there's no audience like a test audience

Hey look, there's Gidget, the original Surfer Girl.

I read this book years and years ago. I've never seen the movie or the TV series.

The book was not as much fun as I thought it should've been. Maybe because it's so dated, or maybe because it was never much to begin with, and just happens to have been made into an iconic Sandra Dee/Sally Field vehicle that seems sort of quaint 50 + years later.

But what a great cover on this paperback edition, yeah?

Anyway, I finished the pre-test version of Mondo Beacho last night. I'll be sending preview DVDs out to my Test Audience this week. This gang of mysterious, unnamed suspects are a few reliably unbiased and thoughtful people who each have a specific perspective that always comes in handy.

They've been hand-picked by me for exactly that reason. Whether or not they like the film can even be beside the point.

In Hollywood, they have a company that handles test audiences.

The way I hear it, (taken with a grain of salt), a randomly-chosen audience has to fill out long questionnaires about a film before they can leave a stuffy, Tuesday afternoon screening. The questions tend to reinforce the insecurities of the moneymen... such as "Did you find the running scenes boring?" for a movie like Chariots of Fire.

With these data in hand, a war of the wills begins between the studio -- whose job is to understand and mitigate risk involved in making money by financing and distributing a variety of disparate films -- and the filmmaker -- whose job can be any number of things but ultimately whose professional reputation is on the line for the artistic decisions that lead to the critical and financial success of this one film. 

Show + business = show business.

Here's a true story I heard recently, (though I've fudged the numbers) about an independent filmmaker whose finished film was picked up by a big distribution company.

Under a big distribution company, a film can be shown nationally, even internationally, on the big screen in front of real theater audiences, and there will probably be some kind of payday for the filmmaker to come from this. 

So that's all very cool.  

"We'll open the movie at 1100 screens nationwide," the distributors said. 

"But first, we'd like your permission to run it past a test audience."

"Or," they said, "if you'd won't use our test audience, we can open on 11 screens."

What would you do? Take a chance that the test audience will love your film and that the distributor won't ask for even more concessions, such as cuts or even reshoots, to try for a better test? (Multiple re-testings are not uncommon). Or do set your jaw and choose the "option" of the handful of theatrical screenings, hoping that word-of-mouth and great reviews will inspire the distributor (whose test screenings you rejected) to take another chance with a "difficult" filmmaker and open the movie across the nation? 

What if you make a few recommended cuts, add a T&A scene, and the film tests well, and then it opens to an average of 45 on Rotten Tomatoes and is gone from 1000 of those 1100 screens after the first week? What if you don't make any cuts, the film gets good reviews, but no one can find it at the local mall and it closes in a week from the 11 arthouse screens to make room for the new Wes Anderson film.

Anyway, I haven't heard how this dilemma turned out for the filmmaker in question. 

But I'd be willing to bet that the distributor would not go for the idea of modeling the movie poster after a scribbly-looking children's book cover.

June update #2

L-R: Ahren Buhmann, Iain Dalton,
Kat Brede on set on Mondo Beacho.
(photo by David Thomas)

Well, I got a ton of work done on Mondo Beacho this week. I'm getting very very close now to a preview version.

And the sun just came out after a dark couple of days.

There's a nice little study in profiles here in today's photo, taken outside Cairo on our one, long day there.

There are two groups: Iain and Kat are setting up the tripod (up up up), while Ahren stands talking to Kenna Kettrick and I, both OC.

Now then. Which of these two groups is the yin and which is the yang?

Or, is it actually that both groups together are yin, while the sunny area around is yang?

Or, is Cairo, with its illustrative t-shirt in the window, actually itself the yin, while nearby Top Pot Donuts is the yang?  Perhaps... Yet Top Pot Donuts was clearly on the shady side of the street!

Either way, I promise more info on the film next week.

June 9 update Mondo Beacho

Extras: boys on the beach, on location for Mondo Beacho.
In the background: Emily Purington and Mondo Beacho crew
(photo by Karin Rathert)

I'm at the point in the edit where I'm working on the film as a whole, instead of as a series of scenes.

