#4: The Making Of A Realization

As I write this the 5th and probably, hopefully final version of our new commercial is done. It´s called "The Dream" but it sounds really lame, so I might have it changed to "Need Action?", in honour of the "Need Milk?" commercials back in the 90s. 
Tomorrow it will be in the hands of the sound mixer and the composer. We are almost done, 6 days away from our deadline and as I sit here in my room at 10.55 PM on a saturday evening, I will try to journey back to see if I can remember how it all started.

PRE-PRODUCTION

Pretty early on, on almost anything I know I will be directing, I can see certain shots (camera movements, angles and beats) pretty clearly in my head. It´s not rare that I write an idea down and do a small, sketchy storyboard next to it at the same time.

So 3-4 for weeks before shooting, I had made a list with shots I knew I wanted. I showed them to my DP and, luckily, he had only good feedback.

Some directors like to have the DP worry about where to put the camera and choose which lenses. As it turns out, I am not one of those directors. I just see things in a certain way that I feel is cooler, more dynamic and interesting (obviously). And I want to make sure that it gets to the screen.

I asked my DP about this when we were driving home after the shoot, if my attitude towards it pissed him off. He said that he felt comfortable in having me figure out the shots, because he knew that I knew what I was doing (this is called "make believe" on my part by the way!) and that it would make him look good in the end.

A particular funny part about doing shot list/storyboards, is trying to do it as logistically as possible while drawing. To think " Instead of having 4 shots for that scene, maybe those 4 could be combined into 2 shots in some way? What if we re-use that angle during the end where A runs over to B? And while we have the dolly on this side for shot #6, could we shoot shot # 11 while we´re at it? That will save us some time". 

And so on.

I like to plan this stuff out by myself, because then I will for sure know the plan inside out, which will make me feel more secure while shooting. That way you can instantly go "Cut! Perfect! The next shot is over here, tracking in on A and panning to B". It might only be minutes saved, but those minutes count up in the long run.

Early storyboard ideas

Shot plan for 2 set-ups

The commercial has two parts. On that is supposed to look like a red carpet event. And the other as an office space. The camera styles in Part One is kinetic, dynamic and fast paced. In Part Two on stics.

To make Part One get that red carpet-Oscar night-stardom all over-effect we rented some streak filters. Streak filters are a piece of glass you put in front of the camera that has teeny tiny lines edged into the optical surface. These lines will take a spot of light and streak it out horizontally or vertically, depending on what way you have the optical placed in front of the camera. 

This would come in handy during shooting, because I knew that we probably wouldn´t be able to find enough extras to fill up the room/shots with. So in placing red heads behind the talents, the streak filters would take that light and fill out the empty space with streaks, thus making it more confusing and give the illusion that more people are in the shot.

We choose to go with a lot of contrast in the faces too, with hard light, only a bit of soft filters. There were going to be a lot of colors in the first part, so the white hard line in the faces would make it look interesting.

Next up was location scouting. I think at that point in time we had already called some places we liked and asked if we could come visit.

The first place was a conference/hotel. Me and my DP walked into an incredibly big room and was it not for its fanciness, it could easily have been a studio. We could control the light as we saw fit, it was perfect for sound and the ceiling was full of small lights, that would look really good, since I like to have the camera low, pointing up on the actor and showing the ceiling.

But the bad thing was that it really just was 4 big walls with almost no "information" for the camera. There was nothing to let the viewer know where in the room the actor would be and since there were shots planned to dolly around the actor, those shots would look like shit with nothing behind him. Imagine an airplane battle in the air with only the blue sky as the background. You wouldn´t know what was up or down, plus the speed of the airplanes would get lost, since you wouldn´t have anything to relate to. This was the same for this particular location. So we had to cross our fingers that the next ones would turn out good.

Meanwhile, I met with Asger, the lead, to talk about the commercial and to catch up. He was in the Metro commercial as one of the frightened people and we clicked right away. 

