FILM TESTIMONIAL - "Our World's Collide"

    After shooting “The Runner” primarily in the early portion of fall, 2013 I went into a lengthy period of no production, which was so foreign to me after shooting so much between the spring and the fall of that year. I had three large projects I began moving on but I had tried to take a step too far before I was ready. Two of the three projects I dedicated a lengthy amount of time to before realizing they were just too large for me to carry on by myself. I needed a level of help and money that I couldn’t get at the time. I first wanted to delve into my growing Catholic faith and what I saw as numerous complications and hypocrisies that were going on not as a result of the faith but as a result of the way people use their so-called faith. I wrote about 3/4 of a script titled “Man of Faith” about a gay man very prominent in his church. He had been outgoing with his sexual orientation with everyone except those in his church for fear of their reaction. I wanted to address a lot of things that were bothering my about most mainstream Christians, specifically the notion honestly held by some that “gay people cannot be Christians”. Where the hell that sentiment came from I don’t know, but anyone who isn’t bothered by beliefs such as these needs to take some time to think life over. I wanted to addressed the way in which we so easily alter our perceptions of people based on one piece of new information. And certainly coming out about one’s own sexual orientation to a vastly religious group would in some ways fit in with that. There were various other issues and ideas I put together for the film, but the focus was getting at the way we behave towards each other as human beings; it wasn’t even really all that much about homosexuality as it was human behavior.
    After I shelves “Man of Faith” because I felt like it just wasn’t coming together the way I wanted I chased two other films including a feature which I spent almost three months setting up only to have to put it aside when it became obvious that I wasn’t ready to take that on yet. That alone ate up about six months of my life. I found myself needed to really get back to work and be honest with myself about where my capabilities were at that time. I was having the filmmakers equivalency of cabin fever. I was both pissed and relieved when I had to put my feature aside because it was honestly killing me because I just took way too much on. The plan was to begin shooting at the start of May 2014 on that feature and I had to shelve it at the end of April. I took about a week off but I had that active artists voice nagging at me, feeling like I was losing time and I needed to get out there and work again.
    What quickly came to mind was a script I wrote back in the fall of 2011 I believe, that was really a talkie film wherein the genesis of the idea I think was to attack homosexual stereotypes in mainstream film. I think that’s really where it came from. But of course going down that road of making a message film made for lots of talking and not a lot of substance. I had just become so annoyed over time with the way that Hollywood claims to be so liberal and progressive and yet they so often cop out in regards to gay characters. Gay men are always hair dressers, secretaries, interior decorators, etc. I’ve known a good number of gay men and none of them have worked in positions like these but they get stuck in them because they’re positions that many regard as overtly feminine. And the same can often be said for lesbian film characters. That was such an annoyance to me, as I think many other things in mainstream film can be. That feeling made me say if I do a film with any kind of homosexual theme involved I  was going to do it without making homosexuality the focus of the film, meaning I was going to present the given gay character in the film not as a gay person but as a multi-dimensional person who happens to be gay. I was going to make sure to humanize the person in a way that so many other films had failed to do in the past.
    That’s where the development of the character Kayleen came through, who was a woman who had just been fired from her job under accusations of sexual harassment from a female co-worker. I then interjected a character named Becca, who was fleeing from an abusive relationship and had found herself stranded outside of Kayleen’s house. Fearing her abusive husband’s pursuits of her she hears a tire squeal down the road and immediately assumes it’s her husband coming and charges blindly into the nearest home for shelter, which happened to be Kayleen’s home. In what was about a 12-page script about six pages of it was a long conversation the two women had about their perspective life problems before the husband arrives on the scene and the women have to protect themselves from him. I scripted the piece and shot it I believe in October 2011 with two very qualified actresses who did a great job. But being new to the film program at school I did not have access to great equipment and shot it with a miniDV camera, which would have been great twenty years ago, but just came out boringly auto focused and yellowish. Another hurdle I encountered was while pursuing an actor for the abusive boyfriend role I found that lots of the men responding looked like men who actually were abusive towards women. At the end of the day I slapped the camera on a tripod and play the abusive husband myself.
