"The Waterhole" by Nathan Cole

Nathan Cole, writer and co-producer of Reno, NV-based drama, The Waterhole, describes how his team used that rarity, a larger-than-expected budget.

His post is titled "The Film Budget Buffet":

The journey to getting our film The Waterhole made was a lengthy one, filled with false starts, long periods of waiting, and stress. Through it all there was only one certainty: there was always money to be spent. The cost to make a film is at the forefront of every producer’s mind, whether you’re a studio putting together a summer blockbuster or an indie filmmaker crowdfunding a micro-budget film. Reaffirming this is the fact that pretty much every filmmaker I have spoken to, aspiring or not, wants to know what our budget was. I know many independent filmmakers might disagree, but the budget affects most of the creative decisions we make. Money will not make a bad movie better, but it can make a good movie better.

The Waterhole was always conceived as a low budget film. How low of budget was never really known. At one time I thought it could be done for as low as ten grand, so when my co-producer, Daniel Menahem, came up with a sum far greater than that we thought we would have more than enough to make the film we envisioned with money left over. The reality we discovered is that if given the chance, there is no ceiling as to how much you can spend on a movie. Also, if you spend in one place, you will spend in another. A rising tide indeed floats all boats in a film budget… for the most part.

The one area where we were willing to spend money that we knew would directly affect the quality of the final product was on cast. The script is dialogue-heavy and character-driven. If the actors aren’t believable, the film is dead. We hired a casting director, Mark Tillman, a position we initially thought was a luxury (how hard is it to find actors in LA?), but it became evident early on that he would earn every penny we paid him. Mark was able to get us access to thousands of young actors in Los Angeles, carefully weeding out the ones that would not work and keeping those that had the talent to handle the script. Mark knew we weren’t interested in “names” but also kept in mind those actors that might be on the verge of breaking big. We had tons of casting sessions, which is a great way to get a feel of how different actors tackled the characters and to hear the dialogue read aloud. Mark also handled all the contracts and dealt with the managers and agents. All of which was incredibly helpful and time saving. Of course, the most important thing he accomplished was to get us our great cast.

Another position we hired that at first we were reluctant to spend money on was a line producer. If before we started you asked us what a line producer did, I would have not been able to tell you. Now I have no idea what we would have done without him. We met Michael Tarzian after he responded for a job posting. We had one conversation with him and realized how much we were in over our heads. Mike knew every last little detail of how to budget for and run a production. He was able to get a full crew, organize a reliable schedule and keep the whole operation running while not letting the spending get out of control.

This was not without a lot of back and forth from us as we tried to cut out line items from the budget that Mike fought to have put back in. For instance, anything we could do ourselves we did not want to pay for, such as location scouting and catering. It was a major pain, but we did those things ourselves. We did not think we needed a third AD, so we axed that position and were fine without it. One position we resisted at first was that of an art director. We thought that by shooting on location we would not need to dress sets or deal with props and what we did need we could manage ourselves. Mike persisted and we relented and allowed him to hire one single person to handle it all. Within one day the new art director had proved his worth by doing a great job transforming our locations into something unique. It was an eye opening experience.

The only problem was that by hiring only one person in the art department Daniel and I ended up in over our heads trying to keep up with the amount of work and constant attention needed to every seemingly insignificant detail. Making it worse is when we were needed elsewhere we struggled to move crew around to fill in for us. This was a lot of extra stress that could have inexpensively been avoided. At the end of the day having a good line producer let us experience making a film with, for the most part, a full crew. It could be argued that we could have achieved the same results without them. This might be true, but in terms of what we learned, having them was invaluable.

As we wrapped and headed into post-production, the decisions as to where we should spend money became harder to make. We shot so fast and dirty that the rough cut was a bit of a nightmare to watch. It didn’t take long to realize we needed to spend a lot more than we had left in the budget. The audio had issues and the cinematography, although fantastic, was too dark to be viewed in all but the most perfectly calibrated monitors. Despite our post house’s best efforts to deliver us a polished product it just wasn’t working. We needed more money to do a better color correction, clean up the audio, and do some ADR with the actors. In addition, we had to license several songs that were needed to enhance the tone of the movie. We had hired a great composer, whose cues really do a great job heightening the emotion of key scenes, but there was much more that we needed to prevent a film that takes place in a bar from getting too quiet. In the end we had to make sacrifices and were unable to bring the actors back into ADR and if I were to be nitpicky, the sound in some scenes is one of the areas we failed to completely make the production work.