I ended up staying there for 3 hours. We talked about the film business, about acting and he had some great ideas for what his character could do in the commercial. All this while trying to figure out why the apartment on the other of the street had full blown red light in the living room with 6 women walking around, drinking. Swinger party was our first guess but it turned out to be a halloween party. This made the few awkward waving-correspondence we had with them a little less disturbing.

Only one place showed some real potential. Located in the center of Frederiksberg, there was this old building with multiple big rooms the owners would rent out. The biggest one had this old but cool look, plus it had a balcony. Dark red and cream white walls. It was perfect. We could have the basic light placed on the balcony, facing down. That ment I could point the camera in almost any direction and we could have spots of light coming down. We quickly new this was the room for us to shoot in.

The location we decided to use.

One thing we also had decided was to rent the room for 2 days. Day 1 being pre-light day, Day 2 being the actual shooting. And that plan was pure luxury for us. In going through every shot, figuring out where to put the light, we would save an enormous amount of time during shooting. Luckily for us the room was available for 2 days, so we could basically just leave all the gear standing in its place. Oh the jolly!

The jolly wasn´t so jolly regarding extras. We searched for extras one week prior to shooting. Pretty late, you think to yourself. Yes, but the location deal was certain only 5 four days prior to shooting and we wanted to make know if we could shoot the damn thing at all. Plus extras are really good at showing up with minimum notice anyway.

We used onlinecasting.dk. That site had made me meet some nice people when we made the Metro-commercial. Actually, I only met Asger because he wrote back on our extra add and we happened to click right away. He gives 200 % full power from when he enters the door and till he leaves. And as a director, that is gold! It´s just easier to ask for "less" than "more". (Which is an awful direction by the way!) But the cool thing about Asger is that he is willing to go somewhere new in an instant, just for the sake of trying it out. 

The Metro-commercial also had Julie and Frederikke in it, as the two chips eating spectators. I loved those two together,so I naturally wanted them in this commercial too, as the same two spectators. Almost like a signature-thing, you could say. The plan is to have them in everything I make in the future and have them react to whatever is going on. And have them eat something new each time. Some people might say that has nothing to do with anything. But those two girls together makes me laugh, so those people can go fuck themselves.

Fortunately they wanted to come back and that made me very happy.

From the metro commercial and the new commercial (not yet color graded!)

We were only two days away from monday 15th, the day of the shooting. And we only had like 10 extras. And in my head we needed around 20-25 of them. We could only hope that enough people would show up…and spam the hell out of people on Facebook.

On the crew side we had:

A DP, line producer, assistant director, two runners, a gaffer and a sound mixer. This was the biggest crew I had ever had under me, and that both excited me and scared me a great deal. But with so many other things in life, I knew that you are only really scared in the time BEFORE something. When you´re there and it´s time to act, the fear goes away and you do what you have to do. 
I had also asked a good friend of mine who is a phenomenal photographer to come and take some stills. Don´t ever underestimated the power of production stills.

We rented gear from Zentropa, Filmgear and Filmudlejningen. This was the biggest lighting package I had ever had to disposal. And as I would do a couple of times during this production I thought to myself "We are really raising the bar each time". On the Metro shoot we had an extremely small lighting package, a very light dolly and even though the set-up was pretty big, this was even BIGGER. And I really like that. 
I have always had a quote from James Cameron in the back of my head: "If you´re not really breaking new ground, what´s the point?". And I kinda understand where he´s coming from. He probably mean in the technical aspect of filmmaking but I translate it into that if you, yourself, don´t personally feel you´re doing something you haven´t really done before, then you´re just repeating yourself. And what´s the fun in that? Our lives are so build up on the same rituals: Waking up, eating, shower, work, eating, going home, eating, sleeping. At least some part of it must be new.

So if the film, or painting or piece of music that you´re making isn´t breaking new ground professionally or personally, then, in my honest opinion, you should go for a walk and find something in yourself that can put that piece of work at risk. If nothing´s is at stake, then you or that piece of work won´t evolve into anything great.

And that´s why directing is the coolest job in the world. Because you just don´t know what you will end up with at the end of the day and nothing can prepare you 100 % for it. And that fear can seriously heighten your sense of what you have to do. It keeps things more alive. Much more than a 9-17 day job.

