Today I met up with Zach Costa to do the story board­ing process for “Mes­sage in a Bot­tle”. Because the film has vir­tu­ally no dia­log, I thought it would be  super­flu­ous to write a script that sim­ply described all of the character’s actions. So I came up with an alter­na­tive to writ­ing a script in the form of storyboarding.

For those that have no idea of what I am talk­ing about, story board­ing is the process of draw­ing out an image for each major action in the film. This gives the direc­tor, actors, and all other peo­ple involved with the film an idea of how every­thing is sup­posed to look, and how every­thing should flow through­out the movie. To sum­ma­rize, a sto­ry­board is essen­tially a comic for the film, with each panel rep­re­sent­ing a dif­fer­ent shot.

Sto­ry­board­ing takes quite a bit of time, it is tedious, and it is some­times redun­dant despite these flaws, it also has many advan­tages. First of all, it gives me the chance to visu­al­ize all of my shots and angles prior to shoot­ing. Usu­ally I’ll come up with bet­ter angles, and more cre­ative shots, when sto­ry­board­ing first, than I would when shoot­ing straight from a script.  The sto­ry­board also allows me to improve the flow of the film as I can either avoid unneeded shots, or I can sup­ple­ment addi­tional shots where needed. This of course ensures that the cin­e­matog­ra­phy is con­sis­tent and does a great job of telling the story from a visual stand­point. Since the sto­ry­board dic­tates about 90% of the shots for the entire film, the film­ing process is much eas­ier, and goes by a lot quicker as all of the shots are at least men­tally pre­pared before filming.

Zach was a sim­ple joy to work with.  Not only was he more than will­ing to help me, but once we got started he straight up ded­i­cated him­self to the project offer­ing insight­ful opin­ions, and great sug­ges­tions, while still giv­ing me the final say in order to stay true to my vision. Not only was Zach’s ded­i­ca­tion impres­sive, but his art was beau­ti­ful, his sto­ry­boards well orga­nized, and his work ethic fan­tas­tic. If I told you I wouldn’t be dev­as­tated if Zach wasn’t inter­ested in my graphic novel idea, then I would be lying. Zach is per­haps one of the great­est peo­ple that I’ve had the plea­sure of work­ing with, and I cer­tainly look for­ward to doing future sto­ry­boards, and hope­fully a graphic novel with him in the future.

Now we didn’t get all the way through the cre­ation of our sto­ry­boards due to the fact that we spent a lot of time eat­ing lunch before­hand, and we did go into lengthy dis­cus­sions about the film’s plot. So while we only illus­trated about a third of the plot thus far, I still feel that this day was a tremen­dous suc­cess and that we made a lot of progress. Not only did we solid­ify the major plot points of the film, but as we were sto­ry­board­ing I saw the plot come to life, and that truly was an exhil­a­rat­ing expe­ri­ence. I’m really not one to inflate my films’ poten­tial, but I have a gut feel­ing that if we can pull this off given the way things are look­ing in the sto­ry­boards, “Mes­sage in a Bot­tle” could turn out to be one of my best films yet.

I would pro­vide pics of the sto­ry­boards, but we used a light pen­cil, and thus the scans of the sto­ry­boards only show a blank piece of paper. To be hon­est they really aren’t all that fancy, but in com­par­i­son to the sto­ry­boards for “The Devil’s Chat­tel” they are infi­nitely more ele­gant. Keep an eye out for more updates on the progress of “Mes­sage in a Bottle”!

My brother and I bribed his girlfriend’s sis­ter to write an arti­cle on our movie mak­ing, plus Emily Crane thought it was a really good idea and she’s on jour­nal­ism too.

My school’s jour­nal­ism staff finally honed in on my movie mak­ing prowess and sent me an inter­view ques­tion­naire to fill out. Thomas, and my brother also got one but here’s what I said.

1.      Have you ever thought about doing pro­fes­sional movie making?

Pro­fes­sional movie mak­ing is a per­sonal dream of mine. I am seri­ously con­sid­er­ing major­ing in Film stud­ies dur­ing Col­lege, and I feel I would really enjoy mak­ing pro­fes­sional movies.  With that being said, com­pe­ti­tion in the pro­fes­sional movie mar­ket is fierce and it takes a lot of expe­ri­ence, rep­u­ta­tion, con­nec­tions, and a lit­tle bit of luck to make a pro­fes­sional movie. So it is some­thing that I dream of doing, but I real­ize that I have to go through an exten­sive process in order to reach my dream of pro­fes­sional movie making.

