Here’s another Movie You Made: “Booth Girls,” written & directed by Adam Mallinger. Adam emailed me this background info on the project:

The genesis of BOOTH GIRLS was a trip to Comic Con 2004, my first visit there ever. At the time, Mattel had a promotion for their She-Ra exclusive action figure and had hired a model to wear the She-Ra outfit. She was trying to put on a good face, but was clearly so not into it and had this “get me out of here” look every time a group of guys came over for a picture with her and got too close. I couldn’t get close enough to tell, but she might have been blinking “help me” in Morse Code.

(Through Google, it took me all of two minutes to find pics that back up what I saw:

http://media.photobucket.com/image/comic%20con%20she-ra/BradandMarie/Comiccon_shera-1.jpg

http://www.silver-surfer.us/Original_Art/Artists_Alley/Me_and_She-Ra.jpg

http://k43.pbase.com/u40/jedi_don/large/32577432.SDCC04_DSC_2210.jpg)

Anyway, it hit me that you could probably make an entertaining movie about models at Comic Cons. I wrote it up in my idea file and then could never figure out how to structure it. The furthest I got was coming up with some characters. It was a given that I’d have a traditional “Wonder Woman” type heroine, portrayed by an overwhelmed model, but what of the other types? Slave Leia was a no-brainer, as you see tons of them at Comic-Con and if you follow pictures from several conventions, you’ll soon notice that the same girls get photographed again and again in that outfit. (Strangely enough, at the time I came up with the idea, one girl was the “queen of Slave Leias” more or less, but by the time we made the movie, she’d been subplanted by three or four others.)

I also figured that every comic con has an inappropriately slutty outfit, usually worn by the girls who man the soft-corn porn booths, so that lead to a slutty cheerleader or schoolgirl character making the list. Then, since it hit me that many of these models were probably aspiring actresses, I figured it would be funny if one of them took the job as seriously as if she was playing Lady MacBeth. From there it was a short leap to figuring out which “type” worked best for an actress determined never to break character and I came up with a Red Sonja/Xena: Warrior Princess type and gave her dialogue that sounded like it came from an 80s Marv Wolfman-penned comic.

But after that, I had nothing. No story, no structure. It was hard to come up with interesting drama once you figured that all these girls do is stand in booths and get groped by geeks. I just couldn’t find an arc that would sustain 105 pages, and it was hard figuring out the “bottom” – the point of the story.

Flash-forward to December 2007. The Writers Strike has all but frozen Hollywood, and both of my roommates have made short films in the last year or so. I, on the other hand, haven’t shot a film since graduating college five years earlier and it’s starting to grate. The girl I was dating (who eventually became my wife) mentioned that if I ever was going to do a short, this was the time because nothing’s being produced and actors have both free time, and a greater willingness to do side projects to stay busy.

NOTE: Adam’s GF’s job at the time was in casting.

So I revisited BOOTH GIRLS and I was stuck for how to pull it off on a short-film budget, particularly the problem of staging a convention. At that point, it hit me that I could just confine all the action to “backstage” which also would provide a convenient way to get all of the girls interacting. Once I boxed myself in there, I suddenly found the structure: Emily, our lead, would arrive for work expecting that she’d have the sort of fun she’s experienced while dressed up as a Disney princess at a theme park. Quickly, the other models would disabuse her of that notion, and then she’d go to the convention floor and be harrassed in a quick montage. Then, as she’s on her way out the door for the day, a little girl would rush up to her and be excited about seeing her hero brought to life, making it all worthwhile.

BAM! I had Emily’s arc. Not an epic one or a deep one, but it’s important to remember that short films are short, small stories. The number one mistake among short filmmakers is that they try to tell too big an idea.

Originally I figured we’d never see the convention and I’d enlist an artist friend to draw a comic book-like montage of Emily’s time on the floor. However, when I mentioned the idea to my producer and friend Matt Bolish, he immediately said he’d like to try coming up with a production design we could pull off on the cheap for that. Not long after that, he came up with a sketch and the price was right. Suddenly, we were able to put a bit more on the convention.