    So, of course, the film suffered. What was fairly decent cinematography for a serious novice in the area still learning about blocking, shot listing and all that hullabaloo gave way to stagnant imagery once I had to also step in as actor with no crew on to help. For the time it was a decent piece of work, but with my sitting there at the start of May, 2014 looking for a new project to get on fast the changes that could be made to make it a more serious piece of work began flooding in.
    First off, I couldn’t make half the movie two people sitting and talking and then random action filling the rest of it. I knew I had to take that long talk the two leads have and break it up so it wouldn’t get so still. To address this issue I took notice of another mistake I made in the initial script of the film, which was that I gave the two women’s life problems even standing, which was way off. There was no way that Kayleen’s problems were at the same level as those Becca faced. So I decided to make the focus of that serious talk the problems that were happening in Becca’s life. Then the problems Kayleen faced are more allowed to gradually come out over the course of the film. I also knew I needed deeper character development and thus scripted an extra probably 7-8 pages of events that happen leading up to Kayleen coming home and Becca arriving shortly after. For some reason, not really sure why, I altered the names: Kayleen became Kendra and I altered the spelling of Becca to ‘Bekah’.
    I had actually considered shooting and had briefly cast the film in early November, 2014 as a smaller project to do following “The Runner”. But I had become so investing in doing and moving forward with “Man of Faith” that I don’t think my heart was ever really into doing it. It was just a simple short piece that I felt I could do more with. In hindsight then it was best that I didn’t do it back then, wherein I probably would have just blazed through the whole thing and lost a lot of the emotion and realism that could come from such a story. Around Thanksgiving I was still a little on the fence about it and then I lost the actress I brought on for Kendra and it just went away. What’s most significant was that at this time I had not made many of these major changes to the story yet that would occur in the version I finally shot. The early additions, the dialogue and pacing adjustments, they all likely wouldn’t have happened. But I even had positive reactions to that initial script, which made me feel if I could do these changes and make everything stick I could come away with a very strong piece of work.
    Delving into a film about domestic violence, in particular violence by men against women, is nothing new for me as far as being in my thoughts and ideas. Like practically everyone, I have people very close to me who have experience violence and assaults carried out against them. I did another film called “Intersection” that was more an avenue to get me more experience working with my camera, but the film followed the lives of several female characters, one of which was fleeing from her abusive husband. It was like Bekah to a T, but I was never happy with “Intersection”. It was more of an exercise than a film for me and it shows. Some parts were shot right after I purchased my DSLR and other parts were shot several months later when I was in a better workflow and you can see the ups and downs of the cinematic qualities in it. Oddly enough, some of my favorite cinematography was in the first character I shot in the piece, which was the very first thing I shot in general with that camera... but I’m getting sidetracked. I’ve written and reflected much on domestic violence. My first legitimate film, “The Way We Are”, was about a woman who was a repeat rape victim; again focusing in on an element of violence against women. When all is said and done however, as far as conveying the real and raw emotions of a person living in constant fear of the supposed “love of her life”, I never felt like I had really tapped into that and I wanted to make that work with a more full-fledged and expanded version of Bekah’s character.
    And finally I updated the final climactic moments of the film. In the original the husband (who because the “Boyfriend” in the remake) manages to knock Kendra out in a scuffle and drags Bekah, kicking and screaming, to the door and manages to get her out on the porch. When Kendra comes to she manages to get to her feet and grab a cord. Unseen by Bekah or the husband struggling on the porch, Kendra comes around and whips the cord at the husband’s feet, tripping him up. He falls, strikes his head against the porch railing and falls unconscious. Kendra then steps up and wraps her arms around Bekah, confirming to her that she is safe. I wanted to make the conclusions a little less, for lack of a better word, anticlimactic. Everything dragged, the timing didn’t fit and so on. So I managed, with a few years of better writing skills to my credit, to create a much more tense, dramatic and fast-paced ending. But of course, for the sake of not giving too much away before the things even made available for others to see, I’ll keep the new ending under wraps.
