"Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra"

I know just enough about music to be either dangerous or incoherent. Read music? check; notate it? check—I spent part of the night before we started shooting Hatboxes transcribing the beginning of Psalm 126 as it's sung in Hebrew....   

Birkat Ha-Mazon (Ps. 126)



But theory? vocabulary, even?  Not so much.

We met with a composer in early August, and he suggested creating tension through instrumentation (formal harp versus informal guitar) and lit up at my affection for the androgynous viola.

That was the easy part.

Being a lifelong writer and working in publishing, I can talk about writing in my sleep, and probably do. Thinking in pictures, I have no problem strongly expressing ideas about visuals.  But music? Sure, I'm passionate about it, but finding the idiom for expressing nuances, even simple "this rather than that, because..." beyond mere taste has me thinking in dimensions uncharted. It calls to mind the Star Trek: TNG episode where Captain Picard has to figure out how to communicate with an alien whose entire language is a recursive series of metaphors.

More Paris 1936, less St. Louis 1913.  Less minuet, more tango.

The music that originally caught my attention as expressive of some of the things going on in Hatboxes was "Pas du chat noir" by the Tunisian-French musician Anouar Brahem.  A moody, introspective piece featuring piano and oud (and, big surprise, accordion), its emotional tone eventually proved too dark and pensive (and let's not even talk about the cost of permissions).  The tune behind the Hatboxes pre-production trailer is lighter, but also lacks emotional range.  So now I've learned to say, "That stretch runs too sweet...the overtones at 1:15 are arresting, as are the quintuplets at :05," in addition to speaking Tamarian.

Susana Darwin

editing Hatboxes

The Hatboxes shoot wrapped late the night of Wednesday, 26 June.  Our editor, Justine Gendron, submitted a rough assembly not quite two weeks later.  A rough assembly puts the best footage in the order the script dictates.  That version came in at a little over 21 minutes.  You could see everything, but it did drag.

Justine and I have met four times since, refining the film as we go.  As of today, Hatboxes is coming in at just over 17 minutes, right on target at about a minute per page of script. 

Editing detail, Hatboxes, scene 4.

This is no time to get sentimental about the words on the paper, or even some thrilling little fragment; if something doesn't serve the story, it has to go.  Whole scenes have made their way to the cutting room floor (now a dated metaphor, since this is all happening digitally...what used to be "slice" is now "click").  We don't want to rush the story, but we also don't want to drag it down or burden it because someone (usually me) can't let go of something.  An unnecessary turn of someone's head, a line that is, in the end, just "yadda-yadda," one blink too many:  gone.

What's astonishing is how much the actors brighten towards incandescence as we tighten the film.  Its emotional heft seems to be deepening, too.  Like everyone else, I'm anxious to see it when it's done.

Susana Darwin

after the Hatboxes shoot

Not surprisingly, there wasn't much time during the Hatboxes shoot to draft blog posts, but we did keep up with our Twitter feed (backwards chronologically):
https://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/%23hatboxesthemovie



© 2012 Brave Lux. All rights reserved.



The shoot lasted for six days and went well.  We ran into some glitches beyond our control on the first day (the sun does move inexorably; so do the planes approaching O'Hare from the east and the Friday late-afternoon commuter trains), but beyond those, we kept to our schedule, ate very well, discovered that some cats are good at assisting with data wrangling, and came away with some very good footage.

Photos of the overnight shoot (Urban Orchard interior, day 3):
http://flickr.com/gp/esteban_monclova/4b1x5M/

Photos of the night shoot (exterior of the apartment building two doors from my house, day 5):
http://tinyurl.com/6salu8n

I learned more about HVAC controls in those six days than I had known living in 27 different places over my entire lifetime.  It's astonishing how noisy air conditioning can be.

I learned that while the shooting schedule may look modular on paper, when it comes to making scheduling changes, considerations beyond the cold linearity of time and geography require a filmmaker's attention.  It seemed to work out for the best that the two most intense scenes got shot on the last day, but that was a lucky break.  The cast and crew of Hatboxes were an exceptional group of professionals, and working with them was an honor.

I learned that hearing the ingredients in Cheetos read aloud at Hour 11 of Shoot Day Six is unaccountably funny.