The money you have to spend will almost always affect the choices you make and sometimes it will make them for you. On a low budget film you stretch that money as far as it can go, sometimes making artistic sacrifices, sometimes asking your crew to make sacrifices. You need to know your strengths and weaknesses and adjust as needed. You need to take care of the crew that are working for low rates and asked to do more than they normally would be required to do. Most of all you need to stay true to your vision. This is a very difficult balancing act. When people ask for advice I am usually at a loss. There is so much to tell, yet so little that may be of any use to any one filmmaker. Every experience will be different, and there is no right way to make a movie.

"Glass City," "Happily After," and "Separation Anxiety" by John Klein

Glass City:




Happily After:




Separation Anxiety:



Here with our first triple-feature is John Klein, whose production company bears the name of his first feature as producer, Glass City. (Note: Klein produced all three films discussed here, and he directed Happily After. Cole Simon directed Glass City and Separation Anxiety.)

Back in my hometown of Toledo, when I was a senior in high school, I started an amateur theatre company called Still Waiting Productions, the name inspired by our first production, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. (Cue ironic chuckles.) Knowing what I know now about theatre, acting, and art in general, I can only assume it was a horrible mess. But at the time, we were the kings and queens of our domain, a small band of passionate students eager to leave a small yet significant mark on our hometown. Our summers, home from college and producing stage plays, defined us, as they do for everyone, I’m sure. When I graduated college with my film degree, it seemed only natural to write what I knew.

I think I’ve covered all the clichés so far, right?

Anyway, that first script I wrote was called Glass City, based very loosely on our experiences with Still Waiting Productions. And, like so many beginning efforts at anything, it also was a mess at first. The screenplay was a hodgepodge of my favorite influences of the minute – Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Garden State were doing circles in my head – and elements were borrowed or ripped wholesale from my life and the lives of my friends. There was no reason not to bring on Cole Simon - fellow SWP-er, good friend, theatre major at Ohio State – to direct because, in addition to being supremely talented, he had shared so many of those influences and elements.

Cole likes to say that when I tell people I’ll do something, it’ll happen. However true or untrue that is, I said we would produce Glass City in my hometown – Toledo has always been referred to as the Glass City, and we saw the morose, stagnant Mike Stegman’s life (get it?) as a nice parallel to that of the city’s downtrodden luck – and that’s what we did, about a year after I moved to Chicago. To keep our costs down, we shot on my HVX200 with a Redrock M2 adapter – all the rage at the time, prior to the onslaught of DSLRs – and Cole brought in actors from Ohio State while I brought crew in from Chicago. Ninety-two pages in thirteen days.

The result was probably the most personal film I will ever produce or shoot. I know everyone looks back at their first film and cringes. I won’t say I don’t do that, because I do. But I also know we made some seriously good choices on Glass City. We came up with a visual style and color scheme that fit the story perfectly, gradually growing from a desaturated, static palette to a more frenetic, vivid look. The acting was remarkable, and I can say that with my modesty intact because I had absolutely nothing to do with it; Cole is just a phenomenal director. And oh, the things we accomplished! We set up a traffic jam with twenty picture cars. We had a fifty-five setup day in a Laundromat, and finished ahead of schedule, dolly moves and jibs through ceilings and all. We closed the largest bridge in Toledo for a night. For a few twenty-somethings on a micro-budget, that was majestic. And for a couple of guys who had lived through summers we wished could last for years, we watch Glass City and now have a complete snapshot of what those times were like for us.

* * *

Following the completion of Glass City, we christened our production company Glass City Films and set off on finding our next projects. I suppose the easy goal was to grow and stretch ourselves beyond our means in terms of production value. But we also wanted to break down our storytelling barriers. Glass City showcased us portraying our own experiences. We wanted our next projects to be steps outside of ourselves.

