Jim Townsend on “Attack of the Vegan Zombies!”

What was your filmmaking background before making Attack of the Vegan Zombies?

JIM: Before I made Attack of the Vegan Zombies! I worked in news production and on independent films in New York City. While I did a little of everything, I ultimately gravitated toward Locations and Production Management. One of my highlights was being the Production Manager on Jay Lee's Noon Blue Apples. That was a great project and it went to Sundance in 2002.

Mostly the work was difficult. Every job had long hours, lousy food and Manhattan is a crowded place to shoot. But there's nothing else like it. Maybe someday I'll have a chance to go back there and make another movie. It's just frustrating to spend so much time, energy and resources toward figuring out how you are going to park a bunch of trucks in Manhattan every day.

For a complete list of my credits, go to: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3134641/. While you're there, find Attack of the Vegan Zombies! and vote!

What was the writing process like?

JIM: Writing is fun and terrifying at the same time. Looking down at a blank page and knowing you have to fill it and about a hundred more just like it with a story is intimidating.

Here's how I did it. I got a very broad idea of the beginning, middle and end of my story. I came up with most of the characters and mapped out all three acts. Then I started to write. I forced myself to sit down at the computer (I use Final Draft software and supplement it with the legal pad & pencil) at about nine o'clock every night. I would write for about three hours and go to bed. By then I was tired and fell right to sleep.

For me, writing at the same time and place every day was crucial. My son Emmet was a toddler at the time so the only available time I had was after he went to bed. I averaged two to three pages per day and was done in a few months. It's not as hard as you think. After a while, the characters begin to talk to you and all you have to do as a writer is transcribe.

How did you fund the film?

JIM: We funded the film with a $30,000 second mortgage on our house. I've probably spent about $5K more since then.

What sort of camera did you use for production and what were the best and worst things about it?

JIM: We shot Attack of the Vegan Zombies! with a Panasonic DVX100A.

The best thing about it is that it looks pretty good, even when you project it on a good screen. It's also cheap and so are the tapes you use with it (mini dv). It is also a light camera, easy to use and has nice, built in audio inputs.

On the bad side, you are limited to the format of mini-dv. It can look very nice, but can't rise above itself. A $3,000 camera can't compete with a $100,000 camera. Some distributors and festivals are averse to mini-dv as well.

You wore a lot of hats on the production -- what's the upside and the downside to doing that?

JIM: I enjoyed doing a lot of things on my movie because I felt it made it belong to me more. Besides, I cheated. The first thing I did for this project was secure a great location with many sets on site. There was very little pre-production involved. All we had to do, was show up and shoot. So I wrote the script to take place almost entirely at one location. They also had a catering service. so we ate breakfast and lunch on site every day. So a lot of production headaches were taken off the page.

The downside is that after a week or two of shooting, my brain began to get even mushier than normal. Thoughts like, "OK.... what scene am I about to shoot now and am I in it?" started to creep into my head. Acting is a lot like plumbing. Sure you look at your bathroom and think "I can tear up that lamination and put in the tiles myself" but it's best left to the pros.

What was the smartest thing you did during production? The dumbest?

JIM: The smartest thing I did was hire Max Fischer to be the Director of Photography. Being new to the Richmond, VA area, I didn't know anyone in the film business. Max knows everyone. He was an invaluable source of contacts. His level of enthusiasm was off the charts and he really got into the project.

I think if there was one thing I could do over it would be to edit here in Richmond. We have the facilities. While I'm thrilled with the final cut, I edited by sending the tapes to my friend Jay Lee in Los Angeles. He did a great job but it was a ton of work for him and I shouldn't have put him in that position. It's also very awkward to try and discuss the changes over the phone with the time zone difference and our schedule differences. I should have spent the extra cash to find a place in Richmond where I could sit down with the editor and go over everything together. Simpler is better.

And, finally, what did you learn from making the film that you can take to other projects?

