Round 1
watch the movies (in QuickTime - get the player here if you need it):

Writings

Shane Anthony Belcourt
I think I might be the new Ed Wood. I seem to make really bad films of my own. Others will watch them (my Mom, my wife, my sisters) and tell me nice things like “Wow, that was interesting, Shane, very unusual choices, strange narrative choices, uneven camera work, uneven performances, really together makes its own thing, you got your own thing going for sure, really neat…Tea anyone?” and say some nice things about them, but I ain’t really buying it. I made some pretty good shorts in high school and during my first couple years of film school before I dropped out to pursue a career in a pop band (I quit that when the blonde hair dye started to make my scalp bleed…seriously).

Anyway, what’s with this latest film effort, the “drop-the-ball” project—four directors making one short film together by passing the story to one another? Well, first let me tell how it all began. I’m an impulsive magazine buyer. Sometimes, being holed up in my basement office I feel like the world (read: pop culture) is passing me by. So, I’ll grab a magazine and try to get something small and interesting to share with people, some small talk topics. Things like this gem from the latest GQ, “Did you know that in some countries eating a packaged guinea pig is a gourmet snack, like in Ecuador?” When you’re in your 20s small talk is about things like what your parents did to ruin you and the teachers you had that never really knew or helped release your innate potential. In your 30s—of which I’m into the third year of—it’s uncouth to complain about the world, it’s up to you now, everyone’s pretty much cut you off: school, parents and loans.

So, you buy magazines and watch home improvement shows to pass the time between stuffing your face and sitting across from everyone in awkward silence. Black Book, the December issue, or was it the February 2006 issue? In it stars and artists interview other artists. I’m bad with names, but a writer-director (Miranda Richardson?) and an actress (?) sent some emails to each other on being indie superstars. It muddled along forgetfully until the end: the actress emailed a photo (right) and told the director to shoot the next shot, the next frame in this two-frame photo story. And I loved it. I was really taken with it.

As you can see, really clever, really powerful. So, I got to thinking, why not shoot a short film like that? One actor in everyone’s part, but everyone can use whatever else they want. In one day you write, shoot and edit your part of the story and then pass it along to the next director who then adds to it. Why hasn’t anyone done this yet? This’ll be a blast. Turns out this kind of thing has been done before, but the solace is I’ve never done it before so it’s new to me, so we went for it.

I lined up four directors: Duane Murray, Jason Gileno, and Jeff Sinisac. Jeff had to drop out last minute because he got a job, so Jordan courageously jumped in as the replacement. I got Melina Nacos in as the lead actor, the through-line for the film. Got four days in a row booked, everyone lined up a day. Now, you can see what we’ve done and how it turned out.

The thing is, I’ve got a feeling this’ll fall into the pile of short films I have kicking around that are really exercises—some moments and parts interesting and good, but that kind of rumbles along and doesn’t have a Magnolia-type parting impression. Was this project a success? Was it worth it? That’s the kind of question I asked all the directors to speak about and their responses are below on their films.

On my little bit it’s like this: in music you can jam. Seriously, you can get together with people and play music with no other purpose than just hanging out and exploring some things musically that maybe you’ve never tried before. Free exploration. Maybe because film costs so much or maybe because it pays so much when you get it going, you never see or hear about a lot of film jamming. You make films to advance careers in film festivals (and because you love making them and the story you’re telling). But making films as a jam, as a get-together, is not often done. In music, jamming with people is one way I improved in certain areas and at the very least got together with people to share music—it was a joyous excursion. So, I thought, why not with film, god knows I need the practice and I’m not getting paid. So, that was the project; it was a chance to get the instruments out of their cases and waiting-for-funding shackles and just fucking make something, just try, just be actively involved in it and see where it takes you.

Personally, it took me to very familiar ground: the land of failure. I’m looking to make a Magnolia or Big Lebowski or Eternal Sunshine; I want to hit it out of the park. I’m playing little league and I’m always hitting the goddamn T, the ball dribbling by my feet, everyone yelling from the stands “Run, run, run.” I was hoping the project would be a storyline jam, like the photos above, one frame to the next, a narrative advancing in unusual ways. So, I wrote a little funny opening, thinking that it’ll go in weird and cool storyline places. Then it became a series of mood pieces, and even though I started the thing, it looks like I’m the one who didn’t get the gist of the project outline. But then I watched them all again a few times and I kind of got into it. Melina looks great, she shows some amazing range. I was too lucky to work with Alex—he was a total crack-up. And Jordan’s was as strange and aggressive as he is. Duane’s was in his weird dream-reality thing that he is becoming a master of. And Jason’s had this intense theatrical quality to it. Everyone doing his own thing. It wasn’t like, “We’re in the key of E, it’s a medium blues, follow me for the changes.” It was, “Hey, I’ll record something alone, which will be in my voice, and then you record your bit and it’ll be it’s own thing too, whatever it is your voice is. I may do blues, you’ll do free jazz, you might do alt rock, and then we’ll end with a solo violin piece.” And in that way, the project was a total success: we got the instruments out and we jammed. That’s it. And someone had a minidisk on hand to tape it. Here it is.

