Over the years we’ve been lucky enough to travel the world and experience a number of festivals – both as filmmakers and audience members.  We recently had the privilege of premiering our short film The Summer Home at the Festivus Film Festival in Denver, CO.  

When formulating a festival plan, we do a lot of research in selecting which ones to submit to.  Some we choose for marketing, networking and career building; others we choose in order to connect with our truly independent filmmaking compatriots around the world, to find storytellers like us who are doing everything they can to make quality, engaging, art.  Festivus is one of these festivals.

WHAT MAKES FESTIVUS UNIQUE?

No barriers to festival execs

The first e-mail we received from Festivus was from Tim DeMasters – one of the festival founders.  And it wasn’t just a form letter; it was an honest-to-goodness communiqué that originated from his fingertips, which ultimately turned into a lengthy thread with the same man!  This might sound minor, but it made an impression right away.  If you’ve ever worked with a festival in the past, you know this is a special thing; usually emails are foisted upon a volunteer charged with wrangling us eclectic, scattered filmmakers.

This trend didn’t stop once the festival started, either.  All three founders attended most every event; they were incredibly approachable and easy to talk to.  In fact, on several occasions they initiated contact and checked in with us!  This wonderful attitude towards their filmmakers leads us to our next point.

VIP service

Festivus pulls out all the stops when it comes to taking care of their filmmakers.  They claim to be a festival for filmmakers and they’re not kidding around.  From day one you get above and beyond service – including a personal liaison. That’s right.  A person dedicated specifically to you.  A super awesome, cool festival volunteer whose whole job is to make sure you have the best festival experience possible.  This includes a personal pick-up from the airport, recommendations for food/activities around town and someone to hang out with and introduce you to other people at festival events.  

Our liaison, Seneca, was amazing; a warm, inviting, knowledgeable and all around kick-ass person.  She truly made our festival experience unforgettable.

Abundant chances to mix and mingle

Festivus knows how to throw a party and practice clearly makes perfect - they have a party every night of the festival!  Not only do they have amazing sponsors (including Buffalo Trace Bourbon), they booked us in some really cool locations around the city.  And each event was catered to filmmakers mixing and mingling with each other as well as festival-goers.  The way everything was set up, it was virtually impossible not to make meaningful connections.  

Beyond the official parties, each screening venue also had an accompanying lounge just across the street – pre- and post-film discussions, free booze and snacks.  Can’t go wrong.

Filmmaker bowling social

Yes, Festivus organized a filmmaker bowling social.  Want to find the inspiration for your next awkward black comedy?  Put a bunch of sport-challenged, uncoordinated filmmakers together and ask them to figure out ways to throw a weighted ball down a greasy lane in order to knock down the most pins.  Good times for all!

To add some extra fun/complexity, they added “Feats of Strength”: spinning around 10 times before throwing the ball, throwing it between your legs, buddy bowling, etc.  Silly?  Sure.  But by breaking down the barriers of the detached, ironic “cool” we’ve all become so adept at and forcing everyone into the abyss of ridiculousness, they created a perfect recipe for fun and camaraderie.

Not to mention Lindy was the highest scoring girl. Oh, and there was free beer.

Quality programming

Last but not least, and the most important part of any festival, is the quality of programming.  And for a festival in only the fifth year of existence, Festivus has some undeniable chops.  All the films were truly independent and we were shocked by not only the production values, but the storytelling skills many of the filmmakers exhibited.  We also appreciated Festivus pushing the boundaries and programming some truly risky films.  

OUR FAVORITE FILMS

We saw many films while enjoying all this festival had to offer – 43, to be exact.  Here are our Top 11 (because 10 is so last year):

Ghosts of Old Highways (dir. Dan Bush // 16 min): A thematic and structural cousin to the 1962 French short film An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, this is a magnificently beautiful film, ultimately winning the award for Best Cinematography.  It’s a music video, but one with a very strong (albeit abstract) narrative and great performances.  Only one complaint: the credits felt longer than the actual film.  This is an odd trend we’ve noticed, and it needs to stop.  Believe us, as filmmakers, we know it takes a lot people and a tremendous amount of effort (not to mention blood, sweat and tears) to make a film.  But on short films, the credits should be just that – short.  We’re certainly not advocating for no credits, but if people are genuinely interested in the film’s colophon, let’s be honest, they’ll go to IMDb.

Blunderkind (dir. Zak Mechanic // 20 min): A little bit Rushmore(1998), but with more time travel, beer and video games.  Cheeky, clever and highly entertaining.  A boy-genius and his trusty sidekick build a time machine, but the sidekick gets lost in the future.  It’s only when the prodigy grows up that they meet again; except time itself has not been kind to the one-time wunderkind.   It features a gleefully self-referential and sarcastic voice-over and uses the tropes of time-travel cinema to create an emotionally compelling, bittersweet conclusion.  

The Forgotten Fruit (dir. James Williams // 9 min): A short documentary about gooseberries and the men who love them – specifically, the men who compete to see who can grow the biggest.  While it might sound like a slight story, the beauty of this film lies in its refreshingly non-ironic earnestness.  There are a number of wonderful double entendres peppered throughout, but the bulk of the movie is a simple celebration of life’s small pleasures, of a sense of innocence, and a forgotten era.

Remake (dir. Chris Tomkins // 7 min): A hilarious, inspired burglary-comedy for film nerds.  Two men break into a house, only to discover one of the world’s greatest DVD collections; this promptly starts an argument over, you guessed it, remakes.  Wonderful – and fun! – all the way around.  

A Finger, Two Dots, Then Me (dir. David & Daniel Holecheck // 8 min): On paper, this should be a sappy and downright ridiculous film: spoken word poetry about the cosmic glory of love.  But the way it’s manifested, the way the poem is visualized, the energy of the performer, everything coalesces into a transcendent and affecting experience.  Deserving winner of the Best Editing award.  

16-bit Sunrise (dir. Vinnie Pomp // 20 min): when asked during the Q&A about his inspiration, the director responded: “Well, a funny thing happened.  I was a teenager and went to High School.”  That pretty much sums it up.  It’s an awkward, affectionate and occasionally dark story about an outcast, the girl after whom he pines, and the video games he uses as a safety blanket.

Self-Sabotage (dir. Scott Brignac // 27 min): We don’t use the term lightly when we say: this film is epic.  It’s quite long for a short film, but it’s a sumptuous feast for the senses.  A collaborative project branching out from the music that acts as the score/soundtrack, it “follows” the verses of the Lord’s Prayer.  It’s experimental, oblique and wondrous.  

