SHORT: "On the Boulevard" production diary

The last piece of the puzzle fell into place these last couple of weeks. I had a composer who created a beautiful orchestral score, in less than 2 weeks (with various rounds of notes from me, poor fella). I had laid in a full temp track of source music from '40's soundtracks, and it gave him a solid direction to move in. The one track he couldn't quite land comes around the 2:00 mark on Dominique's entrance, I used Woody Herman's "Blue Flame" which is a kind of bump and grind, burlesque-esque big band number. Honestly, it would have been kind of a miracle if he did--emulating the sound of a period swing band with a keyboard is a tall order. I left the original track in place for the first set of screenings, but have been shopping around for a replacement. Scoured the rights-free catalogs, talked to my musician friends, even took a few swings at AI versions. Nothing sounded right and fit the vibe. Also, I had cut dialogue around the original track, making it that much harder to replace with something canned.

Thinking outside the box, I wondered if I could find a swing band that would be willing to record me a sound-alike track. I figured I'd have to go outside LA and New York to find folks who would appreciate the indie spirit of it all and help out. Having grown up in Boston and actually playing in a gigging swing orchestra in my high school days, I started there, and found a great organization called the Beantown Swing Orchestra that assembles gifted high school musicians to teach them classic big band swing. They agreed to help out, and shortly thereafter I arose at 7 am on a Sunday (due to time zone difference) to oversee the session via zoom. We emerged with a number of takes, and after a few hours of painstaking editing and shuffling things around, I had my new replacement track, with trumpet and clarinet solos landing just where I needed them between lines! A fun experience, nostalgic to re-live my teenage years musically, and finally I can say that the film is 100% done (and rights-free!)

Below, pic from my senior year of high school wearing the second-hand tux I wore to the swing band gigs on weekends.


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No real spoilers in my post below but it mentions certain story elements.

OK just watched, congrats Charles, what an awesome achievement.

It's hilarious, I actually lol'd massively after the boop in Macadamia and O'grady's staredown.

It's almost wall to wall but it all works. I'm sure it was tough progressing the story but not passing up any opportunities for punchlines. This does some pretty decent psychological work where you want the gags but also want to know what happens next.

It's really cool seeing the blend of old and new, not exclusively old style with gags that are trying to also fit in that era.

I assume you're a Leslie Nielsen fan, or at least fan of the naked gun writers. I just looked it up - the ZAZ writing trio. Their movies were before my time but I saw spy hard in the cinemas and remember thinking it was the funniest thing I'd ever seen.
 
I appreciate that assessment, Rob! Once I started writing, it became indeed apparent to me that the absurdist ZAZ style was emerging from the depths of my psyche, but it really is a pastiche of many styles of comedy I grew up on. Indeed, it was interesting trying to lean into the story aspect in the "third act" (if there was such a thing in a ten minute short) but I felt I needed to serve the noir theme, plus I liked establishing the gumshoe character as being somewhat bumbling and then allowing him to show some actual deductive skills (in comparison, Inspector Clouseau never seemed to figure anything out for the right reasons, he just lucked into it). I did have some moments of deliberation over the anachronism beats, breaking the fourth wall etc, but I'm glad I included them because it balances out the retro presentation of it all.
 
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Just had a chance to watch this—fantastic! Really funny and a great homage to noir tropes and styles. Well done, Charles! And thank you for sharing it here.
 
CharlesPapert said:
I appreciate that assessment, Rob! Once I started writing, it became indeed apparent to me that the absurdist ZAZ style was emerging from the depths of my psyche, but it really is a pastiche of many styles of comedy I grew up on. Indeed, it was interesting trying to lean into the story aspect in the "third act" (if there was such a thing in a ten minute short) but I felt I needed to serve the noir theme, plus I liked establishing the gumshoe character as being somewhat bumbling and then allowing him to show some actual deductive skills (in comparison, Inspector Clouseau never seemed to figure anything out for the right reasons, he just lucked into it). I did have some moments of deliberation over the anachronism beats, breaking the fourth wall etc, but I'm glad I included them because it balances out the retro presentation of it all.
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I guess the ZAZ style is itself a pastiche of styles too, so sort of hard to define. Wasn't meaning to box you into the single category though!
 
Thanks, drboffa!

Rob, no worries, I'm just appreciating any and all who watched and commented! It's fun to hear everyone's responses. And I'd be just as interested to hear criticisms as well!

Just got into our second festival, it will be screening at the TCL Chinese Theatre next month with the Golden State Film Festival. And now that I have that track replaced as I described a few posts back, I need to strike a new DCP. Fortunately I talked to the folks who did the first one and told them this would likely happen so they are going to give me a discount. If anyone has need of these services, it's dcpforall.com, they've done I think four DCP's for me at this point, they are very reasonable and fast turnaround, recommend!
 
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This was really interesting. I'd like to have more people do this exercise of a production diary. When I read your initial posts, they were of some interest. But after watching the movie, I had to read the diary over again and then it was so much more interesting because I could now understand what was behind the words.