Pacing is the order of the day. Without pacing, what've you got? I think I've established that: it's just a series of scenes.

Of course, this process also surfaces new ideas for ways to make the film better at the scene-level as well.

The view of the forest makes some trees stand out.

Here's an example: The screenplay calls for a short, single shot at the end of a scene where a bunch of the characters are hanging out after a show, at night. The scene was originally going to be in a bar, but the logistics and scheduling involved for getting everyone into the particular place I wanted all at once, at 10 at night, were not ideal. (Improbable at best.)  So early on, I went out and found this weird little spot by the public dock near the location where we were already shooting that evening.

It was pretty dark in this little spot, but there was something undefinable about it that I kind of liked and I figured it'd make a contrast to the overall sunny palette of Mondo Beacho.

Anyway, the little shot we're talking about acts as sort of an end-cap to a fairly long scene; the last in a series of similarly-paced shots. Watching this scene the other day in context of the whole film, I realized that it was playing differently than I'd intended. And that maybe this new vibe was better.

And that maybe, there were some more things I could do, to make it even better.

So I started digging around in my files for ideas and almost immediately stumbled on an MP3 by this band "Quakers on Probation" that Graig Markel had turned me on to a while ago. I loved this song when I first heard it -- LOVED it -- but I couldn't find anywhere that it'd work in the film. Just in case, I tried sticking it under our little end-cap scene.

All of a sudden it clarified this new impression I was getting of the scene. It went from a slightly wistful, remote feeling, to a very specific wistful party feeling. Which was a million times better.

(A huge thank-you to Daniel Craig of Quakers on Probation for permission to use their song in the film.)

But wait, there's more! Watching the end-cap again I remembered a film clip I had in a different scene that might make the perfect companion shot for this new approach. And by coincidence, I'd actually been thinking of removing that clip from the other scene anyway, but wasn't quite sure so I'd just left it there for the time being.

I put that clip in front of our end-cap-with-new-music, and lo and behold, it worked perfectly, and the new effect is that the scene "opens up" the little world they live in very nicely.

Then I just had to trim and move the beginning, and end, of each clip and the clips around them, and the music, to get it exactly right.

And maybe get rid of the ambient sound track that'd been there.

Or maybe not.

Whew! Well -- I know that's some pretty exciting stuff to lay on you on a Monday morning. But this editing machine will not rest!

And, as they say in sculpture -- it'll be done when it's done.

Mondo Beacho update

photo by Erik Hammen

"What's your film about?"

A girl moves to the beach
and spends a lazy summer 
exploring the ramshackle beach town 
and falling in love with the wrong boy.

Mondo Beacho, a rock n' roll beach movie... of the mind.

I think this understates the issue, but dang -- if anyone's got a better way to say this in one sentence, let me know. Artists are the people least-qualified to describe their own work.

I'm at the point in editing where it's pass after pass over the same material, looking as much at overall flow as little details. But of course, the better it flows the more the little warts stand out. Then when I stop and shave off the warts, the flow is changed. What? yes.

That said, there's nothing like hanging out with other artists to invigorate your own work. I spent the weekend in Minnesota, eating and drinking with a whole bunch of fine and lovely people and arts-types, some of them even 'Beacho or film-related, including:

Thomas "Folkadelic Two-step" Wold. His song "Downstream" is in the film and whose new, third record is just about done.

Paul D. Dickinson and Jessica Raymond (from The Last City in the East, the film I made back in 2011). Beers. Laffs. Paul has a new project boiling up but I probably can't mention it yet. Happy birthday, Jessica.

I also had dinner and more drinks with experimental/narrative filmmaker Rolf Belgum, (Driver 23, Atlas Moth, She Unfolds by Day) and his clever and lovely fiancee Heather. I even got to see a few clips from his long-gestating and still untitled new film! Fantastic!

Back in Seattle, I'm looking forward to a very productive and sunny week this coming week.