Kama Sutra King (dir. Ben Jones // 10 min): Using the archetype of the Hot Librarian as a jumping off point, this gratifying, big-hearted film is ultimately about inaction and regret, but with a lovely and happy ending. As a film professor once said, brevity is the soul of the short film; this one is short and sweet.

Searching For Sonny (dir. Andrew Disney // 94 min): The one feature on our list.  A suburban black-comedy/neo-noir, from within the first few minutes, you know that you want to spend time with these characters.  Set during a High School reunion, it’s the mystery of a missing friend.  Some great twists and turns, a lot of laughs and gunshot wounds for everyone!

Bunker'd (dir. Chris Canfield // 15 min): Thoroughly entertaining comedy about two men trapped in a bomb-shelter after nuclear war breaks out in the 1950s.  Well, one man and a dead guy.   And a lot of canned peaches.

Spoiler (dir. Daniel Thron // 18 min): The world doesn’t need is another zombie film; but this one has a unique perspective.  After a zombie outbreak, what do people do?  Adapt and get on with the lives, most likely; assimilate the fear into daily routine, keep calm and carry on.  This movie uses that premise to examine a macro concept in a micro narrative of a father trying to protect his daughter from a zombie-fied mother, while the police zero in and are about to “neutralize” the entire house.  Taught, well-acted and intriguing.  

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT?

These are a couple of areas we feel could use a little improvement; but we only say this out of love, to make an already great festival even better.

More Diverse award categories

For such a small and diverse festival, Festivus had a very limited amount of awards.  While they had some specific awards – Best Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Short Short, Best Foreign Short, Best Documentary Short, Best Experimental – they didn’t separate the larger categories like drama from comedy.  Now, of course, having too many awards simply dilutes the value, but it’s nearly impossible to compare a film like, say, Remake with Ghost of Old Highways.  Since awards can help make or break an indie film, Festivus could really continue to help filmmakers and expand their award categories slightly.

In our opinion, they could probably remove the more specialized awards (like editing and cinematography; while filmmakers can appreciate these, a general audience likely can’t discern why one film would win over another, especially for editing) and instead just focus on the best films within sections.  Best Feature (they only program a few), Best Short Short, Best Foreign Short, Best Documentary Short, Best Experimental Short, Best Comedy Short, Best Dramatic Short.

Tailoring programming & advertising to an outside audience

After attending the entire festival and experiencing 43 of the films offered, it seemed that the majority of the attending audiences were other filmmakers.  Festivus can boast some incredible growth since their inception five years ago, and they definitely had an advertising presence in Denver (we noticed at least two billboards while driving around town), but perhaps more general-audience outreach can be done.  And yes, we’re fully aware that this is easier said than done.  

But, as an example: package marketing.  Our film, THE SUMMER HOME, was in a package called “Rehab Shorts”.  To an outside audience, it would make sense that all the films in this package would have a rehab theme.  That’s originally what we thought ourselves.  However, the festival labels it “Rehab” because it’s the first screening after one of their blow-out parties: going to it will help you “rehab”.  We admit, this is clever.  However, it’s targeted toward the inside crowd – to the filmmakers and hardcore festival-goers who went to the party – and not necessarily to a more general/casual audience.

Moderated Q&As

Post-film Q&As at Festivus typically begin with the host handing the microphone to the filmmaker and walking off the stage.  In principal, we totally understand the rationale: remove any sense of boundary between audience and filmmaker.  But, a good Q&A needs help from a moderator.  Not someone who takes over the conversation, but someone who helps guide the audience and their questions.  A good moderator is one who has seen the film and, because of their special knowledge of the filmmakers and the stories behind the films, can lead the audience into questions that hit on a deeper and more useful level.  Without moderation, the Q&As can become awkward and consist of the same few questions: What’s your budget?  What did you shoot on?  What was your inspiration?  While these are great questions, audience members usually want to get to the meatier discussion without the unnecessary warm up period.  A moderator can help with that.

CONCLUSION

All in all the Festivus Film Festival is an amazing festival.  It features fun, engaging, quality programming and focuses on the true artistic spirit and talent brewing in the US and around the world.

Personally, we can’t wait to make another film and (hopefully) attend Festivus again!

You know how some people think that the day changes when the clock strikes midnight? You're walking around with them and at 11:59pm they say Tuesday and at 12:01am they say Wednesday, and even though they're technically right, it's really confusing? When I used to work a graveyard shift, there was a guy who did that every day and it drove everyone nuts.

Well Day 5 of DECORATION started at 12:30am. At least, the story of it did.

I'm on the couch in the living room, winding down to sleep. The lights are off. Nicolas comes into the living room and tells me that they won't need me for tomorrow's shoot. And then he leaves.

Um…ok.

I try to sleep, but that kind of gets your mind racing.

I often say that there's a better version of A Year Without Rent that involves a camera crew following me around because I can only capture a fraction of what happens, but they wouldn't have been able to capture that unless they had set up a camera rig to record absolutely everything. And I don't know that they would have been set up at 6 something in the morning when Nicolas comes back in, this time more combative, to really give me a piece of his mind.

Of course, I'm barely awake. In retrospect I should have discretely turned on the audio recorder on my iPhone, but I don't remember to do a lot of things before I've had any coffee. But here's the basics.

+ Nicolas, who doesn't have a Twitter account, is mad about some tweets I sent from set. He doesn't know what they are, exactly, but he's heard about them from someone else. You've seen some of them if you've read the rest of the DECORATION posts.

+ He "doesn't care what I write", but his concern is that what I'm Tweeting is affecting the morale of the crew. That's a fair concern. In this case, it might be unfounded, since the tweet he seems to be talking about was pretty obviously a joke about how I couldn't believe someone in the crew hadn't seen a certain classic film. Or he had never had a bloody mary. I forget which.

And there was one sent to someone that said the film I was on wasn't going well. That should have been a DM.

+ Not only does he not care what I write, but has, by his own admission, no idea what A Year Without Rent is, and he doesn't care. You'll remember from Day 1 that this isn't a film I approached. They approached me. For the writer, director, and producer of a film of this size to not have any idea who the press person they've asked to come on set is (or what he's doing there), is stunning. This is not a large production, by any stretch of the imagination. And this is not the first production in AYWR. What I do is pretty well-established by this point, both the blog writing (like this) and the tweets from set. Like, for example, Paul Osborne's FAVOR, which Cheryl Nichols worked on.

