One Too Many Mornings - a new comedy.

One thing I learned from my days working in the Feature Film Program, is that the best independent films that went through the labs would save a little bit of energy at the tail end of the project to do pickup scenes. While this is sometimes viewed in a negative light – as if the filmmakers messed up the first time around and have to fix their stupid mistakes – I view this as an opportunity to take the film from good to better-than-good. (And, yes, also to fix my stupid mistakes.)

Editing a movie isn’t that much different than writing. The only difference is that you have a limited number of shots to “write” the movie with. And the film changes – I’ve written about this before, but it’s true: you learn what it wants to be. It resembles your script, but hopefully, it’s better. It’s kind of like a 12 year old boy going thru puberty. It’s growing, you can see the adult that’s waiting to come out, but there are definite awkward bits. It’s voice cracks every few sentences.

Some people just hack their way thru this – forcing the film to be less awkward through editing. Sometimes you have to do that due to budget or logistics. For us – we have the luxury of an insanely dedicated crew, and only internal deadlines, so we can take the time to make the film as best as we possibly can, but in a more natural way. Not only that – rather than just simply smoothing over any editing bumps – we can take this opportunity to look at our film as a whole and see what it needs, and give even more depth to our characters.

I’m running off to meet up with Stephen and Anthony so we can prepare for these reshoots next month. We’re not making it easy on ourselves – writing one scene in a moving car, and another with a large group of children. Wish us luck!

mike

At night and on the weekends, I’ve been slowly chipping away at this film. It’s my first time editing something feature-length, and even though there are probably better ways to go about it, I’m attacking it the same way as a short: one scene at a time. Right after we wrapped back in October, I dove in and got my way through the first 20 minutes or so. Then Sundance happened – I was so busy working on the videos for that, that the film was pretty much completely pushed aside for a period of three months or so.

That period of time away from the film was pretty amazing, because the videos I was working on for Sundance were all about filmmakers who had just finished working on their own films. During that time, we made over 80 videos or so, many of them comprised of simple interviews with all the directors at the festival. I was fortunate enough to even conduct some of those interviews myself. (I won’t go into too much detail, but one day I was very suddenly and unpreparedly thrust into interviewing Soderbergh; to say that narrowing down many imagined afternoons worth of questions down to 5 minutes was nerve wracking would be an understatement)

One of these series’ of videos I took on the editorial duties. It was intense, simply because there was so little time to crank them out – this was prior to the festival, editing from my childhood bedroom in rural Massachusetts during xmas. It was a boot camp of sorts – when taking a 20-30 minute interview and cutting it down to 3 minutes, there are really unique challenges. Some of the filmmakers, while super smart, were not the most articulate. Some of them hadn’t even finished their films yet and were still in the process of really learning how to talk about their films (which is a really good skill to develop). So I’d have to really get in there and do some sentence surgery to allow the filmmakers to say their point in a way that was simply shorter without being too overtly manipulative.

At three minutes, after the filmmaker gives a synopsis about the film, there was only a little bit of room left for two or three pieces of anecdotal information. Deciding what to leave out was the hardest decision, but ultimately had to be made fast. This was another challenge.

During the actual festival, my team and I were producing two clips or more per day about various aspects of the festival. It was a brutal schedule, but awesome to run into some of my friends from overseas from past Directors Labs who now had films at the festival. They were sharing their stories about how their films came to be, and in this moment, while I was working the hardest I’ve probably worked in my entire life, I seriously could not wait to get back into working on my own film. The physical exhaustion from the experience could not trump the extreme inspiration by sitting down with so many filmmakers and watching them finally bring their films to an audience.

So starting in February, I picked it right back up and started chipping away at it. Bit by bit. I kept everything in – even if it didn’t feel right, I left in pretty much every single line from the script, every single scene. I figured the best thing, at this early of a stage, was to just put my trust in the script. And in a weird way, the film started dictating what it wanted to be. After getting all the way through, scene by scene, to the end… I went back in and started making those obvious trims – again going scene by scene.