The movie was right up my alley. I watch film noir constantly on an old movie channel. Same for the writing. My wife and I had a lot of laughs watching it. Well done! I don't know how you got all those shots done in that amount of time. Impressive. That was a real pile of work to prep and shoot. I'm exhausted just reading about it.

There is no way to DP/camera operator and be director. I did that once because my operator had to drop out. BIG mistake. Never again. It was a wise move not to attempt it.

I would have preferred higher ISO on the highlights (more contrast). The trend these days of having dark scenes low contrast really bugs me. Ahh, I'm old and stuck in the past.

Questions:
The foam core was for the back wall to shrink the room?
What do second camera assistants do?
Who was that in the background hiding their face? - Was that a Hitchcock cameo?
What's the difference between a set dresser and a set decorator?


My preference for highlights in film noir
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Paul F said:
There is no way to DP/camera operator and be director. I did that once because my operator had to drop out. BIG mistake. Never again. It was a wise move not to attempt it.
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I used to manage it back in my 20's (all three, along with producer) and had the ability to multi-task greater and had more energy. Not interested in that now. I recognized a while back that the more ways you split yourself on the day, the less attention you can give to any one task. On this I needed 100% focus on the material, the actors and keeping everything on track, and having to think about lighting would have burned me. I did direct the cameras though, but that still lives within the director's role, and it allowed my DP to be more efficient with his small G/E crew.
Paul F said:
I would have preferred higher ISO on the highlights (more contrast). The trend these days of having dark scenes low contrast really bugs me. Ahh, I'm old and stuck in the past.
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It's a fair point. I could have done more windowing to pop the actors when the contrast wasn't quite accurate to the period. I did make a few tiny concessions to a modern look and this was one of them. Generally there is something of a hot highlight present in the backlight, so I felt that covered things enough. But yes, the faces were sometimes about 1/2-2/3 of a stop down from where they might have been photographed back in the day.

Paul F said:
Questions:
The foam core was for the back wall to shrink the room?
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The back wall was true to life, although I added the curtains and "blinds" (layout board with Sharpie lines to simulate the blinds, which was also acting as a blackout since we had morning light coming up through the windows towards the end of the shoot). The foamcore pieces were a variety of objects that covered modern-looking things like touchscreen registers behind the bar (became cabinets), TV's on the wall (became "Brown Derby" signs), modern aluminum door, glass case etc. And all of the caricatures (replicas of those found in the old Brown Derby restaurants) were in some cases hiding decorative wall pieces.

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Paul F said:
What do second camera assistants do?
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Slating, running lenses to the 1sts (not applicable here, we used zooms) and general support. I only had one 2nd for the two cameras on the primary shoot, the second credit was for a small pickup unit I did subsequently (the exterior work with the car and some greenscreen elements).

Paul F said:
Who was that in the background hiding their face? - Was that a Hitchcock cameo?
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Ha! That was the same fella who played "the stiff", both he and the busboy were the producers of the festival who were there all night anyway, so I put them to use. The busboy also played the coroner. We were supposed to limit the number of people we had working on the shoot so this was how I got around it. On most of these Messhall films they throw crew in the background to populate the otherwise empty restaurant, I knew I couldn't do that because of the wardrobe complication so I had to get creative. Hiding his face for obvious reasons, but it also added a kind of fun mysterious vibe--one person related those wide shots to the Hopper painting of the diner.

Paul F said:
What's the difference between a set dresser and a set decorator?
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The set decorator is responsible for designing and ordering all of the dressing for a given set, from wall hangings to furnishings. The set dec department (including dressers) are the ones who place everything on the day, under the supervision of the decorator. In this instance, as I mentioned in the diary I designed and built all of those foamcore plugs and covers, but I consulted with my phenomenally talented decorator Julie Drach on the curtains and other elements, and on the day she oversaw the installation of everything to my specs while we were shooting greenscreen. In theory I was the production designer for the film, but there was only so many times I could appear in the credits so I just didn't list one.
Paul F said:
My preference for highlights in film noir
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Yes, that is a solid example. In my research I did see a fair amount of variation in contrast, some was lower key than this (The Third Man and Double Indemnity had a few such moments), it all depended on the cameraman.
 
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What was the motivation for the cell phone and swear words? I.e. , the rest of the movie stayed in the past style of dialog and technology.
 
There's also the V/O mention of buffalo wings being an anachronism, the drop into the colloquialisms when the gumshoe appears in his own imagined flashback "wassup?" "I'm not here, do your thing", and a few more subtle modern references. All of it in service to the individual jokes. As I learned on Key & Peele, when you set something up with a deep dive into the genre look and feel, it's (hopefully) that much funnier when you subsequently turn it upside down. Even the cuss words get laughs from audiences, probably because they are unexpected. It's not exactly scientific, but I did spend a lot of time thinking about how much of this breaking out of convention I could get away with before it overstayed its welcome.
 
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