We'll keep you posted on our progress.  We've already received a rough assembly of the film, and it looks quite promising.

Susana Darwin

2 Days before Day 1 of a 6-Day Shoot

The Hatboxes shoot is getting close.  This was part of the Hatboxes day today...

At 1:46 am, the first AD circulated an updated shooting schedule.

At 2 am, the director of photography circulated notes, which the producer responded to at 3:10.

At 3:35, I received a message asking what size Hatboxes T-shirt I want.

At 5:28, awakened by an 8-pound cat with 20-pound paws on a mission to snuggle, I replied that I'd like a large shirt, please.

At 6:15, I watered the garden.  Very relaxing; the time it takes is the time it takes.  Glad to see some tomato blossoms.  Contemplated despising something vital to the Hatboxes endeavor:  PayPal (user experience too often worse than voice-mail hell, if you know what I mean).

Handled a couple of pieces of Guild Literary Complex and West Andersonville Neighbors Together business.

Replied to a thread about the weirdos that come out of the woodwork when you put something out there...narcissism never dies.

Reviewed the 1:46 am shooting schedule and got dizzy considering how this whole thing went from "What if...?" almost two decades ago to "Day 1 Friday:  Shot 16 EXT. DALEY PLAZA – DAY Daley Plaza – 118 N Clark St:  6:30 am Setup..."  Quite the rainbow...

 8 am:  learned that we are now only $486 ($111 as of 7:30 pm) from our Indiegogo fundraising campaign goal! [21 June:  we cleared it, and then some!]

Gotta love the lighting equipment list:

(2) Juniors (2000 watt)

(6) Babies (1000 watt)

(6) Tweenies (750 watt)

(3) Betweenies (300 watt)

(3) Inbetweenies (150 watt)

(3) Inkies (100 watt)

(2) Mighties (2000 watt)

(2) Mickies (1000 watt)

(2) 4ft 4bank kinoflo

(2) 2ft 4bank kinoflo

(16) Baby stands

(6) Combo stands

(2) Mombo stands

Mailed a postcard to myself so we can maybe use its bar code sticker on a prop (It read, "CHANGE YOUR SOCKS!" if you must know).

Then I discovered that a pair of overlapping errors have created a scheduling conflict for one of our actors.  Circulated some options to the crew. [21 June:  1AD created a fine solution.]


Researched some last-minute wardrobe questions.

In the afternoon I picked up a couple of props...

(I'm a sucker for elegant design)
...and chatted with the folks at Farragut's about the wrap party.


Picked up enough bagels to feed all of Suriname for a day—thanks, Einstein Bros!

6 pm:  Rehearsals!  Great to have such smart, thoughtful people to work with.


At the end of the day, Etta Worthington, our intrepid producer, turned up with food and equipment and ideas and a to-do list that promises another busy day tomorrow.


Susana Darwin

What People Are Saying

It's nice to be talked about. Usually.  We're happy to have a couple of media outlets run stories about us recently.

One is the Forest Park Review. 

 

The other article appeared in the Windy City Times.

Announcing Our Cast

We are delighted to announce the actors that have been cast for roles in HATBOXES.

Miriam will be played by Robyn Okrant, a veteran actor of Chicago theatre and indie film.  Miriam is an orthodox woman with three children trying to deal with her husband's abandonment of the family and of Orthodox Judaism.

Playing Nadine is Kat O'Connor, who studied acting both in the US and London, and has acted in theatre and film productions in Chicago.  Nadine is a secular Jewish lawyer who has been out as a lesbian for years but is trying to figure out what it is she's longing for.

The estranged husband of Miriam is Aaron, also a lawyer,  who will be played by Tom Hickey. He recently had a role in the pilot for Underemployed and has played many roles on the stage for companies like Straw Dog Theatre and Lakeside Shakespeare.

Nadine's friend Lena is a creative business woman, free spirited, energetic and witty. She will be played by Fawzia Mirza. She was in the new film Scrooge and Marley, that is currently in post production, and has appeared in many Chicago indie films.

Rounding out the cast is Maya Boudreau who plays Hannah, the 15 year-old (and oldest) daughter of Miriam and Aaron. Maya is a graduate of New York University. Locally she has performed with  companies such as Lookingglass Theatre and American Theatre Company.

