Shooting a film in the Jungle

EXTERIOR. CHIAPAS JUNGLE - DAY

An episodic film crew makes the final preparations for a complicated shot. Dolly track has been laid to converge on a tree with sprawling roots.

The Director looks at his watch.

The Guest Star Who Has Seen It All watches nearby with bemused interest.

The Director looks at his watch again, as if willing the minute hand to stop, and if possible go backwards.

Fluff and Buff, the hair and make-up artists, dab sweat from the brow of the Actor, standing at the base of the tree. Given that the temperature is over 100 degrees, this is a noble but futile effort.

DIRECTOR
Don’t worry about the sweat, he’s meant to look scared.

ACTOR
I am scared.

 

DIRECTOR
Don’t worry. This is totally safe.
Nothing is going to go wrong.

The source of the Actor’s anxiety arrives on the set, his partner in the scene, a male with dangling testicles the size of grapefruit.

Sudan, a large African movie lion, is led out of the bushes on a chain by two Trainers. Two other Trainers follow, carrying short poles.

As the Trainers tether the lion to a spike embedded beside the far end of the dolly track, Sudan yawns, and licks his lips to cool them.

ACTOR
Has he been fed today?

TRAINER
If we feed him, he won’t work.

 

GUEST STAR
I’ve brought an apple for him.

Humor is no comfort.

TIME CUT to:

Everything is in place for the take. The Trainers have been positioned out of shot to protect both the Actor and camera crew, should the lion stray from his designated path. The collar round Sudan’s neck is concealed beneath his shaggy mane, and the trailing leash masked by his body. The Actor has practiced limping backwards while swinging a burning firebrand to deter the advancing beast. The dolly grip and operator have rehearsed the camera move that will keep the lion on screen right with his retreating victim on screen left. It’s a travelling geography shot that will add tension when intercut with compatible dolly shots on the faces of the lion and the Actor.

The Director wants the audience to see the lion and the Actor in the same shot; not a static shot, which could be achieved by the elements being photographed separately with a locked-off camera, then fused in the lab, with the vertical split disguised by a tree trunk in the close background. This would spare the Actor any proximity to the King of Beasts. No. The Director wants a Movie Shot, not a get-it-done-move-on episodic approach, but a sense that the camera is almost mounted on the flank of the lion as it slowly closes in on its prey.

The time for this glorious cinematic moment has arrived.

DIRECTOR
So, on action: slowly hobble back,
wave the firebrand, shout at it to
back off…feel free to improv…

ACTOR
Back off, you fucker..?

 

DIRECTOR
Something like that, but without the
fucker…Here we go, roll camera.

The Prop master lights the firebrand again. The 1ST AD calls for turnover in Spanish.
The crew, a well oiled machine, commence their respective duties. The Chief Trainer calls commands to the lion.

TRAINER
Sudan! Go! Slow Sudan!
Slow! Good Sudan! Good!

The Director hovers beside the camera, which keeps pace with the ambling lion. Sudan is fascinated by the firebrand, and reacts to its movements. The Actor is In The Moment! Everything is working perfectly.

At this point the TRANSPORTATION CAPTAIN arrives on set to watch the shot. The 1st AD sees him, and a long simmering feud chooses this moment to erupt.

1st AD
(curtly)
No ha puesto el camiones en
donde le dije.

TRANSPORTATION CAPTAIN
Cree que es el jefe? Yo soy
el capitan de transporte!
Los camiones parquean en
donde digo yo!

The Director turns.

DIRECTOR
Guys! Sshh!

They neither see or hear him. They are in a world of rising steam.

1st AD
Stupido!

Whoa! Bad word in Mexico. Serious escalation. The tension-meter on the set spikes. Hungry lion, anxious actor handling fire, two departments inching towards civil war, complex dolly shot, etc. It’s understandable. But the net effect of the expanding angst is to push the Actor into the truth zone. It’s a great performance, swinging from fear to rage and back again. Meanwhile, the other drama continues.

TRANSPORTATION CAPTAIN
Chinga tu madre!

1stAD
Chinga su madre!

Oh, boy! Now we’ve gone to Def Con 4. After soiling each other’s mothers, there is only one stage the conflict can move to…The Slap.

The Transportation Captain slaps the 1st AD’s face, not to inflict physical pain, more of a formal gesture, a challenge.

Some men go red with anger. The 1st AD’s complexion goes pasty white. His eyes blaze. Detonation is immanent. Luckily members of both departments seize the potential combatants and hustle them to separate corners of the jungle.

The Lion sits down at the end of its leash, awaiting reward. The Actor has started to enjoy himself. Lions? Hah, they’re pussies. The Director calls for take 2. There’s no producer on the set to stop him.

As you have doubtless guessed by now, this is not another of those whimsical screenplay scenes that crawled out of my id, this actually happened.

