FEATURE: Hills Green

I give you guys a ton of credit for seeing the project through. So many talk, so few do, and of those who do, not all complete a feature.

I was somewhat curious about the shooting schedule. Two quotes:

"The first chunk of principal photography was 11 days on location up in the woods at the cabin that is featured in the film, and they were pretty packed days. We would shoot in probably 3-4 different locations a day. So it was pretty fast and furious when we were doing it, at least initially. The last two acts takes place during those 11 days, then we shot for 4 days in Toronto where the first act takes places."

So it sounds like 11 days for the last two acts and 4 days for the first act, for a total of 15 shooting days. The 11 days sound like they happened pretty much bunched up most of the time, since they were so packed.

Then there is this quote:

"we shot in the middle of September 2010, and shot on and off until February of 2011 with a couple of pickup days."

That is a bit confusing insofar as if the 11 days were pretty bunched up - assuming, over, say, two weeks or so? Of course, maybe that assumption is wrong! And then 4 days in Toronto plus a couple days of pickups. Does that mean you shot those 4 days in Toronto over a span of from September 2010 to February 2011? Those are pretty large breaks... no? Could you shed a bit more light on this? #confused.

Thanks for an interesting interview!
 
Thanks for checking out the article OldCorpse.

Yeah, my babbling was most probably confusing. Photography was so long ago, so I just went back into our production binder to double check.

We were on location in September for 11 days straight. Shooting 10 full days.
Then in October we shot the first act stuff in Toronto for 3 days.
Then there was a chunk in the script that called for winter, and it took until February 2011 to schedule/shoot that scene.
Then, after we were rough cut, we shot occasional pick ups all the way up until fall 2012.

Hope that clears things up!
 
Aah, yes, thanks - that explains it all! Amazing that you managed to hold it all together for that length of time... actors drift away, change their looks, stuff happens.

Complete side note - not necessarily a direct commentary on your film - I read this with interest:

"it’s very autobiographical. It’s sort of a dramatized take on our protracted courtship, to the point where a lot of the locations we shot at we were actually revisiting moments from our past. Obviously, it starts off based on us but then it has to go somewhere dramatically suitable for a feature."

You always hear "write (film, draw, compose) what you know". Here's a danger I found: it's hard to maintain artistic objectivity. You know, that teddy bear might mean a lot to you, but it doesn't to the audience, so that 1 minute shot of it works for you but nobody else. Those scenes which mean so much to you because of the context of your experiences, are not that interesting to outsiders. Extreme version: you know those endless stories you hear from new parents about their unique amazing child? Yeah, it's a bore to everyone else. Your dreams are interesting to you only, and everyone tunes it out when you go into recounts... and frankly, I found that my own dreams which I was so excited by when I was dreaming (thinking - "I must remember this to write down when I wake up, this is GOLD!!!"), upon awakening in the cold light of day transpire to be flat and idiotic (most of the time).

So when I read that a film is based on a relationship the director had, I worry - unless the director is into relationships with aliens/witches/mass murderers/amazons - about how interesting it might be.

Again - I don't know the first thing about your movie, so THIS IS NOT IN REFERENCE TO YOUR FILM - I was just curious to know if you sat back and considered "just how interesting this might be to an audience?". I know I would do so - but I tend to worry.

There is of course the other approach - Kubrick's. "I just pick what I find interesting and hope there are enough people who agree". But that is about stuff where he can have a bit of commonality with others, because it's about external stuff everybody has equal access to; a relationship, or personal internal experiences are deeply personal and subjective and people don't have equal access to it. Anybody can be interested in the Vietnam War and have access to it. But only YOU (and your partner) have access to your own relationship.

Another thing about "write what you know", or recounting personal experiences and autobiographical stuff - if you have an external journey, that is accessible to all, that's one thing: "How I escaped Auschwitz (cannibals, wolves, murderers etc.)" is one thing. But "my internal life and feelings in my relationship" is quite another.

You might say "but relationship movies are a staple of film!". And you would be quite right. But this is YOUR relationship. Can you be objective about what is interesting about it to an outsider? If you are shooting When Harry Met Sally, you are objective about a relationship, courtship etc.; but can you be about your very own, where perception is so strongly affected? If you co-director was not involved in the relationship, that might be an objective voice, but that's the other party to the relationship. Tricky.

Now, especially with a low-no-budget, you can say: I can do whatever I want, and people will either like it or not. Fair enough. But to me, shooting a feature is an opportunity to explore the craft, which includes trying to make it for an audience of outsiders, not just for my own private gratification.