Anyway…

 The picking up gear at Zentropa.

The dolly from FilmGear.

I can sleep through heavy thunderstorms, in hotels and places that are far away from home but for some reason I couldn´t fall asleep the night before the shoot. I wasn´t even that nervous as you would think. I lay there and kept thinking "What if there´s something I forgot in pre-production? Is there a shot or a beat that is important but I haven´t thought of?".

And as a matter of fact there was one thing I had "miscalculated" in the storyboards. The idea for the beginning is that Asger is waayyy back down in the room with a ton of people in front of him. The Mysterious Object is being shown and in a total we see everybody raise their signs. In the same shot Asgers sign fills the frame and we pan down to see Asger desperately trying to get his bid across the room. This shot would be his characters first shot, followed by a shot where we see all the people in front of him.

But I realized that there was a much more effective and funnier way to show his situation in (And you will be surprised how logical and obvious this new idea is): If he is in the back of the room, then we should just really see his sign in air…only to be drowned in the sea of signs that an instant later would fill the shot. This proved to be right on the spot, because a few minutes later I fell asleep.

PRODUCTION

My alarm bell rang 3 1/2 hours later, at 4.55 AM. The DP would pick me up at 5.30 AM. The set call was 6.00 for preparing everything. Crew and cast would check in at 7.00 and we would hopefully be shooting the first shot at 8.30. 
Quick shower, packed the last things I needed and out the door I went.

The 19 hours that followed, I must admit, is a pretty blurry memory in my head now. But I will try to remember them the best I can.

That fear I wrote about earlier went away as soon as I stepped into our production van. Now we were driving to the location, there were so much other stuff to think about than the nervousness and the anxiety. Because if I just stuck to my plan, then I was fairly sure things would turn out just fine.

I started to update my shotlist, changing a few shots, so that it made more sense during shooting. For example, there was some dolly shots that would be better placed with all the other dolly shots.

As the cast and crew checked in, things started to get serious. I made a brief welcome and said that I was so very happy to see them all and I hope we would all make a kick ass commercial. 

Asger went straight into make-up, followed by the extras. 

When Asger was done, me and him went through the first shot. This needed a lot of physical acting for Asgers part. He needed to push, be pushed, fall down hard, run, jump, fall down hard again, almost for every take.

Asger rehearsing one of many stunts.

I think we started shooting at 8.45. I wanted to start out with one of the more bigger shots. I guess you could start out simple and easy but starting big gives some energy and tone to the whole thing plus it sets a pace. (Something I learned from watching behind-the-scenes of Michael Bay movies).

So now the whole thing was rolling and we just had to keep up with it.

We had around 27 set-ups which is just below the average amount of set-ups a normal film production will do on a normal day. They do around 40-50, I think. Some do 60-70. But we´re new in the game plus I couldn´t think of more than at least 30 set-ups for this one anyway.

The dolly shots were the most fun to do. Even though it would sound like a very old lady, I really got a kick out of doing those. For some reason not a lot of people (people: amateurs/newbies/up-comings etc) use dolly shots and if the camera is handheld, they are almost always shaky and at shoulder level, trying to capture the actors face -

Set-up for the first shot in the commercial.

(which, I might add, fucking always seems so extremely forced and feigned because for some reason some filmmakers think that handheld camera and a CU of the actor will equal intensity and drama. Many short films starts off that way. The problem is that the characters are not doing much else than looking. And WALKING! They always walk! And think. It´s like a fucking Enrique Iglesias video! Eyes will only show a reaction to something that is happening to the character and that reaction will create a link between the character and the audience. But if the character is just looking and thinking and walking and saying bullshit like "…but why don´t you love me?", that will never take the audience anywhere. And with the fear of being thrown out of my own country: We are MASTERS in doing those boring kind of stories! …in fact, throw me out of the country: They are not even really stories-stories, they´re inner-drama stories! Now, sorry for being blunt but what good does inner drama do in a MOVIE!? A VISUALLY medium!? We need to fucking SEE what the character is feeling by what the character is DOING! I hate it when a film is saying "Now, look at her eyes, look at her. She is looking and feeling stuff, look at her looking". 
But that´s not exciting, it´s not taking me anywhere. Of course, if there IS drama and the film IS taking you somewhere emotionally, then those sort of CU´s can be really effective. They can actually suck the air out of the audience in pure suspense. But those CU have to be justified in the story and in the scene, it´s not something you can just throw in there in hope that will help the drama along. In my rulebook anyway. Of course, I sound like I know how to work around those moments and make big drama. But I don´t. And I don´t have to in order to talk about it. Just look at film critics! Well…sorry, back to topic)