If you seek me out, ask me to come to the middle of Arkansas (on AYWR's dime), and don't know what I'm going to do on your set, that's 100% your fault. It's not like I happened to be in Arkansas and stopped by on a whim. And it's not like I'm doing anything I didn't do on FAVOR.

+ He's upset that I haven't even bothered to read the script, which is something he requires everyone to do, because everyone needs to be on the same page and have the same passion for the project.

From what I can tell, the script has changed nearly every day.

No one has given me a script. When I point that out, his demeanor changes considerably.

+ It's a long conversation. Really long. Cheryl comes in and expresses her concerns, but it boils down to one thing: I shouldn't be helping this film. The director doesn't want me there, and AYWR functions best when the filmmakers are willing participants, which is something that I assumed would be the case from the initiative they showed in asking me to drive 833 miles to get there.

Thing is, I'm not leaving. They're on the schedule and I'm in the middle of fucking Arkansas. If this was LA or Seattle or New York, that's one thing, but I don't know anyone in Arkansas. So I offer to read the script, and that placates him. Sort of.

And they have some valid points about the nature of AYWR and what value it actually provides, because it varies from film to film. But the process doesn't, and when you approach someone, you need to know what you're getting. Is AYWR a good fit for every film? No. But it's your project. You know what AYWR is and your should know what your project needs and requires. That's your responsibility. Otherwise, you're just wasting everyone's time.

Once the day does actually start (late), we head to a cemetery to shoot the titular Decoration Festival.

I've searched Google a couple of times looking for information about the Decoration Festival, and have found nothing, so I'll have to rely on the film's IndieGoGo page: "the town's sons and daughters return to celebrate the lives of ancestors buried in the cemetery."

Apparently it's a big deal.

We get to the cemetery and it looks like, well, a cemetery. Ten or so locals show up to serve as extras, and a skeleton crew walks around the cemetery with them while the rest of us kill time by attempting to play baseball with an orange wrapped in tape and making a swing out of some rope and a gobo arm. There's not a whole lot else to do. 

So they didn't really need me after all, but I don't think that's the point.

Eventually, they come back.

What's they've found out from this excursion with the locals is that the festival isn't something they're prepared to fake. It's elaborate, with lots of flowers and, well, decorations all over the cemetery. The whole town comes out. To do it like this would look terrible. So the new plan is to push that scene to the actual festival--in the spring.

Keep in mind, the movie is named after this festival. They know what this festival entails.

It's not the first thing they've pushed. I've seen them reschedule a couple of Arkansas interior scenes to shoot in LA, but this is a pretty big shift. It's a hard thing to shoot around, it being kind of important. Not to mention the fact that they're going to have to match fall exteriors with spring exteriors, and the leaves have definitely changed already. They either have to use what little they got today and make it work in post, or they have to come back in the spring, which brings up a whole host of potential problems with continuity.

I can't imagine they'll ask me to join them in the spring.

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.

This is Day 4. I've yet to see a call sheet. #AYWR

— Lucas McNelly (@lmcnelly) October 29, 2011

There's no call sheet, but call time for day 4 is 9:30am. True to form, that doesn't happen. We leave at 10:12am and head back to Nooner's house to shoot the final day there.

Nooner has no idea we're coming. He thought we were done. So, of course, he's started to put his house back together. Luckily, he's pretty easy-going, so it's no problem to take his house back over.  

Just like yesterday, we have to clean the house out completely to shoot the scene, but unlike yesterday, we don't have to re-set it later, other than to put the house back together for Nooner and take our props out completely. Why didn't we shoot the two empty house scenes back-to-back on the last day? I have no idea.  

And you know, it'd be easy to go on a rant about this, but I think you see between the lines here.  

Instead, let's talk about the crew, because sometimes when the top of the hierarchy isn't ideally organized, that pulls focus from the fantastic work being done by the rest of the crew, and DECORATION has a very good crew.  

Today's challenge is to rotate the camera a full 360 degrees on the x-axis as Cheryl Nichols stands on her head. There's gear that does this, of course, but they've got none of it. So, Josh Jones and Stew Yost come up with the idea to try and strap a 5D to a tripod head. This gives them the rotation they need, but takes away access to all the buttons and controls of the camera, so they've got to figure out everything, then set the controls, and then strap it in.

Only, if you don't strap it in correctly, you get a kind of oblong rotation that's less than ideal.  

Oh, and they're trying to do it on a tight shot with an actress who's standing on her head, meaning you can't have her sit there for anything longer than a few seconds to line everything up.

Eventually, they come up with a solution that requires a collapsed tripod laying flat on a bed of sandbags (to give it a little bit of height off the ground, thus allowing the rotation). They have Cheryl stand on her head, then make a note of where on the wall that is and where her hands are to establish the base for that shot. Set the frame, then try and repeat the head stand as close as possible to the last one. Then, they have to get a smooth rotation out of it.

It takes a couple of tries, but they get it.

From there, we move down the hill to a semi truck that's been borrowed for a sequence where Rick Dacey climbs on it in a bit of childish wonder. It's a 2 camera shot, one on the ground and one on more of an eye line thanks to a long lens on a hill.  

Then it's some car mount driving shots to finish out the day. Only, when we get the camera mounted on the hood, it's moving around way too much for anyone's taste. Enter grip/AC/PA Jimmy, who sticks a empty water bottle under the lens. And you know what? It works. It's the perfect height. A little gaff tape later, and it's set. DP Stew Yost jumps in the bed of the truck to shoot Rick on the other side of the scene, and once they double check to make sure the cameras aren't seeing each other, they're off.

And that's day 4, the second-to-last day of principal photography. All that's left is to shoot the Decoration ceremony. You know, the scene the title comes from.  

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.

We're up for a 9am shoot on a bridge. It's a small scene, meant to exist near the end of the film, so I'm not going to talk about it too much, other than to say we all drove out there and shot a scene near the water. The rest isn't all that important. Nothing complicated. Nothing exciting.

From there, we head back to the cabin we're all staying in for quick turnaround. The word that goes out is "10 minutes". Someone sits down. The TV goes on, and before you know it, we've been watching Skip Bayless talk about Tim Tebow for over an hour.

Skip Bayless really likes Tim Tebow.

I have no idea what the cause of the delay is.

Eventually, we pile in the vehicles and head back to Story and our primary location of Nooner's house. The second unit splits off to shoot some B Unit stuff.

"you can hang back in the van while we block this scene" // "um...ok" #missingthepoint #AYWR

— Lucas McNelly (@lmcnelly) October 28, 2011

As for me? Well, I'm being asked by the director to sit in the van. But, the sun is out and it's kind of warm out, so instead myself and Chris the sound guy find some chairs on the porch and sit there while they block the scene inside. I eat an orange and work on write-ups for other films.