Generosity and Intimacy in "Mad Men"

*

Mad Men was coming perilously close to losing me this season until the episode "Christmas Waltz," which features an extended sequence between Joan Harris and Don Draper.  After Don hustles Joan out of the agency before she does bodily harm to the dingbat receptionist who'd allowed Joan to get served with divorce papers, they slip deliciously into the entitlement beauty brings...at a Jaguar dealership (where else?).  With exquisite timing and self-assurance, Don and Joan play off of each other and off of the poor salesman and walk away to test drive a shiny red midlife crisis coupe.  Who else could get away with writing a $6,000 check for a $5,600 car and shrugging, "If we don't return it, consider it sold"?

Joan and Don wind up at what Rachel Maddow would probably call an "old-man bar" and drink the afternoon away.  The splendid writing gives the performers room to play as they get deeper into their cups.  Layers of friendship and attraction and accumulated time and experience between Don and Joan allow Hamm and Hendricks to listen to each other and hand the scene to one another in a spiraling accumulation of power and good will.  It's a glory of intimacy and generosity.

Susana Darwin


*http://blogs.amctv.com/photo-galleries/mad-men-season-5-episode-photos/episode-10-don.php

The Casting Director

Casting. It’s fun. It’s maddening. It’s tiring.  It’s sort of like doing a puzzle—trying to fit the pieces together. For HATBOXES, we only have seven roles. That should be easy, right?  But besides being able to act, the person has to look right for the part.  The children must be believable as being part of the same family, for example.

So, to help with this task, we employed the skills of a casting director.  But for so few roles, such a short film, why use a casting director, you might ask.

We decided we needed someone with connections to actors and to talent agencies. And so we brought on Anthony White of Anthony White Casting.

Starting his casting career in 2008, Anthony White was first introduced to the casting world working as casting production assistant with Los Angeles based Reality Casting Company, Doron Ofir Casting. He later worked as a casting assistant for both Sharon King Casting and House Casting.  As an independent casting director, Anthony has cast several independent feature, commercials, industrials, music videos, and short films including ads for Lexus, McDonalds, and Cover Girl.

So Anthony pre-auditioned many actors before the director got to see them.  And ultimately that saves a lot of time.  And, because of Anthony’s connections, we were able to cast from a larger pool of actors.

We’re happy that casting decisions have been made and will be announced very soon.

How NOT To Throw a Movie Premiere

A recent evening attending an indie film premiere was a drag of night out, but a valuable object lesson:

1.  Don't present a rough cut as a "premiere."
2.  Especially, don't charge $25 for tickets to the "premiere,"

3.  indicate the event is "formal" (I wore a silk suit and heels, for crying out loud),

4.  and then have the nerve to ask for feeback from your audience of suckers.

5.  Don't serve one-per-customer treats cold to your "platinum" attendees.

6.  Don't advertise the start time as 7 when it's really 8:15.

7.  Don't ignore the screenwriter you hired to clean up your script and give it some shape and heft.

8.  Don't forget to storyboard.

9.  Don't scrimp on your director of photography.
10.  Don't scrimp on your sound team.

11.  If your movie is going to feature "intertwined stories," intertwine the doggone stories.

12.  Don't rely on music to tell your story ("I have something to tell you."  [musical interlude while the two characters walk in the park] "That's a lot to take in.")
OR to pass for transition
OR to tell your audience what to feel
OR to pad your movie's length.
13.  Rack focus sparingly.

14.  Spell-check your credits.

15.  DO NOT write AND produce AND direct.

When the film was over, I said to my date, "I owe you."  She told me I owe her a bad lesbian movie.  "You're a cheap date," I replied. "When I dragged [a certain ex] to see Bertolucci's Sheltering Sky, I came out owing her seven movies."  And at least Sheltering Sky was beautiful to look at.

Susana Darwin

just like the raid on Entebbe

Because Hatboxes is operating on a fairly tight budget, we have to be creative about envisioning and choosing shoot locations.  The Daley Courthouse, for example, charges $3,000 per day just to film inside it, and that doesn't include any of the labor or other fees, so...outside it is.