JIM: What did I learn from this project? I learned that I can write, produce and direct my own movie. And if I can do it, anyone can.

Set up and Payoff

Movies are full of them... the setup and the payoff.

It's the part in a film that introduces a person (or object or piece of information) that seems to have little significance to the story. The audience shouldn't see it coming, yet it is significant enough so that the audience will remember it. That's the setup.

The payoff happens when that seemingly insignificant information becomes a very important plot point.

In The Wizard of Oz (1939), think of how the ruby slippers are set up as being very important. The reason originally given by Glinda to Dorothy is that if she takes the slippers off, she'll "be at the mercy of the Wicked Witch of the West." However, by the end of movie, Dorothy finds that these same ruby slippers are the key to getting her back to Kansas! There's your payoff.

Another classic case in point: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). Remember the scene when Jack Nicholson is showing off to the other guys in the psychiatric institute? He boasts that he can lift this huge marble water fountain. Of course, he can't; it's too heavy. On first viewing, it just seems like a great little scene meant to show the sheer audacity of the Jack Nicholson character. However, it's really meant to be a setup.

Now to the very end of the movie, when the big Native American patient escapes from the asylum... How? By lifting that same marble water fountain (the one that wouldn't budge for Jack Nicholson). But this guy not only can lift the thing, he throws it through a window and is able to escape from the asylum.

What if this final scene hadn't been set up with that earlier scene? Well, we wouldn't have been amazed at the sheer strength of the guy. (When Jack tried, we realized how heavy the thing was.)

For more on setups and payoffs, try reading these:
Plants and Payoffs
Set Up and Payoff

James Fair On The 72-Hour Movie Project – Reflections (Pt. 5 of 5)

This entry was originally published at Hope For Film

By James Fair

If I think back to the drunken bet in Dublin, when I said that I could make a feature in three days, I believe I have proven my point. I think the audience approval makes my point even further, as it was not only made in three days, but people also liked it. More importantly, I hope that we have helped demystify the production process and gone some of the way towards inspiring filmmakers to try different approaches.

However, the goalposts are now being moved, and people are asking whether it will have a life after the festival. I hope that it can, although it now competes alongside other films in the conventional fashion, jostling for distribution and exhibition deals. If we go back to the aims and objectives, we never designed a plan for what we would do at this stage, which was perhaps a mistake.

I believe there is currently a great deal of methodical examination of distribution and exhibition channels being conducted simultaneously by academia and by business. I have a constant concern that cinema is being marginalised in favour of more dominant screens, especially those of Internet and iProducts. As a filmmaker who fell in love with cinema in the darkened rooms of my local multiplex, I can’t subscribe to the loss of the collective experience of the big screen with no remote control. Whilst I am intrigued and excited by the emergence of technologies and concepts such as VOD and transmedia, I don’t currently use them and I don’t want to see their rise indicate cinema’s decline.

“Innumerable confusions and profound feeling of despair invariably emerge in periods of great technological and cultural transitions. Our “Age of Anxiety” is, in great part, the result of trying to do today’s job with yesterday’s tools – with yesterday’s concepts.”
Page 8, McLuhan, Marshall & Fiore, Quentin (1967) The Medium Is The Massage (California, Gingko)

McLuhan’s quote may be 43 years old but I genuinely don’t believe we have exhausted all avenues in cinema. I believe that we rely upon technologically spectacular advances to constantly woo audiences, and whilst that may have worked in the last century, it won’t work as effectively now. I feel that if we altered some of the ways that we made film, the audience could capture a sense of quality that didn’t depend on 3D glasses or special effects. It is because industry defines these elements as quality that audiences are desperately expecting to feel it, but they aren’t necessarily detracting a quality experience.

“Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. A product is not quality because it is hard to make and costs a lot of money, as manufacturers typically believe. This is incompetence. Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality.”

