PreGame

To the right is the only behind-the-scenes picture I have of the production, because I totally spaced and didn’t think I might want to keep all the pictures for posterity later. What I find fascinating about this picture is that this scene in the movie is supposed to look like it takes place in the afternoon or early evening, with light fading behind the trees and everything, but as you can tell from the sun it was clearly midday when we shot it.

I could not have done this short film without Charles Liu, the cinematographer. It’s really thanks to him that this film looked as good as it did. Because of his knowledge, we were able to shoot the shots we needed at appropriate times of the day, while making them look like they took place at different times from when we were actually shooting in the film. Cinematography is true magic — I mean, all of filmmaking is really about altering and controlling place and time in order to present a window into a particular moment, but I don’t think that really hit home until I made my first real short.

Looking back a year later, I really had no idea what the hell I was doing. All I had to guide me was some theater classes I took in community college, a couple 48 hour film festivals I had done in ‘17-’18, and a desire to make the film as good as I possibly could. I had money and I quit my job to make this film, which I wouldn’t have done in hindsight, but that’ll have to be the subject of a future blog post.

It started with the screenplay. I wrote five pages that somehow took me months to finalize (I remember seeing an early draft last saved in November of ‘18). I cast Alex and Malik before doing anything else. I saw five people in total for the roles. Alex had the necessary chip on his shoulder to play the character of Darryl.

Malik missed his first audition. If he hadn’t auditioned a second time, I don’t know what I would have done. I was thinking I wrote a really simple script, but it required that I cast someone who could act, look like the actor’s brother, and convincingly play basketball. I didn’t have the resources to cast a wide net around local schools and sports centers. Even today, I still have this crazy feeling that if Malik hadn’t come back for his second audition, I wouldn’t have been able to proceed with the film.

Rehearsals began shortly after casting, a total of five or six rehearsals, two hours each, over the course of two months during the summer of 2019. It was a matter of the actors not only memorizing their lines and developing relationships to each other as people and characters, but also being able to hit their marks when performing basketball moves that were such an essential part of the blocking. I relied heavily on Malik and Alex’s input as basketball players to design the moves that would later inform the shots.

Now that I think about it, I also remember storyboarding around this time. I’m pretty sure I had an idea of what shots I wanted before I start rehearsing with Alex and Malik, but I’m not completely certain. Looking back has me wondering when I altered shots over the course of the filmmaking process (was it during rehearsals with Alex and Malik? With Charles?), because some of the storyboarded ones are very different from the scenes that made it into the movie. This is why it’s good to have a production diary, so you can remember these things.

In a way, hiring crew, scouting locations, and ordering crafty and lunch were the easiest parts. I had some experience doing all of them as a director of the 48HFF’s and as a production assistant on reality television shows. I needed experienced, talented crew who I could work with comfortably (as I would have the least professional experience of the bunch), and I was in a fortunate position to be able to pay everybody. Paying the fourteen person crew, editor, and sound designer contributed to the majority of production expenses for the film, along with the cost of the gear.

Specialized challenges including making our days and getting the scenes the way I wanted, while dealing with windy weather that would affect our gaffer material, and implementing precise camerawork that had to work fluidly with basketball choreography. Camera and actors had to hit their marks at the right time, while the actors had to deliver good performances, and sometimes that was a problem. I was never mean or cruel to the crew, but my ignorance from a lack of production experience was sometimes an impediment to getting shots to gel more quickly. There were times when I should have given cast and crew a break, instead of pushing for another take for the sake of time.

I also had to figure out how to get the three production assistants I hired to return the camera equipment I had rented from all over town, on time and safely.

An unexpected fire that shut down the fifth day of production added at least $10,000 to the budget, as I had no production insurance and had to rent the camera gear all over again.

In hindsight, learning at least one additional component of filmmaking — editing, sound design, cinematography — would have saved me a ton of money, but I’m so grateful to have been able to work with Steve, Charles, and Derek, along with the rest of the crew, and the opportunity I had to learn from all of them.