turned out to be one of our most relaxing and enjoyable shoots. You know, a bunch of people sitting around, having a good time, laughing together, and making a movie. The way these things are supposed to be. Aaron's litany of facial expressions will definately be preserved as a DVD special feature.

The day after that last shoot I packed my bags and tried to wrap things up in Albuquerque. Late that night, under the now-familiar glare of a 250 watt tungsten-balanced light, I crammed every nook and corner of my '98 Oldsmobile Intrigue with the accumulated errata of my three month adventure. On Friday, 24 Sept., I drove to Phoenix, where I ended up staying through the weekend with some good friends. It was a very acceptable beginning to the detox process.

I arrived back at my grandmother's house in West Covina, California, around noon on Monday, 27 November. I stayed only a little over a week, just long enough to unpack the car and spend a few blissful nights in my own bed. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to speak ill of that black futon I bought from Ramzi for $75 and slept on all summer. It served me well and has found new purpose as a sofa in the upstairs bedroom of my parents' house in Abq. But it was damn nice to sleep on a real bed again.

I drove back to Albuquerque on Thursday, 7 October. I drove it all in one day, despite repeated efforts by malicious road spirits to thwart my progress. The first, and most interesting, was the guy who flew past me going 100+ MPH on I-15 in Victorville. He very nearly hit me as he swerved across three lanes of busy traffic and roared on. Only a few seconds later, I watched as he turned sharply and plowed his mid-90s blue Toyota into the guardrail. Fortunately (for him), some volunteer firefighters happened to be going by and kept him alive until the ambulance arrived. I did my civic duty and stayed to give a witness report, hopefully ensuring that he would never drive again.

Driving on, most of the other obstacles were less exciting, mostly road construction and a wreck that turned a section of I-40 east of Kingman into a parking lot for half an hour. During the week I was in Albuquerque, I went to an auction, went swing dancing, played pool, went drinking, had the wrap party, and hung out with a ton of people. But by far the most memorable event was watching the birth of my goddaughter, Celest, who was born on the 15th of October, 2004. Tony, who worked many miserable hours on the film as our boom mic operator, is the proud father.

After Celest and her mother were safely home again, I drove back to California with a car full of computer monitors. That was Monday, October 18. Since then, my life has resumed a more tranquil pace. I spent a lot of time reading, watching movies, and pecking away at other creative projects that languished during the summer. I bought a folding table for the editing computer and monitors, and rearranged the furniture in my bedroom to better accommodate the newest addition to my computer family:

"Thanks sooo much for sharing," I can already hear you saying, sarcasm dripping from your words like blood from a harridan's tit. "But when are you gonna tell us what we really want to know? When's the damn movie gonna be done?!?"

I suppose all I can say to that is, it'll be done when it's done. Right now, everything we filmed is sitting in that gray box beneath my table, recorded on dozens of miniDV tapes. I've transferred some of it (177 GB worth) to the RAIDed hard drives in my sturdy editing machine, but that's about it so far. I'm waiting on Adam, who says he can get me a cheap copy of Avid from a contact up there in NorCal. If that falls through for some reason, I'll have to scrape together some cash and buy it in the next week or so.

Once that happens, I'll get started on the slow and laborious process of editing. I've done some video editing before, but nothing on this scale. I'll be doing a lot of learning as I go. Sound familiar? Yeah, it's not like I had any experience writing a screenplay, finding a cast, securing locations, directing actors, or any of that other stuff either. I'm not sure whether getting to this point means I've been successful at any of these things or if I've faked it just well enough to squeak by. Or maybe it's all the result of some fiendish Faustian bargain. I'm sure you have your own theories.

Looking back on the whole experience, I have to chuckle at what a total clusterfuck it was. I honestly find it hard to imagine why anyone stuck with it the whole way. My memories of the production are a little shaky - I have trouble remembering the order of the key shoots. I can only surmise that I descended into temporary madness, and I want to offer my heartfelt thanks to all of you who followed me through the fire.

Despite all the stress and frustration, I think I'd really like to do it again. I'd do a lot of things differently, though. I think a lot of the problems we ran into could be circumvented by some better planning and preparation. I made a lot of mistakes, and for the sake of my own recollection I'd like to ennumerate the worst of them here. I'm sure everyone who was involved would be more than happy to mention a few more, but these are the ones I see as the most detrimental:

• Division of labor. I was not only trying to write, direct, and produce, but manage locations, props, and equipment myself. That's not to denigrate the contributions of the many people who helped in those areas; the problem was I didn't simply assign someone to each role and trust them to take care of it. Admittedly, it would have been difficult sometimes given the often volatile nature of our crew's availability, but I think in the future there should be very clear job titles and responsibilities. One reason I avoided this was that I didn't want people to feel restricted to a single role, but that view underestimates the generous nature of the cast and crew.