Shane went to film school at York University following years of Woody Allen watching. After two years there he dropped out due to financial constraints to pursue a more lucrative career in the independent music scene. Now broke and hopeless, Shane straddles both worlds in fits of "nothing happening" frustration and creative bliss.

Jordan O'Connor
I, Jordan O’Connor, was the unintended participant in this endeavor — “Pass the Ball.” Due to a scheduling issue, the second director/writer had to cancel. That said, I offered to jump in and did…and this is my story (and I’m sticking to it!).

My only experience with directing has been being involved with music. For instance, back in high school I was the musical director of the musical Little Shop of Horrors. So as a result I was coming from a different place as a—if you can use this word— “director.” However, I don’t think this was exclusively what gave me a different perspective of this process in contrast to some of the other writers/directors.

After Shane, Duane and I talked about it, it became obvious that I had a mild deficiency, which was: I wasn’t as plot driven as others may have thought or even wanted. To be clear, everyone was into it and very accommodating to me, and this was still a real positive for everyone; however, as the odd man out, this was an interesting dynamic that I think is worth mentioning.

What would have happened, I wondered, if you took a singer, a painter, a poet, a filmmaker, a photographer, a dancer, and did the same thing? I wonder if there are certain notions that are not only specific within a genre, but also within each idiom itself.

Meaning, are the places—mentally, visually, philosophically—that painters are in generally different from the place that songwriters are in? If so, what is it that each discipline is looking to unveil? Or is it that each individual unconsciously chooses not only an art form due to unconscious motivations, but also the style and approach within an art form.

This was probably the most interesting aspect of this process for me because I was seeing this, or hearing this, from my musical background. In fact, at points I had my eyes closed and was just listening to Melina—thinking about the aural vibe, you could say. I suppose you could say that for some strange reason Shane let a blind man direct the second part of this project, and you’ll have to talk to him about that. But seriously, this was a great experience for me, and it is all the greater as I continue to reflect upon it in a variety of ways.

What the hell was I thinking? Q&A

Q: What was my goal with the second segment?

A: I wanted to show the sides of a woman that are aggressive, hopeful, sad and so forth without crying and being churlish. I wanted her to make us, the viewer, almost uncomfortable with her directness, as well as her earnest passion—as in the “Rose” scene. I was also hoping to combine emotions, to feel a sense of fun about things, but at the same time reveal her imperfections.

Q: How long was the shoot?

A: We started at about 11am and finished around 3pm, but we had a long lunch in there.

Q: How much was written and how much was improvised?

A: I’d say it was 50/50. Everything that was said was scripted, except the phone call and the last line. However, Melina singing “The Rose” was improvised. I wanted her to play piano; I just didn’t know how open she would be to it. I wanted the scene to be fun, to be free of doubt. This something that I have always admired about so many women: their fearlessness. I think it is because there isn’t the doctrine of “macho”, which affects so many men. This fearlessness is something that I am trying to get better at.

Q: Would you do this Pass the Ball project again?

A: Oh I don’t know. I think it was great, in fact it was probably more of a learning experience for me simply because I am so new to this directing thing; however, staff paper appeals to me in the way a camera appeals to a director. I just don’t have the background that the others involved in this project have. For instance, any one of these guys can pick a specific shot and then tell you the first movie it happened in, they can tell you the new approaches to the shot, the way someone or something transformed it… Anyway, they have “camera” in their heads, they have “acting” in their heads, and can do the same thing with characters. Hell, I closed my eyes when I directed for three hours and half of our shooting was at a piano.

Q: So we do what we know, I guess.

A: I guess. But it was a great experience and I certainly hope that this is continued in the future. Fundamentally I was excited about this not because it was my directing debut, but because it was the potential of something new.

Q: How do you mean?

A: I think that there are a lot of people out there talking about the script they are making for Hollywood and in the process avoiding the real script; I think there are a lot of people who envy a life they have watched on T.V. and as a result are avoiding the real life within; I think there is a gap between the people and individuals that we are and want to be or need to be. I think the only way through this is, as Aaron Copland said, to write. I think we need to shoot and write and score and sing and dance all the ideas that are, as yet, undefined by us. We need to probe our lives, our experiences and set out to tell and express—by whatever means necessary—life, our life! In other words, we must seek to express the time within which we live, the beauty, the tragedy and the irony in-between.

A: Ahhh, we’re out of time.

Q: Thanks.

A: Ya…Okay.

Scoring

I scored Parts 3 and 4 of these films—1 and 2 didn’t need anything. Shane’s (Part 1) is very funny and although we played around with a few things, including a laugh track, in the end we both agreed that it stands well on its own and as such, didn’t need me hacking away at it. Mine (Part 2) had a score already in it, since Melina played piano in the segment. As for the remaining two, the process was pretty simple.

When Duane and Shane edited the third segment they had used some piano music from American Beauty to cut with, so I did some piano music. I’m not trying to oversell myself here, but it was a good choice and I went with it.

