Looking back on Pre-Production

Wow, it has been quite a journey, it is far from over, but we are done with a significant chunk of it. In the spirit of finishing one part, I would like to look back at the very humble beginnings of this wonderful project. I don’t want to get caught up in the very, very beginnings, as these are printed in many articles about the movie. I want to talk about the actual pre-production.

Pre-production was such an important and vital part of this movie. Pre-pro took roughly four full months, and for about 90% of that time it was myself Vin, Vikki, Zach and Brianne working on most of the planning.

For me pre-pro was a time to mentally prepare myself for what I suspected would be one of the hardest challenges of my life. I was scared shitless. It was this uncertainty and fright that pushed me to go so far and plan for so much during the pre-pro time. I knew that I was embarking on a very unique journey, a very real journey. I knew had some of the best people surrounding me as my team, however, I knew that it was up to me to lead these people, to know most of the answers, to pull everyone through the hard times, and most of all, to finish this movie with a good professional looking product, the sheer truth in all of that scared me to death… did I mention how scared I was?

Those long four months were comprised of many meetings, many brainstorming sessions, many arguments, many casting sessions, many phone calls and many rehearsals.

During the time of casting Vin, Zach and myself were still working on revisions to the script. I think we went through about 4-5 good revisions, nothing major, but little things. During that time we were casting almost every weekend. The casting situation was fairly painless, for the most part the people that we chose ended up being our first decisions, and they are all phenomenal choices, this movie would not have been possible without their dedication, especially Bobby. We did have to weed through a lot of crap, but we ultimately got our locked cast (except of course for the whole Magner situation, but you can read about that later)

During all of this I was trying to figure out exactly how I should go about directing a movie. I knew I possessed a lot of leadership skills from QFS and everything, and from directing my own movies, but this was a whole new league for me and it was very uncertain for me. One of the best resources for me was FreshDV, and their phenomenal four hour directors’ course.

http://www.freshdv.com/2008/08/freshdv-film-school-directors-course-pt1.html

Basically, it is a four hour interview with an independent director and it delves deep into the processes required by the director and 1st AD on and off set. It was such a huge help to me, it really helped me to prepare for what I would need to do when the time came on set. I also gave it to Brianne to watch and I think it really helped her as well. It really opened up my eyes as to how a director interacts with his 1st AD and how that relationship is used to keep the production more efficient. Looking back on it now, it helped both Brianne and I immensely to prepare for the movie.
In addition to FreshDV I read a wealth of online tutorials, and read many articles written by directors about directing. Everything else I did to prepared myself was mostly just that; preparation. I studied the script many times, hypothesized how I wanted to movie to look, how I wanted it to feel, I visualized character personalities. It was very hard for me to do all of this, on such a big scale. It is a pretty daunting task to look at 100+ page script and know that you have to shape the over all feel and direction of the film. Many things go through you mind, you question your own ideas, but ultimately you learn to just trust your gut. It was very hard for me to sort of take a step back and look at everything from a single perspective, with such a huge project sometimes I couldn’t be sure if everything fit, to alleviate this I did my best to break things down, analyze separate parts of the story and the characters. I did the best I could, and that’s what counts.

One particularly fun part of pre-pro was working directly with Zach. We spent many hours figuring out what our color pallet would be, how we wanted it to look visually. We spent many hours arguing over aspect ratios, was it going to be shot in 16:9 or 2:35:1? I ultimately convinced him we should shoot in cinemascope and he now agrees that was the best decision. We spent many hours doing screen tests, deciding that we wanted to use a mix of sticks, cranes and dollies, as well as hand held when it warranted it. We also made sure that we always used as much of the lens as possible going as much telephoto as we could to achieve the shallowest depth of field possible from the HVX. Workflows were made for the P2 cards; all of this stuff was planned beforehand. Coming from a cinematography and photography background really helped me to work with Zach, I think the best directors are the ones that understand the craft of the DP, because ultimately they are the one person on the crew that the director works the most closely with. It also helped that I have been working with Zach for years and we are very close friends.

During all my work planning with Zach I also had many meetings with the wardrobe department and the art department. Claire did a phenomenal job with the wardrobe and makeup. We spent a good deal of time looking at colors and matching them to the visual style of the movie. Zach and I decided we wanted our palette to be very subtle, not bright and flashy. I had told him I wanted it to be gritty and realistic, not gritty as in grainy and intense, but more of a weathered look. Ultimately the pallet Zach and I chose highlighted a lot of earthy tones, and especially made maroon and red pop. Of course, not by accident, Claire and I chose David to wear a lot of maroon. If you look in the finished product there is a big motif with Calvin wearing bright red and David wearing maroon. While working with Claire I was also working a lot with Justin on the overall art direction. Justin’s work naturally fit right into how I wanted this movie to look. I have always admired his artistic style and during the planning process we came up with many great ideas for the art direction. One thing in particular that took a while was the designing of the pills. This was to be the staple of the movie so I knew it needed to be perfect. Justin did an amazing job and after eight revisions we had our pill, and I think it looks phenomenal, I still can’t get over how good he made it look.

