In Review: LDSFF '09 Part 6: Most of the Rest of The Presenters

That's a subtitle that's packed to the edges with vague meaning, I know, but I'm trying to prevent this from going on too much longer.

While there is one presentation that I'd like to focus on individually, I think I'm going to try to cover the others all at once. This is for two reasons. First, I don't want this series to take all the way until next year's festival to finish, and I still have some actual films to review. Second, several of the remaining presentations can be summarized with brevity, even by me.

Lets get started.

Seth Packard and Ben Lakey

For those of you who don't know, Seth Packard is the writer/director/star of Hottieboombalottie, a film about a teenager with (from what I've seen) self-image issues, raging hormones, and a number of other problems, which at the time of this presentation was gaining popularity in the festival circuit. I've most recently seen Packard give one of the few decent performances in Chris Heimerdinger's Passage to Zarahemla. His role, while minor, stole the show, in my opinion. Ben Lakey played almost as big a role in Hottieboombalottie's creation as Packard did.

Their presentation consisted of clips from the film coupled with advice for filmmakers trying to be successful - which is probably all of us. While I have little love for the film itself, much of their experience seemed useful to me. I'll repeat some of it here:

Packard is primarily an actor (and a talented one), and this film was an attempt at promoting his acting career by providing himself a starring role. This focus would have made it easy for him to surround himself with others who could do most of the other work, but this is not Packard's philosophy. Instead, he began with the assumption that the best way to make a successful movie was to know everything about what it takes to do so, which seems both reasonable and obvious. However, many people seem to think that having the idea for a movie is enough. Once the right idea comes along, everything else falls into place. Packard would argue that this just isn't so.

While his career focus didn't remove him from interest in the other aspects of filmmaking, it did make him an actor's director. Packard would give input on each performance, but allow his actors to make the final decisions. Every movement was designed to add meaning to the film. A lot of stupid things happen in the script, but Packard and Lakey emphasized that actors can't interpret their own roles as stupid or their performances will be phony. They have to believe that their characters really would act in the way that the script is telling them to, even if it is outrageous. The director can have influence in this regard.

As Lakey observed, most filmmakers have three goals: to make it cheap, make it fast, and make it quality. Only two of these can be accomplished, he argues, and on Hottieboombalottie, the standard sacrificed was speed. Packard's approach relied heavily on storyboarding, which took four months compared to the six it took to write the script. Shooting took 18 days. Much of the funding came from family members, and Lakey says they were careful not to pretend to know more than they did.

In order to save money, rehearsals were held while the crew was setting each scene, and only Utah actors were cast.

A few other points of advice:

- Plan really well and it works.

- A realistic post budget is important.

- Keep a low-stress environment: no yelling.

Nelson Says

As I mentioned in my post on that subject, Maclain Nelson is the Executive Producer and star of Dragon Hunter, and also appeared in other films at the festival, such as The Sinking of Santa Isabel, Father in Israel, and Dianatha's Crossing. For those who don't know what exactly an Executive Producer does, Nelson says that it's like being in charge of sales. He puts the money together.

Nelson graduated from BYU in 2003 and began, like Packard, as an actor. Nelson believes that filmmaking is about networking. After a failed audition for the LDS adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, he asked to be a volunteer gopher. Over the course of the production one thing led to another and he ended up as Assistant Director. He accomplished this by being the type of person who says "yes" to every problem and works hard to do it.

In Nelson's mind, there's no difference between an independent filmmaker and an entrepreneur. He says you should realize what you're good at and find other people to do the other things. A good film needs talent at artistic, technical, and business levels. He also says you should make your own films your way, rather than imitating someone else's style.

When forecasting the success of your film, Nelson says you should pick others in the same genre that have been huge successes, failures, and moderate performers, and average them. Then be honest with yourself and others about the risk involved. Your pitch should send the message, "Film is risky. We'll put money in the right places, manage costs better, and bring more money in."