I started playing Ab to F then Bb to G, which are two successive 6th intervals. I liked the form that they set up within the context of the scene. Moreover, since Duane had borrowed dialogue from Philip Glass’ “Einstein on the Beach,” I thought, very simplistically, I would employ a repetitive style—a kind of subtle tip of the hat to Philip Glass.

What I wanted to do was avoid letting the piano be too dynamic and, more specifically, melodramatic. To be clear, I love melodrama and will milk it when I can (check out Michael Kamen’s score to Band of Brothers, which makes me cry, become overwhelmed with nostalgia, and all the rest of it). However, here, in Duane’s scene, it was dryer still; a more surreal scene and as such I didn’t want to land big musical moments all over the place every time the world “love” came up. This was also why repeating the consecutive 6th for a time kept us, as viewers, from arriving or concluding too much about a specific mood. Only after some time passed did I introduce an upper, soprano voice, which was as climactic as I got and as climactic, as I think the scene need to be. Moreover, I avoided making the soprano voice too obvious a melody, as it was simply the timbre that I was interested in; the feeling that there is something angelic at work, something magical, if you will.

Without repeating myself, the fourth segment was treated in the same vein, partially because we had set it up in the third segment; however, I didn’t feel bound to it.

I wanted to look at this woman, but not decide anything about her. I wanted her to be more than one thing; she wants him, she hates him, she needs him, and none of these things are either in her best interest, nor do they work together in any way that isn’t fundamentally destructive—or so it has been in my experience. So I wanted to avoid an ending, to somehow leave it open. Tomorrow she will go out and…The next day she will go out and…It felt like we described her life, but we didn’t solve the problems in her life. Personally I like when things are left a little open and I wanted to score to reflect that and hopefully it, in some small way, I did.

Jordan is currently composing some smaller chamber works, as well as scoring the upcoming indie film Red Moon Over Rigger's Pond by director Tom Antos and the film Ya, Whatever Girl by director Carolyn Hurren. Jordan is also a freelance a bassist in Toronto, Canada, and the leader of the group Cash Cow, which will be recording its next CD in February. As well Jordan is co-founder of The Breath.com.

Duane Murray
Looking back now it is hard to put together what I "felt" about the Exercise; felt about the concept, the process, and outcome. So to be most truthful, I will simply copy and paste an email I wrote to my DP Ravi, when he asked what I thought of the previous day's shoot, and the footage...

"What can I say about the footage...Tough to say in an email actually. I will say that I had a knee-jerk reaction to it and was very unhappy. I realize though, that the unhappiness came from the limitations of the exercise and situation and not with the people. At first, I hated the sound (I wish we could have shot tighter), I wish the script was better, I wish I didn't have to act in it...But again that was all due to the limitations of the exercise, lens, size of ‘crew', etc., and I will say that I wasn't unhappy with the final edit given the circumstances."

To which Ravi took the blame himself and apologized, to which I, feeling like a jerk, replied...

"Oh stop it. I just sent an email saying that's not it at all. You picture something in your head...and it's usually Magnolia, and this isn't Magnolia. More time would have helped everything. We didn't have that. So, with what we had...I am not unhappy. I think it actually 'looked' pretty good. Some nice stuff. I wish I wasn't in it and could have a computer monitor to look at some of the stuff, and to spend time on moments, but we didn't. I also wished I could have more time to cook up a better script, and think up some great camera moves...But I didn't. That was MY failure, not yours. You did good. And this whole thing has made me hate shorts just a little less, but it also makes me want to work really hard at a 'shootable' feature and get it done right. I would love that."

So there you go. I didn't "hate" it. The process or the result. And to those that know me, that's actually pretty positive.

Duane is an actor in Toronto. He would like to call himself a writer and director and is doing what he can to someday earn those titles. He's not quite there yet, but working on it.

Jason Gileno
I dug this project. When you work on a set where nobody gets paid, the only thing you can count on is that the people who are there, are really there. They’re not just in it for the “time-and-a-half”, the good stuff on the craft table, and/or (occasionally) a hot hair ‘n’ makeup girl. After all, the grumpiest grip on any set started like this—working for nothing—motivated only by an enthusiasm to make something out of that nothing.

That’s why pass-the-ball was cool. No dough. Not even doughnuts. Nothing shackles creativity like smelling your own budget burning, especially when you know that you’re the one holding all the matches. Really the only restriction was time, and even that didn’t seem to matter so much. We all had nothing but a day’s worth of sweat equity invested in the project, thus we all had the same perfect excuse if we completely fucked up: “Hey man, I did it in a day.”

I’ll admit this much though: the night before my shoot, at about 2 o’clock in the morning, without an idea whatsoever—let alone a script—it crossed my mind that a sudden bout of the flu might be a way out. But sure enough, the idea came, and—good or bad—we shot it, it’s done, and hopefully we’ll do another one—sooner rather than later.

Jason is a playwright, filmmaker and partner in East Hill Productions Inc. His film credits include THE CHIEFS, which is available on DVD and pay-per-view, and RISE UP, which recently played at the AFI Film Festival. His play TATTOO JOINT is available in paperback, and was originally produced by David Bajurny at the Canadian Stage Berkeley Theatre. Check out East Hill Productions Inc.: www.ehproductions.com