- but I like to go for a more cinematic style. I like moving the camera, I like the dynamic a low angle gives. I was raised on movies that did those things, so that has naturally grown into how I see the world. And especially here, in this commercial it made sense to move the camera, because it´s a story with a lot of stuff going on and moving the camera would only add to the feeling of the commercial.

Of course, there are shots on a tripod too. And they were actually pretty hard to make, because they had to look really good next to the dolly shots. With a dolly shot you can kinda dictate were you want the audience to look. With a tripod shot, the audience decides for themselves. So you gotta make sure that it´s still interesting to look at. But I think we did ok with those shots.

      

 

Directing the actors is the part that I find the most exciting and the most difficult. Directing the camera is much more technical than directing actors, obviously. The camera can´t do emotions and even though the camera is a pretty complex machine, it´s no where near as complex as the human physic. And this is where the real fun begins. No matter how much preparation you do, no matter how much you rehearse…if it´s not working when the camera is ready, what do you do? Maybe the camera can´t do emotions but it holds the definite truth: If something is fake or true. And again: no matter what, there will always be a moment where the performance feels fake.

I pride myself a little bit with having a good sense of when something is fake or feels real. Even if it´s just a second. I am not fully capable of fixing them. But I´m going in the right direction I think. Luckily me and Asger feel pretty comfortable around each other and I like to drop whatever idea I had and test new ground, not knowing if I have a parachute on. And Asger was not afraid of taking the jump with me.

Saying something extremely important to Asger, in a very Director-kinda way.

There were some beats that we had to work on, on the spot. For example: there was a shot where he had to fall on the floor and look up, to see if his plan worked and then get up with a happy and surprised look in his face. We didn´t do any rehearsing on this one, I was afraid we would practice the hell out of it and I wanted it to look fresh. Unfortunately the first couple of takes didn´t go very well, so naturally we ended up rehearsing it. The idea was that Asger would show excitement just after he looks up and then get up in a victorious "YEAH!!". But it just wasn´t working. I think it was tough on Asger because both he and I could feel it didn´t work no matter we tried and we just kept shooting and shooting. It kinda felt pretty stupid spending so much time on it because it was such a tiny moment but in the commercial it was a big moment.

Finally, we figured out a way to solve it. (And as I write this I keep thinking to myself "Of course, why didn´t we figure that out in the beginning??"). Now, if somebody would get as excited as Asgers character was supposed to, it would take a few moments for the victory-reaction to show. And especially if it calls for a "YEAH!!", that needs a full set of lungs. Solved. 
We ended up with 3 good takes.

If we had rehearsed this, we would probably had solved that problem then and saved us some time. But having said that though, I´m pretty proud of the fact that we kept going until we knew we had it. And that Asger didn´t wanted to settle for less either. He is going to be a very big actor someday.

It turned out that we only had 10 extras. 10! It looked so lame if you weren´t looking through the camera. But somehow, we made those 10 people look like 30. We used every trick. Long lenses, shaky camera moves, replacing the extras for each shot and so on. When a friend watched the 3rd cut, he said "Wow it looks so claustrophobic! And I was even there on location!". So that made me happy.

The Extras.

Raw footage.

Around 2 PM I was beginning to doubt that we would make it on time ("Time" being 7 PM) , so when I yelled out "…and that´s a wrap" around 6.50 PM I was really relieved. We had made it! There had been no arguments, no big problems, no "Oh shit!"-moments. You always expect there to be something…but no. None.