    It didn’t take long to get this one going as I had been trying to get an 80-page feature going for the previous two months. So a 26-page script was a walk in the park.It was relatively easy to cast for. I had four characters, which included the introduction of a friend between Kendra and Bekah named Danielle. I brought on my friend Laura Welsh, who has now been involved in six of my projects. She had been in four by that time, all of which were comedies and I wanted to get her into a more serious piece I was doing, even if just in a minor role. Danielle’s character is only in the film early, serving as an initial and yet unknown correlation between the two leads before they are even aware of one another’s existence. So bringing Laura on was a relative quick and easy decision.
    Then it came down to casting the two leads. Interestingly enough, in both cases I went with the first people I auditioned for the roles. For Kendra I brought on Karmen Spiller, whom I had done a short silent comedy about two years before. It was a pretty fun little shooting experience and here, a few years later, she stumbled onto my posting and thought I’d give her a shot. With out only past experience being a goofy, sped up black and white comedy about two drunk soup kitchen employees I had no idea how she would fit for a much more serious role. But I could tell right away that she connected both personally and from an acting/character portrayal position with Kendra. I was then thoroughly impressed with the reading she did, which was for one of the most dramatic scenes in the film. I wanted to see who out of those I met up with could pull off diving into the most emotionally gripping scene in the whole piece right out of the gate and she hit it not only the best but the most realistically; really the direction I wanted to go in.
    And then there’s Bekah. For Bekah’s role I brought on Myra Wicks who I primarily just knew as an acquaintance through Facebook. When I posted an add for the film she responded almost immediately and offered to have me come out there to look at possibly locations to use for Kendra’s home, of which about 2/3 of the film was to be shot in. The location she showed me was perfect, a home wherein the kitchen and living room area were just one large room which left everything very open. Such was incredibly beneficial when it came to shooting as far as where the characters moved around in the film and also as far as making the shooting experience easier without having to navigate around lots of corners and tight spaces. It was so great to have that issue off my back early on. But Myra still had to audition for the character and having never worked with her before I had no clue what to expect. And honestly I only really had the past version of the film I shot to go with as far as having a feel for how Bekah’s character would behave. The actress I had before I felt played the character well but she played Bekah more melancholic than emotional. So in those early stages of having just revamped the script and doing my first audition I was still kind of in that mindset as far as how I saw Bekah’s character behaving. It took be a little longer to really try and get into that mindset and come to grips with the pure fear that would come with what Bekah was experiencing and the risk that she was taking. The full on emotional aspect hadn’t hit me yet. Then Myra came in with her idea as to how Bekah would behave and very early in the ready she began crying, which I for some reason had not seen Bekah doing at that time. But in the crying and shaking she brought out those real raw emotions of not knowing what the next moments could hold in store for a person. She stole the character right there and maintained that emotion through the shooting of the film.
    Whether it turns out to be my best work or not, the shooting of this film was the most fulfilling and invigorating experiences I’ve had as a writer/director/filmmaker. Despite a few scheduling hiccups the shooting process was a breeze and we all connected and bonded so well. There was literally not one argument or butting of heads or ego eruptions by anyone. It was so pleasant and so free flowing even though the subject matter was so intense. When we got to the most serious moments of the film we literally had to take a few breaks because the emotion was running so high and so consistently. And my crew consisted of four total people. I brought on two to work as PA’s doing various assisting work such as slate, script supervision and so on. For that we brought on my friend Cassidy with whom I had done a few little pieces with before. She was able to help for a couple days and was invaluable on the second day of shooting as she was the only extra person on that day. Our other PA, Dorothy was just another lucky case, in that she stumbled onto a posting I placed looking for help on the project. She ended up being a wonderful help and just a generally fun and interesting person to work with. She took to her PA duties incredibly quickly even though I believe she didn’t have any past experiences.
    We were even lucky enough to have a replacement sound guy, Sean, come and help us for the last few scenes of shooting... but I’ll get to that drama. For the other four days of shooting we had sound guy Tim Kahn on to work the boom mic and do sound mixing. I was so lucky to stumble onto Tim’s path and I had actually initially brought him on for my feature that I was forced to postpone. But needing a sound person for this new project I just asked him and he was immediately on board. And he worked completely for free, even though he was on for four days of shooting. It was such a gift to have someone not only so experienced in capturing sound but someone who was so in the zone with his craft. I never had to ask him if he needed help with something or check to make sure he was doing something right. I knew I could trust him right out of the gate to get what I wanted. It was just so free flowing, I feel like I may have been a little bit spoiled by the experience.