2.      How long have you been mak­ing movies? How did you start this hobby?

I’ve been mak­ing movies for about a year now. When I was in sev­enth grade I took an inter­est in writ­ing and would write some pretty ter­ri­ble sci­ence fic­tion and fan­tasy. I always envi­sioned these sto­ries as if they were movies so I guess that’s where my first ini­tial inspi­ra­tion came from. What really sparked things was when I had a project in my Sopho­more Eng­lish class to make a pre­sen­ta­tion about an “open read­ing” book that we had to chose. I hap­pened to read the novel “I am Leg­end” and since the movie recently came out, I decided to make my own film which fol­lowed the book more closely.

3.      What was your favorite movie that you made and why? What was the basic plot of the story?

To be hon­est, I don’t have a par­tic­u­lar favorite in the films that I’ve made. I think that each of my films has an ele­ment that I really like about it, and each one has a unique sen­ti­men­tal value that was expe­ri­enced when it was being made. How­ever, one of my more recent films that I thought turned out pretty well is a black and white Film Noir titled “The Devil’s Chat­tel”. The film tells the story of a Pri­vate Eye who is hired by a mys­te­ri­ous client to inves­ti­gate the city’s mayor on sus­pi­cion of cor­rup­tion. The story mainly enthralls the pri­vate eye’s dilemma of trust­ing his client when inves­ti­gat­ing such a risky and dan­ger­ous case.

4.      What is your favorite movie and why?

I have a lot of favorite movies so it’s really hard for me to choose just one. How­ever, if I had to nar­row it down to two it would eas­ily be the entire “Star Wars” saga, and a film called “Dou­ble Indem­nity”. In my eyes “Star Wars” is the per­fect film. It is packed with inspi­ra­tion, has mem­o­rable char­ac­ters, a unique sto­ry­line, it pushes the bound­aries of film mak­ing from a tech­no­log­i­cal stand­point, and as I am sure most stu­dent will learn some­time at Mater Dei, it has ties to tra­di­tional story telling through the use of the arche­typal hero. My other favorite film “Dou­ble Indem­nity” is more ambigu­ous. The film was released in 1944 and was con­sid­ered both rev­o­lu­tion­ary and con­tro­ver­sial at the time. The film tells the story of a woman who wishes to mur­der her hus­band, and thus tries to invest in a life insur­ance pol­icy so that she can col­lect the money after he is dead. When the woman’s insur­ance bro­ker fig­ures her plan out, he tries to dis­suade her, but even­tu­ally falls in love with the woman, and helps in her plot to kill her hus­band. Aside from the bril­liant writ­ing, great act­ing, and awe­some cin­e­matog­ra­phy even by today’s stan­dards, “Dou­ble Indem­nity” pretty much estab­lished the “Film Noir” genre.  For instance, the voice over nar­ra­tion, venet­ian blinds, harsh light­ing, and femme fatale, all ele­ments that are essen­tial for a Film Noir, all have their roots traced backed to “Dou­ble Indem­nity”. It was also one of the first films to have a female as an “evil” char­ac­ter and it was also one of the first to por­tray such a dark and grue­some sto­ry­line. This caused quite a bit of con­tro­versy in 1944, but since it pushed so many bound­aries, it was con­sid­ered revolutionary.

5.      How often do you make movies? Who do you work with when mak­ing movies?

I try to make movies as much as pos­si­ble because mak­ing movies is one of those things where you can only improve by doing it a ton of times.  Dur­ing the school year things are pretty busy not only for myself, but for a lot of the peo­ple that I cast. I will usu­ally work on a film’s script spo­rad­i­cally for a few months, and then when it’s ready I’ll try to film on a cou­ple of week­ends. Christ­mas, and Spring break are also great times to film, and I usu­ally make a movie dur­ing those times. When sum­mer comes around, I try to make as many movies as pos­si­ble because I have a ton of free time in com­par­i­son to the school year. I usu­ally work with my brother and my two best friends Mike Busch, and Thomas Lyons.