Page 206, Drucker, Peter (2007) Innovation & Entrepreneurship. First edition 1985. (Oxford, Elsevier)

We can find solutions to many of our challenges through action followed by analysis. I believe that academic analysis by itself is of little world value and can lead to paralysis of activity, therefore it is important to create as well as criticise. I believe that film academia should stop standing on the sidelines of industry and actively engage in helping out during this paradigm shift. Whilst they are not there to be the research and development department of the studio, there is little value in them simply analysing cinema from a distance. Being truly innovative is to think of something and to make it happen. Thinking about it and not doing anything is not innovative at all; it’s just creative thinking.

It is for this reason that I have found it a pleasure to guest blog for Ted over the last few months. I think the quality of discussion upon the Truly Free Film blog is a valuable contribution to our community. It is important that we keep our contributions constructive. Machiavelli wrote, “The innovator makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old order and receives only lukewarm support from those who would prosper under the new.” This has recently resonated with me, especially when I would receive criticism even though I never envisaged 72 as being anything other than an inspirational exercise. However, I’ve tried to see other people’s frustrations and loosen my own resistance to them.

For some on the outside, it appeared as if we were stealing a slot in a major festival without having made the film yet. It looked like we are saying that it doesn’t take three months to shoot a film, it takes three days. It seemed were ‘showboating’ and ridiculing the filmmaking process. We actually set out to create a transparent process that inspired other filmmakers, but I can see how that may have got lost in the message. Hopefully our continued presence here upon Truly Free Film, as well as Chris Jones and Randy Finch’s blogs, has meant that we’ve had a chance to get our undiluted thoughts upon the 72 Hour Movie project ‘out’ there.

Thanks to those that have supported us along the way. If you are interested in finding out more about ‘The Ballad of Des & Mo’ and the 72 Hour Project, please visit our website www.72hourmovie.com and join us at www.facebook.com/72hourmovie .

James Fair is a lecturer in Film Technology at Staffordshire University, UK. He has directed two features in 72 hours. The first film, ‘Watching & Waiting’, was shot in Galway, Ireland, as part of the 20th Film Fleadh in July 2008. The second film, ‘The Ballad of Des & Mo’, was shot in Melbourne, Australia, as part of the 59th International Film Festival in 2010.

Quotable Thursdays

We're planning to have a regular feature on this blog that has to do with quotes and quotations. Hence "Quotable Thursdays".

So, to kick it off, here are some quotes on... well, quotes...

And why not begin with the oft-quoted Ben Franklin! [pictured right]

"I have heard that nothing gives an Author so great Pleasure, as to find his Works respectfully quoted by other learned Authors." -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

"I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself." -- Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992)

"A proper collection of quotations is the whole world digested." -- Terri Guillemets

"People will accept your idea much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first." -- David H. Comins

James Fair On The 72-Hour Movie Project – Production (Pt. 4 of 5)

This entry was originally published at Hope For Film

By James Fair

Unsurprisingly, most of the fascination around the 72 Hour Movie project ‘The Ballad of Des & Mo’ surrounds the process of filming and editing it so quickly, especially in relation to the projects that can take months. In this post, I’m going to focus on how we turned it around in such a short time. I wrote a post for Ted a while back titled ‘The Shape of Things’ that explored the organisational structure of the 72, so I won’t repeat that here. Instead I’ll concentrate upon the necessary elements that must be present in order for the process to work alongside the organisational structure.

The simple target is to maximise effectiveness from the effort. People assume that you would have to work hard to make a film in 72 hours, but that is not as valuable as being productive and efficient. In fact, it is the opposite! To be productive and efficient is to achieve a significant amount with a small amount of work. Efficiency is the ratio of the useful work performed by a process to the total energy expended. If it is hard work, something has gone wrong. Quite a few films have been shot in such a short timeframe and even less. Corman’s version of ‘The Little Shop of Horrors’, in which Jack Nicholson made an early appearance, was shot in two and a half days I believe. Shooting rapidly isn’t that hard or complex. It just requires thoughtful consideration to the effective organisation of a good cast and crew, good location management, good scheduling and good direction.

