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Dark
September Rain
A Production History By Writing The Dark
September Rain Press Kit can be downloaded
as a PDF file. For
a quick overview try the Fact Sheet. In 2000 I spent a year traveling the country with a corporate exhibit as a tour manager. Upon returning home I took a year off to research and write a book about spirituality and globalization called The Chrysalis Age: Personal and Global Transformation in the new Millennium. This project greatly influenced my ideas and intentions as an artist. The terrorist attacks of 2001 took place just as I had begun writing the first draft of the book and I spent a good deal of time contemplating the meaning of that day. I saw and read very little that reflected my own views and so, nearly a year to the day after September 11th, I began writing what I hoped would express my feelings about that tragedy while at the same time incorporating many of the ideas and concepts I had fleshed out in the book. The result of this month long effort was a stage play that called Dark September Rain. Having first written Dark September Rain as a play, my intention had always been to stage it for a brief Off-Off Broadway run in September and then film it on a farm in up state New York. The first full read-through of the play took place in December of 2002. The script at that time was very long and the reading exceeded four hours in length. By the time of the next reading I had managed to trim thirty minutes off of the running time. That reading was produced by the Stormbringer Theater Company, an entity founded by my good friend and fellow director Michael Mathis (who plays Harry in the film). The intention of the reading was to stir up interest in the stage production. While it generated some interest, it was not as much as we had hoped for. Concurrent with the reading I was also location scouting. After checking some ninety-odd rental houses on the Internet, I picked one that seemed to have enough room for my proposed cast and crew and didn't look as though it was a vacation home. By some stroke of extraordinary good fortune the first house we visited, the Lazy Daze Farm, turned out to be the perfect setting for the story. We signed the lease that same day, locking in the shooting dates of October 3rd to the 12th, just 4 months away. Unfortunately, progress on the stage version of the story was not as swift. It soon became painfully clear to me that the stage play was an entirely different production and had very little overlap with the film production, thus requiring twice and much work and twice as much money. I eventually admitted that I had only enough time and money to complete one project. And so, the play was abandoned (until some future September) and production steamed full ahead on the film. Over the coming months, with Michael's help and guidance, I slowly cast the film, (mostly with people who had been involved in one or both of the readings). I also researched which camera to buy for the shoot (the JVC HD10U), what equipment would be needed (lots!), completed the script breakdown, finalized the shooting schedule, filed the proper paper work with SAG for the actors, and began recruiting people to serve on the very tiny crew. As the paperwork piled up, so to did the number of boxes with film equipment arriving at my door and spilling out of my office. I had realized that between the costs of insurance and rental it would be just as expensive to simply buy most of the equipment I needed. E-Bay became my constant companion. Before rehearsals began, and while I continued to generate the necessary paperwork, I took some time to familiarize myself with the new camera. I had chosen the JVC JY HD10U because of the extra lines of resolution it afforded and the fact that it gave me the opportunity to shoot with a true 16:9 capture chip. Although the camera does not provide full High Definition resolution, it does have far more lines of resolution than normal DV cameras (1280x720), and the true 16:9 capture chip meant than I would not need to use an anamorphic lens to obtain the film-like aspect ratio that I desired. In looking at films that were shot on digital video I realized they usually looked like video because video can't compare with 35mm film in color registration and smooth imaging during camera movement. For those reasons I decided to shoot the film in monochrome/black and white and to never move the camera. This would make the film a little more difficult to shoot, but it would also set it apart from the Dogma style of shooting that has so infected DV filmmakers. I also felt that the story really lent itself to black and white. The absence of color and camera movement until the very end of the film would heighten the emotional atmosphere of the story.