Daley Plaza, Chicago (© Burmese Tiger Trap)



One scene takes place in a grocery store, and it turns out that the first store we approached is never actually empty—even when it's closed, workers are stocking and rotating the produce.  Another store has agreed to allow us to shoot there, but it has a more boutique layout, which may entail more intensive set dressing, which means more time spent doing that in a compressed window.


The raid on Entebbe comes to mind:  Israeli commandos had a partial replica of the Entebbe Airport to use for drills before their dramatic rescue of 102 hijacked hostages in Uganda in 1976.  Once we confirm where we will be shooting, one way we can speed set dressing would be to create a partial backyard replica of the produce department to design how we want it to look ahead of time—how high to stack the apples, what pricing signage should look like, where to place the extras.


Susana Darwin

"Yadda Yadda Disquisition Talky-Talk," said George Clooney

I would rather read a book on a plane than try to watch a movie cut and bleeped to mid-air PG.  On a recent flight to Las Vegas not only did I catch a basic point about memorable screenwriting, but I witnessed why The Descendants lost the Best Picture Oscar to The Artist.  And that was just glancing up from Tolstoy from time to time, Coltrane on the iPod...but I digress.

In scene after scene, the King family and those around them sit or stand still, just talking—one missed opportunity after another.  Why bore your audience with static visuals (even if that is Hawai'i in the background) when actors can add dimension to their words with actions? Action can contradict the words, emphasize them, work in counterpoint to them.  A variety of activity from subtle to strenuous can add another axis to the film's picture and the sound.

During casting for Hatboxes, a section of "blah-blah-blah" in the script caught our attention. Hearing the reader—the person who utters the other side of conversation while an actor auditions—have to run through several sentences to get to the actor's next line started to sound alarms, especially since the characters are just sitting there talking.  Actually, it's just one person talking at some length.  As I hear her words in my head, she goes from seething to despairing to mortified, and that could be enough, but laying her words over some actions that can punctuate her speech gives us a better shot at success.

Nothing's writ in stone.

Susana Darwin

A Spoon Full of Masochism

After recently watching Faithless, a film Ingmar Bergman wrote and Liv Ullmann directed...

*

...I've been thinking about the telling of painful stories well.  In Faithless, an aging screenwriter conjures a woman to help him tell a layered tale of deception and betrayal between her, her husband, and the husband's best friend.  Ullmann and Bergman made striking choices about which parts of the story the woman narrates while moving from window seat to armchair to guest chair in the screenwriter's seaside study and which parts get staged in Paris and Stockholm and the Swedish countryside.  The appearance of a key prop tells us which of the two men the screenwriter is, and also lets us know that this affair really happened.**


Now, I happen to like movies with Russian-doll plot lines like this.  Carlos Saura's films Carmen and Tango stand out for their intricacy.  My question is why writer-directors like Ingmar Bergman and Woody Allen choose to be mean to their characters.  Is it auteurial self-loathing?  Sure, they're gifted filmmakers, but their later films in particular show a disappointment in humanity—a misanthropy—that just begs scoffing and dismissiveness.  The pity is they slime the audience with that misanthropy as thoroughly as their characters. Self-loathing doesn't have to lead to cruelty.  Suicide suggests self-loathing, but David Foster Wallace's contrasting kindness towards his fictional characters and the world leaps to mind.  Wallace could write about vile characters doing despicable things, but never with a whiff of cruelty towards them.


Maybe Faithless could have focused more on the effect of the adults' actions on the woman's daughter, like Fanny and Alexander centered on the children, but the screenwriter in Faithless insists the woman articulate her sin and his.  At least she's allowed to protest the anguish of the recounting and grieve the damage to the girl (thank you, Ullmann?).  By the end, the characters are wrung out, and so is the audience.  What does it take to explore difficult truths in film without requiring the collusion of the viewer's masochism?

Susana Darwin

*http://www.discshop.se/filmer/dvd/trolosa/P29100
**"really" as in within the film and "really" as in in Bergman's real life

No Gong Needed

No gong needed.  No shepherd's crook, no mask-of-gelid-politeness dismissals.  This is yet another great thing about working in Chicago—we saw a dozen talented performers read for roles in Hatboxes in the first set of auditions a couple of evenings ago, and every one had talent.  Sure, some were stronger than others, some were more in their groove, some connected better with the emotional nuances in the script, some took direction particularly well, but not one called to mind Jennifer Tilly as Blanche "Monica" Moran...

or any of the other 36 cringe-inducing also-rans in The Fabulous Baker Boys.