Again, I don't mean that you did or didn't do this or that in your film. I'm just curious:

1)Did you worry about that aspect - objectivity and interest

2)Have conversations with your co-director about this

3)Took any special measures to work around that issue

Thanks again for the very interesting interview.
 
@OldCorpse While, I am looking forward to Ryan's response to your questions, I want to present my slightly different way of looking at things.

I grew up in a family full of writers (both screen and print) and artists among other disciplines. One of the ideas that was repeatedly presented was that it was not the subject itself that determined whether a given movie/story/painting/etc. was interesting or boring, but how it was handled or presented: it is about what the creators sell you on a particular moment or a particular way of thinking about or experiencing things. This is something that was also echoed by photographers and cinematographers later on (probably long before it was ever discussed in my family, but hey I didn't know about it. :)

Example: Look at the summaries for Runaway Bride and Pretty Woman. In both cases you have the same stars in a romantic movie about two people seemingly setup to be at odds with each other and how their relationship develops despite that. However, Pretty Woman was a movie that people latched onto while Runaway Bride didn't do as well and most of that was down to execution, not just premise.

Or look at the Thailand action films starring Tony-Jaa, for instance the Ong-Bak series. These films were marketed in large part based on the martial arts prowess of the star, but here are the basic premises of the three entries in the series.

- Film A: Hundreds of years ago, a boy in Thailand named Tien escapes repeated attempts on his life and increasing danger. He is raised by a band of warriors that train him in a variety of disciplines until he showcases a degree of mastery in all of them and begins to lead them into battle and seek revenge on those that orphaned him before things are left unresolved in a major conflict at the end of the film...

- Film B: After the setbacks at the end of film A, the protagonist is left broken and forced to rebuild himself. Meanwhile there is intrigue among the antagonists and a major power struggle takes place within the palace. The protagonist from film A faces the lead antagonist in a battle of the mind before they face each other in a decisive battle for control of the country and revenge.

- Film C: Many, many years later a young man with indirect ties to the protagonist in the first two films goes to reclaim a statue that has been stolen from his village by smugglers. He seeks the help of a wise-cracking con-man that used to live in his village in tracking the smugglers down. Then the film pretty transparently sets up one fight or stunt after another.

If you were to look at the subjets of those 3 films, which one would you guess got the best reviews? Now look up the reviews: Film A is Ong-Bak 2; Film B is Ong-Bak 3 and Film C is Ong-Bak. You'll notice that Ong-Bak, the original, is much better received despite being made on a fraction of the budget and having far lower production values (especially in the cinematography) and a less dramatic premise. The filmmaker simply did a much better job of selling us on the experience.
 
All true, Per, and I agree. What I'm talking about is not just the choice of the subject matter, but how your artistic judgment is affected by how close you are to the subject. Say, we take exactly the same story, but in one case you are looking at it as an outsider, and in the other you are deeply involved. I think you may end up with different movies, and in some cases, you might want to recuse yourself from the project as you can't trust yourself to look at things objectively and present them to the best effect.
 
@OldCorpse Potentially true, but at the same time I feel like sometimes it gives you a chance to make your audience "as crazy as you are". :)

For example, consider what you were saying earlier about people talking about their kids. Have you noticed that some people tell more interesting stories about their kids than others? I know a couple people that are so animated when they talk about the kids that it is almost like theatre and I get involved in the story even though I have no direct connection to it. And I know other people that tell me detail after detail while emphasizing the parts of the story that I'm least interested in. And of course there is the question of how interesting their voice is, etc. :)

So I guess I'm adding that even when you are very close to the subject, and it's the same subject, some people have a lot more skill at making it interesting for you than others.
 
Again, true, Per. That's why I didn't say "you shouldn't do it" - merely that it's a factor to consider. What I'm getting at is that in the kid/parents example, if I were the parent, I would ask myself: "am I sure that I will be able to tell my story in such a way that it's interesting to others - I am very close to the subject and my judgment is affected". Some people can separate themselves from the issue, some can't. For some, it never even occurs to them that there's even an issue.

In other words, I think there's an extra layer of concern about artistic judgment when you are filming something that's personal to you in a very deep way - it doesn't mean you should necessarily refrain from doing it, but I wonder if people feel that's something to even think about. FWIW, I know I would think about it. Curious to know what the OP did. Again, not saying he should've - shouldn't have - but I'm always interested in people's thoughts and how they reach decisions. Deciding to do a feature means you are going to spend a lot of time/effort/money on it, and you pick the project carefully - or at least some people do. But maybe I'm overthinking things - like I said, I tend to worry overmuch :)
 
@OldCorpse I think it's a legitimate issue and a great question and I genuinely am looking forward to hearing what Ryan's thoughts are. I guess what I meant is that I wouldn't treat it differently than something that was a little less personal.

