Two years ago, I wrote in the Janesville Messenger about the Madison 48 Hour Film Project, a crazy weekend in which local filmmakers compete to create the best short film from scratch, start to finish, in two days. It is an exercise in caffeine-fueled creativity gone wild.
I first became aware of this film festival when I was recruited at the last minute (actually, everything in these films is at the last minute) to play a role in Janesville filmmaker Stephen Pickering’s entry, "Kingdom of Ends." The entire experience was so rewarding that the following year, I expanded my involvement from just acting to forming my own creative team with good friend and filmmaker Robert Jarzen.
Our story begins on a recent Friday evening at the Electric Earth Café on West Washington Street. The ZenLyke Productions duo (Jarzen and Lyke...get it?) sits at a table, inspirational malted beverages in hand, waiting patiently to draw out of a hat (literally) to find out what type of film we are assigned to make. The festival has a pretty decent Milton/Janesville presence this year, with at least four teams (out of 23) coming from our area. In fact, Stephen Pickering’s team is the defending champion, having won the event last year with a sci-fi film called “Unknown Spectre.”
When it is our turn to draw, we get “Film Noir.” I am excited but Robert is not thrilled; that film style isn't his cup of tea. I immediately text-message my 18-year-old daughter Corinne, who is preparing to compose our soundtrack music, and ask if she knows what “film noir” is. She has no clue. Thanks to Wikipedia and my suggestion of listening to the Tom Waits song “Small Change,” she is able to get the idea.
After every team has their assigned film genre, the required elements are announced. Every film has to include a certain prop, a certain line, and a character with a specific name and occupation. This year, we have to have a tie, a courier named Patrick or Patricia Raynal, and the line, “I can’t hear you.” With that information in hand, the clock starts ticking and we all scatter to go out and create.
The next five hours are a whirlwind. Ideas fly around the interior of the car driving back to Milton. Lines of dialogue are scribbled down at McDonald's in Newville. A quick stop at home to grab a fedora and an old Royal typewriter to use as props. A run to the Janesville Little Theatre warehouse to pick up more 1940's-era props. A shopping trip to buy cigarettes and a shot glass. A call to our lead actor, Michael Chase, to tell him what to wear, where and when to show up Saturday, and when he'll see a script. For the story we're doing, we only need three other actors – Robert's wife Tracy, me, and my nephew William.
By 12:30 in the morning, we have a completed script to send to Michael. Corinne has a good start on the soundtrack music and is trying to get friends together to record the tune later in the day.
After a few hours of sleep, Robert sets up his basement for the shoot while I work at home to create an old-fashioned five-dollar bill and an authentic-looking Western Union telegram. I find exactly what I need online (including a font used on actual telegrams). We try to pay attention to the details to make sure the props we use look authentic to the 1940's – from the typewriter to the telephone to the money to the desk (purchased in 1948 by my parents) to the brand of cigarettes. Proving the indispensability of Google, I look up a glossary of film noir terms as well as tips on how to hold a cigarette properly.
By 9 a.m. Saturday, we're back at Robert's, shooting in his nice cool basement on what becomes a brutally hot day. We have to shoot the scene with my nephew William first, because he has to leave for the airport at 11 to fly to Poland with a group of college students. Tracy is only available until about 1, so the scenes with her are next.
Shooting goes very well, as we knew it would with two professional actors, Tracy and Michael, on board. We also luck out by having Robert's brother-in-law, a still photographer, help with lighting and his contributions are priceless. Principal photography is finished by about 2:30 in the afternoon – which gives us more than a full day to edit and do post-production.
I return home for a little rest and to see how Corinne is doing on the music. She hasn't had any success recruiting musicians so she resorts to recording all the parts herself. After I take a nap, Corinne presents me with four separate digital files – her playing bass, piano, trombone and finger-snaps. One problem – I don't have audio mixing software. I find a free program online and put the pieces together.
When I run the music over to Robert's to add it to the film, he already has completed most of the editing, but he is not a happy camper; much of the footage contains a loud hum from the lights we were using on the set. We were aware of it during shooting, but over the headphones it didn't sound like it was being picked up by the microphone. We were wrong.
We had a similar issue last year, but it was minor and the soundtrack music covered the problem. This year, the hum is far too loud to mask. Until 1 in the morning, we surf the Internet searching for solutions to the problem.
At around 9 a.m. Sunday, Robert reads through the help manual for his editing software while I scan more tutorial pages online. After an hour or so of trial and error, we finally seem to have found a way to eliminate most of the noise while preserving the dialogue. Six hours and one computer crash later, we are satisfied that our effort was worth it – the hum is almost entirely removed.
At about 6:15 p.m., we arrive at the Jade Monkey Lounge in Madison. We take pride in being the first ones to deliver our completed film for the second year in a row. When the producer of the competition sees us arrive, she exclaims, “You have got to be kidding me!”
Alas, three teams miss the 7:30 deadline – one by a mere three minutes. One of the late teams had their car break down on the Beltline on the way to deliver their entry; I can't imagine the frustration.
Four days later, all of the films are shown at a special screening at the Orpheum Theatre on State Street in Madison. I see several people there I know from Janesville – Stephen and his team, filmmaker Dave Haldiman, local actor Dave Bitter, former Charter Media employee Brian Alberth. When Stephen's film is shown, the cast is like a “Who's Who” of the local theater community: Dave Bitter, Pat Hall, Tom Hall, Mike Casey, Elsie Van Tassell.
Robert and I worry about how our film will look and sound in the Orpheum. Darker, black and white films like ours don't always fare the best on the screen there, and the sound system can be iffy at times. Our film is shown second, and we breathe a sigh of relief as neither problem surfaces.
We're amazed as we see the credits on the other films. Our credits are definitely among the shortest; our entire cast and crew totaled 7 people. Some films had more folks than that just involved in the writing.
When we turned in our film Sunday night, the producer asked how we are able to finish without pulling all-nighters or coming right down to the wire. I think the key for us, which we discovered by accident and not by design, is to keep things simple. Almost all of the creative stuff was done by two people. We had a small cast. We shot in one location. All those factors added up to time savings. There are a lot of teams that probably think we're nuts to have so much responsibility resting on the shoulders of a few people. If you see the credits for the teams that win the national competitions, they generally have a list as long as a Hollywood studio release. But for us, our system works. We aren't going to win any huge awards, but we have fun and enjoy the process.
You can see the resulting film, “Written Off,” here on YouTube. Hope you enjoy it...
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