It didn’t take long. After Glass City premiered, a friend of mine from elementary school invited me out for coffee – which I don’t drink, but whatever – and slid a script across the table for a feature titled Happily After. (The “Ever” is silent.) I read it, and as her first feature film screenplay – much like ours – it needed some tweaking. It was a romantic drama, a love triangle of sorts that was incredibly talky… but then around page 68, a spectacular twist just turned the whole script around, turning it into a sort of neo-noir thriller. It was awesomely twisted and unique in the best way, and excited the hell out of me. We collaborated on smoothing over some of the rougher patches - as we've done with all our scripts - though the big selling points of the story and dialogue barely changed. And then I told her I'd direct it. It was an enthusiastic statement without any substance at the time. But when I say I’ll do something….

About the same time I was signing my creative life away, Cole was in a play at Ohio State called Separation Anxiety, written by Jeremy Sony. He sent me the script on a whim, in full acknowledgement of its limitations as a stage play, expecting me to come back and call it unfilmable or something or other. It was one of the most emotionally resonant pieces of writing I had read, and I immediately said, “Let’s do it!” Never mind that half the script took place in an airport, or that there were fireworks at one point, or that the story juggled three separate timelines at once, or that one character sounded like a walking, talking Hallmark card. It was there, and we could totally pull it off.

Now, if you had told me in 2008 at the premiere of Glass City that we’d be producing two feature films back-to-back not more than one year later, I think I’d have spit my drink in your face. But, well, I’m an ambitious idiot. We slated both films for 2009: Happily After for August and Separation Anxiety for November. And our sanity left with them.

* * *

Happily After, my directorial debut, came first. Ninety-seven pages in eighteen days. It was our first SAG feature, and our lead actor, Ross Marquand, was a revelation. My longtime friend and 1st AC, Justin Cameron, lensed the film – his first feature – taking over for my usual cinematography work, and brought a whole new level of excitement and raw creative energy to the set. We had nearly twenty locations, ranging from a park to a police station. My gear was still our only option given our budget, but we had learned much from our mistakes on Glass City, and were able to handle the adapter this time.

I think it’s a fact that every first-time director can’t sleep in the weeks leading up to Day One, and when I did sleep, I dreamt of the worst possible circumstances. But when you get on set, everything melts away but the joy. And that’s how it was. We made our first five days, the scenes looked and sounded great, we were able to bounce two pages ahead of schedule by taking advantage of a sunset on a high-rise rooftop, and we all started to feel that excitement.

And then disaster struck.

During the filming of a scene involving our lead actress, Sharina Martin, she severely injured her wrist on a broken window. The good news: she’d be fine (and was, eventually). The bad news: she needed reconstructive surgery on her wrist, and would require a cast for the remainder of the shoot. Too deep into shooting to recast – something none of us wanted anyway – we simply rewrote the film to accommodate and rescheduled nearly every scene of the shoot to fit around the change in availability. We wound up only two days over schedule, in the end, and I’d say no one who watches the film is aware of the change until I bring it up in Q&A sessions, so I’ll count my blessings.

But for the rest of that month, we were all in a state of heightened awareness, of constant improvisation within the confines of what visual arcs, themes, and ideas we had already set out for ourselves. The police station – an abandoned location rented out by the city of Chicago – had fallen prey to scrap metal thieves, and there was no longer power in the building. The art department had one day to redress four rooms of the station, including the prison area. We had only half a day to film the final scene of the film, which featured an eighteen-foot crane and a Steadicam. Such is life on every set, I know, but it all seemed more so because of the early challenges.

The editing room only brought further difficulties, as we struggled with early test screenings and wound up cutting 25 minutes of superfluous plot points out of the rough cut. To say this film was made in post-production is a true understatement, and if I could share a directing credit, editor and colorist Mike Molenda would get it. The work he did was awe-inspiring, and the film exists and thrives because of it.

