The Unattainable - Part 3 - The Seat of Wisdom

Scripty Extraordinaire Melissa

"She comes in colors everywhere,

She combs her hair

She's like a rainbow.

Coming, colors in the air

Everywhere

She's like a rainbow."

-She's a Rainbow, Rolling Stones

My admiration for script supervisors was made clear in a previous post. When it came time to hire a script supervisor for The Unattainable, I reached out to Andrea, who is pictured in that post.

She was not available. I explained the complexity of the script; that we would be shooting in digital and 16MM, that the script would be broken down into present, past and voice-overs that were part of the lead character's imagination.

She gave me one name - that of our scripty above, Melissa.

I spoke to Melissa briefly, and then sent her out our latest copy of the script at the time.

At the time, we had not published a script, which was undergoing constant revisions, and continued to do so right up until and after filming.

In order to keep track of changes in all paperwork, starting with the script, a color code is used to distinguish revisions. In the case of the script, the line producer, AD and script supervisor will confer on whether the changes are few enough to just color code certain pages, or go to a new color entirely.

The guide we used was: white, blue, pink, yellow, green and goldenrod. The standard color code includes more colors, but in order to save us the cost of buying even more reams of different colors (remember, this same code is used for paperwork such as schedules, vendor and crew lists, etc) I cut it off at Goldenrod.

Coming, colors everywhere. It is, indeed, like a rainbow, with a wash of different colored paperwork.

This being a very low budget project, I had originally budgeted one day of prep for script supervisor, which clearly was not going to work with our complex script.

For one thing, there was establishing a timeline. Designers needed to know what happened when, hair and makeup needed to know if this was our leads now or five years ago, the AD needed to schedule so as to not constantly having us change set dressing and the rest during the middle of the day.

The director had a very clear timeline, and it was laid out on index cards along one of her walls. She would show it to anyone who wanted to reference the timeline. When I say it was laid out on a wall, it was an entire wall, floor to ceiling.

The prospect of carrying around the wall was, well, not very enticing. We needed something simpler.

We needed the right person. After getting Melissa's initial response to the script, I knew she was the right person. I knew we had to have her, and looked to get her together with our director as soon as possible.

Below is a somewhat edited and redacted (national security, proprietary information, and all that - very hush hush as they used to say in the spy movies) version of her first email explaining how she broke down the script.

I have attached my Short Form Breakdown by Scene Number below.  .  Everything after Sc11 is supposed to be chronological 

A few notes: 

1952 = Harry's birth year

1970 = Harry goes to Vietnam

1956 - 1975 = Vietnam War

10/1/2000 = FEMALE & Kevinbegin dating

10/15/2003 = Our story begins (Sc31)

2004 - 2006 = FEMALE & KEVINPAST

2010 = FEMALE & Harry's PRESENT

I will fill in the other details later.

Please let me know if you have any questions/comments/etc.

Best,

Mel

Here is the chronological list that (directors assistant) made yesterday:

LIST OF SCENES BY TIME

PAST: (x)scenes

PRESENT:(x)scenes

ATEMPORAL/IMAGINATION: (x)scenes

TOTAL: 124 scenes

The Short breakdown she refers to starts like this

Scene Location Characters D/N Date Time 1/8s ERT

Scene Location Characters D/N Date Time 1/8s ERT

Scene Location Characters D/N Date Time 1/8s ERT

1 EXT. DOCK BY THE SEA (FLASHBACK) - AFTERNOON D10 Sat-10/08/2005 12:36P

1 EXT. DOCK BY THE SEA (FLASHBACK) - AFTERNOON D10 Sat-10/08/2005 12:36P

1 EXT. DOCK BY THE SEA (FLASHBACK) - AFTERNOON D10 Sat-10/08/2005 12:36P

2 INT. PRISON VISITING ROOM (FLASHBACK) - DAY D11 Sun-10/09/2005 2:10PM 2 5/8 2:37

2 INT. PRISON VISITING ROOM (FLASHBACK) - DAY D11 Sun-10/09/2005 2:10PM 2 5/8 2:37

2 INT. PRISON VISITING ROOM (FLASHBACK) - DAY D11 Sun-10/09/2005 2:10PM 2 5/8 2:37

3 EXT. DOCK BY THE SEA (FLASHBACK) - DAY D10 Sat-10/08/2005 1:43PM 2/8 0:15

3 EXT. DOCK BY THE SEA (FLASHBACK) - DAY D10 Sat-10/08/2005 1:43PM 2/8 0:15

3 EXT. DOCK BY THE SEA (FLASHBACK) - DAY D10 Sat-10/08/2005 1:43PM 2/8 0:15

4 CREDITS OF FILM Z 1/8 0:08

4 CREDITS OF FILM Z 1/8 0:08

4 CREDITS OF FILM Z 1/8 0:08

5 INT. APARTMENT, EAST VILLAGE, NYC - DAY D17 Mon-09/20/2010 3:43PM 7/8 0:53

5 INT. APARTMENT, EAST VILLAGE, NYC - DAY D17 Mon-09/20/2010 3:43PM 7/8 0:53

5 INT. APARTMENT, EAST VILLAGE, NYC - DAY D17 Mon-09/20/2010 3:43PM 7/8 0:53

6 INT. BAR (IMAGINATION) - NIGHT Z16 Sun-09/19/2010 10:33P

6 INT. BAR (IMAGINATION) - NIGHT Z16 Sun-09/19/2010 10:33P

6 INT. BAR (IMAGINATION) - NIGHT Z16 Sun-09/19/2010 10:33P

7 EXT. HALFWAY HOUSE - NIGHT N16 Sun-09/19/2010 11:28P

7 EXT. HALFWAY HOUSE - NIGHT N16 Sun-09/19/2010 11:28P

7 EXT. HALFWAY HOUSE - NIGHT N16 Sun-09/19/2010 11:28P


This is a small part of the work Melissa did.

As we moved forward, Melissa's understanding of the script became crucial to every aspect of the shooting, and I have to say she was more involved in helping to get coverage and tell the story than most supervisors I have had the chance to watch work.

One day in particular that I remember was our Day 2. It was all meant to take place INT THEATER. At one point, the DP got the idea of shooting one section EXT in order to break up the shots and give us an intro the those scenes.

What time of year was it? Was she wearing a coat? If so, how heavy?

As our first team was discussing it, Melissa calmly looked at her notes and said, "It's January 20th, 2011."

End of discussion.

Her daily notes continued to not only help for editing, but helped me know details about what was happening during the day that would have been impossible for someone else to keep up.

I've waited some time for script supes to get me notes in the past; Melissa's were usually within two hours of wrap. She gave credit to some software she said she was using - I think she secretly created the software and just didn't want us to know. After my AD, she was the second person I would seek out when I came to set to get a sense of what was happening.

As with most movies, the color wheel kept on turning, with schedule revisions necessitated by actor availability (we were sharing our male lead with a TV show filming in LA) and locations.  My small but incredibly efficient production office kept us constantly with the proper color, as "Megan, what color vendor list are we on?" would be answered with something like "Pink, but don't publish that one yet - we're still revising it."

I often wonder if we make making movies too hard, if we secretly enjoy it more if it's more of a challenge. Somewhere, people work with those simple, boring scripts I referred to in the start of this series. As my long-time AD once said when we were doing a complicated dolly shot through every room in a house on an Indian-American co-production a few years back, "JB, remember when people used to point the camera and shoot? What ever happened to that.?"

Maybe it's me, and I'm just drawn to more challenging scripts, having become numb to the endless stream of scripts that just regurgitate the same, worn-out plot lines and characters.  Indeed, sitting through trailers for upcoming films the other day, I wondered if I was in a revival house, watching movies that were just remakes of older movies, either clearly or inferred.

What I do know is that on this film, on this script, I was glad to have this lady.

"Have you seen her all in gold(enrod - my edit)
Like a Queen in days of old
She shoots colors all around
Like a sunset all around"

For this shoot, no, I have not seen a lady fairer.

Plaster - Part 5 - Not A Dry Eye In the House

"When I come home baby,

And I'm working all night long

I put my daughter on my knee

And she says  'Daddy, what's wrong'

Fool To Cry, Rolling Stones

There are no absolutes in film production. Great movies have bad days. Lousy movies have good days. On the best productions, there are people who make things harder. On the worse productions, there are good people doing their jobs.

Even on films that don't get finished, there are sometimes great scenes that you wish had seen the light of day.

In discussing casting, I mentioned that the producer. Joey, and the director, Jean-Baptiste. had gone out and gotten a signed deal memo from an actor for $10K. The actor was quite good and special, and known enough to be worth that much money, but it was a bad idea for a number of reasons.

It was outside of the pay structure we had established with Most Favored Nations agreements with agents. It could have led us to having to renegotiate with actors we already signed. We got lucky on this one.

It was outside of our budget. This is worth discussing.