Good casting is critical. They must not only cope with pressure but also thrive upon it. They must be consistent with performance. They must have patience and calm. They need to be rehearsed but not so much to be inflexible. They must know their lines and be capable of nailing the performance in approximately three takes. Any more than three and we are losing too much time on set and sending too much data to the editors. I was incredibly fortunate that all of the actors in ‘The Ballad of Des & Mo’ were extremely competent and unflappable, despite the huge pressure. This sounds like a staple requirement of an actor, but in reality not all are happy to be put under such stress.

The crew must have similar characteristics, buoyed by an enthusiasm and energy for the project. As a director I believe I encouraged this through leading by example. It was more ‘do as I do, not do as I say’ – the opposite of traditional direction. If a tripod needs carrying, I can do it. People criticise this approach by saying that ‘if you are carrying the tripod you are not directing the film’. This is rubbish. Carrying the tripod is directing the film. It is moving it where you want it to be. If you are still making creative decisions on the set of your movie, to the extent that you can’t carry a tripod, you are an ass. Something has gone horribly wrong.

I believe that good direction is good planning. Know where you want to put the camera. Know how scenes will cut together. Know the pace of the action and make sure you are getting it on set, regardless of how fast you are filming. The temptation with video is to shoot lots of coverage, but I believe this is lazy ‘dump-truck’ directing. Shoot what you need and move on, otherwise there are ramifications throughout the process. Shooting too much means time transferring it, cost to store it, time sifting through and editing it.

Good scheduling is essential. For every hour that we filmed, approximately two minutes would have to be used in the final cut of the movie. Our first day of filming remained in one location and we shot through just over a third of the movie, accounting for the slow start as we gelled as a team. The second day we had many more location changes but split into two units for a couple of hours and filmed sections of the script where the protagonists weren’t on screen together. The third day we fell behind early on, but the adrenaline and momentum of being so close to the finish line carried us forward.

All the way through this we were transferring files on location from the 16GB RED cards in regular data dumps, not dissimilar to the process of changing the film magazine. Occasionally we’d resort to using the RED drives instead, but we were wary of bottlenecking the data to the edit and paranoid about dropping frames. These were then couriered as quickly as possible to our edit team, who were located centrally in Melbourne. They would transcode the footage and send low-resolution versions for the editors to picture cut. They would communicate back to location that the footage had been ingested and in circulation that meant we could start to recycle the cards on set. Once the editors were done, they’d send the sequence back and it would be conformed at full resolution, along with a stereo sound mix that was being cut independently. This convoluted process requires a blog in itself, but that would have to be authored by Mike Fisher, our genius workflow manager courtesy of Sequence Post in London.

Ironically, the biggest problem throughout the process was dumping the film back to tape in order to be screened in the Australian Centre for Moving Image. The whole 72 Hour Movie project hinges upon the benefits of tapeless workflow, it simply couldn’t work if we had to digitise in real-time. Yet in order to screen the film in a traditional setting we had to go back to the conventional safety of tape! A classic example of how the possibilities of digital filmmaking production don’t always marry nicely with the traditional processes of distribution or exhibition.

I have never advocated making features in 72 hours to be the way forward for filmmaking. I believe that our project serves as an example that we can think differently about the process of filmmaking instead of unquestionably adopting the same roles and protocols each time. We all have different motivators for making films, perhaps storytelling, art, business or fame. We should formally acknowledge the different approaches to filmmaking so that alternative processes can be legitimately recognised as valid and viable for production. Perhaps it is the current inability to recognise and reward innovative filmmaking that is leading audiences to believe that cinema is running out of ideas?

James Fair is a lecturer in Film Technology at Staffordshire University, UK. He has directed two features in 72 hours. The first film, ‘Watching & Waiting’, was shot in Galway, Ireland, as part of the 20^th Film Fleadh in July 2008. The second film, ‘The Ballad of Des & Mo’, was shot in Melbourne, Australia, as part of the 59^th International Film Festival in 2010.