To this day, the completion of Happily After is something I refer to as a collection of minor miracles. I’ll never have a cast and crew as good as that ever again, methinks, at least not a group so dedicated and so willing to take on the impossible. I took more creative risks on it than on anything I’ve ever done, and more financial risks to boot. I hope that energy comes across. And so, here we are, and here it is.

* * *

Compared to that, producing Separation Anxiety should have been a breeze. Five main characters instead of twenty? Half the locations? Sixteen days instead of eighteen? Easy as pie. Of course, by now, I should also have gotten used to being wrong.

There were rewrites and changes abound in the early stages of the transition from stage to screen. The screenplay was trimmed to ninety pages from over 120. A more ambiguous ending was scrapped in favor of one that provided a real emotional catharsis for our trio of main characters. Finally, Cole stepped in as director when Jeremy decided to focus solely on the screenwriting, and I again relinquished the cinematography reins to Justin so I could exclusively produce. We’ve always prided ourselves on not wearing too many hats, so we could excel at one thing rather than be mediocre at two or three things. Collaboration makes our world of filmmaking go round, no question about it.

The first five days were early wraps and brought incredible performances from Glass City actress Kiana Harris and former “Dawson’s Creek” star John Wesley Shipp. I suppose it must be our sixth day of production that brings us trouble on our shoots, because the massive forty-setup day – which featured emergency vehicles and a rather complicated series of jib crane moves at dawn near an iconic dam location – finally broke us. We wound up having to come back the next day to shoot several remaining elements, and had severe issues matching the cloudy day to the previous day’s sunny footage. I suppose we should be grateful, though, that clouds were all we got. We were blessed with a two-week dry spell; had it rained on a single one of our shoot days in Columbus, the entire schedule would have been dead in the water.

As it stood, we got to Toledo and I finally realized the worst part of filming Separation Anxiety as a producer: the airport. Populating an entire wing of the Toledo Express Airport with extras – whose information we required weeks in advance for TSA to run background checks – and then trying desperately to light consistently despite being surrounded by wall-to-wall windows just as the days are getting shorter…yeah, we probably should have thought that through a bit. All praise to Justin for not losing his cool and getting some truly splendid photography out of it. And equal praise to our 1st AD, Dan Gutierrez, for corralling extras and making an indie film look massive. In the end, we closed an airport. We even got to film on a plane. What films get to do that at our level?

After Separation Anxiety premiered, Cole won the Golden Drover for Best Director at the Trail Dance Film Festival. I think we all would’ve been happy to win Best Drama, of course, but I think I was secretly happier that Cole took home his award. The growth he displayed from Glass City to Separation Anxiety was stunning; I can only hope my second feature is as grand a leap in maturity and quality.

* * *

I could list hundreds of little nuggets of advice for all independent filmmakers. Don’t be so afraid of hearing “no” that you forget to ask the question. Trust your crew. Good food is the most important thing on a low-budget set. Always have a backup plan in mind, whether it’s a second airport or another picture car or a replacement crewperson. Or hard drives, for that matter. But, no matter what, treat every single person on the cast and crew with the respect they deserve, which is quite a lot. That means communication. That means proper housing, food, and paychecks. That means insurance. And it means just plain being nice.

Our company is a Midwest group. We started in Toledo, we’re in Chicago now, and we have no intention of going to either coast. This is home, and this is where we’ll do our best work, always. Our mission statement speaks of fostering Midwest talent and artists through powerful narrative drama. We have humble beginnings, as all indie filmmakers do. But however much a mess we may think we are sometimes, we couldn’t be happier with our films or with the people we’ve chosen to tag along with on this crazy journey. And someday, hopefully, we can look back on all this and say, Yes…this was still only the beginning.

