Brandon Rice
Distributed Producer
I like the line... "back to the ol' salt mine... got a quota to make"
COLD CALLS by John Whalen featuring Blanchard Ryan (OpenWater) & Ben Bailey (CashCab)
- Thread starter Jack Daniel Stanley
- Start date
Gord.T
Still "Senior Member"
Well let me expand on that a bit. Jack and crew were given a script to film and that they did and did it very well. It's nice to see fellow dvxusers from the scriptfest see their ideas come to life in the real world and in the fest. Jack took his own time to help shoot this as did everyone else.
So a huuuge thanks out to the dvx team for making this a great community.
So a huuuge thanks out to the dvx team for making this a great community.
Dick Campbell
Veteran
done very well, I thought. great photography, and a clever idea. leaves you a bit saying "why isn't this resolved?" wan't there a classic film with line that the call was coming from inside the house?
Jack, once again, you come around these parts to show us all how a movie is made. I must have watched CC ten times. Such great subtle camera moves and foley. The actors were amazing. Great fusion of suspense and comedy. There is also no surprise coming from you that the art direction was perfect.
When you catch things only after multiple viewings, I'd say you've succeeded in making an experience, not just a film. Watching CC, my normal movie watching technical critique mechanism is bypassed and delivered straight to the film fan in the back of my brain. That's when I know I've seen a good film. I experience it on a subconcious level.
Timur did an amazing job with the cinematography. Sound was perfect. Everything was no less than I would expect from a JDS film. Thanks for the free film school. Hopefully, I can steal something from you for my next movie.
Thanks for the continued views and comments all. :beer:
Mark I'll get to this later today. With some more in depth info for you.
I appreciate the question and think it could be an interesting discussion.
Yeah pretty much what Barry said, except for the scene in the closet, it was in the shot list which was posted a few pages back but I knew I was just going to cover it fairly standardly due to lack of space, nothing fancy, and that I would have to adapt once we got all the art direction etc. and big Ben in there. So given my other line producing hats I didn't see the point in storyboarding an over the shoulder on him, his medium close, a wide angle on her, her medium close, and then the hitchcock zoom, when all of that was gonna change once we had all the elements, so I just shot listed that sequence. I'll repost the shot list for you tomorrow along with some of the boards.
Sorry to not answer you and Mark tonight but I've been feeling a bit under the weather. :-KnockedOut(D
Xrayspecs
Active member
As the writer of the "Cold Calls" script, I figured I'd chime in here about some of the questions that have come up.
As Jack explained in a previous post, the ending is intended to be absurdist/off the wall/ridiculous. The kicker of story -- that the telemarketer is working in of Dana's closet -- is supposed to work on a couple of levels:
1) It's a goof on the old "When a Stranger Calls" Hollywood cliche. The stalker/caller always turns out to be calling from "inside the house."
2) It's also a comment on the invasiveness of telemarketers -- those guys who call you at home and try to sell you stuff. In this case, I thought it might be funny to take it to a crazy extreme: Tim the telemarketer is so invasive, he has literally set up shop in Dana's closet. That's the punchline. How he got into that closet is kind of beside the point.
Someone else asked about my involvement in the development of the final shooting script....
The script I wrote was pretty bare bones -- not a lot of description about mood, look and tone. Part of the reason for this was that when I wrote the the script earlier this year, I had intended to shoot it myself. Since I had a pretty good idea of how I wanted the short to look and feel, I kept the script description to a minimum. (In fact, I actually shot some test footage on a DVX100 with my wife as Dana, trying my best to emulate the slick look and fluid camera of the "When a Stranger Calls" remake trailer.) When Jack agreed to produce the script, he very kindly called me to grill me about what I had in mind in the way of style and tone. It turned out, we both had the same basic idea about the look and feel of the piece. Jack, of course, came up with all of the specific and clever ways to pull that off, which he's talked about elsewhere in this thread.
Jack also rightly decided that my dialog-heavy script needed a little visual massaging, and so he came up with the idea for a montage sequence, a series of short scenes showing Dana fielding increasingly absurd sales calls while doing stage business in various parts of the house (in the bathtub, in the garden, etc.). The idea was to show Dana's increasing frustration in a more cinematic fashion, one that would build up comic tension through quick cuts. Jack asked me to come up with a bunch of goofy sales pitch lines for that sequence. I sent him a batch and he picked his favorites. And then he added one of his own.
