Frugal Film-making vs. How Not to Do It

posted by Gareth Higgins

I’m writing from New Zealand, where I’m happy to be observing the creation of ‘The Insatiable Moon’, a film based on Mike Riddell’s 1997 novel.  It’s eye-opening to see the process that I’ve been criticising for so long – as Jett says, it’s HARD to make a movie.  I can see that now :)

Some thoughts thus far:

There was a time when the term ‘independent film’ was a near-guarantee of quality or at least interest – making a film like ‘sex lies and videotape’ or ‘Reservoir Dogs’ required so much superhuman effort that it was a miracle if they were even finished. Distributors, alas, needed an economic reason to invest, rather than merely their aesthetic sense, and if your small film with no stars didn’t happen to be lucky enough to attract the attention of a wealthy gatekeeper, it wasn’t likely to be released.

It was easier for big-budget special effects-laden extravaganzas to get seen simply because audiences can be trusted to flock to  see ever more spectacular ways of destroying New York, or the latest film starring whoever happens to be really famous at the moment merely on account of the fact that they’re in it. Without the stars, or a decapitated Statue of Liberty for much of the audience, there is no show. Or so the superficial received wisdom goes…

Independent film-making eventually adopted major stars, and you’re now as likely to see a marquee name in an independent film as you are to see a well-known character actor from the 1970s in a Roland Emmerich disaster movie. The lines have become blurred – indie has become cool, and of course, indie has become far more accessible than ever. The equipment has never been as cheap, the opportunities to learn from the internet never more available. Everybody wants to make a movie. And sometimes remarkable things occur when people put the resources of time and talent and money to the service of a human story. Tom Burstyn, Director of Photography on ‘The Insatiable Moon’ has been on both sides of the indie/corporate canyon, having shot more than 70 movies, and worked with actors including Oprah Winfrey, Matt Dillon, Jessica Tandy; he shot Paul Newman’s late classic ‘Where the Money Is’, a vastly underrated, smart little film, and has worked on massive mini series such as a recent endeavour to represent the life of Marco Polo on screen.

Why, then, do we find him in a small Baptist church on Jervois Road in Ponsonby, shooting with a hand-held Fig Rig, only using two lights, and with a crew small enough to fit in my living room?

One obvious thing about Tom is his love of the local, so when we sat down for some food to talk about his philosophy of cinema, it was for the most amazing bowl of Vietnamese chicken noodle soup I’ve ever had. He had some mint spring rolls, but they sat quietly on the plate while he talked at length about what he calls ‘frugal film-making’.

Tom’s critique of the status quo could be summed up as his view that ‘Producers are too often obsessed with gimmickry rather than being interested in expressing an idea’ – so fifteen lights and computer generated graphics and an exploding suspension bridge take precedence over the way the breeze is bending flowers and the look in a character’s eye. ‘The system of film-making is fear based,’ he says, with the ultimate fear being that the film being made won’t turn a massive profit for whatever bank owns it. Of course, the possibility of profit is partly determined by how much is being spent on the movie in the first place; and fear, you might imagine, and creativity do not happy bedfellows make.

Hence Tom’s passion for frugal film-making; a manifesto rooted in the notion that, as he puts it, once you have ‘a good script, a good director, and a good cast…artistry is taking things out, not adding them’. (You can read more about frugal film-making here.) Tom’s made two films with a crew of two; so ‘The Insatiable Moon’ must feel like a riot; but as I’ve observed him work over the past few days, it’s clear that his unruffled demeanour pays dividends among the rest of the crew. Too often film sets and other creative endeavours are full of anxiety; writers will perhaps contend that you need this – that a creative foment can occur when you take a work seriously enough to be anxious about it. Fair enough – but I think us writers would also say that, for the most part, it’s up to us to feel the anxiety and turn it into words before we arrive on set.

The principles of frugal film-making being applied to ‘The Insatiable Moon’ certainly make it a set not driven by fear; but it doesn’t diminish the quality of the work either – the actors are given room to breathe because they’re not worried about being in the right position vis a vis an invisible Godzilla that will be painted in later; and they’re not worn out by unnecessary multiple takes. The people embodying the characters of the people on Jervois Road go in, incarnate their lines, and the crew collect the information. Tom Burstyn once wrote a document called ‘Kamikaze Film-making: A Sociopolitical Manifesto on the Enlightenment of a Film-Set’; I’m not sure what the ‘kamikaze’ was referring to, because I think he’s slaying myths about the way movies are supposed to be made, rather than shooting himself (or anyone else) in the foot.

Feet featuring bullet holes are par for the course in a fascinating, wince-inducing article in The Guardian this morning – about how a first time producer spent several million on a piece of work that, after struggles including his lead actress’ hair going on fire, and his lead actor refusing to die properly on screen, may (or may not) see the light of day next April. City trader Robert Fucilla wanted to be famous, so scraped the cash together to get a movie made – an endeavour that deserves to be applauded, no matter what the outcome – it’s HARD to make a film; and as ‘The Insatiable Moon’ family have discovered, one of the hardest aspects is getting finance for a project that might seem unconventional. Now, to me, a person who read and has been in love with the novel for the past 12 years, the story of a homeless Maori with serious mental health difficulties who believes he is the second son of God and labours under the conviction that his Father has called him to impregnate a disillusioned housewife so that she can give birth to the future of the human race, well that is of course PERFECT material for a film. Not unconventional at all…

Alas, people who say they know how these things work aren’t always so sure; and so this little NZ film has had to struggle to surface in the same waters that disproportionately slake the thirst of bigger films with bigger budgets. But, as we enter the fourth week of production, I’m glad to say that we’re swimming upstream, and doing just fine. Last Friday’s shooting schedule was tweaked due to some of the heaviest rain I’ve ever seen (note to self: make sure you get the right bus next time; you know, the one that doesn’t leave you ten minutes walk from where you need to be, in the middle of a torrential downpour and without an umbrella); but in a swift and deft decision our director and crew moved to an indoor location and got some lovely work done. Today we’re shooting in a house, and so there will be significantly fewer people on set than when we were shooting scenes of a public gathering last week. The sense of family and relaxed relationships mingles with a commitment to professionalism that deserves to be compared to far larger scale productions. Reading the article about Mr Fucilla’s film, which appears to land in the middle ground between a labour of love and a folie de grandeur makes what’s happening here in Ponsonby seem both more exciting and more challenging: it’s HARD to make a film, and so we wish Mr Fucilla well, and hope some of the goodwill being expressed on the set of ‘The Insatiable Moon’ will somehow transfer to anyone struggling to get their movie made today, wherever in the world they may be.

*You can follow the progress of The Insatiable Moon at the production blog here.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 1:00 am. It is filed under Blog, Gareth Higgins, On Filmmaking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.