Either way, I wouldn't say "can I tell this story in a way that is interesting to others" but more "what makes this story interesting to me and how can I communicate that to others?" I think you are right in that you can't take the shortcut of "something happened and it was important to me so it will be important to other people" but if you really look at why it was important to you, you can often sell that. I mean, Brad Bird at Pixar talked about how they didn't worry about making it interesting to an imagined audience - they worried about making Pixar movies interesting to Pixar, and they had high enough standards in doing that, that audiences could generally relate to it.

I mean, a lot of us spend so many years on the technical side of the craft so that (hopefully) we have it down so pat that we can have more of a focus on the artistry rather than the craft of what we are doing when the time comes. For each take or shot you can "feel" whether it is in or out of alignment and resonates or not on set... and then of course change your mind a million times in editing. ;)

I guess it also helps to be able to read people and tell if they are getting bored. If you are talking about something and you feel the people getting bored around you or you feel yourself getting bored, then you haven't found the core of the story. So I think it helps to be able to talk about the story or show pictures of the story or however else you want to express it in a way that engages people in it before you commit lots of resources to it. But I have no resume in features, so I'm hoping that Ryan's answer is more interesting. :)
 
First off, it's really cool that the film has sparked such an interesting discusion.
Thanks to both of you guys, really enjoyed reading your thoughts.

I'll try to explain/answer where we/I were coming from.

I subscribe to "write what you know" (when it comes to drama especially).
I believe if you can do that with honesty and courage, you're bound to strike a chord or two with your audience.

When it comes to how we chose to tell the story, we, frankly, came at it from a perspective not far off 'I can do whatever I want, and people will either like it or not.'
That is to say, we chose to style the film as a slow, sparse, moody portrait of a time in two peoples life.
It will bore some people, no question. But the few thousand dollars that we put into the film was our own and we had no delusions of creating a masterpiece and landing a huge deal.
Our goal was to make a film that would move people who could relate to it and, moving forward, have people a) be interested in what we could do next time given a few more resources and b) be interested in bringing us aboard their projects.

As far as it being autobiographical...
Firstly, I don't think a single plot point from the film actually happened in our lives.
Some scenarios are similar to things that happened, and we shot them where they happened, but the context and intentions of the characters are fictional.
I wanted to draw from our experiences and create a film about the feeling of unrequited love. I think it's pretty universal and relatable to many people.
Then again, lots of folks don't want to see a 70 minute art film about it and that's fine by us.

Krista and I spoke at length about the content of the film and where it came from while we were breaking the story.
But, at the end of the day it is a fictional work that we tried to imbue with emotion that came from a truthful place.
Our intention was never to pass off minute details of our lives as entertainment (as per your baby-stories analogy).


I'm sure I didn't address all your guys' curiosities, so let me know if you have more thoughts.
 
Thanks Ryan, that's helpful.

In terms of going into a little bit more detail, were there any specific decisions that the familiarity with the locations or "mood" of a given scene caused you to make? Did you ever think "I want it to look like memory X" or something like that? Or were there other less obvious ways in which the locations influenced you?

Or was it simply a case of "I was there once so I know a scene like this could happen in a place like that", that let you cut down on location scouting a bit? :)
 
Thanks! That's actually pretty similar to my thinking in one respect: if I finance my own (no-budget) movie, my freedom of expression increases exponentially - I am free to experiment and don't have to worry about answering to some studio executive or financier of some kind. That's a definite plus. The flip side of it is that I really do want to reach the audience.

I like another aspect of your thinking "I'm not looking for wild financial success or landing huge studio deals" - this is exactly what I've been saying to all the nay-sayers on these boards. We are realistic about this. Do it to learn, do it to experiment, do it to meet people of like mind, and if lucky and the film works, maybe it'll open a door or two. Perfect!

Now, despite my general skepticism about no-budget dramas, you've got me intrigued :)... I generally think it's easier to get to an audience with genre like horror/crime on zero-budget; drama is very risky, as is comedy on no-budget. But you guys seem to have thought about it deeply and that makes me cautiously optimistic. I'd like to check it out.

My worries about drama: acting is more demanding than in horror - and no-budget actors... you know the drill. Chemistry among actors is more important than in horror. Making scenes work is harder (in horror, you just stab someone and you can't help but have tension!). The challenge for horror/crime etc. is to do something new and fresh - watching yet another retread of the masked maniac is not going to make you stand out from the crowd. Here drama can have an advantage - easier to be original, not that there aren't cliches to avoid too.

I think I understand why you based this on stuff you know - bigger chances it'll be real, and audiences respond to real.

