Indie Film Hurdles
Film production at any level can be challenging. Imagine a set of hurdles (i.e. casting, crew, permits, etc.) that must be constantly overcome, and even after a hurdle is cleared there is no guarantee it won’t have to be cleared again and maybe even again. But somehow we always seem to clear them. It’s what we do.
Recently my very good friend, A.P. Gonzalez, decided he was going to make a short film based on one of his feature length screenplays. He would write and direct the project and we would produce it together. The hurdles on a low budget independent film can be both challenging and sometimes overwhelming but we felt we were up to the task.
It seemed simple enough. It would be a two-day shoot with a total cast of twelve and only a few locations. But one of those locations, the Los Angeles River, proved to be an early hurdle. The river is managed by the Army Corp of Engineers and they have rules about filming there. The biggest one involved the weather. Even after a permit is issued, the Army reserves the right to shut down the shoot if it rains (or even if rain is forecast). Los Angeles has been rainier than usual this year but we thought (hoped) that surely by April, the rains would be over.
We also needed a house exterior to shoot and found a great one near our river location. We were scheduled to shoot all morning at the river and then move to the house and surrounding streets after lunch. Originally, this was our plan for the second shoot day.
For the first day, we needed another house where we’d shoot mostly interiors with a little bit of shooting in the front yard. For that location we found a house in Hollywood (on the internet no less) that had the right look and was also affordable.
With our locations and cast set (we had a terrific casting director), we assembled a crew and attended to the millions of details involved with making a film. Things like wardrobe and props as well as catering and crew parking were all hurdles we needed to clear and with less than a week to go before shooting, we’d cleared them all. And then we hadn’t.
The forecast, which until then had been bone dry, now called for rain on both the day before and the day of our LA River shoot. But the day after that, Sunday, was supposed to be warm and sunny. It seemed we had little choice but to flip our days. But there were hurdles. Could we change our permit? Yes. Could the cast switch days? Yes. We had two different lunch caterers, could they switch? Yes. Will the public lot we planned to park our crew in be open on Saturday? Yes. So we switched the days. All the hurdles were cleared again. And then they weren’t.
Two nights before our shoot, with our Hollywood house location now switched to Saturday, we discovered that the Hollywood Half Marathon was also scheduled for Saturday. And our crew parking lot, which normally opened at 7am, would now open at 4am and was listed on the Marathon website as a place to park. This meant that by the time our crew arrived at 7am, the lot, which was normally empty, would likely be full. The parking hurdle was back!
My feelings about parking are best summed up with a story (what a surprise). Years ago, I was asked to speak to some film students at my Alma Mater, City College of San Francisco. I’d gone through the program there and since I’ve managed to make a living in production for thirty years now, it’s safe to say that it has worked out.
At the time, most of my experience had been on commercials. I showed some of the spots I’d worked on and told stories about the different challenges we’d faced during production. That went well. The class was eager for more so I told them that I would now reveal to them, the key to film production.
Their notebooks were open. Their pens were poised. And I told them, “I know you’re all going to be big important directors but the real key to production, is parking.” I’m reasonably certain that none of them wrote that down.
But they should have. If you can’t park the trucks or this case, the crew, you can’t make the movie. We tracked down the owner of the lot, made a deal (a much better deal for him I might add) to prepay for the spaces we required, and another hurdle was cleared. Again
There were still plenty of other hurdles on the shoot day. The battery on our shuttle van died in the lot. The police rerouted traffic making it difficult but not impossible to get to the lot. The sun and the clouds were not exactly cooperative (as in consistent) while we were shooting our exterior shots. And the next door neighbor fired up the loudest motorcycle on this or any other planet and let it idle in the driveway for what seemed like forever (but wasn’t really) before taking off. We managed to clear each of those hurdles as well. Somehow we always do.
Our second day of shooting presented far fewer of the surprise type of hurdles. The parking was smooth, the van always started, the sun cooperated and there wasn’t a motorcycle in sight. But if those or any other hurdles had presented themselves, we would have cleared them somehow. It’s what we do.
If you’d like to learn more about this project, you can visit our crowd-funding page at:
http://www.hatchfund.org/project/the_wetback
(You could even donate if you’re so inclined.)
Funding on any film (especially an independent) is one of the bigger hurdles to get over but I’m happy to report that we’re very close to clearing that one too. It’s what we do.