It's not exactly a closed set. The director and actors are in there, of course. As is the DP and the grip and Jimmy, who's a hybrid grip/PA/whatever. Basically, everyone but myself and the sound guy. But whatever. I have work to do.  

Eventually, the director comes out and asks if I could take some pictures of the area around the couch for continuity. It's a simple enough thing to do. There's a couch there and a bookshelf with a bunch of books on it. So I take pictures of everything and, as requested, start moving everything out to the porch. I pull the books out in stacks, being careful to keep them in order, the assumption being that we're going to want to reset the scene back to the original configuration. And while a lot of the books and magazines are scattered around the floor and coffee table, they're at least in distinct piles, and those that are on the bookshelf are in a specific order.

It's a little thing, but if you can pull 10 books off a shelf and keep them all together as you move them around, it saves time when you have to put them back. There's no trying to use photos to recreate the order. All you have to know is that this stack goes on the top shelf, over to the left. The rest takes care of itself.  

We pull everything, stripping the area completely. But by the time that's finished, the director has gone ahead and done the same with the entire house.  

There are no photos for the rest of the house. None.

They film the scene and then we have to reset the house for a night scene. But there's no photos, so when the time comes to see the parts of the house that aren't the general couch area, there's nothing to go by, other than the consensus memory of the cast and crew. Ever tried to remember every little detail about a room? It's not easy. People's memories conflict. Say you've got two framed images of birds. Was the cardinal the one higher up or the bluejay? How sure are you?

And sure it's a small thing, but those things add up. Flip one bird image and whatever. These things happen. But do it over and over again and it starts to pull people from your story. It becomes a drinking game, and when that happens, no one's going to be sober for your emotional third act.  

What the production does have is footage from scenes previously shot in the house. But think of how time-consuming that is. You've gotta get out the hard drive and computer, boot it up, and search through all that footage, just to figure out if it was the cardinal or the bluejay on top. And that's a best case scenario. That's if you can find the footage you need, if it's nearby or, say, back in the cabin where everyone's staying.

This is why you get a Script Supervisor, because they'll be damned sure if it was the cardinal or the bluejay. Hell, they'll even tell you if it was hung straight. And it won't take them all night to figure it out.

And if you don't have the budget for the Script Supervisor? Well, then you make sure you get photos of the entire house before you start moving things.

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.

Call time for my second day on DECORATION is 9:30am. I'm ready to go a little before then, call it 9:20. Call time comes and goes. Nothing happens. And by that I mean nothing. People aren't ready, and why should they be? We aren't moving.

10am comes and goes. People start to emerge. They make breakfast. Get coffee. The director has gone for a walk. It was like this yesterday too, but it being my first day, I chalked it up to an aberration. Now it's looking more like a trend.  

When you join a production near the end, there's a period where you try and figure out the pace of things. Every production operates on its own speed (for better or worse) and when you join one mid-stream, there's an adjustment, kind of like merging onto the highway. The more times you do this, the easier it gets, and after a while you can sometimes tell before you even hit the on-ramp.  

After a week or so, every production becomes what it'll eventually be, which is to say that things don't change all that much beyond a point. Sure, in the first couple of days, stuff gets addressed and things change, but eventually it all settles into a routine. Very little changes past that point. Crews know that. Hell, they're the first ones to figure it out and adjust accordingly. So if you're on a set and the call is 9:30 and no one in the crew is ready to go at 9:30, that probably means that call time is a myth. Grips aren't giving up a hour of sleep if you aren't going to be ready to go on time. They aren't stupid. A good way to see if something is an aberration or the norm is to see how the crew reacts. Or, you ask them. And then a pause is all you need.

So we finally leave at 11:08am (I know because I wrote it down) after a 9:30 call and head to the police station to shoot the other half of the scene we shot yesterday. This requires a car mount on a police car. Then, we wait while they drive around filming a scene. They come back and we re-mount the camera in a different spot on the car. Nothing crazy complicated, just a question of building the safest thing imaginable with what we've got on hand. The car mount is easy enough, because we've got one of those, but putting the camera behind the back seat is a little trickier. DP Stew Yost settles on a tower of apple boxes and sandbags, with the camera wedged in-between the top 2 sandbags and the director sitting next to it to ensure the whole thing doesn't tip over.

From there, we head over to the tiny town of Story, Arkansas where the house location is. In the story, our two main characters (Cheryl Nichols and Rick Dacey) return home from LA when their father dies back in Arkansas. This is his house, a tiny one bedroom structure on a hill. It's a building badly in need of repair, which makes it a perfect location.  

We move some stuff around a shoot a couple scenes, nothing all that complicated. It starts raining and things need to be adjusted accordingly, but all in all, we get everything. We wrap around 6pm.  

It's Stew's birthday and someone has bought him a pellet gun. The crew spends the evening setting up empty beer bottles. By morning there's a pile of broken glass on the ground.

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.

The big news in the crowdfunding world is the U.S. House passing the Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act. It was a rather overwhelming vote, which means that somehow Congress has found something Democrats and Republicans agree on. All by itself this is shocking. What the bill effectively does is open crowdfunding up to equity investments. Almost everyone thinks this is a fantastic thing.  

Everyone except me.

SEC regulations aren't even remotely my thing, so I'm not going to pretend I fully understand what the bill means. Other people, smarter than me, can do that for you.   They can tell you about what the new regulations would do, what extra paperwork it would inevitably involve. They can tell you more about that worrisome part where the individual states get involved. But I do have some idea how the film world works and some idea how crowdfunding works.

Let's assume for a minute that the bill allows you to sell equity stakes in your film via Kickstarter and IndieGoGo. That seems to be what everyone thinks it means. On the surface, this seems like a pretty good deal. As it stands now, people back projects for a variety of reasons, but essentially they do it to support an artist in his or her quest to create something. They don't expect anything in return, other than the promised perks. But imagine if they could make money on it. Wouldn't they be willing to give more? If there was a chance that they could get behind the next PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, logic dictates it would make it much easier to raise those funds. No one doubts that.

And really, that's kind of the problem.  

People see dollar signs and their brain just shuts off. People need money to make their films and anything that makes that easier is automatically viewed as a good thing. I understand that. Money is a great motivator. But there's more to it than that.  

The relationship between a backer and a creator is a unique one. The backers collectively give an artist the ability to create something on their own terms. The filmmaker then delivers that film and the strength or weakness of it determines whether or not the backers would be willing to support them again. Make a good film and the relationship continues. Make a shitty film and it probably won't. At the end of the day, it's the work that matters.  