Casting was another major component. My girlfriend and her friend started generating lists of actresses they could get for the girls. Eventually we went straight to offering Courtnee Draper the part of Queen Natalia, and another very talented actress the part of Emily. I had originally planned to fill the role of the convention worker with one of my actor friends, but when I saw the quality of actress that our casting people were coming up with for the girls, I gave them a wish list of two actors I’d give my left arm to have as the convention worker. Adam Wylie was the first one we went out to and he accepted.

With two roles left to cast, we arranged auditions. Kelsey Crane was one of 20 girls we saw that day for the schoolgirl (many of whom arrived for auditions in their own slutty schoolgirl outfits) and she pretty much blew all of the others away. Our Slave Leia came down to Gena Shaw and Jen Nikolaisen, with Gena edging out Jen. We had a cast!

Or so we thought.

The Friday before the table read, and about one week before shooting, I got a call informing me that our lead actress as Emily had just gotten a part in a horror film shooting abroad and was unavailable for our start date. This was 5:30pm, and with the agencies starting to close up for the weekend, we had to get a replacement fast. We like Jen’s work in the audition and I told the casting people to see if we could get her for Emily. Fortunately, we closed on her an hour later.

Never underestimate the value of getting good actors for a short. In college, most of the actors I worked with had never acted for the camera before and often I would be stuck trying to make the most of a so-so take because it was the only one where they either hit their mark right, or where they got their line right, or where they didn’t seem to be pausing every other sentence. Each of them brought something special to the role and in two days of shooting I think there were only a handful of takes where an actor flubbed a line or gave an off-reading. This meant I had a surplus of usuable takes to work with in the editing room. Plus, they not only would play it as written, but would give me variations on their reads, making for even more interesting dailies.

Plus, several of them worked out interesting bits of business so they weren’t just standing there talking. Courtnee Draper kept coming up with new gags like polishing her sword, Kelsey kept figuring out different ways to torment Jen, and pretty much all of Gena’s physicality from slithering off the couch, to shimmying, to tugging on her chain was all her. I got lucky because they were all having fun, and that kept their energy up over the two days in ridiculous outfits. (Between takes, Adam Wylie would often entertain us with some of his card tricks. He’s quite a magician.) They all went out of their way afterwards to thank me for such a fun shoot.

Like I warned, this is probably way too long, but I wanted to hit on the key elements for a successful short film:

1) A simple succinct idea

2) Solid production design that’s within your means

3) distinct characters

4) Casting (probably the most neglected element in a lot of shorts I’ve seen)

5) knowing how to deal with your cast on the day.

With regards to the last one, I got really lucky. My actors were great and there was really only one point where I felt I had to make an adjustment to my plan so that an actress had time to get comfortable enough to get to where I needed her to be. It was a shift that put her in control of that particular bit and it seemed to win her trust enough that she was had a ball with the part during the rest of the shoot.

My other bit of advice would be to say that no matter how well you plan, there’s always going to be a major curve ball thrown at you – as happened to us when our first lead actress dropped out at the 11th hour. As it turned out, Jen Nikolaisen was wonderful in the part – exactly what I’d envisioned and it was a great deal of serendipity made possible by the auditions we’d had for a completely different role.

We ended up in that year’s Dragon*Con Independent Film Festival and emerged as a Finalist in the Comedy catagory. I’m pretty happy about that, even though the few other fests we submitted to ended up not accepting us.

And here is “Booth Girls.”

“Booth Girls” is on YouTube here.

If you have any comments or questions for Adam , post them here.

Also if you have a full-length movie or short film that you wrote, directed, produced and/or acted in, and would like me to promote it on GITS, post background info and link here, or email me:

scottdistillery@gmail.com

Same time tomorrow for more Movies You Made!