DVTheatre
Projects 
DVTheatre
Projects Starring: Louise Sophie Kruse and Michael P. Moran
Producer's notes: This is our third short, so by now our production process and technical act is pretty together. The real problems began when I tried to take out a casting ad in "Backstage West." After a couple of failed attempts to do it online, I finally called to find out what was happening. It seems they had a problem with the fact that the female role required nudity. I had taken pains in the ad to be up front about the nudity and the sexual situation of the piece, but that simply raised a red flag. Since I was non-union, they wanted the phone numbers of three actors I'd worked with in the past year, as a reference, before they would run the ad. Fortunately, I have pretty good relations with my actors, so I felt confident about giving them the actor's numbers. I also called the actors to warn them of the impending inquiry. Within a couple of days, all the actors called to let me know they had been contacted by "Backstage West." (Of course, all three actors told me that they reported I was a perverted, dirty old man.) The ad came out a few days later and we got hundreds of submissions, in spite of the nudity and sexual situation.
I spoke with a few candidates who were right for the role and not offended by the nature of the material or nudity. As the final step to setting up auditions, and in order to avoid any misunderstandings, I wrote a condensed version of the script and sent it to each actor. Wrong! Condensing the script only intensified the sexual antics. A few ladies left me nasty messages on my voice mail saying I was a cheesy pornographer... others sent me scathing E-Mails. Even some men decided not to do it. Out of the hundreds of submissions and dozens of candidates, there were only a handful of possibilities left.
Since "Backstage West" stipulates that non-union auditions cannot be held at a residence, I rented space at the Ventura Court Theatre. Things were looking grim the day of auditions. Then Louise Sophie Kruse showed up strutting her stuff. She wore a flaming red wig, had more cleavage than I had hoped for, and had a comfort with her sexuality that made the five guys she read with squirm. She also knew all of the lines, picked up the blocking instantly, and corrected the guys who couldn't remember their blocking. I had found Tina. There were two guys I thought could do the part. One gave a really intelligent reading and was a polished actor. The other guy wasn't sure what was going on, but he went with it and had an edgy energy that was appealing. Unfortunately, I went with the edgy guy. He never really understood the subtleties of the piece and Louise and I spent several hours trying to explain it to him. After three rehearsals, he got a 2-week job on a reality series and we had to postpone rehearsals. Then he got sick and canceled two rehearsals. Then he just didn't show up for a scheduled rehearsal. I conferred with Louise and we decided to offer the part to the intelligent, polished actor. Fortunately, Michael P. Moran was available and accepted the role. Michael accomplished more with Louise in their first rehearsal than the edgy guy did in three.
This whole casting ordeal brought home a lesson I really learned a long time ago. The real bottom line is that this is a people business and no matter how together your production process, or how good your technical chops are, the one variable that you can never predict is what people will do.
"Significant Others"
Author's notes: Another marriage in big trouble. A porn writer married to a feminist? You won't guess who he's been cheating with. Set in 1984, the year the first woman ran for vice president.
Starring: John Dylan, Jasmin Sol and Anne DeVenzio.
Director / Videographer notes: We staged, rehearsed and shot the play in my living room. We rehearsed for four Saturdays until the actors had the characters down, knew all of their blocking and most of their lines. We scheduled a four day shoot with the option for a fifth, a two day weekend that was followed by a three day weekend.
The blocking and shots were organized into twelve lighting set ups. Major lighting changes were planned for lunch breaks or the end of the day in prep for the next morning.
The relatively complicated lighting routine was made possible because of my fortunate meeting with Douglas Shaw. Douglas handled most of the gaffer chores and provided all the lights used for the shoot. A 500W Leko with built in doors was used for the key. Two 250W "Mole" Fresnels with doors and diffusion provided fill and backlight. To add more ambient light Douglas came up with two Chinese lanterns with 100W soft whites on a dimmer.
This set up gave me about an f 2.0 which the XL-1 indicated was one and a half to two stops underexposed in manual setting. We determined this had the best night interior look after testing several other settings. There may be a better way to get that look and still have correct exposure but we're artists and our technical skills are limited. A limitation that would haunt our first day of shooting.
Most everything was set up the night before the first day. The actors arrived in make-up and would be in costume shortly. The buffet set up by our associate producer Colleen Kennedy was a big hit with everyone's favorite goodies. David was ready at the monitor station with script and slate. Douglas brought his boom, mic and mixer to do sound, we plugged into our XLR adaptor and got a reading on the XL-1's meter.
Tape in place, actors on set, we started shooting right on schedule. We had a good day getting through a major and minor lighting set up. After most people left we put our first tape in to watch dailies.
Nothing, I fast forward the camera, 8 minutes still black, we look at each other with a horrible sinking feeling, wait a minute there's some kind of picture. I hit play, it's our third shot, broken up with big black lines. A couple more minutes and the picture clears up but there's no sound. Well there's a little sound if we turn the volume all the way up, of course there's also a lot of hiss. The whole days sound was no good.