Before I knew it the rehearsals were finished and I was packing to leave town for a weeklong job that was helping to pay for the shoot (as well as my upcoming wedding, which would take place just two weeks after we finished shooting!). Everything was going according to my evil plan, when two of the crewmembers with the most production experience dropped out. This left me with only two experienced crewmembers, neither of whom could be there for the whole ten days of shooting. I was worried, but after making several unsuccessful phone calls to try and rustle up a few more hands, I resigned myself to shooting my ultra-low budget film with an ultra small crew. The size of the crew didn't worry me so much, because I had plenty of actors to pitch in when needed, what I worried about was the fact that so few people had any experience on a film set. I had been on plenty of sets for commercials, music videos, features, and student films (as a PA and grip/electric) and knew first hand how inexperience could foil even the best pre-production plans. So it was with some anxiety and trepidation that I departed for upstate New York to begin shooting. We arrived
at the Lazy Daze Farm house around 4pm on Friday, October 3rd and began
unpacking the 15-passenger van I had rented and the car of Paul O'Flynn
(our Production Assistant and the only person who would be with us the
entire week). Then, while the majority of the cast and crew started organizing
the production equipment and supplies, my soon to be wife Tsufit (our
makeup artist), Michael, and I took the van to go grocery shopping for
10 days of food. Two hours and $800 later we returned with our larder,
unpacked the van for a second time, and began preparing dinner. While
everyone else started on dinner, David Lanphier, my Assistant Director/Sound
Engineer/Grip/Gaffer (I said it was a small crew) and I began setting
up the first shot of the night. The plan was to shoot several short scenes
between Virginia Worley (the lovely actress playing Jean) and Michael,
to help myself and the crew get our production groove on for the fast
paced weekend ahead. Before the first shot and before dinner, I led a short ceremony to bless the house. It was a simple blessing, using the lines from the Black Book of Carmarthen that are the closing lines of the script. We all stood around the table as I led everyone in a brief purification meditation and then closed by reading the lines from the Black Book together. Then we moved into the TV room and started shooting. The first shot was a unique moment. It was almost a decade since I had directed a film and so much had change. Not only was the technology so much different (I shot that last film on a 1960's 16mm camera and edited on a flat bed), but I had changed so much as well. Ten years ago I never would have imagined making a film about the intersection between personal and global transformation in the face of national tragedy. These thoughts drifted through my mind as I set the first shot and talked Virginia through her monologue. Before I knew it, the camera was rolling and I was ready to call action. As I spoke the magic word, I noticed the flies. To be honest I had noticed the flies earlier. How could you not? They were everywhere. But that seemed natural. It was early autumn and we had turned the heat on, and it was an old house, so there were bound to be a few flies. I grew up in the country, so I knew about insects and autumn. But my youth in the sticks didn't prepare me for this. As we continued to shoot it became glaringly obvious that we were not dealing with just a few flies. They were so numerous they would buzz around the microphone ruining shots, dart in front of the lights causing shadows on the actors faces, and even dive bomb into the actors themselves. Soon I realized that it was going to take much longer to shoot the scenes I had planned simply because there were too many flies in the room. And then David tapped me on the shoulder and asked me if I had been upstairs lately. The upstairs of the house was where all but one of the bedrooms was located and where most of the cast and crew were planning on sleeping. I climbed the stairs slowly, knowing from the look on David's face that whatever awaited me at the top was not going to be pleasant, but I figured I was a country boy, so it wouldn't be anything I hadn't seen before. I was wrong. I have never seen so many flies in my life. I had never imagined that there could be so many flies in one house. The air was full of thousands and thousands of flies buzzing through the air, and hundreds more lying dead on the floor where the cast and crew had sprayed them, trying to get the infestation under control. And then I noticed the sound. The humming that reminded me of standing next to giant transformers. That sound, that humming, was coming from the walls. As images of Amityville Horror flashed through my mind, I stood on the last step at the top of the stairs and thought only one thought; "No way in hell am I going upstairs." So, I turned, went down stairs, and declared the upstairs uninhabitable. Everyone would have to sleep downstairs for the night. Then I return to shooting the first and only scene we would film that night, and silently prayed that none of the actors or crew would be so disgusted that they would abandon the house and the film come daylight. Fortunately for me, the actors and crew are all extraordinarily tolerant people. Everyone embraced the fact that we were infested with flies and tried to make the best of it for the next two days, until the infestation wore off. So, Saturday morning we began shooting. To be honest, the next few days are a bit of a blur. Because we were short on crew, and especially experienced crew, I ended up doing a lot more work than I had planned. While I had always planned on shooting the film myself I had assumed I would have several experienced people to help with lights and sound. And although the crew I did have were very helpful, most of the technical burden fell upon David and myself. So, David and I became a