Once our entire cast was set in stone, the first wave of pre-pro rehearsals started. These rehearsals were more about targeting specific characters rather then looking at whole scenes. This time was for getting to know the actors, building the relationships that would get us through the long production process. Obviously the main focus was on the actual characters, but everything has its place. I spent many weeks working with Bobby and the other actors, and we made some really good progress, each and every one of the actors, and myself started to really get used to who the characters were, now not just on paper, but in real life.

One part in particular that still stands out to me was towards the end of pre production after many weeks of rehearsals we had our cold read. This was a time for all of the main actors to get in a room and act out the whole script in its entirety. The cold read went well, and it was interesting to see it all played out in one two hour sitting. Bobby didn’t have the best cold read, and I could see he was struggling. I believe it was his first cold read and the whole experience was new to him (as it was to myself) so I think it was hard for him to jump from scene to scene and emotion to emotion so quickly. The character of David Bushell is very complex, and through the few months the story takes up the character changes a lot. So I can expect that it would be hard to capture all of that essence in just a short two hour sit down.

After the cold read Vin came up to me and voiced some concern as to Bobby’s performance. It was nothing big but he did have some concerns as to the dimension of the character during the cold read. I assured him that in rehearsals we had been making many, many strides with the character of David, and that Bobby was doing fine. I pretty much told him everything I just said in the last paragraph.

However, this incident did make me realize something very important. I had never taken a step back and gone over the whole character arch of David with Bobby. Every rehearsal we did was just small increments. It was something I had overlooked, but it was such a vital element in the structure of a complex character that we needed to go back and work on it some more.

It was literally the last day in pre-production and I had to call bobby up and tell him to come back, it was very hard for me to tell him what I had realized, and that we still needed to do work. He came back up and we worked hard on it. We talked a lot about the character of David as a whole, and I concentrated on certain scenes of importance in the script. All of the major work had been done in the past rehearsals; we just needed to tighten everything up and work on the big picture. Over the next week (the week before our first shoots in NY) I made up a four page character arch of the character of David to help Bobby visualize how David progresses though the story. I spoke with Bobby every day that week and we talked a lot about everything. We were getting down to the line and what I had realized during the cold read definitely scared both of us.

However, I had complete and utter faith in him and myself, I knew that we had nabbed that one last issue and that Bobby was utterly committed to the character of David. When the time came and we shot that first scene Bobby blew everyone away with his performance, it was at that point that I knew that all that time and work was worth every second. To this day Bobby and I have used the character arch every week, and to this day Bobby continues to impress me with his amazing acting skills.

I have of course left some stuff out, because I don’t have the time or mental capacity to write all of the many things about pre-production down. All I will say is that those four months are what made this production even remotely possible, and it was the sole dedication of everyone involved that helped prepare all of us for the ride that is The Mercury Cycle.

The end is near… Kind of

So it has been a long time since I have written any substantial posts. Life has just been so draining; everything about this movie takes everything out of you. It is very hard sometimes to keep on going. The thing that keeps you going is the people around you, the people that have become your family. Sure most of us were good friends before this movie. However, now we are so much closer. It sounds very cheesy, but it really is the crew that has kept me going, and I am sure everyone else feels the same way.

There were times when we would have a week off from production, and those times are always great to catch up on sleep and schoolwork and sanity. On the other hand it is such a weird feeling, you are emotionally and physically exhausted yet you feel like you need to be on set, you need to be back with your family. You feel out of place in the real world, all of the inside jokes and experiences you have shared on set don’t have a place in your off set world. With that being said it is ironic that some weeks you dread going to set, you just don’t want to deal with the stress and the hectic nature of it.

I have said it many times and I will say it again, I am so proud of every single person who has worked on this film. I have seen so many people grow, so many people mature, including myself. We are extremely close to the end of principle photography, we only have a few pick up days left. We have experienced so many things during these past five months, we have learned so much. We have yelled and hated each other, we have hugged and loved each other. We have and are continuing to make history every day, every second.

Once that wrap party is over a new chapter in The Mercury Cycle saga begins; a whole new world of opportunities and solutions. It is going to be challenging, and it is going to be hard, but it is going to be a totally different experience for me. I have gotten through being the director during pre-production, production and now I will get a chance to see it through until that oh so gratifying picture lock. It has been totally awesome, it has completely sucked and ruined my life, but in the end it’s a chance to make history and do something no one has ever imagined.



- Cody