There were some other nice touches that Jack and company added to the mix, bits that weren't in the script: The little dog running across the kitchen floor, the vibrating doorknob (in the script I just described the heartbeat sound as getting louder when Dana passed the closet door), the ball hitting Tim in the head, and the detective's "flatulent bastard" line. That exchange between Dana and the detective in which the cop misconstrues Dana's comment about "exploding gas" to mean something else was the only major change of dialog that Jack made. And he was cool enough to run it by me first. I thought it funny, so I said go ahead and incorporate it into the short.
As Jack explained in a previous post, the ending is intended to be absurdist/off the wall/ridiculous. The kicker of story -- that the telemarketer is working in of Dana's closet -- is supposed to work on a couple of levels:
1) It's a goof on the old "When a Stranger Calls" Hollywood cliche. The stalker/caller always turns out to be calling from "inside the house."
2) It's also a comment on the invasiveness of telemarketers -- those guys who call you at home and try to sell you stuff. In this case, I thought it might be funny to take it to a crazy extreme: Tim the telemarketer is so invasive, he has literally set up shop in Dana's closet. That's the punchline. How he got into that closet is kind of beside the point.
Someone else asked about my involvement in the development of the final shooting script....
The script I wrote was pretty bare bones -- not a lot of description about mood, look and tone. Part of the reason for this was that when I wrote the the script earlier this year, I had intended to shoot it myself. Since I had a pretty good idea of how I wanted the short to look and feel, I kept the script description to a minimum. (In fact, I actually shot some test footage on a DVX100 with my wife as Dana, trying my best to emulate the slick look and fluid camera of the "When a Stranger Calls" remake trailer.) When Jack agreed to produce the script, he very kindly called me to grill me about what I had in mind in the way of style and tone. It turned out, we both had the same basic idea about the look and feel of the piece. Jack, of course, came up with all of the specific and clever ways to pull that off, which he's talked about elsewhere in this thread.
Jack also rightly decided that my dialog-heavy script needed a little visual massaging, and so he came up with the idea for a montage sequence, a series of short scenes showing Dana fielding increasingly absurd sales calls while doing stage business in various parts of the house (in the bathtub, in the garden, etc.). The idea was to show Dana's increasing frustration in a more cinematic fashion, one that would build up comic tension through quick cuts. Jack asked me to come up with a bunch of goofy sales pitch lines for that sequence. I sent him a batch and he picked his favorites. And then he added one of his own.
There were some other nice touches that Jack and company added to the mix, bits that weren't in the script: The little dog running across the kitchen floor, the vibrating doorknob (in the script I just described the heartbeat sound as getting louder when Dana passed the closet door), the ball hitting Tim in the head, and the detective's "flatulent bastard" line. That exchange between Dana and the detective in which the cop misconstrues Dana's comment about "exploding gas" to mean something else was the only major change of dialog that Jack made. And he was cool enough to run it by me first. I thought it funny, so I said go ahead and incorporate it into the short.
Geoff_R
Veteran
Jack, I throughly enjoyed the film. I don't think it falls into any specific genre and that's one of the things I enjoy the most from this. It's got a mixture of thriller, horror and comedic elements entangled together and it works.
I think it's shot extremely well; much more classical than some of your prior work. Good mixture of soft, subtle dolly along with strong, highlighting moves such as the rush forward in the tub and the quick profile pass when we realize the caller is in the house. That's my favorite shot of the fest so far... 4:38-4:41...
Speaking of that... some Q's.... that entire setup... very nice Very early Speilbergian' if I might say. It reminded me of E.T. You've got strong horizontal blue flares coming from the lamp (what lenses did you use?) and that fresnel in the closet is nice and hazy, yet subtle (did you use a fogger at all?) These are probably both Timur and Jack Q's and I'm very interested in hearing more about this setup and how it was lit. Beautifully executed...