symbiotic filmmaking creature, with him anticipating my needs as we set the camera, lights, and sound for scene after scene, shot after shot, all day and all night. I had hoped to keep the shooting days to around 12 hours, which is was a crazy enough goal considering how much material we needed to shoot and the tight schedules of some of the actors. But the flies and the noise of the traffic from the road nearby complicated this schedule and our days regularly went longer than planned. But absolutely everyone remained enthusiastic and energetic no matter how late the day became. By lunchtime on Saturday afternoon I had my groove on. And it felt good. I had absolutely no time to leave the set between meals and my entire being was consumed with the shooting of each scene, but in retrospect I'm not sure that I would have wanted it any other way. I should have made a little better use of the crew and had someone watching the script more closely to keep me from shooting things with practical lights that should have been shot by candle light and silly mistakes like that, but the overall experience was insanely exhilarating. Making the film was using all of my talents and skills, organizational, technical, and artistic, in an intensely concentrated manner. It was like being in the zone, on some artistic high, for days and days straight. It was wonderful. But it was also tiring, and there were times when I suspected, at least momentarily, that I had used up all my mojo. How Do You Shoot a 16 minute scene with 6 actors in 4 hours? The only point during the making of the film that I was even remotely worried about my ability to capture on camera what I had written on the page came on Monday evening as we prepared to shoot the 16 minute scene with all six of the main characters that is the intellectual and philosophical heart of the story. Due to scheduling conflicts and delays caused by traffic noise and flies, we were only going to have 4 hours in which to shoot this 16-minute scene. I had hoped for six to eight hours, but it was nearly 11pm and Gin Hammond, who played Margaret, needed to leave no later than 7am the next morning. In order to give her at least 4 hours of sleep before driving back for the play she was in, I needed shoot the scene as quickly as possible. Normally a scene like this would be shot over several days. How was I going to capture everything I needed to make the scene work in just four hours? I had no idea. So, while everyone ate the pizza and salad that was being served for dinner, I wandered around the main room that covered both the kitchen and living area struggling to figure out how to shoot it. I had shot all the other scenes with four of more characters in isolated close-ups and medium shots to create a sense of separation between them. I knew from shooting these scenes that it would take at least an hour per actor to shoot the scene this way, which was 2 more hours than I had. At a certain moment (I suspect when the pizza hit my stomach and my blood sugar levels rose again) it suddenly became clear. I would have to do the opposite of the other scenes and shoot the entire thing in wide frames capturing three different angles of three actors at a time. Four hours later we had wrapped and headed to bed for the night. That following morning, Tuesday the 7th of October was not only the final day of shooting with the main cast, but also my 35th birthday. The day seemed to fly by, and suddenly, before I knew it, we were shooting the last shot with the farmers. I called cut, we all congratulated ourselves, they brought out a candy bar with candles (no time for cakes) and then, within twenty minutes, they were all packed into the van and driving back to the city. We had accomplished an extraordinary amount of work in a short period of time. The film runs two hours and forty minutes and fully 2/3 of the material for the film was shot in just 4½ days. And after a constant flow of mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual energy, there was suddenly a profound pause. It was like running a marathon and then falling straight into bed. The absence of movement, as well as company of the cast, seemed odd and disorienting. The only people left on the farm were Paul O'Flynn, Gaetane Bertol (another friend and production assistant), and Tsufit, who at the time was still my finance. Not knowing quite what to do, we hopped in the car, headed off the to the nearby town, bought some steaks and some wine and came home to celebrate my birthday. The next day moved slowly, in part because we all needed to recuperate, and also because the next actor didn't arrive until that evening. We spent the day slowly adjusting to having fewer people in the house and shooting some of my scenes as the First Daimon. Daimons are a Greek an ancient concept. You can think of them as guardian angels, or psychological principles that nurture our true nature. Although I had played the farmer Gabriel in the previous film I made dealing with these characters, I was originally planning on not acting in this film. Acting is something I enjoy, but not something I do much of and I thought it would be impossible to play one of the main characters and really give the film the attention it required in terms of direction and cinematography. The First Daimon was originally going to be played by a wonderful actor named Munro Bonnell, but he was forced to drop our a few weeks before filming due to scheduling conflicts. At first I figured I would go back to the casting process and try to find another actor I liked for the part, but the more I thought about it, the more it sounded like fun to play the part myself. I knew that I planned on shooting the Daimons in single shots that would be easy to set up and capture and I also figured that it was one less person to house and feed. Of course at the time I made this decision I didn't realize we would be so short handed when it came time to shoot my scenes. In the end, while I did enjoy playing the Second Daimon, it was much more work, and much less fun than I had figured, and I