Because he believes that the hardest part of making a film is making the money, Nelson gave the following points of advice/insight/encouragement on the process:

• Make a list of anyone you can think of who might be interested in investing in your film.
• Have a solid business plan.
• Start an LLC for your film.
• Keep meetings with potential investors to 15 minutes.
• People are interested in film investing, so they will meet with you.
• Keep your contacts
• Sell investment units - don't try to get all the money from one place.
• Most investors will buy one unit even if it's a little higher. They don't like partial units or multiple units as much.
• If you don't have a big name actor, keep you budget under $500K unless it's a genre piece.
• Big actors will work for less money if they like the script and if you can be flexible with scheduling (this was how Dragon Hunter got Issac Singleton - not a huge name but a recognizable face).
• You only need one name actor, and with a $500K budget you can get it.
• Make a list of the actors you want and start contacting them in order of preference.
• Give them a week to respond before moving down the list.
• Start small.
• For musical (and other talent) find people who are hungry. Local/smaller bands are eager to get their music in a film and won't want outrageous sums of money for it.
• Get an IMDb Pro account

For foreign distribution, Nelson suggests a Park City company called Kowan.

A few things to look forward to from Nelson's company: a sequel to Dragon Hunter called Dragon Hunter: Legend of the Hidden City, a vampire movie, a western, a musical. Not much more info on any of them than that.

If you're looking to get a script produced, Nelson accepts submissions at maclainnelson[at]hotmail[dot]com.

Technicalities

Because they don't really have much to do with the purpose of this blog, I won't be in-depth about these, but there were a couple of technical presentations about the RED camera and Visual Effects. The first was by Alan Williams and Zach Helton. Williams is a Digital Intermediate Producer at Universal Post & Cosmic Pictures. Helton is from Digital Cinema Tech.

This presentation was interesting, but from a state-of-the-art perspective. One comment the presenters made that is worth mentioning was regarding the importance of storytelling. They see actors and directors as necessary evils in the telling of a story - an interesting point of view. The presenters also reiterated Ben Lakey's comment about quality, price, and speed, and how a film can only have two of them in its favor.

Other that that, I'll only say that if anyone reading this is considering using the RED camera in a film, either of the gentlemen listed above can help you procure one and they would be happy to assist in your post production as well.

The VFX presentation was given by the good folks at Bluefire Studios, who did a number of effects shots for The Errand of Angels. They gave suggestions for setting up effects shots with the goal of lowering post production costs.

S.A.G. U.F.C.

This presentation was by Anne Seward Hansen from the Screen Actor's Guild and Marshall Moore of the Utah Film Commission. They spoke about producing films in Utah - specifically how the UFC's rebate program (at the time it was 15% of every dollar spent) helps bring productions to the state.

Again, because it's not as much to this forum's purposes, I'll just give a couple of bullet points.

• It's in the state's best interests to have lots of productions and big productions.
• Yay Utah! stats: Utah was 4th in the nation for production last year, the film industry created 994 jobs in Utah in fiscal 2008 and generated $36 mil. in revenues.
• The minimum you have to spend to get a UFC rebate is $1 mil., but that will be lowered soon.
• Utah is the only state in which a union film and a non-union film can be shot side-by-side without restriction.
• Rebate is changing from 15% to 20%.
• The $500K cap on the rebate is being removed and it will now be structured as a tax refund instead of a cash rebate.
• 35 of the 38 submitted films have been approved - those that weren't were so trashy they didn't fit the state's values.
• Ratings are not discussed in the approval process.
• It may be possible to package several low-budget films from a single funding source in order to meet the minimum spend.

Last One I Promise - The LDS Film Forum

This would normally merit a post of its own, but I snuck out partway through to go to a different presentation, so I only have a little bit to report on.

This years forum was moderated by Gideon Burton and included presentations from Cathy Cowley and Katherine Morris. No doubt I'll do no justice to their thoughts and preparation by summarizing what little I heard.

Cowley's and Burton's comments can probably best be encapsulated in the questions they asked, which may merit further discussion here, but which I can't begin to answer without waxing long-winded and boring. Cowley contemplated the formal presentation of our identity (as in a eulogy) through film and asked, "Who do we want to think we are and try to become?"

Burton extrapolated with this query, "What aspect of our identity must be present in a film to call it LDS?"

Morris spoke about Paradox a-la-Terryl Givens. She claimed that Film offers a good medium to explore the disintegration of sacred space that Givens discusses in his works. This concept is basically that rather than separating everyday pursuits from spiritual reality, Mormonism eliminates the difference. Morris further said that because we think of film as a secular medium, sacred things portrayed thereon can be hard to receive.