"Dawn" by Jay Reel

Tell Me About Your Movie isn't a review site, but I'd be remiss if I didn't say how much I enjoy and admire Jay Reel's Dawn, a unique, low-budget, character-based take on vampirism. Very happy to see Jay share his story with us here:

I based the screenplay of Dawn on a short story I wrote in September of 2000. At the time, the idea was to write a "journal" of sorts, with entries made in real time, set on the dates they were written. The final entry was to be on my birthday (12th). It didn't quite work out that way, and I finished the story several days early. The "journal" was written by a man, who was relating the day-to-day struggle of living on the road, homeless, with his young daughter, who just happened to be a vampire. She was around 8 years old in the story and was a living creature, in that she had a heartbeat and could die like any human. I kept some of the vampire attributes of legend (unnatural strength, empathic abilities) and eliminated others (no "allergies" to the sun or crosses). Ultimately, the human father and his "special" daughter come a rather tragic end.

In adapting the short story to feature length, I needed to add some elements of danger, that wasn't there in the original version. Now, there was a man pursuing Dawn and her father, who knew of the girl's vampire origins. The ending of the movie is very similar to the short story, but otherwise the mood is much more somber. This really isn't a horror movie, but rather a story of two misfits, struggling to survive in the world. I was influenced by certain "road movies" I appreciated throughout my life, about characters on the run and trying to eke out a living. Jim Jarmusch's Down By Law, Paper Moon, Of Mice and Men, etc. In this case, Dawn's vampirism is like a disability that separates her from society in general. Otherwise, she's a normal little girl, with all the aspirations and hopes of any child her age. The father is like any caring parent, who would do anything to protect and provide for his child.

Dawn was shot during the summer of 2002, with Ray Boucher portraying the father (John), 10-year-old Kacie Young was Dawn, and Mindy Raymond as the mother. The mother's story is told during an unusually long flashback (20 minutes!) that culminates in her death, while giving birth to Dawn. I "acted" as Carlton Reed, the psychic "bloodhound" who is pursuing Dawn.

Dawn premiered in Dallas, at the Angelika Film Center, in August of 2003. J.R. Bookwalter (The Dead Next Door) picked up Dawn for DVD distribution through his Tempe Video label in 2006. It is available for sale through Amazon.com, and several other online retailers. It can be rented via Netflix.com as well.

You can find me on Facebook.

Additional videos:

• I talk about Dawn props
• Video reviews here and here

"Driver's Ed Mutiny" by Brad Hansen

Brad Hansen of Collateral Damage Productions tells us about crossing state lines—lots of them—to make his indie feature, Driver's Ed Mutiny:

Driver's Ed Mutiny follows three teenagers who have to make their way from Chicago to Los Angeles, each for their own personal reasons. With no other options, they hijack their driver’s ed car and embark on a coming-of-age journey down the historic Route 66, with plenty of bumps along the way.

A comedy/drama, Driver's Ed Mutiny is the second feature from filmmaking group Collateral Damage Productions following their award-winning 2007 release The Chemistry of Dating.

* * *

Driver's Ed Mutiny came about because I thought I had a great story idea and I had friends who were willing to help make it a reality. I wanted to make a modern day John Hughes movie—a film about teenagers that wasn't an R-rated gross-out comedy. I was also tired of seeing indie films that all took place indoors. I wanted to push the scope of what a microbudget movie could show.

Driver's Ed Mutiny was certainly a challenge to make. We ended up shooting in 9 states and over 50 different locations—a massive logistical challenge, particularly for a tight budget. But it was a terrific bonding experience for the cast and crew (most of us didn't know each other before the film but we are now close friends). Ultimately I think we ended up with the film we set out to make—a touching yet funny movie about characters you hopefully care about that spans the nation. I'm very proud of all the hard work and dedication that the cast and crew put into the film to make this dream a reality.

Our movie is nearing the end of its successful festival run and we are starting the search for distribution. Keep tabs with us on Facebook or Twitter for distribution news!

"The Changeling" by Jay Stern

Jay Stern tells us about making his first feature-length film, based on a 17th century play:

I made The Changeling because I had simply grown tired of wanting to make a feature.

There had been many things keeping me from making one. I went through film school prior to the digital revolution, so it was much harder to just go out and make a feature when I graduated and moved to New York City. Instead, I started working in theater, which I could rehearse in my apartment and put up in small theaters and bars around town for practically no money.

During this time I developed a few film projects but had trouble finding the financing. I made short films in the meantime and started a film festival which is just about to enter its 9th year.