    In being able to cast so quickly we were able to jump into shooting in early June, shooting three days in a row between the 10th and the 12th. The first day we shot all of the Kendra scenes leading up to before her going home. This included shooting all the parts with Danielle’s character, which was primarily a brief conversation the two of them share when Kendra discovers she has just been fired under allegations of sexual harassment. That was a fun start to things. The first scene we shot was that conversation. I picked Risley Park to shoot at, on the southern portion of Oak Grove, only a few blocks from where I lived for almost twenty years. I had always remembered it as a nice park and very quiet. Every now and then there would be a few kids running around or a couple people playing basketball, but that was about it. We made it about 45 minutes into shooting before a neighbor right next to the park had his landscaper start hacking away at his yard and literally he did not stop for the remainder of the shoot there aside from a minute here and a minute there, which was all we had to find a way to finish everything. Instead of wrapping there around 11:30 a.m. it was closer to 2 p.m. Not the world’s greatest start to a film shoot, and that combined with the fact that I hadn’t shot anything serious for about eight months was making the situation even more difficult. Getting through that first scene though was the only great trial when it came to actually shooting. But I can remember feeling like I didn’t know how to deal with the issue, like I had backtracked from where I once was. But fortunately it became more like riding a bicycle as time went on.
    After making it through the brief Danielle period we had a small collection of just Kendra parts to shoot and once we got to the end of the first day I felt myself getting more back into my groove. The second day was a small portion with Kendra’s character but was primarily focused on Bekah’s character, and hence Myra’s first day of shooting. That day went fairly well right straight through. After having a full day completed with my two leads I felt even better about the choices I had made. And the best work laid ahead of us.
    Our third day would be the first to be shot in Kendra’s home. We moved everything from the southern Portland neighborhood up to Washougal, Washington. The focus of this first day was to get as much done as we could with just the two female leads, saving anything that included the Boyfriend character for later. Those days we shot at the Kendra home location were, all three, incredible in terms of us all coming together and really bonding and forming a nucleus with each other. The big final pieces we did were the long conversation that the two share and a scene a short while later in which Kendra comes out about what’s really going on in her life. But that main conversation they share, wherein we really see the explosion of emotion from Bekah as far as her life circumstances. It’s also the only real long stretch of dialogue so both in terms of action and line memorization it was the Mount Everest of the film. The first few takes were really more just the two characters getting comfortable and adjusting to the overall feel of the scene. And they were doing really well. But then shot four came, wherein I first moved in for a super close shot on Kendra’s face. Than moment, I think really for the first time, Karmen and Myra completely connected and bonded in real life much like how they were supposed to in the film. That would be the first take where I actually saw tears form in Karmen’s eyes near the end of the scene. From that wonderful take they were able to keep that emotion strong literally through to the end of filming.
    But even after those three solid days we still had, what I assumed, would be one more long day with the Boyfriend. Now since I had begun casting the one role that was always lingering up in the air was the role of the Boyfriend. When I planned on shooting the piece back in the fall of 2013 I had brought on an actor named Patrick Green who’s been in a lot of stuff around Portland. He was still a possibility when I revived the project but he just had too much other work going on. I next asked one of my close acting friends Jeffrey Arrington to play the role and he was on for a little bit but again we just could never make the scheduling work. I then went to another close acting friend, Josh Rice, who couldn’t make the scheduling work the first time we rescheduled. I found another actor to fill the bill for that last day, but unfortunately or fortunately Myra got sick and we had to postpone that last day. Because of that postponement we had to wait a couple weeks before everyone’s schedules synced up again. But because of that postponement we were fortunately able to make the shooting day work with Josh.