17 years ago. The Actor was Canada’s great Chuck Shamata, whom I have cast in two movies since. The Guest Star was former Tarzan Ron Ely. The Lion Trainers were the incomparable Boone Narr and Hubert Wells, and the Director obsessed with getting a tie-in shot was yours truly.

So the purpose of this story is the issue of conflict resolution. Every movie mixes good intentions under pressure with powerful egos. There Will Be Blood, if you do not head these situations off at the pass. I had ample warning that the clash of personalities was gathering momentum, but chose to ignore it. Naturally Murphy’s Law applied, at the most precarious moment. So I have learned over the years to develop an ear for seismic pre-shocks, and use diplomacy, humor, bribery, alcohol, whatever it takes to help the parties see each other’s virtues.

Too often crews work in an atmosphere of politics, blame and fear. No one gives their best under those circumstances. Part of a director’s job is to set the tone in the workplace, encourage communication, and make everybody’s hard work FUN.

EXTERIOR. SAN VICENTE BLVD - DAY

EXTERIOR. SAN VICENTE BLVD - DAY

Mr. Macho, once proud, now bruised, battered, his clothes clawed to shreds, staggers into foreground. He shrieks into the lens.

MAN
LESBIANS!!!

Pan up to reveal a thousand Sisters of Sappho cresting the hill behind him. Dykes on Bikes, Lipstick Lovelies, Bi-curious Hollywood Housewives, thunder forward like the hordes of Genghis Khan, uttering battle cries that challenge the Dolby sound system.

The man lurches past three beautiful women, PARIS, BRITNEY, and LINDSAY.

PARIS
That’s hot!

 

Britney and Lindsay are not so sure. That’s way too much pussy before cocktail hour. They hightail it into the Pacific Design Center.

The lesbian cavalry turn on a dime in Hot Pursuit, grinding a flock of nearby vulture paparazzi into road kill.

They jack up their front wheels and smash through the glass walls of the Design Center, in an homage to those 180 degree, slow-motion, round and round the shattering glass/billowing explosion shots that were style du jour in the early 2000’s action pictures.

As you can tell, I’ve always wanted to direct for The L-Word. Perhaps this writing sample will do the trick.
Actually, I like hanging out with lesbians. Why? Because, like all women, they have more empathy than men. Empathy is a quality this world, and this business of ours, is sorely short of.

And really good directors of outrageous action flicks are not a dime a dozen either, which is why DOOMSDAY’s Neil Marshall should be singled out for special praise. I love genre cocktails, and DOOMSDAY is Mad Maxine 28 Years Later, with a dash of V For Vengeance, violently shaken then served over ice. Cool is the word for this high camp /dry camp propulsive splatter piece that totally understands what its target audience wants. More! That’s what we want on these occasions. Give us More! And he does, piling set piece on set piece, full of black hearted laughs.

But some movie critics don‘t live in Marshall‘s universe. They have lost touch with their inner 17 year old.

These critics are the eunuchs at the orgy. They can‘t do it, so they bitch about people who can. Their complaints run the full gamut of myopia. The exploding rabbit was poor taste, missing the fact that this sub-genre operates in tightly controlled Bad Taste. ( Vaporizing the Easter Bunny on Palm Sunday opening weekend was a pleasing co-incidence, and a huge laugh) It’s a Nothing’s Sacred moment which sets the tone for what’s coming up beyond The Gate. There’s a particularly British vein of wry humor underscoring much of the film that may escape American audiences. That the British Government would consider Scotland expendable. In a Westminster minute they would. ( The ‘15 and the ‘45…Culloden is not forgotten. ) That 30 years of quarantine has turned Glasgow into punk rock cannibals. Quietly hilarious. And so many riffs on past apocalyptic movie moments. Lots to enjoy, if you have a cine-literate funny bone.

There are complaints about action staging. Yet to those of us who have actually done this type of work, Marshall’s command of the discipline is self evident. Camera placement and editorial choices put the audience in the danger zone of the action, interspersed as necessary with reminders of geography, paid off with a lot of squirting and squishing. He understands screen dynamics, how to fluidly move your eyeballs from background to foreground, from left to right, then break rhythm for impact. And he understands blood and dismemberment. Not torture-porn, just how to be enjoyably excessive for the hard-R action audience of 2008.

There are critics who expected more depth. Perhaps depth makes a critic feel more important for expounding on it, but some films simply do not aspire to great depth, they just offer the fan base a fun ride. But DOOMSDAY does provide, albeit in broad strokes, a post-Katrina, post-Blair/Bush political undercurrent that resonates with its audience: profound distrust of government. Marshall’s excellent chiller The Descent had depth and character growth aplenty. The genre and the tale required it. This time he’s venturing into live action graphic novel territory. Did one dimensional story telling spoil 300? No. It’s horses for courses.