6.      How many peo­ple star in your movies? Do you star in your own movies often?

I typ­i­cally write four main parts to my movies. Thomas, Mike, and my brother usu­ally act three of those parts, and then the fourth part is played by some­one who fits the role. I try not to cast too many peo­ple in my films because the more peo­ple there are, the harder it is to man­age things, and the longer it takes to sim­ply get things done. Plus it’s sur­pris­ingly hard to get peo­ple to ded­i­cate them­selves to a film, and even if they do that, with each addi­tional per­son we cast, we run the risk of some­one show­ing up late which can really hin­der pro­duc­tion. Because of this, we try to keep our casts to a min­i­mum. With that being said though, we do employ quite a few extras who have one or two lines, but we usu­ally only “Star” about four actors in our films. I have “starred” in my own films but only when we’re des­per­ate for peo­ple and can’t find any­one else to play a part. I’m a really ter­ri­ble actor, and I find it dif­fi­cult to direct, film, and act at the same time, so I try to stick to direct­ing and work­ing the cam­era. The only film I ever really starred in was my “I am Leg­end” film for Eng­lish and that’s only because I had to in order to get a grade.

7.      How long does it take to make a movie? What is the process and method that you use to make your movies come out the way you want to? Is it really hard work?

The cre­ative process of a film can take quite some time. As I men­tioned above, I usu­ally write a script spo­rad­i­cally dur­ing the school year, which can take up to a cou­ple months to com­plete, sim­ply because I’m not writ­ing the script con­sis­tently. Film­ing itself only takes two-four days for most of our films and we usu­ally split those days over a cou­ple of week­ends dur­ing the school year. Edit­ing and post pro­duc­tion typ­i­cally only takes two days, so when all is said and done about a week total for actual pro­duc­tion and post­pro­duc­tion, and up to a cou­ple of months if we include the cre­ative process, and preproduction.

We started off with a rather unre­fined method to cre­at­ing our films.  We would have a gen­eral idea for a film, we would bring a cam­era to someone’s house, and then we would impro­vise the sto­ry­line as we filmed.  As we got more ambi­tious we decided to refine our process, so that we could improve the over­all cin­e­matic and the­matic ele­ments of our films.

One of us will come up with a vision for a movie, in which case I usu­ally take up the task of writ­ing the script. After I fin­ish writ­ing the script I give it to my brother, Mike Busch, and Thomas Lyons to see what they think of it. After we make the nec­es­sary changes to the script we all assign our­selves jobs for the film.  Mike Busch hap­pens to know a lot of actors in Mater Dei’s the­ater depart­ment, and he is also very per­sua­sive when it comes to get­ting these peo­ple to act in our films. So Mike serves as our pro­ducer, as he gets all of the nec­es­sary peo­ple to act in our films and gen­er­ally coor­di­nates other logis­ti­cal aspects of the pro­duc­tion. Thomas is per­haps one of the most bril­liant and cre­ative engi­neer­ing minds that I have ever met, so he usu­ally serves as our prop and spe­cial effects designer. My brother James doesn’t have a spe­cific pro­duc­tion job, but he is often very crit­i­cal of my ideas, so he serves a key role in hum­bling me dur­ing the pre­pro­duc­tion, pro­duc­tion, and post­pro­duc­tion processes. I serve as writer, direc­tor, and edi­tor. Along with these roles, Mike, Thomas, and James serve as key actors within our films. After we get our props and actors assem­bled we begin the film­ing process. We don’t really have a spe­cific method for the film­ing process but we usu­ally film the parts with the four core actors first, and then we’ll pick one day to film all of the shots in which we need extras. We often have some really good ideas while we are film­ing, so we don’t stick to the orig­i­nal script too reli­giously. The night that we fin­ish film­ing, I get this over­whelm­ing urge to fin­ish the film so I imme­di­ately start the edit­ing process that night. First I import all of the footage, and try to string together as much of the film as pos­si­ble. The next day I fin­ish string­ing together the clips, and put the fin­ish­ing touches on the film by adding tran­si­tions, spe­cial effects, and other minor tweaks to the footage. The edit­ing process takes me about two days total, but that’s mainly because I work the whole day straight through on editing.