Katie Aselton on "The Freebie"

What was your filmmaking background before making The Freebie?

KATIE: Honestly, my only background in filmmaking was watching and collaborating with Mark and Jay Duplass. I acted in their short films, Scrapple and The Intervention, and went on to not only act in, but also co-produce their feature film, The Puffy Chair. And I have been present for all their films since. Being close to them and watching their process from the moment of conception to the moment of completion was and still is an incredible education.

What was the genesis of this movie -- how was it developed and written?

KATIE: This movie was born out of unemployment! I was an actor who wasn't booking anything and when you're married to Mark Duplass, you realize that, if you have the idea and you have the passion, there's no excuse to not execute it.

The truth of the matter is that I am surrounded by an incredibly talented safety net that I knew and respected and trusted to not let me fall on my ass. So once the idea of this seemingly fine couple giving themselves the freedom of one night with someone else came to me, it all happened very quickly from there.

I wrote the outline that we shot from (the movie was 100% improvised) and a number of people from the aforementioned safety net jumped on board - Ben Kasulke (our d.p.), Nat Sanders (our editor) - and through them, we were introduced to other amazing people - Adele Romanski (our producer), Hillary Spera (our 2nd shooter), Sean O'Malley (sound) -- and we created this awesome collaborative team who loved this story and shared a vision of how to tell it.
Were you always planning to both act and direct it?

KATIE: Yup

How did you fund the film?

KATIE: We paid for it out of Mark's and my own bank account... couch cushion money, really. And then we cut some serious corners shooting in our house, cooking our own meals, begging many favors from many friends, etc.

What sort of camera did you use for production and what were the best and worst things about it?

KATIE: We shot on two Sony EX3s and I was really happy with the look of the film... I think it's incredibly cinematic for video. I have a hard time thinking of the "worst thing" about it, really.

What was the smartest thing you did during production? The dumbest?

KATIE: I fired our lead actor 3 days into shooting, which could have been the dumbest thing I could have ever done, except for the fact that we ended up with Dax Shepard, which was by far the smartest thing I could have ever done for this movie! He and his performance just blew me out of the water! I was so pleased.

The previous actor just wasn't enjoying the process... he wasn't comfortable improvising and instead of embracing it, he became very guarded and defensive and incredibly hard to work with. And when it comes down to it, when no one is making any money, you all better be having a good experience.

I love doing what we do. What we do is fun! Don't get me wrong... it's hard and exhausting and it takes a toll on every part of your life, but I can promise you, if I’m lucky enough to be running the set, I’m going to do everything within my power to make sure the vibe is great and that the people are good, and they want to come to work everyday!

And, finally, what did you learn from making the film that you can take to other projects?

KATIE: I learned I can kinda do this! Which is exciting and terrifying all at the same time... it's a whole new world open to me and I have only dipped my toe in, but I’m excited to go deeper!

James Fair On The 72-Hour Movie Project – The Script (Pt.3 of 5)

This entry was originally published at Hope For Film

By James Fair.

On a number of occasions, people have said to me that the success of ‘The Ballad of Des & Mo’ at the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) was the strength of the script. I am naturally flattered, because I wrote it, but I am also a little embarrassed, because I do not view it with the same reverence and respect as others seem to. I’m not saying that the success wasn’t due to the script, I am saying that the script was part of the process.

Honestly speaking, I would never waste a developed idea for a film upon the 72 Hour Movie project. I cherish some of my script ideas too much to use them in such a hurried production circumstance. So I deliberately wrote a script that would suit the purpose of making it in 72 hours, using the process as a catalyst for the script.