    Now my previous workings with Josh included two projects. I met him while shooting a silent film for a film studies course and he played the male lead. We immediately became friends and I helped as a DP on a film of his a few months later. He was then slated to play the lead in the feature piece that I was forced to put aside and since we had been in talks so long for that it only seemed right that we would still be able to work together in whatever I did next. And with Josh’s busy work schedule it was convenient to have him on in a smaller capacity. However, in being friends and having worked on more casual projects together I had no idea that he would be able to hit the nail on the head the way he did in playing the abusive Boyfriend. He took on an almost monotone voice and a lingering, almost unchanging facial expression, in particular with his eyes. Whereas Karmen and Myra had made the emotional connection so strong earlier with their performances alone, Josh came in and made the fear of his scenes equally as strong. More than anything else, the moment in the film that was the hardest for me was the sequence after Kendra had been knocked out and the Boyfriend grabs Bekah and tries leading her to the door. Shooting it was all right, even with the emotion that came with getting through it. But in viewing and syncing all the footage the one moment where I had to stop was watching the shots on Myra playing a shaking and crying Bekah as her Boyfriend dragged her closer and closer to the front door (the presumption being that if he got her outside it was all over for her). The footage for that was the hardest to watch.
    We powered through what was supposed to be the last day of shooting, but with it reaching 8 p.m. and us being 11 hours into shooting I suddenly hit that wall. I became exhausted and almost incoherent. I was no longer able to control the focus on my camera. I knew, even with only two scenes left to do that we needed to stop. Rescheduling was surprisingly easy... at first. Everyone determined the following Tuesday worked for us to finish. And it would only take a few hours... Josh also worked as a fire fighter during the summer and he wasn’t 100% sure at that time when he might be called out so whether we could shoot hinged entirely on that. But we were struck with the good fortune that Josh wasn’t going to leave until later that Tuesday. This was an incredible stroke of luck because once he was gone Josh probably wouldn’t be available for two to three months... just to finish one scene. But we had to begin a little earlier to make sure we got done before Josh had to leave. So I spread the word and got the message out to everyone that we had to start earlier. This was on Monday, less than 24 hours before we were to shoot this last day. I then found out that Tim was having health issues and was not going to be able to make it.
    Suddenly I was thrust into a situation of not knowing what to do. We had little to no time to find a replacement and I was working until the evening hours with no internet access to put out a message or last ditch effort for a replacement just to get through those last scenes. So I did about the only thing I could think of and outsourced it to Myra who, in the eleventh hour, managed to find us a sound guy she had worked with before. Somehow, some way, the shooting day managed to work out and we got everything done after a total of a bout six weeks between all the shooting days. That final day went about as well as all the other days and the final climactic moments gripped everything exactly how I was hoping.
    But beyond everything working out, having a good piece to work on and everyone getting along this film was a major game changer for me. Sure, it was a lot more dramatic than most of my past work and it was my first real foray into a film with some actual physical violence, brief although it was, but it really boosted my confidence as a director. I had always looked at myself in the artistic way, as a good writer, cinematographer and editor. I had always directed my own work for the sake of knowing the pieces better than anyone else. It was often convenient and sensible. But by the ending of this film I found myself flooded with compliments on my directing style, which confirmed to me why so much other work in my past had been successful. And while much of my other work had been fairly good I was always used to it being just a fairly pleasant, here we go, it’s done now, thanks thing. But Karmen and Myra were particularly complimentary towards me, which I wasn’t very used to in the past and sometimes, honestly, I didn’t know how to handle it other than just saying thanks. But I’ve had time to think it over more and really come to terms with how important this project was for everyone involved.
    I also feel like that experience has launched me into the next level as a filmmaker, as someone who can find a venue and more visuals for every project I do now and in the near future. I managed to punch out a 40-page script for my next project in about six hours. And I’ve found the reaction from actors to be more positive just to the script ahead of time than I have in the past. All at once things are really coming together more than they ever were before. And I’ve found myself connecting much more strongly to female actors, in part because I prefer to have female leads and to work with actresses. That’s just my thing, I find female characters to be more dynamic and more compelling. So I have felt a boost there as well. “Our World’s Collide” really had a profound effect on me and everyone else involved and I am so glad that I waiting to shoot it when I did, making sure I was ready and making sure that I really had the best people possible to perform in it. Score one for all of us!