Production Diary: Fruitless

As James has hinted, I haven't been a good blogger lately because I've been focusing on movie-making. I recently made the rotten mistake of applying to film schools, which involves a lot of waiting around and nail-biting, so actually making a movie was good both for distracting me, and for bolstering my chances when I have to reapply next year because nobody wants me.

Right. Whoa, okay, side note: I've started listening to an internet radio station that does movie soundtracks, so I can play the "do I recognize it" game. Right now they're totally playing the theme from Vision of Escaflowne. Weird.

Back to the matter at hand.

So my unfortunately named friend, Syed Adnan Hussein, approached me about campusmoviefest, a contest that started at Emory and has since been desperately trying to work other places. The idea behind the contest was to prove to college freshmen that it's easy to make a video using iMovie and other assorted Mac products, but I suspect everyone learns the exact opposite.

Adnan had all sorts of completely incorrect information about the contest, all of which pointed to us having a good shot at winning. (For example, he still thinks it will somehow help us that he's a graduate student. True, this contest is mostly populated by freshman dorm halls forced by their resident advisors to participate, but I don't think the fact that we're doing it too is going to work in our favor.)

So we decided to put together a movie, based on an idea I've been kicking around for a while. I won't go into a lot of detail, but it's moderately complex, requires around five actors, some props, a lot of locations, and it should run around 7 minutes -- and have a really excellent montage. We estimated that, if we worked hard, we'd be finished in mid-March.

We found actors, we gathered props, we scouted locations -- and then we hit our first snag. The movie must be no longer than five minutes.

Not a problem. It'll be a tight five minutes. We'll have to cut away fast, but that's a good thing. We can still --

Snag Two: There's a restriction regarding music. Recall that about half of our movie is taken up by a montage, which I had planned to score with the disco hit Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel. No good. You can make your own music, or you can use one of the 800 songs by local artists that the contest provides, each of which is worse than the last.

We can work with this. This is not the end. Hell, all I need is a bad song. We can totally --

Snag Three: It's due in five days.

Exactly how these people expect anyone to put something remotely good together in five days -- let alone five minutes of something good -- is entirely beyond me. And yet, sure enough, this was in the rules. In fact, only 10% -- that's 50 seconds at most -- of the finished product can consist of footage shot before the 5-day period.

Of course, this can only work in our favor. Frequent commenter RM, a major component of our team, has all kinds of editing equipment and is a much faster video editor than any of the other teams could possibly have, and he and I both are plenty familiar with the tricks and the pitfalls of filming what have you. Advantage: us. But my complicated idea had to go.

New challenge: come up with something that can be filmed in two days, and edited in the remaining three. It shouldn't have more than 2 actors, as few props as possible, maybe one location, and it better be no longer than two minutes. (Note: everyone else turns in a 5-minute movie, but everyone else's movie sucks.)

My first idea was an adaptation of a comic strip I did in high school, in which Hitler and Stalin live together in an apartment. (Stalin is the neat one, Hitler is the messy one.) I was voted down -- "too offensive." My ass.

Unfortunately, I had shown Adnan a tape of the movies I made in 2002. Like everyone else in the world, he liked the one with the cat. And he wanted us to remake it. Blaaaargh.

Bonus picture from the original cat movie:

The original was actually part of a larger project, Three Dreams..., in which I filmed three funny dreams I had (because it's easier than actually writing something). The cat dream was, in fact, particularly hilarious, and surprisingly easy to film. On the other hand, in its original form it took only about 20 seconds. So it would need to be padded, which could only decrease the funny. And problem #2: I've already done it! Come on, people!

But they wouldn't do Hitler & Stalin: The Odd Couple!, and I sure didn't want to wait around for another idea. We only had five days. So remember, if we lose the contest, it's totally their fault for picking the wrong project.

I wrote something. We went over it a few times and added some extra jokes. (Or at least, I thought they were jokes. One of them is about a miscarriage, which I grant isn't generally funny, but in this context I found it hilarious. Hmm.) Because really, what we had here was one good joke -- maybe two, if you count the concept -- stretched out to 2 minutes. Problematic.

Filming went more-or-less as planned, except that my cat was a total diva. He refused to stay when we needed him to stay, or to move when we needed him to move. The cat in the previous movie had been a lot easier to manipulate. (I just reviewed my notes from that production: apparently, to get the cat to look in the right direction, I was waving another cat around off-camera.)

Editing, thankfully, was lightning-fast. We had one last conflict, this time over the title. I wanted to call it We Broke Up. Everyone, of course, hated that idea. (For the record, Julia, who again provides the voice of the cat, agreed with me.) We ended up settling on Fruitless, which in almost no way describes the movie, but at least it's memorable. Remember, if we lose the contest, it's their fault for insisting on the wrong title.

So we did the cat thing. One day RM will realize that the link he posted is dead, and you'll be able to see it yourself. I agree with RM's assessment -- given the X-treme constraints, we put together a pretty good product. It's certainly better than last year's winners, all of which, for some reason, had a lot of sped-up motion. Maybe the judges are Benny Hill fans.

The contest happens on Thursday. Check back here with baited breath to find out if we actually win anything. Then I can start fretting about grad school again. Or, I can make another movie...