One day in 2005, after another grant rejection for an ambitious project I planned to shoot in various locations across Europe, Siberia, and the U.S., I decided that enough was enough. I realized that I would never make a feature unless I just went out and made one. I looked at the network I had developed during my years in theater and running a film festival and realized I had all the resources I needed. I decided to adapt a successful play, so I wouldn’t have to worry about creating a script that worked. I searched for one that was public domain and could be produced on a tiny budget, shot in my apartment if need be. I would then gather my group of actor friends, rehearse, and shoot.

The goal was simply to make a movie, to get something in the can that was feature-length. I’d pay for lunch and tape stock (remember tape stock?) but that would be it. It would be a down and dirty production that would highlight our strengths – solid, strong and intimate acting, and a long-standing working relationship that would allow us to work efficiently.

After much search I settled on Middleton and Rowley’s 1622 play The Changeling. I know that in hindsight choosing a minor Jacobean play with the original period language isn’t the way to ensure commercial success for a super low budget first film. But our goals were small, simply to make a movie, to work through the process of creating a feature film together. For this, the play was perfect.

We started rehearsing without a crew, location, or any funding in place. I expected these things would come together eventually. I just wanted to be doing something every day that would keep momentum moving so that at some point we wouldn’t be able to stop the process, that there would be no turning back.

It’s a long story, and most of it can be read on my production diary. Suffice it to say that the project grew much bigger than I could have imagined. We found an incredible director of photography who was naturally in tune with me and the project (the supremely talented Alan McIntyre Smith, we gained access to two beautiful locations for very little expense, and what originally was going to be a down-and-dirty modern adaptation to be shot in friends' apartments became a beautiful period piece. We raised $17,000 from private donors to get the film in the can, and eventually went on to secure a New York release, and receive reviews in the New York Times and Variety.

The resources we went into the film with turned out to work to our advantage. My previous relationship with the cast and our long, detailed rehearsal process meant that the actors were completely comfortable with their roles and each other so that they weren’t thrown when things came up on set. We never had to do a second take due to a performance issue. And this was necessary because we could only afford to shoot for six days! (I don’t recommend doing this by the way. Six days is just too short to shoot a feature.) And giving crew members a chance to step up their own departments on this movie meant that they gave their best work to the project. The cast and crew were the best production resources I could have hoped for.

The experience was transformative for many of us. It was my director of photography’s first feature as DP, my composer’s first movie, my sound designer’s first feature, and my leads' first feature leading roles. And ever since then I have no longer been uncomfortable about referring to myself as a “filmmaker” (although, yes, technically it was shot on video, not film).

The movie was a hard sell, as far as I can tell, due to the genre, the lack of famous actors, and the fact it was shot (albeit beautifully) on miniDV. It was rejected by every festival I applied to. And I applied to tons of them, big and small. But Ray Privett, the programmer of the Pioneer Theater (and who now runs his own distribution company, Cinema Purgatorio), saw the film when we had a private screening at his theater and he asked if he could release it for a New York run.

Outside of our New York run, we had limited attention in the U.S., but the play the movie is adapted from is quite well known in Europe and the other film versions aren’t very well regarded, so I routinely get requests for copies from England and Germany. And having successfully produced and directed a low budget feature, I’ve received offers to produce other films. I’ve also gone on to lecture about low budget filmmaking (you can see one such lecture, about my work on The Changeling, here.)

Since The Changeling, we’ve since gone on to shoot another feature, Spirit Cabinet which is now in post. You can read about that ridiculously short shoot here. And now we’re in pre-production on a low budget romantic comedy musical called The Adventures of Paul and Marian. We’re currently raising funds to get us through production via Kickstarter, so if you’d like to join the indie film revolution, please check us out!

So let this be a lesson to you – you too can make a feature if you make sure to cultivate a group of talent and give them a chance to do the work they normally don’t get to do. Don’t sit around waiting for someone else to make your dreams come true. No one is going to be as good at it as you are.

Questions about our work or making movies in general? Feel free to email me at jay@jaystern.com