Far from it.

Truth is, auditions are very unglamourous.

                            


But, in very modest surroundings, some interesting performances happen.

And it's helpful for me as writer and director. The auditions were energizing and clarifying.  I saw ways to tighten the Hatboxes script and heard variations in rhythm and timbre that will help tell the story better.  I look forward to the next round.

Susana Darwin

Passover

I’ve studied a half-dozen Passover  haggadahs in the past month ahead of  hosting a “salon seder” last night with a great group of women.  We used the recently published New American Haggadah  (check out the “simultweets”).  The haggadah is the book that  guides the seder ritual, and tell you what, Passover is a marvel of an  all-over-the-place holiday:  we  observe the festival because the  Almighty told us to, but we’re also supposed to tell the story of the mass  escape of the Israelites from Egypt.  The story, the festival table, even the food, are all heavy with  symbolism, but the underlying message is self-determination.  Freedom.

Often everybody attending a Passover seder has a book in hand—the  haggadah—men and women, young and old.  Literacy affords an unparalleled promise of  freedom.

matzah = flight  from Egypt into the desert…the Israelites took off without time even to let  their bread rise; charosset, a  mixture of fruit, nuts, and spices = the mortar the Israelite slaves used  in building for the Egyptians; beitzah (hard-boiled  egg) = mourning the destruction of the Second Temple (and celebrating springtime); maror, here horseradish = the bitter harshness of slavery; z’roa (shankbone) = the  Passover sacrifice and the protection of the firstborn from the last plague; karpas (parsley) dipped in salt water =  the tears of the Hebrew slaves.

The orange is a  late addition to some seder plates:  a rabbi’s wife is alleged to have said that women belong in the  rabbinate like an orange belongs on the seder plate.

We do love our irony.

Four questions tell  us about different types of children, or different types of Jews.  Four  glasses of wine mark the holiness of the occasion, the telling of the  Exodus story, grace after the meal, and the psalms of praise.  A cup of wine welcomes the prophet  Elijah.

An observant Jew might hear the Bible’s telling of Exodus once a year, like  clockwork.  If you’re not so  observant, though, maybe you channel-surf past The Ten Commandments,  but you may be a bit vague on the details (Moses, reed basket…ten  plagues, “Let my people go,” miraculously divided sea…).  The parts of Exodus that get into the haggadah  and then into English translation assume an intimacy with the story that many  celebrants may not have. Like…Did you know that Moses had a speech  impediment?  Did you know that the  first thing the Almighty said to Moses after calling him from the burning bush  was “Take off your shoes”?   Did  you know that four women get named in the Exodus story, and the Jewish people  owes its existence to them all (Miriam, Shiphrah and Puah the midwives, and  Zipporah, the Midianite who married Moses)?

Susana Darwin

The Producer

“What does a producer actually do,” someone asked me recently. I sighed.  This wasn’t going to be a quick and easy answer. A producer is . . .

Oh, yes, the person (people) who tromp up to the stage at Academy Award time and collect the Oscar for best picture, thanking everyone along the way.

Ah, but that doesn’t answer the question. People end up with producing credits for a variety of reason:

• they may have contributed or invested a significant amount of money

• they may have made some important connections to assure the film’s success—maybe have gotten a well-known actor or two to commit to the project, or some important investors, or a studio, or . . .

• they may  have helped develop or shape the idea with the writer and the director

• they may have been rewarded for something they contributed of significance along the life of the film

• they may have worked tirelessly to gather cast and crew, and other resources needed

• they may have organized the shoot, created the budget and schedule, and made sure those documents made sense and were adhered to

• they may have stood around during a shoot in the background, solving problems as they arose

Well, the list could definitely be added to.

The titles that come with producing could be executive producer, producer, associate producer, co-producer, line producer—each of those may or may not connect easily with one of the bullets above.

So, although I didn’t totally answer my friend’s recently asked question, I made a start.

For HATBOXES, perhaps I can tell you what I am doing.  I’m a project manager, essentially. I believe my job is to assure that the film is completed on time, on budget, and at a high level of quality. 