• I tried to both direct and produce. Big mistake. I now know the crucial difference between director and producer, which I didn't appreciate before. If I'm ever again in a position to decide which I'm going to do, I'll pick one and find someone else to do the other. I think I was less terrible and producing than I was at directing, so that's probably the role I'd pick on the next one. Creatively, I'm much more a writer than a visual artist. When writing, I can mention the important stuff and leave it to the reader's imagination to fill in the details. When directing a movie, the director has to meticulously craft every minute detail of the visual environment, and I didn't really have a knack for that.

I also feel like I neglected the actors to a large extent because I was so busy dealing with everything else. Sitting down with the actors and working out the nuances of their performances is the main thing the director is supposed to do, and I was so worried about the camera and the lights and running power cords that I neglected that rather crucial job.

• Scheduling. Need I say more? Arrrgh. I know this is the one people really want to kill me over, and I can't blame them. This is where I made my biggest miscalculation, and I can only once again offer my heartfelt thanks that the cast and crew didn't desert en masse. Basically, here's what happened. We cast the movie before we had a lot of the locations secured or figured out. Since the actors seemed to have fairly flexible schedules, I didn't think it would be a problem to schedule as locations became available.

Then, a week before we were really ready, I learned we had to do the computer pod scenes immediately. We rushed to get that done in one nightmarish session, and from then on chaos reigned. I should have stopped to regroup and plan the rest of the filming all the more carefully after that. Instead, I simply decided to keep going as opportunities arose. Because the actors didn't have a set-in-stone schedule in advance, they were unable to organize the other stuff in their lives around it, so their schedules and availability kept changing. Before long, everyone was so confused (including me) that all we could do was try to survive day to day.

In retrospect, it wasn't the pace of filming that was the stressful part; it was the lack of a schedule. Probably the best piece of advice on how I should have handled the scheduling came from cast member Richard "Rabbit" Boehler, who (I discovered late in filming) has directed stage plays and short films. He said the best way to do it was to schedule everything so far in advance that nobody has an excuse not to be there. I will cherish these words of wisdom when next I embark upon such a venture. I would really like to have a super-tight two or three week shooting schedule next time, no matter how ambitious the project. Our shooting dragged on to a final total of fifty-one days, from the computer pod fiasco on 3 August to the job interview scene on 22 October. No wonder everybody was wiped out by the end.

• Characterization. A minor mistake compared to the previous ones, but one that bothers me nonetheless. Something I failed to do when writing the script was to fully flesh out all the characters. Since I'd never really worked with actors before, I didn't realize that they actually expect me to know interesting details about their character's life. As a result, I answered a lot of actors' questions with responses like, "I dunno, make something up." I think this was a massive failure on my part as both a writer and director, and one I didn't understand until too late. Now I realize that the characters in a movie need to have a broader life outside the scope of the film's story.

In a novel, it's easy to flesh out a character by going off on a twenty page tangent about their childhood; not so in a ninety minute movie. Since those details didn't need to be in the script, I didn't think I needed them at all. Next time I write a screenplay, I'm going to write treatments for each of the characters. I may even write a short story for each, so that the actors can get a better sense of who their character is. And, as I mentioned before, I'll trick some other poor sap into being the director so that I'm not the one who has to come up with unexpected details on the spot.

So, despite the fact that the production phase of this movie might justly be compared to a slow-motion train wreck, we did finish it. Believe it or not, that was by no means certain. At various times I'm sure everybody thought that the whole thing was about to fall apart. Rather than looking at the whole thing as a narrowly averted disaster, however, I like to think of it as a hugely educational experience for everyone involved.

Some people probably concluded that they would never again work with a disorganized, clueless bumbler like me again, and that's fair. I certainly won't hold it against anyone if they decide not to be involved in future projects of mine. For my part, however, I think the next attempt I make at filmmaking will be a vastly better experience for all involved. I think I have a pretty good idea of what went wrong, and I have some ideas about how to do it better next time.

If you have any thoughts you'd like to share with me, post a comment or send me an e-mail. I definately want to keep in touch with everyone, and I mean that. I look forward to seeing you all again in the not-too-distant future, and once again I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for helping make this movie happen.