As I was going through, all the things I learned from making the videos for the festival started creeping in, except in this case – scenes that were long and inarticulate, they became more and more precise. And I felt like I had the tools to be able to do this. The 2 hours and 20 minutes of scenes quickly whittled it’s way down to a 1 hour 43 minute rough cut of a movie. A movie that still, of course, needs a lot of work.

But it’s getting there. I watched the film for the first time all the way through last Thursday morning, and it was a complex emotional experience. First of all, 5 minutes into the movie, I realized that I will never ever be able to see this film as if I was watching it for the first time. Simply put: I know what is going to happen. And at that moment, I thought there were going to be zero surprises for me.

After the cut ended, and it was very clear what parts of the film worked, and what parts of the film still need work… I took a walk around my neighborhood. It was on this walk that the film surprised me.

We went into making this film knowing it was going to be a long-term process, and understanding that we needed to make it personal to us in order to maintain the passion to see it through over several years. And so we simply attempted to make a film about our own relationships both as friends and lovers.

On my walk, when thinking about not only the film, but the road it took to make the film, some themes that are in the movie revealed themselves to me in a way that felt like someone else had made it. Specifically, I started thinking about how as we get older, our friendships to one another change. Friends go away. We lose them to other relationships, we lose them to disease, we lose them to distance. And we cannot rely on friends to fix our own problems. They can help but only to a certain degree.

And even more tangibly speaking, I thought about how people with a really strong sense of self, these are people I admire, and these are people that are able to get through life in a way that’s meaningful. Like knowing ourselves incredibly well is what keeps us confident and rational. And back to the subject of friendship – I now think the way one’s sense of self is shaped is through the strength of past friendships. Very simply – our friends shape who we are. Our sense of self is comprised of the sum total of the bits and pieces of intimate relationships we have had up to this point. That is how we can define who we are. And in essence, all our friends that move away, or that we lose to alcoholism, etc… these people don’t go away. These people are indeed a part of you. And in that sense, can help solve problems when absent.

Perhaps this is just my own personal relationship to this particular story, but with all the short films I’ve made, I’ve never had a film talk back in this way. In fact, up until this week, I can’t say I was discouraged by film, but I always thought it to be one of the more inherently frustrating art forms. That it’s a one-way conversation, muddled by all the practical compromises that get in the way of making it. I remember David Fincher once said that if you get 20% of your original intention when making a film, that you can call it a success.

I now disagree with that, or rather, think there’s far more to it. As of right now, I’m of the mindset that if you have a clear and personal intention going in, and you shepherd it with care and with awesome people, there can absolutely still be a sense of discovery, even in your own work. And I feel so fortunate to be having this creative experience.

The editing continues and the discovery continues. We’re sanding down the jagged edges, and figuring out what holes need to be filled with our reshoots next month. There is still a very long road ahead, but it feels good to be slowly making our way up it.

mike

We did it. And by “we”, I mean the boat load of people who donated their time and energy to the project. As a filmmakers, we feel completely blessed that we had such a windfall of generosity to help roll this ball of a film uphill. While there’s still loads of work to come, in our minds, the hard part is over. Thanks to everyone who helped us. It was an incredible experience, and many of us will remember 2008 as the year we all made our first feature film.

Mike, Anthony, Stephen

In the process of writing the script to One Too Many Mornings, one of the main factors we had to keep in mind was very practical. That anything we wrote – we had to be held accountable for making sure we could actually pull it off. Meaning, if we decided to write a scene set on a sinking ship – it would be up to us and our friends to figure out how to 1. get a boat, 2. figure out how to make it sink, 3. figure out how to get it back out of the water for a second, third, and fourth take.

At the same time, if the entire movie is comprised of simple “two guys talking on a couch” scenes, we might as well stage it as a play instead of a movie.

The one moment in the writing when we decided to step out of our comfort zone involves a scene where the main character punches his fist through a window. When we wrote this scene – we knew full well that we didn’t know how to do this, and over the next few months – this was the one thing that we needed to figure out.