Contrary to what some people will have you believe, this relationship can theoretically go on forever. If the filmmaker keeps delivering the work and keeps engaging with those backers in a meaningful way, it stands to reason that the backer pool will get deeper over time. Someone with a track record attracts a bigger audience. You could have a director make an entire career's worth of films, all of them crowdfunded, completely free of any studio system or any interference from people concerned with how their film will fare in a marketplace.

That's never before been possible. And now it is. It's the hope that there's an actual future where indie filmmakers can sustain themselves with their work.  

That's a really big deal.   

Now add a profit motivation to that.  

Money changes everything. Tell people they can make money off something and it becomes all they can think of. Instead of giving a filmmaker $50 and then watching from afar as they make the work, people take a more active approach to following the progress. After all, that's their $50, maybe their $100, maybe more. The entire expectation changes. They go from being benefactors to investors. And investors vote with their wallet.  

Let's say your film has 500 backers. You now have 500 investors to keep track of. 500 people who, on some level, want your film to turn a profit. 500 people who all have different ideas about how to do that. In short, you're just like a studio filmmaker, only you have to answer to a lot more people and you have a lot less money to work with.  

But in good news, it'll be easier to convince the guy you went to grade school with to give you $50. So that's something.  

Really, I don't imagine for a second that Congress has any idea what the hell they're doing. And I'm sure the law will be littered with loopholes designed to help the 1% continue fucking us all over. I'm skeptical that this reform isn't more trouble than it's worth, and I don't really see the upside. Seems to me we're just tearing down the best opportunity to create a system for filmmaker sustainability in our lifetime. And for what?

One of the discussions Kieran Roberts and I have every so often about UP COUNTRY is how to best finish the movie. It's a common discussion that every film has. Our approach is simple. Since we have no investors and no one to pay back, we can do whatever we think is best for the film. We have final cut. It's 100% up to us. We have some interesting things in the film that we can do simply because of the creative freedom given by our Kickstarter backers. Or, as I say to Kieran, "if we can't do this on a $4,000 Kickstarter film, we'll never be able to." It's really a liberating feeling. It's not something I want to give up.  

And maybe if those 108 backers were investors, that wouldn't change. I'm pretty stubborn, after all. But my gut tells me it would. I know it would muddy up the water quite a bit. I see meetings and large votes on stuff like the font of the title sequence and what festivals (if any) to submit the film to and really a bunch of nonsense that has nothing to do with making films. It's middle management. I used to work in middle management. It's neither fun nor productive.  

Filmmakers don't need that sort of group think mentality telling them how to do their jobs. Not when the system in place has so much potential for greatness.

I arrive from Seattle an hour or so after call after getting a ride to my car from Brendon Fogle. It's a whole new team from the last film, with the only constants being Kris, Lindy, and Wonder Russell. Oh, and Falcor. I get the tour of the place, which is much bigger than it looks from the road and pretty easily holds everyone. Next to the cabin is a garage that serves as a holding area for gear. And there's a porch that overlooks a golf course. As far as places to make a movie go, it's a pretty nice one.  

I'm on set for the last couple of days, so everything's already in full swing, clicking along. There's some rigging in ceiling to hang lights. Everyone's already exhausted. The usual.  

There's always an adjustment period for stuff like this, where I come in as the new person. It takes a bit to actually work myself into the work flow. Even more so on this film, as things seem to going pretty smoothly. There's not a whole lot for me to do just yet. So I help carry some heavy stuff and take some pictures.  

 
Then, we set the living room for a night scene of a party in which, for some reason, Ernie Joseph and Mark Carr are wearing dresses. I'm not really sure why, but there you have that. It's that kind of film, I guess.

It's also, according to pretty much everyone, one of the most DIY shoots they've been on, due in large part to the ingenuity of one Kit Boyer, who when presented with a partial camera package for the RED, got creative. He made an eyebrow for the matte box with some cardboard, gaff tape, and a soda can.

But he also created something he calls "the plunge". It's, well, I'll let him explain it.

 
Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.

Back when I lived in Pittsburgh, there was a yearly convention of furries. It was always big news, for all the reasons you can imagine, and because not a whole lot happens in Pittsburgh that isn't somehow related to a sporting event. The big convention center in Pittsburgh is downtown, across the river from where I used to live, so it wasn't uncommon to stumble across a furry on the way to Starbucks or on the way out of a bar on a Friday night.  

Don't judge me. It's partly your fault I'm here.

But before we get to that, let's talk about casting. THE HONEY COOLER is written around this, um, "character" in Denver. He does a bunch of stuff, but mostly he's one of those guys you meet at a bar and say to yourself, "man, I should totally put him in a movie." No doubt he's interesting.  

He's also unreliable.

 

Director Ryan Demers and I have been sitting in Ryan's car for over an hour, waiting for this guy to come downstairs. He's awake. He's just doing whatever. Ryan's not all that surprised, as apparently this has been going on for the whole shoot, only today it's worse because it's the final day and what's he going to do? Fire the guy?

Obviously, it's unacceptable. The guy should be fired. But Ryan's right, he can't reshoot all the guy's scenes. He's fucked. This is why you check references. Because if you're repeating someone else's headache, then you fucked up in pre-production.  

Eventually, he shows up. Hooray.

 

We get to the bar, over an hour late, and I put on my costume. Thing is, when you volunteer to wear an animal costume, that pretty much precludes you from doing much else. You can't really carry all that much, so once we're loaded in, I'm limited to shuffling around in a ridiculous outfit and taking pictures.  

I'm playing a panda bear (like in LOST, if LOST took place in a dive bar in Denver) who plays pool with a tiger and then, in the next shot, is making out with said tiger on the pool table.  

This is why I turned down the option to join SAG.

The eye holes in the panda head make it really hard to see what the hell is going on, which is great for keeping your focus on the pool table, but makes it really hard to see any cues. Still, I do my best to repeat my actions each take--a shot in the corner, pause, survey the table, line up a shot side pocket. Then, I make out with the tiger, which essentially just involves pushing our costume heads together and rubbing our hands on each other's backs. As far as making out on screen goes, it's either the most or least awkward way to do it.  

From there we go downstairs into what, I assume, is the green room for when bands play. There's food variants of band names written on the walls and no one wants to sit on the furniture if they don't have to because God knows what's happened on them.  

It's a quick scene, then we wrap the bar and head to the next location, where Ryan explains to me what the fuck just happened.