Hollywood productions go over all the time. For most of them, it is just paperwork. Money is moved from one production to another by the studio. Yes, there might be consequences and raised voices in meetings, but at the end of the day, as long as the final product does well, it is not a big deal.

As I used to say in my line producing class at NYFA, when productions go over budget on small, indie films, checks bounce. I should have added "or the movie doesn't get finished."

Productions constantly rob Peter to pay Paul.* Money needs to be moved around. When it cannot be moved around, the phrase "we can take it from post (production)" rears its head. What that translates to is "hopefully I won't be here when the shit hits the fan," or, "it's gonna be someone else's problem."

During production, post-production becomes that great land of enlightenment when all good things will come to pass. Sound problem? Fix it in post. Continuity problem? Don't worry, we can cut around it. Went over budget? We can take it from post.

There is an incongruity in the above suggestions. If you are dumping all you problems to post, then post will probably need more money, not less. Unless you know there is more money coming from somewhere, it's a recipe for either not finishing the edit of your film to get it to a distributor, or taking short-cuts in post that negatively impact your product.

The more reasonable solution is what families do in budgeting - they put the money where it's needed, and then decide that they can do with less somewhere else. Money can - and should - be moved from one line item to another when it serves the production, not dumped randomly but with some rationale. One useful example is the relationship between art department and locations.

If you can find a location that needs little dressing, you can take that money from art department. IF, on the other hand, you find a space that is cheap, but has almost nothing, then the money you saved on the location needs to go to the art department to dress it properly. That sort of movement of money makes sense.

If paying this fee to one actor had meant an ability to not spend more on other actors (because we already had a "name" we wanted) that could have worked. If we were still in the process of funding the film, and getting that "name" got us more money, that is certainly okay. In fact, this is the ethos behind the theory that "name" actors don't cost a production money; that their potential worth at the box office will off-set the cost enough that investors are willing to fund the project at a higher level.

Joey and Jean-Baptiste hoped that this was the case with this actor - who we will call Reggie. In fact, they had wrung the Money Tree bare. There were no more leaves. We were now officially $10K over with no way to make it up.

Then, there was Reggie.

While Reggie was - and is - an incredible actor, he had drug dependency issues at that time. Thankfully, he has long-since cleaned up his act, and those issues are very much a thing of the past. At the time, it was an issue, as it was on our production.

On the day of the shoot, the actor was late by a number of hours, and when he arrived, he was in no shape to work. We rescheduled the scene for the next day, having lost a good part of that day working around him.

To his credit, he took his responsibility seriously. He took me aside - we knew each other from previous work - and said he would stay in one of the apartments we were using as sets in the Bronx, so as to insure that he would be there the next day. Further, he said being away from his usual contacts would guarantee that he would be in better shape the next day.

The next morning, indeed, he was a different person.

The scene was one where he played a guy who had gone to prison, and missed the birth of his daughter. When he comes back and sees her for the first time, she is about five years old. She doesn't know him, and is scared of him at first. She runs away from his embrace. He is heart-broken.

Movie crews become jaded, and are rarely moved on set. As one is not watching a movie, there is no context, and with all the lights and trappings, there is no "magic."  There is no sentimental music. There is no editing, bringing the attention of the viewer where it needs to be at any moment. Unlike the theater, there is no context, no lowered lights. There is no mystery.

In this context, I have rarely seen a crew member cry. Forget that weeping could ruin a take; it just rarely happens.

This was different.

Reggie was beyond wonderful. There was no trace of the actor; he was the character.The child actor was perfect as well, but it was Reggie that made it happen.

During the master, as I looked around through my own watery eyes, you could see members of the crew covering their mouths and nose to prevent openly weeping. I cannot remember a case where this many crew members were moved like this during the shooting of a scene, and to this extent. It continued during coverage, as Reggie kept pulling out emotions from even deeper on his single and close-ups.

It was a special moment on a project that had it's fair share of problems. This day - and this scene - weren't one of them.

In the poem by 8th Century Zen master Shitou Xiqian known in the East as the "Identity of Relative and Absolute," a central part of Zen liturgy, the following phrase appears:

Within light there is darkness, but do not try to understand that darkness,
Within darkness there is light, but do not look for that light....

Within the darkness that was Plaster, this day was the light; however, within this light, the darkness of the budget problems would not go away.

"She whispers in my ears so sweet,

You know what she says?

She says, 'Daddy. you're a fool to cry

You're a fool to cry,

And it makes me wonder why."

* The interesting etymology of a phrase that is used less and less today, Robbing Peter to Pay Paul. My dad used it all the time.