We eat some pizzas and burgers, packed the whole equipment down, drove it back to Zentropa and Filmgear, returned our production van and the producer drove me and the DP home. I was in my bed around midnight, 19 hours after I had gone up.

The whole thing was over and we had gotten some amazing shots.

Now the whole just had to be edited together, with sound and music. 

Just.

POST-PRODUCTION

The editing basically started the day after shooting. I did a pre-cut version for the editor, selected clips and threw them on the timeline. It was really just to give an idea of the whole thing. And it turned out to be an invaluable thing. We only had 2 week for post and that pre-cut gave us a big head start.

The pre-cut.

The first cut ran 1m28s. And during the cuts that follow we chopped off 10 seconds every time. The final one is now 46 seconds I think.

The editing is something I look forward to every time. After spending a lot of time in pre-production being in a group of few people, you are suddenly standing with a huge group in production. And when the shooting is done, you are ready to be in a small group again.

Since I basically have the entire movie/commercial/short film in my head long before we start shooting, (How directors can jump into production without it in his head, is beyond me), I use to watch what the editor is doing closely. Not breathing down his neck or anything, but unless something better comes up, I´m really sure that my vision is the best one. The good thing about an editor is that he has no idea of what we´ve been through. He comes in and watch what we´ve got with a fresh eyes. So I also like to see what he does with it.

This is where the project is created for the 3rd time. And this is also where I have to be prepared to let go of my vision and accept the material for what it is. If my preconception of a scene is not possible in the editing (because I fucked up in the storyboards, in my directing, whatever), there is only one thing to do: Try something else.

We could do some re-shoots but that wasn´t a possibility on this one.

The editing process on this one went fairly smooth. We were pretty much on the same page and if he had a suggestion, it was for the better. He kept cutting it faster and faster and I were constantly afraid that it all went too fast. But I´m pretty happy with the way it is now. Plus we have been cutting to dead silence and the sound and score will make the fast cutting more "smoother" I think.

The sound and music are being composed as I write this and I can´t wait to see it with everything on there!

For the score I want to go a bit over the top. Orchestral sound and theatrical. I think it will make it funnier and more exciting. I sended the composer a clip from The Social Network, the famous/infamous (depending on who you ask) rowing-sequence. And the universally famous piece from the William Tell Overture, just to give him an idea of the mood and scale.

I sended a few people a link to the video, just to see if there was something that didn´t work. The general response dealt mostly with smaller things and people seemed to understand what was going on. That is always good to know before you finish something. That some people like it.

Even though the commercial is only a few days away from being finished and even though I have no idea what the outcome will be, I will end this blog entry. 

But before doing so I want to share a very specific revelation I had while on my way home after the shoot. I might go corny here, but bear with me.

That night, while being completely drained of energy and with a toasted brain, I got the feeling that this is really what I am supposed to be doing. Even though I have known this since I was 9, I really KNOW it now. It was a very weird thing that kinda took me off guard but I felt that I could honestly say to people, with no shame or fear of not being taken seriously, that I´m a director. You are in a way brought up by society that it is a shameful, childish thing to pursue a dream in the world of creativity. And when you finally got the courage to say out loud what you want in life, you always find yourself in the energy draining "But what about a Plan B?"-conversation. Those reactions always bum the shit of me and frankly, makes me sad/very pissed off.

But that evening I thought: I had just directed the whole thing and it went great! I didn´t fuck up, I knew what I was doing and I didn´t panic. Hurray!! It was almost as if someone had come up to me after the shooting and said "You passed!". "Passed what?". "The test". "There was a test??". "Yep, congrats!"."Oh…phew!".

Now, I still mean what I wrote in the first blog entry: "I only know half the things I think I should know and don´t know of all the things I don´t know yet." And it will be that way for many, many years to come.

Maybe the commercial will suck big time when it goes public, no one knows. 

But for me, personally, that doesn´t matter. That realization was the best outcome I could have hoped for.




THE END!




I hope you enjoyed the reading. Leave a comment if you like.


All the best,
Jonas Thorbjoern