This is happening

Time to get this thing up and running.

Due to circumstances beyond my control…

MAID’S ROOM is being put on hold. It is not gone forever, I hope, but it is not happening this year.

blogging the film

I’m beginning to have second thoughts about blogging this film. I know that the conventional wisdom right now is that you need to grow your audience from before you start shooting.  Apparently, if you don’t do this, you’re an idiot.  So you have a blog and a twitter and you spread the word about your film.

I have to admit that this blog, with barely any posts, got more hits than my regular blog, which I’ve been writing for a year now.  Obviously, there’s an excitement about a new film that just doesn’t exist for a blog that randomly talks about movies.  A film is a film, after all.

But doesn’t a blog detract from making a film special?  If I put up all my thoughts on this film before they it’s shot, is that going to make it more or less special?   I like to be surprised by a film when I see it.  I need to know a little bit about it.  I read about films at all the festivals.  I watch the trailers.  I decide if I want to see it.  But if you read too much, it not only kills the experience of watching it, it starts to kill the desire to go and see it in the first place.  A trailer that looks great the first time can start to show its tricks after repeated viewings, and make you suspicious about what they’re covering up.  I don’t go to a film thinking, “Oh yeah, that’s that shot they were talking about on their blog.”

The other thing is this film is a thriller, with twists and turns.  How much can I talk about this without giving it all away?

I have all sorts of new ideas about how I want to get certain shots, and how I’m going to design the sets, but I’m very protective about those ideas until they happen.  It’s not just that I don’t want someone stealing my great ideas, it’s also that I’m completely paranoid about someone stumbling on the idea themselves.  I don’t want to help them out.  They can see my film and then copy it all they want.

And I don’t need some random commenter chiming in on my new great idea with something like, “oh yeah, Tsui Hark did it like that in GREEN SNAKE,”  or “that’s a dumb idea.”  Stuff like that takes the wind right out of your sails.

It’s a nice feeling when you sit in a theater and don’t know everything about a film, even in today’s promotion-saturated world.  Sure, you should know that you’re going to see a comedy or a drama or horror or whatever.  And maybe you do need a little criticism to prepare you for your initial viewing, someone to provide some context for a foreign film, for example.

I’m not going to post anything bad anyway.  I hardly tell my friends what’s going on for fear of cursing it.  I can tell you now that we’re waiting for a star, but I can’t tell you who.  Nikki Finke sure doesn’t give a shit about me, so how much promotion is this really going to get me?    Is it really worth doing?  I’ve got a lot of work to do.

Seeing Stars

I wrote Maid’s Room with an eye on being able to shoot it myself in a house, because it doesn’t have a lot of locations.  But, it has big ideas in it and I want some powerful, charismatic actors who really know how to deliver a big performance. It honestly has nothing to do with budget, because I’m sure I could shoot this for less, without stars, and the film would look great.  And I probably would have shot it already.  But it wouldn’t have the power or the appeal of stars. And also, the maid is going to be an unknown, so I want to surround her with big personalities so the audience will be impressed when she stands up to these huge, powerful characters.  That is a moment that I can’t wait to see, and I need some stars for that moment to really sing.

So right now, I’m waiting for a couple of stars to get back to us.  And they’re in no hurry to commit to this when they might be offered MI4 next week with 10X the salary.  Who knows?  Right now, I’m not their problem.  If they say yes, then I am, so it’s a big commitment, for this and a thousand other reasons.

Casting for stars is fun and scary.  It’s scary because sometimes you have to make decisions that you never thought you’d make and they are the exact opposite of what you’ve always thought you wanted.  When you are casting, you have to pick the right star for the right part.  Suddenly, some actor who you’ve always loved suddenly wants to be in your film – and you have to say no.  It’s incredible.  There’s this great actor who wants to do your movie!  The producers are pressuring you because that means financing.  You’ve always thought this guy was a great actor. But he’s wrong for the part and it will ruin the movie.  And you say no.  It’s a weird feeling and not a good one, but it happens.

Watching a star act while you’re looking through a camera is watching magic happen.  It’s hard to describe what happens to a shot when the stand-in steps out and the star stands in.   There’s a great commentary track on GET CARTER where Mike Hodges talks about the first shot he got of Michael Caine in the film.  It was the first time he ever had a star in his film and he wasn’t used to so much charisma beaming into his camera as Caine stepped into a close up.    I can only imagine.  It’s a great film, and his thoughts on that moment are interesting.

Themes

I was thinking, after I did the last post about ants as a theme, that I hadn’t seen anyone do a theme in a film for a long time.  Themes are little motifs that you spot in a film that add another layer of meaning to the images.  They can be simplistic or complicated, expressionistic or more abstract or even cryptic.  Hitchcock was the old pro with complex visual themes, and even simplistic ones.

