Production Diary – Shoot For The Moon

For the past few weeks, my spare time has been spent researching spacesuits, tracking down a jetpack and constructing a homemade rocketship. While this is, admittedly, how I usually spend my downtime, the exception in this case is that it was for pre-production on my latest film, SHOOT FOR THE MOON. Telling the story of a young boy who wants to go to the moon and how he uses a little outside-the-box thinking to make it happen, it’s my entry for this year’s “Attack of the 50 Foot Reels” competition.

Every year, twenty-five filmmakers are issued the challenge to create Super-8 movie entirely in-camera. This means that the movies are shot in order, with no editing, no second chances and (hopefully) no mistakes. The first time filmmakers get to see the finished result is three weeks later, at a public screening in the Egyptian theater.

Jumping at the chance to have my work screened in such an incredible venue – even though I had no idea what said “work” would end up being – I got über-producer Christina Ferguson and cinematographer extrordinaire Jeffrey Waldron on the phone and told them it was time to get brainstorming. While some single-take and potentially flash flood-inducing concepts were initially considered, SHOOT FOR THE MOON came out the winner. Given the amount of preparation the project was going to require, however – especially given the one short week we had to make it all happen – I knew that settling on the concept was really only the beginning of the struggle.

The foremost challenge was finding a talented, available young actor on such short notice. While the city is filled with actors of all ages who are willing to volunteer their services for shoots like this, our Backstage West casting notice had somehow managed to yield only a single submission, from a thirty-something actress in New York who wasn’t willing to travel. Given that I’m doubting even the most gifted middle-aged female thespian could play a ten year-old boy – and that the New York office of Land Elsewhere Productions is still under construction – we were, in a word, screwed. Luckily, it’s situations like this that earn Christina her “über”. Combing the youth section of Backstage West’s homepage, she found Curt Roland – a fantastic, professional young actor who was local, available and talented. After a quick email inquiry to his mother Terri, Curt was our astronaut.

Of course, what’s an astronaut without his ship? Luckily, questions like this are the exact reason why Sony Props exists. Like the Batcave (only without the Batman), this cavernous warehouse has anything an aspiring filmmaker or caped vigilante could ever want. Weapons from the tenth through twenty-seventh centuries. A baseball the size of a boulder. That big Viggo painting from GHOSTBUSTERS 2. Ever since film school, it’s been my go-to destination for anything I couldn’t build, borrow or steal – in this case an industrial-sized washer that we were going to turn into a rocketship (see right).

Although the rental cost had me convinced that the washer is, only semi-ironically, Sony’s means of laundering vast quantities of money, you can’t argue with production value. And given that they gave me my first “so then I rented the jetpack” story, I hardly have cause to complain. Best of all, with the set decoration for Curt’s room covered, my Saturday night was free and clear for some quality time with construction paper and crayons. For once, my ability to draw at a third-grade level came in handy for the drafting of the blueprints Curt’s character uses in the film.

That night – possibly due to the effects of staring at nothing but primary colors for five hours – I had a bizarre nightmare that Curt had somehow been recast with Steven Spielberg, who stood stock-still, arms folded as he analyzed my directing choices while I walked him through the scene. Fortunately, it being a dream, I was soon rescuing passengers from a terrorist attack aboard a combination Air Force One / prisoner transport plane. No, that’s not a joke. And yes, I’m copyrighting the idea before Jerry Bruckheimer turns it into a movie.

?As can be expected from any day when images are expected to find their way onto film, Sunday came with its fair share of minor crises. After replacing an errant gaffer with friend-of-a-friend Erin Weller, who turned out to be such a pro it was almost frightening, we then found ourselves exactly one tripod and one dolly short of what was necessary for our first shot. Two frantic phone calls later, we had the necessary equipment in just enough time for my handcrafted title card to literally burst into flames under the intensity of the lights. Cradling the ashes in my hands, I looked to Jeff for some sort of an explanation. “It has to do with ions” was the closest I got, and I decided that was a damn fine answer. Three revised title sequence concepts later, we had our first shot on film only moments before Curt arrived on set. Seeing him in his costume – an uncanny replica the hand-stitched one I wore on Halloween roughly a million years ago – was a really great experience. He had the timeless look of a kid in love with both space travel and its promise of adventure.

Since the script called for scenes alternating between inside the apartment to the “launch site” (a.k.a. my front yard), Jeff had wrangled enough lighting firepower to allow for quick jumps between the two. While this was a fine concept in principle, it did mean that we would have a full-scale setup – including a flag positioned twenty-five feet of the ground to block out a streetlight, five film lights and a rocketship – left outdoors for the entirety of the shoot. While theft wasn’t much of a concern given that I live two blocks away from a police station, there was the issue of…well…my living two blocks away from a police station. We were doing a high profile shoot across a span of seven hours, with no permits. When the inevitable finally happened and an officer pulled into the driveway, it turned out that he was just curious about the rocketship and wished us the best of luck. Even though a convoy of police cruisers made regular circles around the block, our only interaction with the city’s finest was smiles and waves. God bless the City of Culver City’s film-friendly police force.

Breaking only for a fine meal courtesy of my king’s riches in Boston Market gift cards, the crew – Curt especially – kept up a great energy throughout the shoot. There were some fantastic surprises along the way, especially Jeff’s artful lighting of a moon cut-out to give us an Amblin-worthy night sky. Given that the alternative would have been pointing the camera toward the starless expanse overhead, I can’t overstate what a great achievement this was. We shot straight through until one in the morning, with everyone finally making their way home around four. That left me with about three hours of Spielberg-free dreams before work.

The unprocessed film is now in the hands of the event’s organizers, meaning three weeks of nervousness until the November 6 screening at the Egyptian. It’s an open screening, so be sure to drop me a line if you’re planning on attending. All the details can be found on the competition’s homepage. In the meantime, you can check out more stills from the shoot here. Special thanks again to Christina, Jeff, Erin, Curt and Terri for all their great work!