DVTheatre
History 
DVTheatre
History We're two old goats with lots of cherished but unproduced material. Despite our insanity, we realized it's unlikely that anyone in Hollywood will be smart enough to give us a "green light," a "yellow light" or even a Bud Light®. So we bought a digital video camcorder, a non-linear editing suite and bummed a light.
In December of 1998, Michel was remodeling his kitchen when he recieved a visit from his old writing partner, David M. Kaufman. David had been working with FirstStage Hollywood, a theatre group dedicated to giving original plays a staged reading. They had just staged "The Tent," a play David had rewritten from a version Michel directed in a little theatre they had thirty years ago. David complained that staging the reading took an incredible amount of time, money and energy to pull off, and the only record was a crumpled program. Michel ventured that if they were doing their theatre trip today, they could shoot it on the new digital video technology he had learned about while working on a television series at Universal. David wanted to know what it would cost to get that kind of equipment. Michel speculated a camera and non-linear editing setup would run about ten thousand dollars. David said he would put up the first ten thousand if Michel would direct "The Tent" on digital video.
Michel had put his directing ambitions on the back burner for production design work, but even art director jobs were scarce due to runaway production and ageism in Hollywood. While out of work for several months, Michel kept busy remodeling his kitchen... but he was getting antsy to do something creative. David's offer was very tempting. Michel agreed to research what it would take for them to make their own digital videos.
Desktop digital video was fairly arcane at that time and off-the-shelf computers needed third-party cards to capture and edit digital video. After months of reading magazines, searching the internet, going to expos and meeting with strange people who made video cards in their garage, Michel was not even close to making a decision. Then Apple came out with the blue and white G3 that could do it off the shelf. It was six months after that fateful day in the kitchen. David wrote a ten thousand dollar check for a non-linear editing suite and Michel bought a Canon XL-1 and the other stuff.
To practice for "The Tent," they produced "The Gravitational Bed" and "Significant Others." These whacked-out one-act comedies come from David's warped mind. Michel added his jaded view by directing, shooting and editing the madness into the first two17-minute shorts for Digital Video Theatre.
UPDATE 5-20-2000: We were in pre-production for "The Tent," a feature length comedy on schizophrenia. Shooting was scheduled for March 2000. We planned to shoot on weekends, just as we did with the shorts. Reality bites. Trying to juggle the schedule of seven people to rehearse and shoot an ensemble piece on weekends became impossible. In order to accommodate everyone, the schedule extended to more than three months, which would have become a continuity nightmare. The next time we try to mount "The Tent," we'll set it up to be shot in a twenty day schedule.
David's real life became more demanding so dvtheatre's third short, "The Blind Date," was written, produced and directed by Michel. It was completed in March 2001 and is currently on the film festival circuit.
We have co-written other material and were actually paid a couple of times (back in the seventies when we were young), most notably the exploitation / cult film "Werewolves on Wheels," which Michel directed for Fanfare Films. We also did a rewrite for Fanfare called "Hot Summer Week," which is also released as "Girls on the Road." David made a few bucks writing a couple of "art" movies in Europe. Michel made small change directing another "cult" film for Dimension Pictures originally titled "Sweet Sugar," also released as "Chain Gang Girls," "Hellfire on Ice" and "Captive Women 3." (Four titles could be a record. Or, does that happen to all films sold in bankruptcy?)
Currently, Michel is developing a series of shorts that explore the call girl theme of "The Blind Date." He's also written a couple of jazz tunes he wants to make into music videos. David wrote and directed a 4-minute video called "First Interview With Animated Man," which he plans to put on the internet.
We'll be checking our E-Mail and are interested to know if anyone else is doing anything similar... or different.