can only hope that the results are not detrimental to the film. Donnetta Grays, who plays the Second Daimon, arrived on Wednesday night and we began shooting her scenes the next morning. We shot quickly and efficiently; Paul and Gaetane stepping up to fill David's technical shoes. And when Gaetane left on Thursday, Paul filled those shoes alone. Our progress was especially impressive not only because there were so few of us, but also my role as the First Daimon necessitated my setting a shot and then stepping in front of the camera to shoot it. It was awkward at first, but we all soon adjusted to the process and focused on trying to make the scenes with the Daimons work. I always knew that the Daimons would be the most difficult part of the script to capture for film. On stage they would seem simply like long-winded narrators, but for a film their meaning and importance could be completely lost on an audience member. Having shot some tests before the shoot to see if I could actually play the part of the Daimon, I suspected that much of what we shot would likely be used as voice over, but I wanted to try and capture as many beautiful images of the Daimons as we could so I could at least give them some kind of visual presence on the film. Fortunately, Donnetta not only has a beautiful, rich voice, but it is also effortlessly easy to capture her beauty on camera. Although shooting my own scenes was sometimes a struggle and it was relief to be done with them, I very much missed sitting behind the camera and listening to Donnetta read her lines. Dale Fuller and Janet Ward, who played Ben and Harriet respectively, arrived Friday evening and we started shooting them bright and early the next day as Donnetta was leaving. Before we could begin shooting, Tsufit had to gray Janet's hair. Janet, the envy of all women, has no natural gray hair herself. The effect was transforming and perfect for the part. Our crew became ever smaller, Gaetane having left on Thursday and Paul having to leave just for the evening on Friday night. But by that time shooting had become like breathing and so, when there was only Tsufit and myself left to capture the scenes for that Friday night, it didn't seem to very difficult to set the camera, lights, and sound all alone. And shooting Janet and Dale would be a joy no matter what the circumstances, so I could hardly complain. I was struck by a certain sadness as we wrapped each scene. It was a feeling that I had experienced constantly throughout the shoot. I would get a shot that was just perfect and find myself struggling not to ask the actor in question to do it again, simply so I could hold on to that moment of seeing it unfold before the lens. I suddenly understood why some directors go so far over their original shooting schedule. Once you say the words "Cut. Moving On." the scene and the moment are lost in some way, even though you have the footage. So it was with a heavy heart that I called cut on the final scene of the film and what I thought was the final shot. The next morning I realized that I had forgotten to shoot two of my own scenes (there were a lot of them and at that point I was my own Assistant Director, so I think I can be forgiven, even though I did write the script). So, while the others packed up and got ready to leave, I headed upstairs with the camera, some lights, and the sound equipment to wrap the film. An hour later the film was wrapped (barring some pickup shots and voiceovers that are inevitable in any low-budget film) and I was helping Paul pack the van as we said good-bye to Janet and Dale. As we left I took a moment alone to walk through the house looking for anything that might have been left behind by the cast or crew. Moving from room to room I let the memories of the previous ten days wash over me and considered how lucky I had been. The film was in the can (or on the tape as the case may by) and barring a couple of days of infestation by flies, it had all gone off very smoothly. The actors were helpful, enthusiastic, and their performances were exceptional. What little footage I had been able to review looked great and the biggest problem I could foresee would be dealing with the sound of flies and traffic in the editing. All in all it was the most creative and exhilarating ten days of my life. And while I was exhausted, and I knew that there were many, many months of post-production and editing ahead of me, I couldn't wait to do it all again for some other story. Because I am an idiot and don't know how to schedule time between giant projects, Tsufit and I had less than two weeks between the time we returned from filming and the date of our wedding. Unfortunately, in addition to organizing the wedding I needed to complete all the paperwork for SAG so that I could get my deposit check back and help pay for the wedding. Soon the wedding was over and I was happily and ecstatically married. I began the editing process shortly thereafter. I cutting the film with Adobe Premiere Pro using Cineform's Aspect HD plug-in to handle the HD footage from the JVC HD10U camera. There were 30 hours of footage to review and log, so I had a lot of work to do before the real work of editing could begin. The editing turned out to be one of the most artistically rewarding aspects of the entire production. Early on I started experimenting with using fades between the shots instead of straight cuts and slightly overlapping the dialogue between shots to create a dreamlike flow in the film. As I continued editing, Juan Masotta, my composer was busy writing music. I was always amazed to see a scene that I had been looking at for weeks with his music for the first time. Juan's music complimented the scenes so well that I decided to use it throughout the entire film, adding to the dreamlike manner in which the story unfolds. Editing throughout the winter, spring, and summer, the film was finally finished in early September 2004, just in time to make the application deadlines for the Sundance, Slamdance, and Berlin film festivals. Now of course,
the real work begins. |