I’ve managed a lot of projects.  In fact, that’s how Susana Darwin and I first met.  I was a project director at an educational publishing company, managing a multi-million dollar textbook project. I hired Susana as a photo researcher—her first position in publishing.

Back to the film.  My job is to make sure that things happen and this baby gets made.  If it was a really big project, there’d be lots of people reporting to me, doing the legwork. But this is a small project, so a lot I’m doing myself.  This is shared as well. Susana is producing as well, but I see my role as making sure those parts of the project don’t overwhelm her, so she can focus on being the director.

Certainly, when we go into production, I  hope that she sheds her producer shawl completely so she can only think of her directing tasks.

So, what is a producer?  It’s somebody who makes things happen.

But I’m interested in finding out something: have you ever wondered what a producer does and if so, has this in any way answered the question?


by Etta Worthington

On Casting

I circle back to the film Antonia’s Line every couple of years not only for one of the best understatements by a lesbian in all of film (“Mooi motor” is Dutch for “Nice bike;” the look Els Dottermans gives that motorcycle is pure chrome lust), but because the film tells a compelling story and its actors are interesting to look at.  Few are classic beauties, but their faces and bodies are powerfully expressive, enlivening completely the characters they play.

I’ve tried not to fix particular faces in mind for the characters in Hatboxes as I’ve drafted the script and rendered the storyboards, though I did have to tell myself to quit staring in early April when a dead-ringer for “Miriam” turned up in line at the grocery store check-out two carts behind me.  Energy, presence, depth of attention, flexibility are among the qualities I’ll be watching for when we hold our casting calls.

Chemistry is the element that stirs the most anxiety when considering casting.  An individual actor’s charisma is one thing; what happens when two actors play together, with and against and off each other, is part of film’s magic.  The conundrum of chemistry is that acting at one level is fake.  

However, chemistry is something that can’t be faked, and its faking has been the downfall of too many lesbian films.  Maybe it’s one or both actors ducking out mentally at the moment when authenticity matters most; maybe it’s the director failing to clear obstacles to authenticity.  Maybe it’s rushing and losing focus and not capturing the best take, not having the courage or discipline to wait to be moved and insisting on that.

Susana Darwin

April 2012

Hatboxes script...storyboards...overheads...shot sheet

First came the script:  the idea of chemistry developing between a secular lesbian and a recently separated Orthodox woman arrived a long time ago, but telling a compelling story in an independent short was there from the beginning.  After many years, various titles, and numerous shifts in focus, the script made huge gains with the attention from my writing group, 41N 87W.  "Your story starts at page 15," they told me in 2009, and they were right.  In early 2011, I said to myself—probably aloud—"All you've ever wanted to do is make a movie, so go make a movie!"  A Chicago Filmmakers screenwriting class in got the screenplay within striking distance of creation.  Producer Etta Worthington applied her expertise late in the year, and now, Hatboxes is locked down and ready to shoot.


Which means that whatever is on the page today may need to change once we get on set in June.  Whatever's best for the story.

Next came the storyboards, which for Hatboxes look like a graphic novel by someone who is competent with a pencil, but who hasn't dedicated a lot of time to drawing.  Round 1 was good for the trees (six images to the page), but if you don't have a single image per page, it's hard to move them around.  Hard?  Impossible.  Plus, the scale of the boxes I was drawing in was too small for my skills—I needed more room (I felt like a kindergartner with a fat pencil).  And then there was the fact that pencil didn't scan well at all...so round 2.5 featured me and a Sharpie getting reacquainted with each drawing.

There are 123 of them.  That may be overkill.
...

...

After the storyboards came the overheads.  Imagine those schematic drawings of office cube farms showing the chairs, the desks, the filing cabinets, and maybe circles within flattened ovals representing a human figure from above.  Overheads are great for discovering logic bombs in the storyboards:  in shot 15, character X is on the left, but in 16, she's on the right.  Was her move intended?  Why did she move?  It has to be better to work out these kinks on paper [sic] than on set.  Planning is a gift to your future self.


...

...


And then came the shot sheet, a list of all the shots that squares with the script and storyboards.
...

...


I can't wait to review these with our director of photography.

Stay tuned...

Susana Darwin

April 2012