But when was the last time you saw one in a film?  I honestly don’t remember seeing one since they late 90′s.  I’m sure I’m missing some films, but even if I am, have filmmakers just abandoned this simple technique?  Has it gone out of style?  Ridley Scott used to use themes – think of eyes in Blade Runner, or (not as successfully) the water theme in Thelma and Louise – but I don’t think he uses them as much as he did.   I guess Batman had its bats, but Batman without bats would be missing something.

Themes can be awfully simplistic and expressionistic.  I still remember in WOLF, a horrible wolfman film, Mike Nichols kept Jack Nickolson all caged up, literally.

Themes might not always be what you want to use, but you want to think about these things, deeply.  The ants in Maid’s Room aren’t the most complex idea, but they are only part of a larger scheme of images I’m planning, which have to do with a natural world order outside a house, and the civilized, artificial world inside a house and the tension between the two.  There’s ants, but there’s also air conditioning and landscaping and a lot of windows and gates.  This isn’t just a filmic gimmick.  It’s how I’m creating a world and atmosphere for the film, and filling it with what I’m trying to say about what’s going on in the story.

So why are themes so uncommon these days?  Is it just the handheld, verity style that’s become so common?  Is it the simplistic visual style of films?  Or is it just a trend?   It’s curious.

Ants

So here’s a little dilemma I ran into when storyboarding Maid’s Room.

Ants are a big theme in this film.  The trouble is, they’re small.  Sure, there are big ants, like carpenter ants that are pretty common around here, but they tend to be lone roamers.  (That’s a carpenter ant in the picture above.)  You never see them swarm around a spilled drop of ice cream.

Sugar ants are small.  The only other film I know that uses ants is BLUE VELVET, but Blue Velvet has them in close up with slow motion and weird sounds.   Plus, those are BIG ants.  I’m not looking to use the ants in the same way.  This isn’t about this world of horror lurking just out of vision.  It’s more of a natural idea, that in the end, nature’s going to get all of us.

So my idea is to try to avoid showing ants in extreme close ups.  They are small, but they do swarm, so I’m hoping that a swarm of ants will show up on film and be recognizable as ants without rubbing them in your face.  I’m not sure this will work, so when the weather gets a little warmer, I’ll shoot a little video just to make sure.  Better to know now that figure it out on the day of the shoot.

A small excerpt from the Director’s Statement

Here’s a small part of the Director’s Statement.  Anymore would give away too much of the plot.

LIVING IN A MORALLY AMBIGUOUS WORLD

The first notes I have on The Maid’s Room script go back years, as the situation of an immigrant maid working in a wealthy family has always appealed to me.  What started as a simple situation meant to illustrate some aspects of class divide, the script has evolved to deal with some complex aspects of power and how that power plays out, not only in a personal way, but also with regard to the politics and state of the world we live in.

….

The Maid’s Room is basically separated into three parts.

Part one: Drina

Part two: Brandon

Part three: Mr. Crawford

Each part will have a different look to best reflect the perspective of each character and also the mood of the story.

Drink’s look will have bright, sharp focus. Sharp colors. Wide angles. Drina sees things clearly.  She is wide-eyed and has a bright outlook on life.  This part of the film will have that look as well.

Brandon’s look will have low depth of field, more narrow lenses, things are not clear, they come in and out of focus. Murky colors, more grain.  He’s still trying to figure things out in the world. He doesn’t see things as clearly as Drina. It’s a world of shadows and fog, an atmosphere where the lines between reality and fantasy are blurred.

Mr. Crawford’s look should have a feeling of tunnel vision, with the edges of the frame dark and/or blurred. He sees very clearly, but only what he wants to see.

patience, please

I was looking for some stuff to put on here, but a lot of it needs to be scanned. I was going to put my director’s statement up, but it gives away too much of the plot. You would have to have read the script to understand it anyway.

It will take me a couple weeks to get this page up to speed.

Drina

Drina is the name of the maid in Maid’s Room.  Here’s a little sketch I did of her in her room along with her character description from the script…

DRINA SALIZAR, 21, is a quiet, honest girl. She is stubborn and determined. She’s never had too many friends, and that’s how she likes it. She’s wary of people, as if she’d been let down by someone she loved. There is something very warm about her; her emotional distance makes her very attractive.

Some location pics

Here’s some pictures of a possible location for Maid’s Room.  Don’t mind the kids in the pictures.  It’s a pretty spot in Brookhaven Hamlet, next to Bellport on Long Island.  These houses are built in a nature preserve, but the whole area is covered with this swamp grass.  It’s perfect for Maid’s Room.  Beautiful, isolated, swampy, menacing.

movie pics