Last week, almost a year after we finished the first draft of the script, we still didn’t know how to do this. Two days later – Cindy and Michele, our bottomlessly resourceful production designers, had built a fake window frame, painted it to match the door, ordered 5 sheets of custom made breakaway glass, and basically, Saved Our Asses.

This moment is complicated further by taking place during a party, with many extras, and preceeded by a fist fight. In thinking about how to capture this moment with the camera, one option would be to get lots of sloppy, energetic, handheld coverage (Bourne Identity style), and cut it in a way so that it looks much more realistic than it actually is.

The more difficult choice, is to let it all play out in what’s called a moving master. Where the camera is on a dolly, and it glides around in one, unbroken take to capture all of the action. While the camera is not necessarily telling the audience to feel on edge, in a way it seems that much more harsh because there’s zero cinematic trickery.

The reason it’s more difficult is because everything has to go right. The extras have to hit their marks. The special effect of the glass breaking needs to be perfect. Because the camera is constantly moving, so do the focus marks.

Additionally, this is probably the most important moment story-wise as well. The entire crux of the movie hinges on us being able to capture this emotionally as well. So while everyone is running around worried about the technical aspects of the shot – we absolutely cannot lose sight of character.

We attempted this scene on Saturday night.

Sunday morning, at 5:30am, when my head hit the pillow, I slept soundly, knowing we nailed it.

Thank you to all of our patient extras, who kept up their enthusiasm take after take after take. Thank you to our new actors Ed Flores, Bridget Moloney, Daniel Casey, and Jeanette Baity, who were able to maintain a looseness, despite the technical constructs of what we were doing. Thank you to our crew, new and old, who rallied together to really Make It Happen.

In the last half a year we’ve gone under the bridge, over the river, down the hole, across the street, through the marsh, and into that tunnel that we can finally just now see that glimmer of light at the end of.

21 and 7/8ths pages to go,
Team OTMM

We just finished a great long weekend of shooting. Actor’s Gang co-Artistic Director / Really Awesome Dude VJ FOSTER both began and wrapped shooting with us. The last film director he worked with was Steven Spielberg; before then it was Clint Eastwood and Sam Mendes. Now he has Michael Mohan to add to that list. We are so grateful to have him in our film.

Additionally, now JONATHAN SHOCKLEY has wrapped all of his scenes with us. We’ll miss working with him, though know he’ll probably somehow end up in all of our movies in some way.

Lastly, we began shooting with enthusiastic actors DEBBIE ISRAEL and LIBBY WEST. We’re lucky to have started with Libby, as she’s in the middle of acting in Frankie and Johnnie in the Claire de Lune. It’s a fantastic play, and will be running at the International City Theatre in Long Beach through the end of the month.

We have one sad note, and that is our DP, Elisha Christian got in an awful car accident on Saturday night after shooting. He’s okay; his fiance’s car is not. Even with that horrible news, and the millions of phone calls it takes to the various insurance companies, he came to set the next day with the same energy and creativity as always.

This upcoming weekend we are only shooting for 1/2 a day, but the following weekend (12th – 14th) we’re tackling a large party sequence in the film. If anyone out there wants to come hang out on set, we’ll put you in our film as an extra. In the meantime, we’ve got 1 final role left to make decisions on casting.

30 pages to go,
Team OTMM

Dear Internet,

Here’s a quick update on our little film One Too Many Mornings. We’ve spent the summer trying to get the raise the rest of our financing for the film, and we did it! Thanks to one very generous man named Robbie. Because of him, we can finish our film!

Right now we are back in pre-production, trying to gather all the resources we need to put this film completely in the can. We also had several roles that we are in the middle of casting. Already we are very excited to be able to work with VJ Foster, Libby West, and Debbie Anne Israel; who have recently agreed to be in the film.

Even though we have the actual funds to shoot the film; everyone is still donating their time and resources to us, and we have some uphill battles ahead of us with securing locations. We simply do not have the money to pay for locations.