Did you rehearse with actors at all? Did you do table readings? Did you try to shoot scenes with stand-ins just to see how to light/block? How much of that kind of "dry-run preparation" did you guys do?
 
Per,

Our memories/experiences helped us come up with ideas for scenes and gave us the locations for them.
But what the characters were thinking/wanting out of those scenes was (most of the time) specific to fictional story we were telling.


OldCorpse,

You do seem to worry a lot, haha!

I totally agree that no budget drama is more difficult. And I'm sure not every scene in the film works (that'd be a miracle our first time out).
In horror if you have a couple good deaths and a sweet dvd cover people will rent it. Not so in drama. All there is is your story and actors.

My next film is horror and I can't wait to get started.

We didn't rehearse with the actors.
Save for the one scene we workshopped as our screentest during the casting process (which was cut from the film in the end).
We had meetings and emailed back and forth. They were sent character information and the treatment outlining the scenes.
I think workshopping some of the scenes would have been beneficial, but we simply didn't have the time.
We didn't have the male lead cast until the end of August.
One thing we did was, since they were both vegans, we sent them on a couple missions to hang out and shop for their own groceries to get comfortable with each other,
which really worked out well.

No table reads because there was no script. And no preblocking/shooting. The location was a three hour drive.
We spent a weekend location scouting in August, but a few of the locations were found the day of/before we filmed.
Lighting wise, we picked our time of day as carefully as we could.
Also, I couple of scenes were created on the spot when the right setting/light just materialized.


Hope this helps!
 
OldCorpse said:
You might say "but relationship movies are a staple of film!". And you would be quite right. But this is YOUR relationship. Can you be objective about what is interesting about it to an outsider? If you are shooting When Harry Met Sally, you are objective about a relationship, courtship etc.; but can you be about your very own, where perception is so strongly affected? If you co-director was not involved in the relationship, that might be an objective voice, but that's the other party to the relationship. Tricky.

Now, especially with a low-no-budget, you can say: I can do whatever I want, and people will either like it or not. Fair enough. But to me, shooting a feature is an opportunity to explore the craft, which includes trying to make it for an audience of outsiders, not just for my own private gratification.
Click to expand...

I feel like I'm saying the same thing in every post, so I don't know what my motivations are, but here are my thoughts.

There's a quote I like--"In every man exists the entire human condition." I believe that. I think any film about people should come from personal experience. That's what I want to watch. I wouldn't watch Bergman's films about relationships if he was just makin' that sh*t up.

Kubrick's mindset is also nice to hear. I hadn't heard him say that before. Fortunately he was courageous enough to make his self-indulgent cinema. It paid off, because clearly there was enough interest.
 
Thank you, Ryan for the comprehensive answers. Limitations are a reality in all filmmaking, and the lower the budget, the greater the limitations. It sounds like you made the most of what you had. I'll be following your progress... and don't forget to come here when you're ready to tackle your horror flick - you can blog about it as it's happening (time permitting) from conception to prepro and on throughout the process... it's interesting to other filmmakers here, and will be a nice document for you to look back on. I wish you a lot of success - or should I say, "continued success", because as I always say, merely completing a feature is already a huge accomplishment in the micro-budget world. Best of luck, and I'm looking forward to hearing more from you guys!
 
hunter richards said:
This looks like a lot of fun to make- You guys standing up on the golf says it all.
Click to expand...

Production was a lot of fun! But post production...


Drew Ott said:
I feel like I'm saying the same thing in every post, so I don't know what my motivations are, but here are my thoughts.

There's a quote I like--"In every man exists the entire human condition." I believe that. I think any film about people should come from personal experience. That's what I want to watch. I wouldn't watch Bergman's films about relationships if he was just makin' that sh*t up.

Kubrick's mindset is also nice to hear. I hadn't heard him say that before. Fortunately he was courageous enough to make his self-indulgent cinema. It paid off, because clearly there was enough interest.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the input Drew.


OldCorpse,

I will definitely start a thread for the new film. This time I'll start it from preproduction.
My plan is to shoot some teaser footage this summer or fall as a proof of concept and for crowdfunding/fundraising.
So keep an eye out!

Thanks again for the good conversation.
 
Hey GTA folks.

Just wanted to provide some info on our upcoming premiere incase anyone was interested.
The film will screen, preceded by a program of Canadian short films, on Monday June 24 at 8:00pm.
Ticket Info
Press Release

Thanks!
 
Hey Everyone. We are thrilled to announce that Hills Green will be released next month on iTunes!

10446997794_15c2754cf0_c.jpg


A huge thanks to everyone that has followed our film for the past three years! We learned so much making this first one and
can't wait to hear people's thoughts!

Thanks again!
 
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