Then, to a public park, where we've got to film the second half of a scene they already shot. Only now there's a lot of fucking people where they need to shoot a bit of a stunt involving an elephant falling off a bike. We can re-block it, or we can start setting up and hope people get the hint. We do the latter and it actually works. People clear out. We get our stunt.  

Really, we spend more time figuring out if we'll be able to get the shot then we actually do filming it. Things go as smoothly as you could imagine, considering that we've got the following: a public park, an elephant that needs to run his bike into some rocks and flip over the handlebar, a girl in a bikini he flies over, the actor who's eternally late chasing him, and the camera on one of those things you can ride behind a bike. Just…yeah. Controlled chaos.

And that's a wrap. I guess. I don't know. I'm so confused.

 

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.

It early morning on the set of THIS IS OURS. Coffee. Eggs. Bacon. Bagels. All in all one of the better micro-budget film breakfast spreads. I'm not really awake when the DP, Jonathan Houser, asks me if I want a code for this iPhone app called Storyboard Composer. It takes me a second before I realize that I already have the app. I bought it long ago, when I first got my iPhone 3G. I remember it being the first app I actually spent money on, and it's still the one I've spent the most on. 

It wasn't even that hard of a decision. 

Basically what the app does is build storyboards using the camera in your iPhone. You take pictures, import them, and add whatever you need to the image to create the storyboard. Direction, movement, people, whatever. Put it in a Quicktime video with the proper pacing, export it to PDF, and there's your pre-visualization all finished. 

The concept isn't all that complicated, one of those "why hasn't anyone else thought of this already?" sort of things. If you watch the DVD extras for AMELIE, you'll see Jean-Pierre Jeunet essentially doing the same thing. This app is a natural extension of that.  

But wait, why does Houser have codes for a free copy of it? 

Because he created the fucking thing. It's his app. 

Really, this shouldn't be all that surprising. Innovation in film processes is always driven by filmmakers who see a need they can fill, something that they possess the skills to make more efficient. This is how grip equipment gets invented. Hell, it's how Kit Boyer ended up putting a plunger on a RED lens earlier in the shoot. It stands to reason that a filmmaker would be behind something like a storyboarding app, but even then you assume it's a filmmaker working for someone like Avid or Apple who came up with idea, someone who makes films on the side. Not a filmmaker who gets steady work in the field.  

But here the creator is, sitting in a crowded kitchen in Plain, Washington, working on a micro budget feature. It's kind of weird. 

After the shoot, we meet up for drinks in Seattle. Houser tells me some of what they've got planned for future versions of the app--an iPad version, syncing with various other things you use in pre-production--but mostly we talk about how people use it both in pre-production and production. A lot of filmmakers will keep it on their phone and only use it for more complicated scenes. Others will use it for everything. My favorite use that I hadn't considered? Using it in conjunction with your script supervisor. Take a picture of the monitor for every shot of a scene. Load them into the app, then play it back before you move on, if for no other reason than to make sure what you just shot cuts together. It's a hell of a lot easier than going back to that location, or re-setting all those lights. Or worse: getting all your actors back a month after you wrap for re-shoots. It's not even extra gear to carry around. 

And then who walks into the bar? Wonder Russell. Sometimes the indie film world is bigger than we think. And sometimes it's a lot smaller. 

Check out the app for yourself: 

When Zahra Zomorrodian first proposed the idea of flying me over to the UK to work on THE STAGG DO, part of the hope was that she'd be able to find other European productions for me to work on, kind of a tour through the old continent. None came forward. Well, not exactly.  

There were, of course, the Germans. 

One thing people always find surprising is that a sizable chunk of the "Film Courage Community" (as we've started calling it) is in Germany. There's Movie Angel, of course, and Spoxx. But it's even bigger than that. I think for the original A Year Without Rent Kickstarter campaign, Germany had the 3rd most backers, behind the U.S. and the U.K. (maybe Canada was 3rd, but whatever). 

In fact, without Spoxx we never hit that goal.  

So it's not surprising that when the Germans heard that AYWR would be crossing the Atlantic, they found a way to get something for me to do. 

That's how I ended up on the doorstep of a person I've never met before in my life, either in person or online, with my suitcase and duffel bag, ready to stay at his apartment for a couple of days.  

This is unusual, even for me. 

I should back up. 

Spoxx picked me up at the airport. We saw the Statue of Liberty (no, really), and the memorial spot for the Berlin Wall. And then we walked over to the apartment of the person I've never talked to.  

Gerold Marks is a German film blogger who specializes in 3D movies and my host for my stay in Berlin. Five minutes later, Gerold, Spoxx, and I are walking around Berlin as Gerold gives us a tour of the city. And not a short, "oh, here are some places a couple of blocks away" tour, but a full-on tour. I want to say we walked miles around the city.  We saw the museums (well, the outside of them), statues, and probably 4 different parts of the Berlin Wall. I learned how to tell if I was in East or West Berlin (you have to look at the traffic lights). I saw monuments the Soviets built to themselves and ones that survived their reign.  

It was undeniably cool. 

The idea for my visit was to have me give the "keynote" speech for a crowdfunding event organized by Wolfgang Gumpelmaier followed, the next day, by a matinee screening of my first feature BLANC DE BLANC (which you can watch via VOD at the previous link) 

The working title for my speech: "No One Gives a Fuck About Your Project". 

(I'm at around the 2:45 mark) 

It'll be fun to watch these emerging markets catch up. 

But all this is a precursor to the real reason I came to Berlin: for the beer. Ah the beer. Thing is, people are ordering for me in German, so all I know is that I'm getting German beer. And that it's good stuff.  

It's 4am when I get back to where I'm staying, and later that morning, I have to be back across the city for the screening of BLANC DE BLANC.  

For days I've been trying to get my computer to burn a PAL version of the film, but it keeps crapping out on me. Still, Spoxx had his computer hooked up to the projector yesterday, so it seems like we'd be able to use that. Except when we get there, we realize the audio won't work. Oh, and the theater could absolutely play a NTSC DVD, if I had one, which I do. It's just in my car, which is in Seattle.  

And since it's Sunday, nothing is open. We can't burn a NTSC DVD because there isn't a blank DVD for miles around. So we start digging for solutions, finally settling on hooking the video up to the projector and then running the audio through some detachable computer speakers we found behind the cash register. Is it a perfect solution? No. Hell, it isn't even a good solution. But it's a solution. And it's better than people not seeing the movie at all.  

The exception maybe being if one of them thinks you ended the movie wrong, like this guy: 

Maybe we did. Maybe we didn't. See for yourself. 