Onwards...nice shot selection overall. I think this piece also highlights some solid growth in my opinion. Although I like some of your prior work better (18 seconds), this one feels much more cinematically precise that anything else you've done. It's very selective, very intentional. Each scene, each beat rather, is motivated nicely through shot selection. I think it's easy to piece together the beats of the story in the editing and it's something we all do at some points... But I feel like the majority of the beats here were constructed in a very deliberate fashion within the shots, on the set itself. Most importantly, this attention to detail is consistent throughout the film.
I think it's shot extremely well; much more classical than some of your prior work. Good mixture of soft, subtle dolly along with strong, highlighting moves such as the rush forward in the tub and the quick profile pass when we realize the caller is in the house. That's my favorite shot of the fest so far... 4:38-4:41...
Speaking of that... some Q's.... that entire setup... very nice
Very early Speilbergian' if I might say. It reminded me of E.T. You've got strong horizontal blue flares coming from the lamp (what lenses did you use?) and that fresnel in the closet is nice and hazy, yet subtle (did you use a fogger at all?) These are probably both Timur and Jack Q's and I'm very interested in hearing more about this setup and how it was lit. Beautifully executed...Onwards...nice shot selection overall. I think this piece also highlights some solid growth in my opinion. Although I like some of your prior work better (18 seconds), this one feels much more cinematically precise that anything else you've done. It's very selective, very intentional. Each scene, each beat rather, is motivated nicely through shot selection. I think it's easy to piece together the beats of the story in the editing and it's something we all do at some points... But I feel like the majority of the beats here were constructed in a very deliberate fashion within the shots, on the set itself. Most importantly, this attention to detail is consistent throughout the film.
Hey Geoff
The closet was 3 lights. 2 prolites w/ 216, and one 1k openface with tuff spun. nothing fancy, one light bounced off the ceiling as a toplight, one light bounced off the wall to the right as a rear edge, and the backlight/shaft of light coming out of the door on the wall behind her. the trick is to stage the lights behind her so the side of her body towrds camera stay dark, and it sells the effect that the closet isnt as bright as it is. the smoke helped soften it a bit, and gave a touch of diffusion as well.
That scene was shot with a 20mm a 35mm, 50mm and an 85mm...
The closet was 3 lights. 2 prolites w/ 216, and one 1k openface with tuff spun. nothing fancy, one light bounced off the ceiling as a toplight, one light bounced off the wall to the right as a rear edge, and the backlight/shaft of light coming out of the door on the wall behind her. the trick is to stage the lights behind her so the side of her body towrds camera stay dark, and it sells the effect that the closet isnt as bright as it is. the smoke helped soften it a bit, and gave a touch of diffusion as well.
That scene was shot with a 20mm a 35mm, 50mm and an 85mm...
I just watched "basic instinct" on Hulu last night www.hulu.com, ironically they just added it this week. (hulu is a site in the states you can watch tons of tv shows and movies for free) All the films are uncut but have limited commercial interuption. You have to sign up for an account for the films, not the t.v.
first thing, I forgot how incredibly hot Sharon Stone is in this film. Second, the cinematography is amazing and it is worth watching for that alone. Hudson should do one of his breakdowns for the interrogation scene.
first thing, I forgot how incredibly hot Sharon Stone is in this film. Second, the cinematography is amazing and it is worth watching for that alone. Hudson should do one of his breakdowns for the interrogation scene.
Geoff_R
Veteran
Thanks for the inside info. :thumbup:
Pawel Tomasz Dlugosz
New member
I’ve watched Cold Calls three times and each time I found myself loving it!
It’s not hard in this case to point out, what makes this such an enjoyable short.
A classic “When A Stranger Calls” setup given a modern fitting, flawless acting, great dialogue; my favorite - the telemarketers offers in the calling montage, smooth and even editing that doesn’t distract the viewer from the plot, choreography matched perfectly for Dana’s character, and of course the music which brings out the uncertainty and non-materialized fear until the last scene, all add up to the film’s core values. Obviously there are many more factors at play, but as always I’m having a hard time making my words catch up to my thoughts, so… an edit should follow up shortly. Hopefully.
Now, some random thoughts about “CC”:
I really like how the dog appears at the beginning of the film, and gives a little “grr”. After I’ve watched it for the second time, it made me think of all the frustration and trouble that the telemarketer will make Dana experience. And the first time, I thought of it as a warning for Dana.
DJ Hazard was a really great choice to star as a stone cold cop. He could freeze a glass of water with just one glance.