It was at this point that I left the room, so I'm sorry to cut this off when it's finally getting interesting. Perhaps I can return to the subject in more depth later. What's left is a discussion of the presentation by Rick Stevenson, a non-LDS independent filmmaker, and reviews of several films. For now (assuming anyone has actually finished this post - thanks, if you have) I'll leave you to ponder.

In Review: LDSFF '09 Part 3 - Dragon Hunter

I'm glad I finally have a chance to get back to this. Sorry it's taken so long.

Being at the same time as the 24 hour screenings, I didn't think I was going to get to see Steve Shimek's Dragon Hunter. Probably because of popular demand, however, the festival's producers decided to put in in the TBA slot immediately after the 24 hour films. So I stayed.

I have to disclose that I tend to be a sucker for fantasy, and was consequently predisposed to like this film. I was intrigued by it to no end. A Mormon film about hunting dragons? How "Mormon" would it be? Would it be an overwrought morality tale? A complex allegory? Or nothing of the kind? How "big" would the film be? Would it look like a Hollywood fantasy-action movie, complete with realistic CGI monsters and carefully choreographed fight scenes? Would it be more like something you shot in your backyard with sock puppets? The posters certainly didn't look that way. I had a lot of questions and didn't know quite what to expect, but I was excited to see it nonetheless.

Because I'm not very good at summarizing plots, I've pasted the synopsis from the festival site below:

Orphaned as a baby when his parents were killed in a vicious orc attack, Kendrick of Elwood was raised by his elder brother, Darius. Though only nine at the time, Darius devoted his life to Kendrick's care and to purging orcs from their land. As Darius grew into a great warrior, he sheltered Kendrick from all possible harm. Now, after years of absence, a new danger emerges, more lethal than the threat of orcs or men. Reports of dragon attacks spread like wildfire through the panicked land. In memory of his mother's prophesies of a mighty Dragon Hunter in their bloodline, Darius leads Kendrick on a perilous journey to the castle of Ocard - the Dragon Hunter training grounds. Will dragons completely decimate the countryside? Only the Dragon Hunter will decide!

In spite of being patterned after films like The Lord of the Rings, this film, to paraphrase Maclain Nelson, its executive producer and star, was not the most riveting action-adventure movie ever. It was made to make money, Nelson said in his presentation later in the festival. Fantasy, he pointed out, does better in foreign markets than in the U.S., and so, for Americans, does not lend itself to art for art's sake. This, however, does not mean that quality craftsmanship is not involved. In fact, the very first thing I noticed about the film was the stunning cinematography-a-la-T. C. Christensen of the opening sequence in particular. I was surprised later to learn that not only was the script submitted by a student, the film was crewed entirely by students to keep costs down. Nelson and his team essentially said to the BYU media arts department, "We want to do a fantasy film. If you can come up with a script we like, we'll produce it."

This might just be every film student's dream come true - although not necessarily this genre - and I have to applaud Nelson and his associates for making the offer, regardless of other considerations.

Getting back to the film, let me say a few things generally to answer what I imagine some of the surface questions about this film may be.

The special effects were good enough to not be cheesy. The fight sequences were shot in such a manner that I never knew who was hitting whom for all the quick cuts, and motion blur. It was a bit melodramatic and slow-moving, but not unbearably so. Many of the characters could have been taken from any number of other fantasy films (or even video games), notably the orcs and the overdone, heavily painted, scantily clad female elf. Who really goes on a battle quest dressed like that? Honestly. The main protagonists, Kendrick and Darius, were original and well done. I particularly liked the captain of the travelling band the two brothers meet up with, though his name escapes me. The character played by Isaac Singleton, of Pirates of the Caribbean fame is also pretty good. The story has potential, but doesn't always live up to it.

With that out of the way, there are two aspects of Dragon Hunter I'd like to discuss particularly: the language, and the intertwined moral themes, namely courage and the motivation for fighting.

Language

A lot of fantasy films have every character speak in British-like accents in order to get an archaic sound to the words. At the very least, they try to eliminate accents that are clearly modern, such as the distinct speech patterns associated with people from Brooklyn. They also avoid modern slang, contractions, and other linguistic artifacts that might give the piece too contemporary a feel. While the effectiveness of this approach is debatable, it is nevertheless a common creative choice. Although some actors did have (it seemed) native accents, this was not the format of Dragon Hunter, in which the main protagonists noticeably sounded just like everyday Americans - though not crudely so, and I spoke with Nelson individually to ask why.

