After having sworn to never again work on a short film for 8 months in a row, Fuji and I started on a challenge to try and make 12 short films in 12 months.
Looking back on it now, it might not have been the wisest decision, but that's always easy to say afterwards. Even though we 'only' finished 9 films that year, it was - without a doubt - the most productive period in my filmmaking life.
The Birth of this Project
I believe it was one of the first days of 2012. I was taking a bath. As is often the case, it's while in a bath, underneath a shower or on a long walk by myself in nature, when my creative ideas flow most easily.
Lying down in my parents' bathtub, I was brainstorming on an easy to make short film. In other words, a project that would be the opposite of Zeespiegel , production wise.
I then had a lightbulb moment
What if we would go for a film shot in a continuous take, a film where Fuji just had to push the record button at the start and press it again at the end of the shoot? In other words, a film consisting of one single take, a continuous shot. A film that would require some skills from the actor and some prep time for camera and light but that would - if executed well - hardly require any editing.
Location
We would shoot it on one location, instead of two locations that were far apart (like we did for Zeespiegel)
We could shoot it in my parents' house. I was living there at the time, due to being unemployed. They were about to go on a little holiday so we would have the whole house for ourselves.
(No) Casting
We would make it a film with - once again - one actor. The same guy, Miro Brooks, who starred in our previous short film.
Theme
I then looked for a theme that I could easily identify with. As was the case in Zeespiegel, I picked a depressed guy ( a metaphor for how I felt), who had to live with his parents again after years of living on his own. Parents who expected from him that he would find a job and act like a grown up - he had finished university after all - while the only thing he wanted to do, was escape from their house and live a life that would actually make him happy.
Exact Location
I started to brainstorm about the most interesting space in my parent's house and realized that it would be either the cellar or the basement.
Focusing on my parents' cellar, I realized that it's merely a storage space. It's the room where they store, among other things, their wine and beer.
What if we made this short an improvised monologue / rant on having to grow up, on parents' expectations about their kids? About a guy who feels different, can't conform to that kind of 'average' life, who feels totally claustrophobic?
The Length of the Movie
I had learnt from our last project, that it helped to decide on the length of a film before the actual shoot.
1 + 1 = 2 What if we would let the duration of this short, depend on the time it would take the actor to empty/ drink a bottle of wine?
Adding some Alcohol to the Mix
Drinking alcohol would not only make the acting more interesting, it would also make the improv more natural, the monologue less forced and lead to a change inside the actor's mind and body.
What did Fuji think about all this?
I talked with Fuji about my ideas. He informed me that our camera (Canon 7D) could only film a minute or 12 in a row, before it would stop recording to save the file. As 4 GB - the maximum file size - would then have been reached.
I then had a Eureka moment
What if we made it a 12 minute film?
2012
12 months
12 movies
12 minutes
Let's call the project 12 movies 12 minutes. It would work from a marketing perspective too.
That is how this project was born.
Flash Forward to the Production, not much later
I had written a loose monologue, containing the kind of thoughts and feelings that the actor could improvise around. I believe I actually translated it to English, as we had decided to give the project an international appeal for marketing purposes (online and film festivals).
The Day of the Shoot
We had only one weekend - my parents wouldn't be around those days. Of course, Murphy's Law kicked in. Miro, the actor, is sick on the day of the shoot
I think he had the flu. No energy and extremely sore muscles. He informed me in the morning, that he wasn't sure if he could drive over to us. He would take a hot bath and see if it would help.
Apparently it helped him just enough. He's a tough guy and didn't want to disappoint us.
Nevertheless, I learnt that he wasn't able to stay for the night - which had been my initial plan, to buy us some time to prep and relax - and that he wouldn't drink alcohol for two reasons: being sick and having to drive back to Belgium afterwards. In short, he would only have a couple of hours to spare. We really needed to improvise.
A couple of hours later Fuji, Miro and I were together again.
My Directions
The cellar was so tiny that I wasn't able to be in the cellar with Fuji and Miro. I had to direct them first, then let them enter the cellar and do their thing.
Directing Camera
To make things as interesting as possible in the tiny space we had, I decided to give Fuji the following directions:
Position yourself between my parent's freezer and the wall where the bottles of wine were stored. You are allowed to move but I don't want you to move your feet. In other words, you can hunch down, bend forward, backwards, turn around but just keep your feet in the same position. I think he was allowed to zoom in and out too but I don't remember my exact directions.
"I am Your Father" - Directing the Actor
I told Miro to focus on his monologue, improvised around the internal struggle between his parents expectations of him and his own ideas of growing up and happiness.
I also informed him to respond to the sounds that he heard upstairs, outside the cellar. The sounds would be made by me. I told him to imagine that I was - these sounds were made by - his father. I also gave him something to do, to make the words, the monologue flow more easily (a trick I learned from a book on directing actors).
What I did, was the following: I positioned him on a seat in the cellar, gave him a pan with water and a pile of potatoes to peel. The film would start with him peeling potatoes. He had to imagine that his parents had locked him in their cellar and ordered him to peel potatoes (prepare food) for them.
They treated him as a slave, even though he was their adult son. It was a severe form of punishment, humiliation.
I remember now, that I also informed him to dress up in childish clothes, contrasting with his adult appearance.
Don't Leave the Cellar!
And, last but not least, I told him to do whatever he wanted in the cellar but - no matter how frustrated he grew in there - he wasn't allowed to leave that space during the shoot.
The film started out with him peeling potatoes and growing more and more frustrated along the way, directing this negative emotion towards his parents, especially his father.
The Actual Shoot
After giving these directions, I left Fuji and Miro in the cellar and started playing the part of the father, making noise every now and then, trying to be as annoying as possible.
After 3 takes of around 12 minutes each - Fuji just filmed till the camera stopped recording - Miro was completely out of energy. His throat was sore from all the talking and screaming. He said this was all he could do that day.
Fuji and I thanked him for coming over despite being sick and it was a wrap.
I believe Fuji stayed another night, it was fun. It felt pretty good to have shot a film in one afternoon.
(Hardly no) Post Production
Afterwards, the editing was a piece of cake. We selected the best out of the three takes we had. Fuji then cut off a couple of seconds to make it exactly 12 minutes. And - if I remember it well - I made the subtitles. A process that was probably the most annoying and most labour intensive of the production.
Here's the film, the first short of our 12 movies 12 minutes project on Vimeo
Or watch it on YouTube:
TO BE CONTINUED
Earlier Filmmaking Posts by me:
Make your own Damn Movie
How to Not Make a Movie - Part 3
How to Not Make a Movie - Part 2 - My Second Short Film
How to Not Make a Movie - Part 1 - My First Short Film