In the scene when Dana’s running through the corridor, we can hear the pounding of the heart… or at least that’s what we think it is at the moment. Then, as we have her opening the closet that she just passed, it turns out to be the sound of the ball bouncing of the wall, thrown by Tim. That just made me burst out in laughter! :laugh:
P.S.
Thank Goodness, my phone is on the “Do not call list”. But then again, I wouldn’t mind having Ben Bailey in my closet. That would definitely make me one of the cool kids on the block ;P
It’s not hard in this case to point out, what makes this such an enjoyable short.
A classic “When A Stranger Calls” setup given a modern fitting, flawless acting, great dialogue; my favorite - the telemarketers offers in the calling montage, smooth and even editing that doesn’t distract the viewer from the plot, choreography matched perfectly for Dana’s character, and of course the music which brings out the uncertainty and non-materialized fear until the last scene, all add up to the film’s core values. Obviously there are many more factors at play, but as always I’m having a hard time making my words catch up to my thoughts, so… an edit should follow up shortly. Hopefully.
Now, some random thoughts about “CC”:
I really like how the dog appears at the beginning of the film, and gives a little “grr”. After I’ve watched it for the second time, it made me think of all the frustration and trouble that the telemarketer will make Dana experience. And the first time, I thought of it as a warning for Dana.
DJ Hazard was a really great choice to star as a stone cold cop. He could freeze a glass of water with just one glance.
In the scene when Dana’s running through the corridor, we can hear the pounding of the heart… or at least that’s what we think it is at the moment. Then, as we have her opening the closet that she just passed, it turns out to be the sound of the ball bouncing of the wall, thrown by Tim. That just made me burst out in laughter! :laugh:
P.S.
Thank Goodness, my phone is on the “Do not call list”. But then again, I wouldn’t mind having Ben Bailey in my closet. That would definitely make me one of the cool kids on the block ;P
Adam J McKay
Veteran
okay, I really don't know if im freaking out or not. But I am 110 percent sure I have watched this film prior to this festival. I watched it with a friend and told him how it was going to end with the dude in the closet and all. Was this posted before? Was this part of the plan? I don't know whats going on.
This film was shot on OCT 13th, 14th, and 15th and not finished until the upload date.
Made expressly for this festival, and not screened before as that would be grounds for disqualification.
You have never seen this film before, except perhaps in your mind's eye.
There is, however, a logical reason for your feeling of Deja Vu, you've probably read it: (link)
Made expressly for this festival, and not screened before as that would be grounds for disqualification.
You have never seen this film before, except perhaps in your mind's eye.
There is, however, a logical reason for your feeling of Deja Vu, you've probably read it: (link)
Adam J McKay
Veteran
That must be it. That makes a lot of sense. I thought I was having a twilight fest moment of my own there, that or I was going completely insane.
Phew.
Phew.
:grin: :beer:Mark Johnson said:
Yes. But of the 35 or so productions I've directed for the stage only 2 or 3 were my own plays, the rest: some Shakespeare, some other classical, lots of non-premiere contemporary, and lots of New Plays developing the text wit the author. So my work is rooted in text analysis as I'm used to working with a 60 point checklist in grad school where we had to do 30 page documents on every play we directed and a 60 page thesis. So really looking at a text and breaking it down is an area where I have lots of formal training and experience. Eventually this would be applied to my work/writing on the front end, followed by a more intuitive middle, then applied again when I directed my own work. It's a very different process in theatre and film. In one form the playwright is t the top of the foodchain, in the other the director. In theater you could never say "we need a joke here, I'd like a montage sequence instead of this scene, lets get to the point sooner". No no. You can only say things like "what is it you were going for when you wrote .....? Ok, does that make sense with this? This part worked best for me. Here's where my interest lagged. Oh great playwright sir, or madam." So yes this is the first time I've directed another's screenplay, but I took the approach to the text as simmilar to the New Plays I've directed, and the note giving process was a combination of the way notes are given in my UCLA screenwriting classes and in my current online writer's group coupled with the way I would give notes to anyone I'm working with as a director: fairly directly.Mark Johnson said:
I don't know if I would say substantial, and yes John was certainly involved. I'd only take the text out of a writer's hands as a last resort. I think John alludes to most of this below but I think the revisions were something like:Mark Johnson said:
- I asked for the 1st act to be tightened as much as possible. I think we get a few phone calls and my notes were that they should state the crazy product, any story point, and move on very quickly. Since there is not a lot of plot or action in those first phone calls the script will feel stagnate if it takes us too long to get one simple idea - she's getting weird telemarketing calls over and over from the same guy. That's really all the 1st act needs to say.