Memorial Day post, Mondo Beacho

Yessir, it's time for another random-seeming Mondo Beacho update.

But the posts reflect the process, which at this point is not smooth or predictable, it's organic.

It's a living thing, man!

I keep retooling the opening of the film. It's very, very important to start your film out right. Enough cannot be said about this.

In fact…  the opening is so important…

(how important is it?)

I'll tell ya!  The opening is so important -- it's unbelievable.

(That one goes out to Steve O'Neil)

Anyway, I'll be working on that opening scene right up to the last minute.

When is the last minute, by the way?

I don't know yet.

It'll be done when it's done.

That's what they say in painting.

Right now, I'm typing this foolishness instead of working on the "band practice" scene, which is about a quarter of the way through the film.

Just before I broke for dinner, I realized that scene needed to be put together differently.

It actually looked quite good as it was --  but that was in the context of itself.

After I watched the whole film before it up to that point, all of a sudden it was clear the approach needed to be different.

The film informs the scenes.

The screenshot above is from a different scene, the "gig scene". We shot that at Heartland, a DIY club that actually had its final show last night. They're closing up due to losing too much money. Heartland made a good run of it. Mondo Beacho got two bands from them due to me going to see shows there: Punishment and Thee Samedi.

Good bye, Heartland!

I saw a good movie at the Seattle International Film Festival today. "My Year with the Nuns". That Matt Smith is some storyteller.

And, the movie was playing at the Egyptian Theater, which closed down earlier this year and was possibly going to go away altogether, but SIFF has decided to take it over and rehabilitate it.

That's the second single-screen theater they've rescued this to. They bought the Uptown a few years ago. It'd probably be knocked down for condos by now, if not for them.

That, my friends, is how a film society should operate. Hell, if that's all they did, I'd be a supporter.

In other news, my short film The Last City in the East is opening for Modern Times (that's right!) in Minneapolis this week. Are you in Minneapolis on Tuesday, May 27 at 8:30? Check it out!

Hurry up and wait, Mondo Beacho

photo by Erik Hammen

I definitely got some good work done on the film, but last week was a very hectic. I'll have more specifics to post soon.

I did see a lot of relatives this week. Quite a few of them are crazy artists just like me. That's always nice to remember.

Also good to remember is that I need to come up with a better pitch for the film. How to explain it to the uninitiated. "Mondo Beacho is a beach movie of the mind. ... " what else?  Umm.... I don't know, but do you wanna hear about this awesome edit I made by removing two frames from a clip and adding three from a totally different scene that matches?

The least qualified person to describe art is usually the artist. The smart ones don't say anything. I fall into the other category. If anyone's got a good way to describe my film, please let me know. ( but "not yet done" is already taken)

Update May 11, in brief

Erik Hammen, Riley Neldam, Ahren Buhmann on set
(photo by David Thomas)

I made good progress on the cut despite a very difficult week and more of the same to come.

I'm about 2/3 of the way through the final cut, working on the scenes like the one in downtown Ballard, out on the water, and outside Surf Ballard with Maya and Sarah.

Digging up buried treasure everywhere. Who buried it? Me.

Today's photo is from the scene we shot at Lect's Soup Stop. (Lect's is actually not featured in this photo. )

Our window of time to work at that location was very small, and it started shrinking the minute we started to shoot. If I recall correctly, I had to "drive solutions with proactive detail-oriented problem-solving." Put that phrase on your resume, it'll double your take home pay. Just kidding.

Anyway, I love that scene now. I worked it last week, and it came out great.

In other news, I had lunch with Steven Sterne on Friday, it was great to catch up. He's been very busy acting these days.

Last summer, my kids were extras in a non-Mondo Beacho movie, called "My Year of the Nuns", and it's playing at the Seattle Int'l Film Fest this month.  I'm pretty sure this is not a "Nunsploitation" flick, but the director is Bret Fetzer, who also wrote the play "Lollyville" that Sarah is currently in, and the writer is this guy Matt Smith, who I saw acting in another movie once, and he was pretty funny. So I've got high hopes for it.