It took a handful of folks asking about my micro-budget script CHAT before it occurred to me that I haven’t done a follow-up on the movie’s developments.
My last post on Chat was this: “DAY 20 5-11-2013: Hard to believe, y’say? Perhaps beyond the very realm of possibility…..nah. Wrapped CHAT today…”
The unofficial genesis of the movie dates back to November, 2011. That’s when Boris Wexler and I started throwing around ideas for a micro-budget movie. You can find some of that story here.
18 months later we closed out production, like this:
“Final Falcon scene…multiple setups, all handheld, from him walking out of the building, out front, turning a corner, supposedly looking into the sun, and walking off. Sounds simple but as anyone who has ever stepped on a film set knows, there are things you can control, and things you cannot. There’s also a thing called karma and a vibe around any film set. From Day 1 the breaks were going our way on CHAT. Now we’re not talking about a Cecille B. Demille, 10 Commandments-style miracle, but just was we were about to shoot the damn scene– the clouds parted! The crew, in amazement, hustled outside to grab the critical final scene. Falcon (Rush Pearson) in place, his hair spiked out like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. “Let’s go, let’s go!” The diva sun was toying with us… “And 3, 2, 1…Action!” Managed three takes before the cloud cover shifted back. Boris looks to Fred, Fred to Boris. “Think we got it.” One last set up inside the elevator, doors open, Falcon walks out the revolving doors…
“That’s picture wrap!” Cheers and applause.
The famous director talked about every movie essentially being three movies: The movie in the writer’s mind. The movie you film. And the final cut movie that belongs to the world.
CHAT is 2/3rds done. Production over, post-production begins. No whammies here…we’re cautiously optimistic.The long, strange road continues.”
Late May also happens to be the end of semester at Columbia College. My day gig kicked my ass last Spring. That, and the movie stress, caused me to bail. Literally. I left town for a month of R & R in the Philippines. It’s easy for the writer to split to Asia during post-production because, if he’s not the director, he’s not expected to be in the edit room. So whilst I was chilling, back in Chicago, the shape of the movie was coming together.
Boris and our editor, Erin Babbin, began work in May-June. Their method was this: Erin (who I’ve never met but am happy to thank for all her her work here—THANKS ERIN!) assembled our digital data into a coherent order. She then started work on “Reel 1”—meaning the first 8 to 10 minutes of the movie. Boris would sit with her at the Final Cut Pro station and choices were made in terms of scenes- scene length- shot order- which take- etc. Erin would work the full week piecing together Reel 1. A week later Boris would look over what she put together. In this fashion the editor has some creative authority, at least in the first look of the movie. Why is this important?
For those of you about to hire an editor, you want someone capable of giving you exactly what you want in a timely fashion—sure. But you also want someone capable of surprising you. An example of this would be Erin, in Reel 1, juxtaposing the ending of the father’s first moments in the Chat studio with his walking out down a hallway, and seeing the sleazy activity with his own eyes. It’s the first time the audience sees it and they’re seeing it with him. It’s powerful, and it’s not in the script. She moved the images around and Boris and I approved. Just a great choice.
Boris would look over her Reel 1, give detailed notes in their four hour meeting, and then make suggestions for Reel 2. Erin would then work during the week on refining Reel 1, and doing the rough assemble on Reel 2. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that 10 minutes a week for a 90 minute movie = a working Assemble in 2+ months. Meanwhile…
Paul, the writer, is chilling in the Philippines.
This is why Boris gets the biggest of big bucks that will surely roll in once this movie makes Sundance, South By Southwest, and a dozen major fests, picked up by a major distributor, bags us a killer foreign sales agent, and dazzles with a month-long theatrical release in a dozen cities, followed by a profitable DVD and multi-platform VOD release.
Stop laughing. A guy can dream….
This puts us into July. The assemble is done. It’s time for the “inner circle” (producers, the DP, writer, etc) to weigh in with Time Code notes. The time code runs under the picture, it’s how you identify where the footage comes from. As Boris rightfully noted, this is the time to make your voice heard in the most detailed way possible. He wanted 10 pages of notes from me.
Back from the Philippines and fully chilled, I gave him 20 pages, single spaced. They looked like this:
REEL TIMECODE NOTES
1 00:00:32 Opening hallway shot. I think the shot is evocative and the best we could get under the circumstances. Love the blue flickering light in the distance.
1 00:00:39 Without Mary Rose V.O. it’s hard to give you a 100% “this is great or this needs work”. What’s here seems fine visually. I will say that we want this opening to be intriguing and to move, to draw an audience in, not to be mournful and depressing. Right now it feels like the latter, but it’s the not visual’s issue.
1 00:00:43 Like the digital lettering. Fits with theme and title.
1 00:00:53-01:51:00 Titles montage. This is elegant, yet accomplishes plenty in terms of information. We establish his biology background, the mouse, his trouble with light, the pills, his routine…this is a valuable minute. I have no notes on the visual or cut.
1 00:02:00:14 Super picky (much bigger fish to fry soon) but I don’t get the cutaway to his feet. Cut that.
1 00:02:10:04 It’s fruitless to talk about what was in the script at this point but I thought we were going for his POV here in terms of interactions with noise and especially LIGHT. There is none of that here between his walk from his house to the cemetery. Why? It’s not that what’s here doesn’t work, it’s just not jazzy, not powerful at all. Just functional.
It was the director’s job to try to find correspondences in these notes, what to keep, what to trim, what to cut. Hearing all the different takes on the material, listening to your own instincts, then making a decisive choice. Essentially creating what the world will come to know as the movie.
During July and August, also, the first samples of music came in from the movie’s composer. Boris forwarded these onto me. I sent back thoughts on melodies and emotion, also suggestions for comparable scores—like the music for Social Network, Primer, and Upstream Color. I also sent on samples from electronica I listened to when writing the movie, Photoprimitive and Asura. Boris rightfully said we’d be letting Robert, our music guy, come up with his own solutions. At least initially. Absolutely correct. You only want to suggest these alternatives if the initial inspiration isn’t what you have in mind. If his first instinct is powerful and original, you go with that.
The next round of editing unfolded in September and October. Boris and Erin worked at double speed now, doing two Reels a week. The goal was to have a workable Rough cut to screen to an audience. This is a big step in the life of a movie. It’s painful to let down your pants on a project that isn’t ready but it’s exactly what must be done. You need folks from a wide spectrum—some who know the script and some who don’t, some who are experts in filmmaking and some who are non-filmmakers. All opinions are welcome, long as they’re honest. For our purposes there’s a definite time table. The locked Fine Cut will commence 10 days from this screening. It’s pretty much the moment of truth.
So, for the plan is to screen it this week, take audience feedback, make final editing changes, add in sound effects and ADR, then the music composition tracks, then the color correction, and….
You get the picture. Still a ways to go on CHAT. Look for more news in January.
Wish us well, mockingbird.
I liked the movie to begin with but it seemed like I dropped a hit of acid somewhere along the line and it ended up you could only speculate what it was really about.
haha, yeah, the story does that to people. i was probably too influenced by MULHOLLAND DRIVE. Thanks for looking it over!