He said that he didn't feel such language lends any extra credibility to a fantasy film. Indeed, my linguist sister-in-law once told me that people in medieval times probably sounded more like Americans than Britons, although popular perception is the reverse. Nelson didn't think the choice hurt the film at all, and I, after getting into it, agreed. But I do remember being surprised by it, nonetheless. For the first several minutes, the world created effectively by cinematography, costuming, and sets, was made less believable by the sound and content of some of the lines. In many cases, good or fairly good acting made up for what I considered somewhat weak dialogue.

And yet, aside from being occasionally forced, the primary reasons I considered it weak go back to this same concept of setting and perception. I don't think the accents would have thrown me as much if the words being spoken had sounded less modern. With the conglomeration of voices and speaking styles in the film, the return to everyday English felt out of place at times, especially since the characters who did this did not do it consistently. Some lines, in content and delivery, sounded tailor made for a big fantasy action film. Others sounded like they were written for a suburban sitcom. This is probably a realistic reflection of life, and it ended up being a minor issue, but it was harder for me to commit to the film because of the language.

Courage and Fighting

Here I want to shift gears a little bit. While I want to discuss these themes as they apply to the film, I want to also discuss them as they apply to the LDS filmmaker.

Dragon Hunter opens and closes by making assertions about the relationship between courage and fear. In the beginning, Kendrick admires Darius' bravery, but Darius claims to have none. Instead, he claims that his will to fight comes from the fear of what will happen if he doesn't fight. In many cases, this means that he simply fight to stay alive and to kill his attacker. In fact, he's devoted his life to hunting orcs for this reason. His primary motive in life is the fear of dying at the hands of an orc. Therefore, he becomes an orc hunter. The topic of his daring deeds and those of others comes up repeatedly in conversations throughout the film.

In almost every case, the person in question denies fighting out of valor or some sense of right or righteousness, and instead cites fear, vengeance, hatred, or plain necessity as the driving motivation. Regarding fear, I want to make it clear that this is not fear for the welfare of others, but simply an (arguably) utterly selfish concern for one's own life. In the end, when Kendrick becomes the legendary Dragon Hunter and devotes his life to bringing about their extinction, he monologues the same reason Darius gave. He chases down and confronts dragons because he is mortally afraid of them.

So how does this apply to LDS filmmakers? I wonder if sometimes we have these same motivations for creating our art.

For example, no one is surprised to hear an LDS filmmaker express a desire to combat the immorality common in Hollywood films, or at least provide an alternative. We tend to applaud and encourage these desires because we want more beauty and goodness in the world. But how many LDS filmmakers (or viewers, for that matter) are motivated by fear of the influence of immorality in their own lives or the lives of others? Do we combat these things to avoid being destroyed by them? Is that an appropriate motivation?

Similarly, like a masked vigilante, do we harbor a deep hatred of filthy entertainment and want to see it eradicated? Do we view the battle as inevitable or the alternative to fighting as unacceptable? Have we or a loved one been hurt by it so that we desire vengeance? This may not be common, but I doubt it's impossible.

Further, how do we define the dragon?

I don't propose to answer these questions for anyone, but I think we would do well to ask ourselves why we make films and why our audiences want them. Are any of these motives at the core? If so, is this appropriate from a personal or gospel perspective?

Closing Note - including spoiler, in case you care.

Dragon Hunter provides, if nothing else, a lot to think about. Let me say one other thing really quickly. I often have a hard time with seeing LDS actors who have been in official Church films playing roles in worldly movies. In Dragon Hunter, the villainous "wizard" who tries to control the dragon and gets eaten - a topic which might make for a good post another time - is played by (I'm terribly with actors' names) the same guy who plays one of the apostles in Finding Faith in Christ. For some reason, I couldn't take him seriously as a demented, bloodthirsty maniac. He always seemed like an apostle in costume. However, if I had seen the two films in reverse order, I have a hunch I may have felt differently. What do you think about that? Does acting in Church films limit an actor's credibility in other roles?