Critics have a job to do; to provide a contrary view when necessary to studio hype. Now anyone can call themselves a critic and be published in the increasingly flatulent blogosphere of movie geekdom. ( Me too, I guess) But when they take on the mantle of studio chief and pontificate about a director’s early promise being an illusion, that his career is now all downhill, they step outside their moral mandate, and become an envy-driven sniper. DOOMSDAY is the work of a fresh, quirky cine-literate mind, and a top notch professional achievement, all the more so for being the man’s third movie. I look forward to Marshall’s next one, and the next 20 that follow. (scroll on)

EXTERIOR. BLAZING HOUSE NIGHT

A modest suburban house is fully engulfed. A struggling film maker parks his beat up hybrid, as his distraught spouse runs up.

WIFE (hysterical)
Your agent came over and set fire to the house!!

 

FILM MAKER (awestruck)
My agent came to my house…?

 

Yes, we’ve all heard it. Love ‘em or hate ‘em. You gotta have someone out there spruiking for you. ” My guy’s better than his guy!”

Hollywood, the Cannibal Goddess that lures us all here with her Sweet Smelling siren song of Success, has hierarchical structures, customs and practices that take quite a bit of decoding when you first arrive. Standing now at the outskirts of geezerhood, I offer a few observations and experiences to those brave young persons fresh from film school contemplating a spell in the meat grinder. But bear in mind the Gospel According To Goldman: Nobody knows nothing.

To put my words of wisdom in context, I am compelled to offer my qualifications.This is difficult for me because of my innate modesty, but I will try.

I am a genre specialist, originally making 15 films in a country where the arts funding bodies, till recently, despised genre. However, Australia in the seventies and eighties was good for a renaissance person. I founded and wrote a quarterly movie magazine sold in theatres and drive-ins for 5 years, made trailers for other film makers, directed episodic between features. As I flew out of Sydney, I was possibly a medium sized fish in a small pond. Landing at LAX, without a recent US theatrical release to herald my arrival, I immediately became plankton. After many years of navigating this shark infested reef, I have now evolved into a sardine. My career goal is to become a dolphin, playfully cruising through a variety of genres on adequate budgets.

Don’t panic. The aquatic metaphors are now concluded.

So how do you start from scratch in this town?

First, create or attach yourself to as much material as possible. Throw as much mud at the wall as you can. Something will stick.

Second, make friends. I don’t mean throw parties. I mean deliver the goods above and beyond creative and fiscal expectations.

Mr. Reliable is a popular guy. Specialize in the difficult. No task to great, no budget too small. Work breeds work, particularly if you leave your producers smiling rather than looking like - unhappy rabbits. Thanks, Joseph Mankiewicz, for that brilliant metaphor. Great delivery too by MM.

Low budget genre film making does not mean you have to check your personality at the door. The producers of NIGHT OF THE DEMONS 2, LEPRECHAUN 3 and the totally off the wall LEPRECHAUN IN SPACE (Noon, March 17, Sci-Fi Channel. TiVO for later to share with group of St. Paddy’s Day sci-fi geeks Alchohol necessary.) actively encouraged me to apply my subversive sense of humor to the conventions of teen horror, as long as the set pieces still delivered to their target audience. A pubescent pre-occupation with penis size, boobs, and the prospect of sex (generally unfulfilled), sprinkled with pre-SCREAM genre parody for the cinephile helped the shelf life of these films alot.

Success in one genre can be a trap. “He can only do horror comedy” That’s where you need a good agent/manager to persuade the executives, who have rarely done it themselves, that film making is film making, regardless of formula. Diversification is essential to build up that body of work, so that you have many arrows in your quiver to offer as samples. Remember, this is a business that is founded on rumor, driven by greed, and ruled by fear. Hiring a director is a scary, potentially career threatening decision for an executive or producer. Having a range of specialties increases your chances of being bulletproof to more potential clients. For instance, 12 episodes of TARZAN ( elephants, lions, chimps and pythons) qualified me for ATOMIC DOG. A facility with visual effects got me BRITANNIC, an attempt to sail in James Cameron’s waters on the equivalent of his catering budget. That got me my fun-apocalyptic movie OMEGA CODE 2. The Omen meets Air Force One in The End Of Days, with The Final Conflict at the Battle Of The Bulge. Did you know that Armageddon will be fought with Gulf War tanks? Oh, Rapture. I had such fun.

Practice in a multiplicity of genres will get you on a list of ” reliables”. Then all you need is for one of your efforts to garner strong box office, high ratings, or awards. Then you are on the “hot list”, and agents WILL come to your house, hammer on the door, eat through the walls to get 10% of your action.

Finally, it is vital to stay current with the latest technology. The DGA recently held a symposium on 3D , superbly hosted by Jeffrey Katzenberg, Steven Spielberg and James Cameron. Stereoscopic movies are no longer special events, they will soon become a regular part of our regular cinema diet. The Hannah Montana concert film only cost 7 million.Look at the per-screen averages. Get on the train, folks. Can’t wait to do one. (Flagrant hint).

Brian Trenchard-Smith
(Hollywood’s best kept secret)