So if any generous people in the southern california area has access to either a dive bar, or a large, brightly lit sanctuary; these are the two things we need. We would be shooting in each for 1 full day. Ideally the sanctuary scenes would be filmed on September 1st (labor day).

Aside from that, we’re just scheduling and logisticizing and scratching our heads trying to piece together this very complicated puzzle that is the rest of our film. But it’s happening.

Slowly but surely,
The One Too Many Mornings Team

Stephen just recently booked and shot an episode of Californication, which will air on Showtime in the fall. They also gave him his own trailer, in which he clogged the toilet and couldn’t get it fixed. Show business is crazy!

ONE TOO MANY MORNINGS is officially on hiatus until Mike gets back from Utah. So far it’s going so unexpectedly well, and we all can’t wait to really get our hands dirty with the rest of this. During this month we’ll be trying to raise that last amount of money we need to do so, and Mike will begin editing.

We could have never gotten this far without the support of Elisha Christian, Meg Halloran, Michele Yu, Cindy Chao, Todd Sklar, Brock Williams, John Lynch, Brad Breeck, Erica Acevedo, Tina Kapousis, Jonathan Shockley, Julie Mitchell, Peter Szilagyi, Cheo Ramsey, Zack Fox, Todd “eye on the ball” Luoto, Jon Frechette, Graham Sibley, Bryan Irving, Alex Swakauski and his awesome car!, Tucker Marolf, Dave Canseco, Joe Weinstock, Shaun O’Sullivan, Aaron Martz, Joey Rassow Kantor, Babette and William Hale, Kayleigh Duffy, Beth and Dennis Mohan, Kelly Tillery, Anthony’s family, Mary Deptula, Cara and Jacob Farlow, Karen Sampson, Robert Byington, Catherine Conway, Virginia Meredith, Mark Gardner, Courtney Morrison, Michael Burton, Gina Spampanato, Michael Rhodes, Danielle Renfrew, Anish Savjani, all the bloggers, and all the Anonymous Donors. Thank you all so much!

We are currently rolling into our 6th weekend of initial production, out of 8 weekends total. By the end of this leg of production we’ll have about 2/3rds of our film “in the can” as they say. As of right now, I’ve never been this happy with the way a film has been turning out. The usual ebb and flow of self-doubt is there for sure, but slightly less, just because I’m assured in the fact that we’re making this film for all the right reasons.

There are many pros and cons to making a film in this scrappy of a way. Many of my friends who have made features with larger budgets than ours (while we initially tried to raise 150K, so far we have been operating with less than 10) say that they would have traded money for creative freedom. This is something I won’t ever take for granted. Even though we are faced with compromises of having a smaller crew, and having to scrounge for resources, I can confidently say that at the end of the day, this film will be as close to the film as we set out to make.

Every June, I spend the entire month at the Sundance Directors Lab in Utah as a part of my job. The job is not glamorous but the experience is amazing: it feels like 4 years of grad school all rolled up into a concentrated 4 week span of time. Everyone who is there, from the creative advisors, to the fellows, to the boom operators, are there for the love and exploration of film.

While I’ll have to spend this time away from the film physically, it couldn’t be better for the project. I’ll have that time to reflect on what we shot, and develop the plan for the rest of the shoot that much better. If I’m lucky there might be a chance I can edit a few scenes at night and on Sundays. I’ll probably screen a trailer for the film at the “crew shorts” night.

It’s also good, because we pretty much ran out of money. Anthony’s doing his best knocking on as many doors as possible trying to put the rest of this together.

When I get back in July, the current plan is to finish editing what we do have just to make sure we don’t need to do any re-shoots or get any additional scenes. We’ll then be (fingers crossed) finishing up shooting the last 3rd of the movie in August.

The big highlight of the weekend happened around 1am on Saturday night when I was trying to silence a really loud cricket and ripped my pants. I wonder how many directors have actually ripped their pants during the middle of shooting a scene.