Three
indie filmmakers took the Seattle
International Fourth Annual Film Festival's Fly Filmmaking Challenge
this year to come to Seattle and scout, cast, shoot, edit, and screen
a short film in seven days. The program, designed to showcase local
filmmaking talent, vendors and crew as well (re) ignite the spark
of creative impulse in filmmakers, also re-invented itself to address
the new media digital technologies as directors Jim Taylor, Meg Richman
and Clay Eide shared three formats: Super 16mm, High Definition and
Digital Video with varying success.
The idea behind the challenge has always been significant as
evidenced by the number of other festivals appropriating the program
as their own under the "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery"
banner. Vancouver Film Festival copied the program with their "Guerilla
8" challenge in 1999; Galway Film Festival is considering a version
of the program that actually pits three directors against each other
on one script, and Flicks on 66 (Albuquerque) created the Wild West
Digital Shootout (July 14-22, 2000) as an almost carbon copy. Still,
the SIFF program stands as the definitive witness to the creative
impulse, technical ingenuity and potential brilliance borne of deprivation
bred each year during the mad dash to screen.
"These films provide vivid proof that short films can be long
on entertainment value without the luxury of bloated budgets and overlong
scripts," insists Seattle Festival Director, Darryl Macdonald. "While
each of their films is distinctly bold and original, the finished
films are a collective testament to the high quality work that can
result when limited resources are put at the service of talented individuals."
"Creatively, it certainly was a great experience, to be forced
to create in that amount of time." admitted Jim Taylor (co-writer
Election,
Citizen Ruth) whose HD film Living Will was a comic
misadventure about one man's dying father. "There's the obvious thing
of working within limitations and being creative, but it's also just
satisfying to finish something. A week is a very satisfying, as well
as frustrating, amount of time to move on from."
"My only problem with the program was with the restrictions
the Festival put on footage with video formats," added Taylor. "They
seemed unnecessary and dogmatic, and that didn't fit with the ideal
of the challenge. Learning I had only 22 minutes of stock threw me;
I wrote the script to shoot in two days, not with 22 minutes of stock."
"I don't think they should be called Fly films," joked Clay
Eide (director, Dead Dogs) who shot his digital black
comedy, Peter's Day in the Sun about a naturist club,
with an all-nude cast. "They should be called IF films since you're
always saying IF only this or IF only that. My initial wish, going
into this, was to make the short film I wanted to make regardless
of the imposed constraints. I didn't want the short amount of time
given to be a factor in the project. I wanted people to say, "wow,
that's a good film", not "wow, that's a good little film considering
he only had six days to make it". It didn't quite turn out that way.
Perhaps I was naive, because that time constraint did make a difference."
"I have to admit," Eide continued, "that what I took from the
experience is that I would never do this again...not in a bad way,
but it's just too quick. It's not really so much that it's too fast
to shoot or edit or do sound, there's just no time to take a moment
to step back and say is this working or not. That's the real problem."
Seattle director, Meg Richman (director, Under Heaven),
who took over for an ailing Mary Kuryla at literally the eleventh
hour (Kuryla was admitted to the hospital for emergency medical care
the day before she was to arrive in Seattle) to shoot Kuryla's script
Girl Sketch on Super 16mm, found her love for the work
renewed. "I found it an incredible privilege to come into a set-up
situation and just get to play like that," said Richman. "I know the
program was beneficial to me as a filmmaker because I got the chance
to work on my craft. Whether or not it's useful to the audience is
a different matter altogether-I'm not so sure about that. So in that
sense it seems a somewhat selfish indulgence.
"For me personally it was a chance to remind myself how much
I love to do this work (because it's a long time between shoots, lord
knows), a chance as a relatively new mother to discover that my child
will survive and even thrive during my times of intense (pre)occupation,
and creatively it was an opportunity to play around a little, because
the stakes were not high the way they normally are when you make a
film. I am hoping that spirit of playfulness can stay with me when
I embark on my next feature."
Often for the directors, who have in the past included Miguel
Arteta (Star Maps, Chuck and Buck), Adrienne
Shelley (Sudden Manhattan, I'll Take You There),
Julia Sweeney (It's Pat, God Said Ha!),
Eric Schaeffer (Fall, If Amy Fell), Tim
Blake Nelson (Eye of God) and Will Geiger (Ocean
Tribe) among others, the casting process is the hardest as
roles are cast less than 24 hours before shooting although, as Taylor
pointed out, any chance to work with actors is better for directors.
"Getting experience with just talking to actors was valuable,"
explained Taylor. "Saying the right things that won't send them off
in different directions; choosing words carefully so as not to send
them off in the wrong directions; just helping them to understand
the story better without scaring or confusing them is important for
their support. The more you do that as a director, the more you learn.
"For instance, one time I was just paying attention to the
wheelchair roll out of frame at the end of the film. I had headphones
on and as the actors performed the scene for the first time with camera
rolling, I started to yell out "slow, slow, slow!" which was intended
for the chair, but it freaked the actors out! It was a big mistake
for me as a director to forget to be calm and focus!"
"It was tough," agreed Eide. "It was a fire fight, at least
on the first day. The second day was easier, but still frustrating
in other ways. And sure, it was good to be working again, but it felt
like you were just struggling to get stuff down, get stuff stuck on
tape.
"I like to rehearse and of course there isn't any rehearsal
time since you pick your actors the day before you shoot. As it was,
I think the actors did an amazing job especially with the little time
they had. And it helped, since we shot the nude scenes on the first
day, that we cast several members of local naturist clubs as extras.
These people were out of their clothes the minute they arrived on
set, and that put the actors at ease."
Although the Festival intended to showcase the different mediums
by screening all the films transferred onto HD, the projection system
broke just before the screening and had to be replaced by an analogue
video projector which did none of the films justice.
"The compare and contrast aspect regarding formats is a great
idea," said Richman, "but neither the filmmakers nor the audience
got to see what the movies really looked like. That was truly a bummer,
as the pros and cons of these technologies are on everyone's minds
and we could all use more information."
"In the future, it seems like the Festival could play around
with the structure of the program a little," continued Richman. "I'd
love to see the same script made by three directors; then each film
edited by three different editors. To me, that would be really interesting."
"I think SIFF might try a change," added Taylor. "Why not?
This is exactly the environment for it; to take a chance and come
up with a new wrinkle each year. It'd be interesting to loosen up
the DV approach: put an IMAC in each directors' room and let them
edit around the clock for example!"
"The value of the program," concluded Eide, "lies in the film
community in Seattle and getting to work with different people. It
works for the Festival because they have three new films each year
that go out to the festival circuit. Iit's a program that people know
about; it puts butts in the theater."
Co-sponsored by AtomFilms for the first time this year, all
three films will be on the AtomFilms site for one year at http://www.atomfilms.com/default.asp?spot_id=99
FilmFestivals.com
contributor
Kathleen McInnis