The email from DP Connor Hair says the film is about a mime, kind of a riff on a French style. Fair enough. I'm a big fan of French films. Give me some Renoir, some Truffaut, some Godard, Jeunet, Attal, and I'm a happy guy. And if you're going to do a French thing, a mime is as good a start as any. 

So what, in this French movie about a mime are we shooting? Is it a balloon? A scene in the park or on a street corner? Nah, we're shooting a rave scene.  

I'm told this is atypical of the larger narrative, but I'm only here for one day. So…I guess we'll see when it comes out.  

We're in this place called Underground Seattle. As I understand it, at one point Seattle was built below sea level. Obviously, this is not such a great idea and something they eventually rectified, building the current city more or less on top of the old one. But that old one is still there, kind of a museum to a lost city. Think Atlantis, but with guided tours and t-shirts. 

Add to that our rave scene. 

If you're going to shoot a rave scene, you need a couple of things, primarily a smoke machine and lights that pulsate and move around. In other words, not your normal Arri kit.  

I mean, sure, you use the Arri kit (if you have one), but the special lights are really going to be your money makers. So what have we got? 

Well, there's a couple of lights that are controlled by sound. As the beat changes, they change. Perfect for this sort of thing, where it turns what could be a super complicated light gag into something a lot easier. We've got a couple of those, all in different colors. But if you've ever used such lights, you know that they aren't super strong, certainly not strong enough to get picked up by a digital camera in any meaningful way. 

 
Enter the smoke machine. 

By pumping in a bunch of smoke and throwing a lot of light into that (kind of like how you'd film cigarette smoke), director of photography Connor Hair is able to get a lot more play out of the flashing lights, thus making them workable.  

But when you're filming a rave in an underground city, you can pretty much try every trick in the book, like shining a projector through chicken wire. 

Or you can get an interesting effect by playing a projector through a large plastic tube. Of course, that's not as easy as it sounds. First, the tube is far too long and we've got nothing to cut it with, so Rory Emmons does what anyone would do: he attacks the tube with a hammer. It more or less works, but now the tube has a pretty jagged edge on one side. He puts that one at the ceiling, with the flat one on the ground. Then, it's a simple matter of attaching a projector and DVD player to the ceiling, lining it up so that it shines properly through the tube (harder than you think), and filling the tube with smoke via the bottom. The tube holds the smoke decently, but it dissipates faster than you'd like, meaning we have to keep tilting it up to pump in more smoke.  

Still, it looks cool. 

Meanwhile, up on the street and in the dressing room, people are getting made up in crazy elaborate rave costumes. 

Remember, this is a French film about a mime. 

Once the room is set, it leads to an interesting visual. The room is pretty much a maze of boxes and fake walls, full of crazy lights and even crazier costumes, every corner containing a surprise. And then, around the final turn is a grip checking Facebook on his phone.  

On my phone are several missed calls from unlisted numbers. It's 10pm on a Sunday. On my voicemail is a message from the Seattle police. They're at my car, which has been broken into. I take off running. 

When I get back, we're full into the rave scene. Oh, and there's a guy twirling fire. But my car is full of glass. There's a window with a garbage bag secured by gaff tape and a police report to fill out. I stay for another couple of hours, but then, not being all that comfortable with the safety of my car, I figure enough is enough. I bow out early,  

The rave is still going full-steam. 

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.

There's a lot of things you can do wrong as a film production, and if you've been paying attention to our coverage of THE STAGG DO, you'll notice that they've pretty much ticked off all the boxes, save one: we've had good turnarounds.  

Generally, the rule in film is "12 on, 12 off". What that means is that a day's shoot shouldn't go over 12 hours and the crew should have 12 hours off before starting up again. The first one gets broken all the time in indie film, so much so that it's always a bit of a shock when a film goes the entire production without going over 12 hours. The turnaround, however, is a little better protected. Crewing on a film is a grind and people get exhausted pretty quickly, so the 12 hours to re-charge is pretty vital. It helps that usually the director and producers are just as tired as everyone else. There are reasons you can push the 12 hours. A big company move is one. Sunrise or sunset is another. But even then, 10 hours is a minimum before people start to get more than just annoyed. 

Today's turnaround: 6 hours. Six hours is insane. It's flat-out dumb. The only excuse, really, is if you've got a location that's giving you a very small window to shoot, thus tying your hands.  

A location like, I dunno, a strip club.  

If you're going to make your crew shoot outside at night in the rain for days upon days until there's a near mutiny and then shoot the 7th day in a row on a 6 hour turnaround, a strip club is probably one of the only places you could justify shooting. Crews are mostly made up of straight guys and straight guys like scantily clad women. It makes them forget a lot of other things, like how exhausted they are. The concept isn't very complicated. And I know, it's horribly chauvinistic and blah blah blah, but these are people who've been put through the wringer, physically and emotionally. Plus, it's in the script. 

Just the simple act of being inside is a nice change of pace. All the gear has a layer of dried mud on it (as do we) and smells a little like a wet dog (as do we). Whether or not this is an improvement over the usual smell of the place is up for debate.  

We have a hard out, which means we're getting kicked out at 4pm whether we're done or not, so the first thing Richy Reay and I do is a walkthrough of the location, to gauge what gear we actually need. The rest can stay in the van, thus saving the time of loading it in and out. We settle on the kino banks and some of the redheads, and that's essentially it. But when we get back upstairs, the entire van has been loaded into the club. Everything. Stuff we don't need. Stuff that we couldn't even use if we wanted to. 

Maybe it's because I haven't slept. Maybe it's because I've been wearing wet shoes for 4 days. Or maybe it's because I'm tired of people doing things without listening (or thinking), but I'm kind of pissed. I don't yell. Yet.  

I look at Richy. "I swear. Sometimes I think Simon is the only one listening." 

"Well, that's not fair," Richy says. "He's got professional help." 

I haven't mentioned this yet, partly because the story of THE STAGG DO has been one of escalating tensions and failures and he doesn't factor into all of that, but Simon is deaf. Legally deaf. He's also one of our camera people. I've never been on a set with a deaf person before. Film sets involve a lot of talking without looking at people, so I kind of figured it'd be a challenge, but he's easily been one of the most attentive, competent people on the shoot. 

How it works is he can read lips, but he's also got an interpreter to sign for him. This is kind of essential in dark, or when you're trying to talk and adjust a light at the same time, the sort of things where your natural actions don't lend themselves well to eye contact and lip reading. Think of being on a set. How much to talk to people without looking at them? Or without even being able to see them. A lot, right?  