We finally deduced that the first ten minutes of the tape was faulty because we couldn't get it to record anything else in later tests. The mixer, the only new component added without being previously tested, probably wasn't compatible with the XLR adaptor even though the meter got a signal. The big lesson here is to always do a "tech check" when you add something new, whether it's a piece of equipment or a new cassette. Oh yeah, make sure you're wearing headphones and can hear the sound, duh.
The next day I explained our plight to the cast. They agreed to a reshoot on the fifth day and worked the entire three day weekend. After an extensive "tech check" we went ahead with our planned schedule. Once we got into a routine of checking and double checking our list of potential pitfalls, the rest of the shoot went well.
"The Gravitational Bed"
Author's notes: Can this marriage be saved? In this far out sci-fi case study, a sex therapist married to a multiple personality tries to solve their sexual problems by leaving earth on a special bed. Warning: couples experiencing similar sexual problems should not attempt this at home.
Starring: Bill Hill and Lucille Duncan.
Director / Videographer notes: I originally staged the play in a one hour rehearsal for a workshop reading at FirstStage. The whole play takes place on a bed so I decided to use the bed as a stage. A few weeks later the actors gave an (on book) performance for the Playwright's Express.
This was in anticipation of getting our camera which arrived on 5-28-99. I would shoot some tests and practice lighting for a couple of weeks then shoot the play. We set up the bed against a wall of my living room for the tests and shoot.
I've shot stills for over twenty five years, worked with world famous cinematographers and sophisticated professional cameras, even shot second camera on a few films. I was a little overwhelmed however, taking on the responsibilities of a Director of Photography without a camera assistant, gaffer, grip or any other technical help. I decided to shoot from only one direction so I would have one lighting set up for the whole piece.
For the key light I built a wall of foam core on the right to front side. I taped on extra ears to contain spill. I used a Lowel Light kit that has plates with adjustable sockets and adaptors that let you put barn doors on PARS. Five 500W PARS were clamped onto low C stands and angled up at the white cards for bounce.
For fill I used another white card, low 500W PAR, on the left-front. Backlight was a 300W PAR on the end of a C stand arm shoved into the corner and aimed directly at the actors.
That 3300 Watts of light in a 12'X12' area gave me an f 2.8, good enough for comedy lighting yet soft enough for a night interior.
Lights were plugged into powerblocks connected to extension cords routed to different circuits in various rooms throughout the house.
The practical fixtures on the set were four Chinese lanterns with 15W and 25W bulbs. The idea was to give just enough glow to feel like planets in space.
For the blue light sequence I used one 500W PAR with a snoot, blue gel and a tree branch to break up the light. For the wake-up sequence we switched on the powerblock of the main lighting set up to overpower the blue light.
The XL-1's white balance was set to tungsten for the entire shoot. Like many other folks, I was frustrated with the lack of focal length markings on the servo controlled lens and the inaccurate viewfinder. We now double check focus on our Sony monitor to avoid soft shots but I haven't figured out a way to control depth of field with that lens.
For the background we looked at wall size posters of the planets, they were too high contrast and there are copyright issues. We settled for a "navy blue" king size sheet and pinned it to the wall.
We shot the play over a weekend in two eight hour days.
"The Tent"
Author's notes: This comedy on schizophrenia is my first full length play. It was written when I was in college with Michel in the mid sixties, just as the boring "Father Knows Best" commuter college scene got increasingly far out due to well documented cultural factors way beyond any father's knowledge or control.
Michel, then a committed actor, requested that I write a full length play for his senior project. That play, "The Tent," reflects the sea of changes in our lives and the lives of our wild and crazy friends. Many were making radical career shifts while having nervous breakdowns. More and more of these young people were declaring they wanted to give up their "nine-to-five" ambitions to be full time "artists." I was included in that group.
Bucking that trend, "The Tent" focuses on a schizophrenic artist who thinks if he can find true love he can become normal. The part was written for Michel, who could really "play" crazy. The artist's circle of friends have their own selfish reasons for wanting him to stay creatively insane.
When the college drama department rejected "The Tent" as his senior project, Michel dropped out. He took it to practically every theatre in L.A. He got a production at the Angel's Company where the late Victor French championed it. A few weeks into rehearsal some of the cast had trouble relating to the play and us. "The Tent" was canceled before it opened which was probably fortunate since the Angel's Company was too "sane" to do it well.
Word travels fast. A few weeks later, Gene Shane, who ran the Fernwood Theatre in Hollywood, called and invited us to do "The Tent" at his theatre. Gene reasoned that, if we were kicked out of the Angel's Company, we must be his kind of people.
We became partners in the theatre and produced "The Tent" in 1966. Michel directed but didn't play the artist because of his life altering decision to quit acting. Roger Corman saw the show and asked Michel to be his Production Designer on "Bloody Mama." Shortly after Michel left for Arkansas locations the show closed. He always regretted not having the means to film that production.
In 1998 I spent a year rewriting "The Tent." It's happening now instead of the sixties and the story of love, madness, art and friendship has been more fully developed. It was given a staged reading at FirstStage in October '98.
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.