Film mak­ing has a work hard, play hard men­tal­ity to it. The actual film mak­ing process is very repet­i­tive, time con­sum­ing, and often times frus­trat­ing. To add to that there’s also a lot of things that can com­pletely destroy a film pro­duc­tion, whether it is bad weather, a key actor can­celling, or sim­ple mis­takes dur­ing the film mak­ing process, there’s just a ton of things that can go wrong and destroy a film. Despite all of this, film mak­ing is per­haps one of the most enjoy­able hob­bies that I have taken up. The sim­ple process of writ­ing a script and see­ing it come to life in the fin­ished prod­uct of a film is just an awe­some feel­ing . To add to that, my friends and I all have a great time mak­ing our films, and so each sec­ond that we spend work­ing together is packed with fun, humor, and plain enter­tain­ment. Some of the best expe­ri­ences that I’ve had with my friends were when we were mak­ing movies, and that alone makes the process worth all the hard work. If you have a clear vision, a cam­era, and some great friends then mak­ing a movie is a piece cake.

As you can tell I am very long winded, and obvi­ously take myself way too seri­ously. How­ever, I can’t wait until this arti­cle is released in next month’s paper so I gave the writer all the info she needed to make a great article.

With the com­ple­tion of “Most Beau­ti­ful Girl in the Room” and its’ world pre­mière slated for the com­ing weeks, I’ve decided to set my sights on my next film project “Mes­sage in a Bottle”.

“Mes­sage in a Bot­tle” will be the first film under my MEIFilm­Pro­duc­tions port­fo­lio. What this means is that I’m plan­ning to use this film as part of my film col­lec­tion to sub­mit to col­leges for entrance into their film schools. Because this film will be sub­mit­ted to col­leges, and could quite lit­er­ally decide my fate as a film maker, it will have com­pre­hen­sive pre and post pro­duc­tion stages in order to ensure qual­ity. As such, pro­duc­tion for “Mes­sage in a Bot­tle” will likely begin some­time within the com­ing month, or dur­ing spring break.

Logis­ti­cally speak­ing, “Mes­sage in a Bot­tle” is far sim­pler in com­par­i­son to “Most Beau­ti­ful Girl in the Room”. The script calls for only two actors, mod­est prop require­ments, and few film­ing loca­tions. On top of this, dia­log is brief and makes up only a small por­tion of the story. Because there is so lit­tle dia­log, the biggest chal­lenge of mine will be con­vey­ing a story with­out the use of words. This chal­lenge has both its pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive aspects. From a film mak­ing stand­point the film­ing process will be far quicker, as there will be less dia­log to rehearse with the actors. This also means that I will have addi­tional mem­bers in my crew as less of them will be act­ing. This will allow me to focus on get­ting cre­ative and cin­e­matic shots in a far more timely man­ner in com­par­i­son to pre­vi­ous films since I will have to worry less about the actors, and more about the cin­e­matog­ra­phy of the film. If I can pull it all off, this film will hope­fully impress admis­sions admin­is­tra­tors at film schools, due to the fact that a fun­da­men­tal skill of film mak­ing is the abil­ity to visu­ally tell a story. If I can prove that I can already do this, I assume it will be a major plus in their con­sid­er­a­tion of me as a film stu­dent. On the other hand, I have lit­tle expe­ri­ence in the realm of visual story telling, as I have always uti­lized exten­sive dia­log in my films. Fur­ther­more, the lack of dia­log could make it dif­fi­cult for my actors to por­tray their emo­tions, which will be a vital com­po­nent to this film’s suc­cess. Due to the sheer rad­i­cal­ism that this film presents in com­par­i­son to my other films I run a high risk of botch­ing it up.

A small change that I’ve made to the story line of this film is that I’ve altered the end­ing sig­nif­i­cantly from that of the orig­i­nal short story. The intro­duc­tory por­tion of the orig­i­nal short story, which tells the redun­dancy of the character’s life, will remain unchanged. How­ever, the cli­max of the story will be com­pletely dif­fer­ent and will take a more light hearted and humor­ous approach. The rea­son for this the­matic change is to make the film more enjoy­able for audi­ences to watch, as well as to inte­grate addi­tional cin­e­matic ele­ments into the film. As always, I’m keep­ing details of the altered story under wraps, how­ever I will reveal that I per­son­ally enjoy the new story far more in com­par­i­son to the original.

With that out of the way, I believe I have a pre­lim­i­nary sound­track selected so please lis­ten to the youtube embeds through­out this post to get a taste of what “Mes­sage in a Bot­tle” will sound like.