- I asked that a fairly well written suspense scene where Tim calls again and Dana stares at the phone and the unknown caller I.D. but does not pick up, be replaced with a montage. I think initially the montage was something other than I was expecting, so since I was under a rush to get a script out to the name actors we were trying to get and had such a clear idea for the form of it, I sent a draft back to John with something liked "GARDENING -DANA: Hello, TIM: [FUNNY PRODUCT NAME], "WATCHING TV - TIM: [Funny Rebuttal]"and asked John to come up with a list of products, services and rebuttals that I could plug in for an early draft, again just to get to Blanchard and Ben so I could try to talk them into doing it. But the main point of the montage was to give a very fast 2nd act that quickly intensified her problem.
- I asked to amp up the funny in the detective scene. I felt at that point in the screenplay we needed a clear joke. I really dig John's sense of humor and I did always get a chuckle out of the early scenes, but felt here we needed to show our true stripes a little bit, and I wanted to push Det. Burton a little more into the world of Tim, so Dana, like Leslie Nelson in the Naked Gun Series/Scary Movie and Anna Faris in Scary Movie, would be the only normal one, sort of lost as to why everyone in her world was so loony. As written the scene was fairly functional with some cute bits about the detective flirting with Dana at the end.
- I think other than some tightening in the longer call in the bedroom, the more suspenseful cheese of the month club one, that's about it.
About the same. It's easier to do my own stuff. Barry as producer steps in as leading the development process as I have with Matt, only Barry is less hands on since I'm the director. Barry's quite good at development, BTW. But for now I prefer to do my own stuff because it's easier to get what I want so to speak - to clarify, John was super easy to work with, just I don't have to worry about offending myself if I want something ripped out and replaced. If I could find a feature script that blew me away and wasn't too expensive to produce, however, Barry and I would be shooting in right now. But we haven't found that yet so we are developing our own.Mark Johnson said:
Initially it was a struggle for me to figure out the initial tone of the piece. I knew that it took a hard turn, I think the script says, after "The calls are coming from inside the house", that when Dana runs into the hallway, that "We are suddenly in a slasher movie." So one could, theoretically do something completely different up to that point. But the more I thought about how some of the mundane things would play in thriller-drag the more I liked it. Since there was no indication of that in the script for the first three phone calls, I called John to discuss this and see if it was way off. My concern was stepping on any comedy, or taking away from the dry absurd dialogue that drove the screenplay so well on the page. As John mentioned, that had been what he was thinking all along. So beginning as a thriller would unify the piece some and give it a consistent style. The application of which would be basically to establish "thriller" with the opening music, and then maintain the camera style but back off on the music until we were in true thriller mode with the arrival of the detective. So after the opening music - thank goodness for the 9 second DVXuser leader, we had no underscoring for the first three phone calls that were more ordinary life, stasis not totally upset yet, phone calls, but maintained a smooth floating camera style of a slick thriller.
I did which one?
Maybe Ben improvised it.Here mostly I'd given the note about punching up some of the funny in the detective scene, had gone to bed and the next morning had an idea. Since we were moving close to needing to lock the script at that point, needing to get actors lines to memorize, I dashed it off to John with the clear instructions that he was under no obligation to use the tweaks I scripted in the Detective scene. But he liked them and didn't care where they came from so we ran with them. He was great to work with throughout the whole thing. A few things like tightening up the top etc, were improvements that John would have gotten to eventually. The rest of the notes I would say were more finding a place where his sensibilities and mine would more perfectly mesh in order to fully realize the material for this director, with these actors, and these resources, making this production at this time.
Brandon Rice
Distributed Producer
Jack, it was very interesting hearing about the collaboration on the script and production... thanks.
Barry_Green
Moderator
I think it was "shoes for penguins" or something, and if I'm right, yes that was one that Ben improvised.I did which one?