In the last Open Forum, Shea posted this comment. Here’s the key question:

“What are your thoughts on writing a script to shoot yourself? How would you approach the process of writing the script, would it be the same?”

I thought this would be a great opportunity to contact Broderick Fox who will be directing this summer One Degree, a movie based on an original screenplay Brody wrote in part in one of my advanced screenwriting courses. It’s a wonderful script with finely crafted characters, each with multiple layers of depth and a strong core concept, especially for an ‘indie’-style movie.

So I emailed Brody with Shea’s question and Brody was kind enough to take a few minutes from his busy pre-production schedule to respond. Here are Brody’s thoughts:

With ONE DEGREE, I knew I wanted to write a story that explored issues of alienation, and the self-imposed barriers that often keep us from connecting with others. I also knew I wanted to make something I could shoot myself, so the only parameters I put on it were:

1. Keep it contemporary and LA-based as that is where I live.

2. Keep it character-based and performance-based rather than effects-heavy.

3. Tonally, keep it in the reality of the world around me, rather than write a Wes Anderson-esque, heavily production design-dependent reality.

4. Write a story with a place and energy that lends itself to digital production. Shooting a period drama on mini-DV is swimming upstream in some respects.

Even with those restrictions, by the time I got the script complete and put my producer/director hat on, I realized the writer side of me had not necessarily made things easy. I had written a story with a character who is a singer, with no fewer than 5 live performances. That led to issues of recording to playback, and furthermore I had him singing existing music that alone priced out to about $600K in usage rights! I’ve been able to partner with amazing artists–Taylor Mac and Jessie Deluxe–to create original music since then, but it was a challenge.

I also wrote a story with physical transformations of a character. That makes for major challenges in scheduling. Once a haircut happens, it’s hard to go back and pick up shots. And if you have 3 scenes at a costly location and one occurs post-haircut, then you may have to rent the place twice and have a company move back there. Major pain.

The other thing I have learned is that it’s not the 4 page dialogue scenes that are challenging to shoot. It’s all the 1/8th of a page actions and intercuts that will kill you on a shoot day, because each one of those is a new set-up of camera, lighting, and location. That said, I like stories that move visually and “show rather that say” whenever possible, so I’m not telling everyone to just plunk the camera down in front of yakking actors for 90 minutes. But one should be strategic about re-using locations rather than inventing a location or a supporting character who never returns just for the fun of it. Chances are putting that sort of restriction on yourself will lead to a piece that is more coherent and elegant anyways–every character recurs, folds back in, and has consequence or meaning; locations are revisited, allowing for motifs that structure and create meaning over the course of the film.

I recently saw an Australian film called BOXING DAY (2007) directed (and shot!) by Kriv Stenders that astonished me in its process and outcome. The film is shot on a Panasonic HD camcorder that uses P2 cards, so footage went direct from camera into computer at day’s end. It is also shot in long takes, so that the piece is essentially 11 shots matched at unnoticed edit points in the action. This means that at the wrap party, the film was already edited. The film is a domestic drama with a fixed location and is very character/performance-based and lends itself to this immediacy. The performers were almost all non-actors: 2 ex-cons, a real social worker, a stand up comic who had never acted before, an Aboriginal girl who had never acted, and one experienced actor.

Stenders worked backwards in planning his film. He knew he had $100K from the Adelaide Film Festival, and that essentially meant he could afford 3 weeks at the location with actors, crew, and equipment. His process really merged the best of theater and film. He rehearsed for two weeks, with a script outline and characters but dialogue not fully fleshed out. He shot the film twice in that time, as he essentially follows actors with the camera in continuous takes. Over the course of that time the story evolved, dialogue was nailed down, camera moves and positioning was worked out, etc. All of that proved to be a laboratory for the final week where they shot the film a third and final time, the resultant takes coming to be the final film.

The method is deceptively simple, and succeeds where works like RUSSIAN ARK and TIMECODE have in my estimation fallen short in their attempts at “real time” narrative. Realtime is not a story conceit that works easily, but I bring up his example to underscore a directorial process that embraced the limitations faced as catalysts for story and process. Check it out if you can find it (not released in the U.S. yet, but on its way to be sure!).

So in short, I go back to, “write what you believe in,” with all of the above hopefully making this platitude a less empty one!

Some fantastic insight into the mind of a writer-director, one who has been trained in the field of documentary film-making and now faces the specific challenges of a scripted movie project. I’ll elaborate on the subject in a later post, but Brody has cut some major trail with his response.

Thanks, Brody, and best of luck with One Degree.