But Simon works his ass off. He puts himself in position to "hear" as much as possible, even volunteering to do help in other departments. 

Which is all to say that when the deaf guy is the only person listening, that can't be a good thing.  

It goes relatively smoothly, sort of. Well, compared to the stuff in the woods. Maybe it's just because everything is contained, instead of being flung across all creation. It's at least a little easier to find things. Of course, it's all in the wrong place, but it's easier to track down. There's not a lot to the scenes. A couple of nearly naked models. Some easy setups and we move across town to a house where 2 more scantily clad women appear, only they haven't been cast yet. 

Enter Nick the runner, who goes around town during the strip club scene, literally trying to pick up women. And the crazy thing is he finds two, one of whom is an aspiring underwear model.  

The scene is only a couple of shots, and we're done while it's still light out. Tomorrow's a day off, so the crew heads to a bar, where James buys drinks for all.  

Spirits are finally picking up. Is that because there's beer and cleavage? Probably.  

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.

On Day 5, it stopped raining. 

For the length of the production, the out-of-town chunk of the production (myself, Ben Moseley, AD Jennifer Hegarty, Production Designer Jen Saguraro, Tina Frank from the Art Department, Sound guy Xander McGrouther (replacing Paul Quirk, who was only available for part of the shoot), and 2nd AC in training Charlotte Bagshaw) are all staying at the house of filmmaker Dawn Furness. There's about a half a bar of Wifi there, if you stand by the window and hold your computer at an angle, and according to that it isn't supposed to rain on Day 5. It's even sunny out all afternoon and on the way up to the location. 

And then we get there and it pours for about 10 minutes, which is just long enough to make everything wet, especially the tall grass in the field where Ben and I will be setting up the 2K. So much for dry clothes. 

Today's challenge is to light a tree fort (yes, a tree fort) on the other side of the river, about 100 yards downstream from where we lit on Day 3. Downstream means closer to the barns, which is theoretically a good thing. 

It also means we have to get the 2K across the river via a walking bridge the Runners have built out of pallets and other random wooden things they've found laying around. It's safe, but when you mix in the rain and the mud, it's not the ideal thing to carry a heavy light across. It needs to go down the hill to get to that, then up a hill and through a gate so that we can get it to the only place where it'll be able to hit the tree fort, and even then you're looking at a moon that's at best on the same axis as the actors.  

Augmenting the moon is our usual assortment of Redheads, 2 on each side of the river, gelled green and pointing up at the canopy of trees all around the tree fort, the idea being that if you've got nothing but blackness behind actors in a scene like this, it looks pretty dull. But, some indication of foliage in the distance, blurry and out of focus but definitely there, adds perspective to the scene. If nothing else, it helps sell the illusion that we are in fact in the woods, which we actually are.  

Think of it this way: there's no point in going to all the trouble of filming in the fucking woods if it looks like we might have shot the damn thing on a soundstage. 

By this point, we've got this pretty well down to a science. It's not all that complicated. It's just a question of execution. The only hitch in the system is that today they want to put a practical in the tree fort, and even that is pretty simple. The hardest part is catching the extension cord as it's being thrown up fifteen or so feet. 

We don't even have to flip the lights. Suddenly I've got a pretty easy assignment. 

The problem is, there's not a whole lot to take pictures of. All the light is focused on the tree fort, and it isn't strong enough or big enough to hold extra people. Down below, at the base of the tree, is pretty dark.  

Of course, that's only a small part of what's going on. While it's still light out and we're setting lights, it's obvious that something bad is about to happen. No one is happy, even more so than yesterday. 

"Have you ever been on a film where the crew mutinied?" I ask Ben.

"No, you?"

"Almost." 

It's to the point where it isn't a question of if things are going to fall apart, but when.  

It's strange, because our G&E team is mostly out of the picture for all of this. We run around, setting lights and stringing cables while there's all this bickering and anger going on. We see it--you'd be blind not to--but it doesn't affect us all that much, really. It does, but it doesn't.  

All through the shoot, the director has had to spend a lot more time than normal working with actors before the camera even rolls. They don't know their lines, for the most part and to call the working relationship between the actors, the director, and the production unprofessional is kind. It's the single biggest drag on the schedule. I can tell that no matter where I am in the woods, matter how far I am from the action. 

On Day 5 they add a new actor to the mix. James has never met him. No one in the production has. They rehearse him, which by all accounts goes well, but when the camera starts rolling, he freezes. Completely. The production comes crashing to a halt.  

He cannot function on camera. This is why you do your research before you bring someone on. It's easy to chalk an actor freezing up as something out of your control, but is it? If this person has acted before, then you should rather easily be able to learn about his stage fright with a quick phone call. And if he isn't, then why are you hiring a non-actor without at least meeting with him? Why are you hiring anyone without doing at least a cursory reference check? 

And then the AD quits.  

Jennifer Hegarty has been unhappy pretty much from Day 1. That's been obvious to everyone, but as the production fell further and further behind, she became more and more vocal in her displeasure, telling anyone who will listen how badly things are going, and even confiding to me things you shouldn't tell the embedded reporter on your set.  

I don't want to get into the why because I honestly don't know. Nothing on a film set happens in a vacuum. Anyone who tries to tell you that the problems on a set are all one person's (or several persons) fault is either lying to themselves or trying to sell you on their own innocence. I do know that a very unhappy Assistant Director quit the film, and that spun everything into a panic. Suddenly people are doing damage control left and right. Richy Reay (the DP) asks me to take over for him as he and James go and "take care of some things", and suddenly Ben and I are in charge as we've got to figure out a scene that was supposed to take place in the tree fort, and now happens and the base of the tree, where it's completely dark. It strikes me that the best approach is to slide the moon over, throwing it at the tree trunk, and staging the scene in a way that the new actor is in silhouette, thus making his dialogue much less important (and really easy to replace in post, as needed). 

So we go to work re-lighting the scene. The Runners start knocking down bushes and nettles in the way, Ben moves the 2K and I start re-lighting the canopy, basically trying to figure out how Richy would want this lit. By the time we're ready, Richy is back. He tweaks a few things and we set some branches between the actors and the lights to give some dapple. Then James come back and we shoot the scene. 

I have no idea what transpired in that time frame. And I don't really care. As a journalist, I know my job is to cover the story, but I'm a filmmaker first. Priority one is getting the shots in the can. The rest is just things to write about.  

When I get back to the barn, Jen asks if there's anything she can do to help out G&E. I put her to work organizing the gels. Fittingly, they've exploded into a giant mess.

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.