I started with 40 cells in a Microsoft Word document. These cells would roughly translate to two-minute scenes of screen time, so an 80-minute film. I sat in a cafe with my assistant Irune Gurtubai and filled each cell out, not necessarily in consequential order. The only rule was that each cell should have a significant plot point that carried the story forward. From there, we sat for two hours and drank copious amounts of coffee until we had filled it out. That was the structure of the script. I then spent three weeks writing the actual scenes and dialogue, sticking as close to the structure as possible. It ended up being 46 scenes, which is deliberately one third less than ‘Watching & Waiting’, the film we shot in Galway. I decided to have longer scenes with more dialogue because the RED camera having interchangeable lenses would be a slower set-up than the fixed lenses of the Panasonic HPX500 that we used upon ‘Watching & Waiting’.

The first draft was then sent to a series of different script editors of varying experience for them to compile notes and return them to me. These editors were recruited through a variety of sources; previous colleagues, loved ones, friends and Facebook followers. They were spread worldwide – Finland, U.S.A., Australia, Germany, Ireland and England, which ensured the script would be universal. This municipal process also acted as an accelerant to my script editing, which can usually take far too long between drafts. Taking the notes into consideration, I would rework the script until I was happy with it; five drafts. My first film Peppermint had fifteen drafts!

It was the fifth draft that I sent Kate O’Toole after I had approached her informally through Facebook. I noticed that she was following us in our group so messaged her and she asked to see the script. We went through one more draft, where the character motivations and necessities were tightened up, and this became our shooting script. The shooting script was then amended in rehearsal if the actors offered ideas to strengthen their characterisation. I would act as a sounding board and was by no means precious. So when people commend the script, they are really commending the work of around ten people. This is not script writing by committee, as I wrote it all, but it was the functional product of a methodical process, created in direct relation to the process of filming it in 72 hours.

I have written scripts before and I have studied scriptwriting in two university modules at undergraduate and postgraduate level. I think I may be good at it, but I genuinely believe that we delivered ‘The Ballad of Des & Mo’ along very formulaic lines. It is a generic romantic comedy, but an audience still love stories that are told well, regardless of their genre. I wrote it faster than any other script I have ever written and I did fewer drafts than normal. I believe that the script followed the ideals of necessity and dilemma very closely, and that meant that it connected well with audiences.

The story follows a middle-aged Irish couple that arrive in Melbourne on their second honeymoon, yet their luggage doesn’t arrive with them. The premise meant the characters losing their luggage in the first scene removed the problems of wardrobe changes. Their flight from Ireland to Australia meant the two protagonists could look tired and bedraggled as part of their jetlag (regardless of whether it was a result of shooting a feature in 72 hours). This premise also considers the demographic of the MIFF audience. Whilst there is a great deal of younger people who would’ve been interested in our process, we wanted to have a story that identified with the festival audience. I find it a little strange that studios are so fixated with the 15-30 demographic when they are the exact audiences that are most likely to pirate material and most likely to be out drinking or partying instead of watching movies. I thought of my parents – they have no idea how to pirate, they wouldn’t agree with it ethically and they hate going out to bars because the noise is too loud and they are filled with pissed kids. Have we explored all audiences fully? Are we blind to the potential of other audiences because we are so fixated with the system the way it is now?

Whilst the script was critical in securing our star, Kate O’Toole, it was the process that had particular impact. She’d joke that actors get paid big money for the inconvenience of sitting around and being bored. But in all seriousness, if you are an actor, isn’t there an appeal in spending a high ratio of time on-set actually acting instead of waiting around?! Organising a shoot to be faster means it can be cheaper for producers and more rewarding for actors, but it requires the maximisation of effectiveness from the effort inputted, something I’ll explore further tomorrow.

James Fair is a lecturer in Film Technology at Staffordshire University, UK. He has directed two features in 72 hours. The first film, ‘Watching & Waiting’, was shot in Galway, Ireland, as part of the 20^th Film Fleadh in July 2008. The second film, ‘The Ballad of Des & Mo’, was shot in Melbourne, Australia, as part of the 59^th International Film Festival in 2010.