| | | | | There's Something for Everyone at This Year's LA Film Festival, (and especially for all of you)! |
| | The 2015 edition of the Los Angeles Film Festival is in full bloom, having kicked off a couple of days ago. LA's premiere film event goes until June 18th and is chock full of world premiere films, festival favorites, cult classics, panels, discussions, parties, and more.
Looking through the schedule, there are a number of films that look interesting and a couple that I can whole-heartedly recommend from Sundance, (don't miss The Dark Horse and The Overnight, both playing on Saturday; they are terrific!), but there is one film in the festival that I want to tell you a little more about: IN THE TREETOPS.
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| | | | In The Treetops Marks Bold Debut for Talented Newcomer Matthew Brown |
| No Budget Film School is proud every year to be one of the Participating Organizations for the LA Film Festival. This means that I get to host a film that I think will appeal to all of you. I work with the festival's marketing department to pick a no-budget feature that I think you will not only enjoy, but also learn something from, (this is No Budget Film School, after all!).
I got a sneak peak of the film I am hosting, In The Treetops, and had an opportunity to interview the film's young filmmaker Matthew Brown. I'm thrilled to be presenting this movie this year--I'm sure I will be looking back a few years from now and telling people, "I was there when Matthew Brown premiered his first feature." At 24 years old, Matthew is a talent to watch.
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| Matthew is graduating this year from the North Carolina School of the Arts, the same school that filmmakers like David Gordon Green and Jeff Nichols attended. He made In The Treetops during his Junior year, shooting the bulk of the film in 12 days in January 2014.
I've seen a lot of student films, having attended prestigious film school showcases for years and judged short film competitions. It seems that no matter how talented the filmmakers may be, often they look like they're trying to copy someone else's film--their favorite director, something the studios are making--rather than tell a unique story in a personal way.
The first thing that struck me about Matthew's film was how much it bucked this kind of filmmaking. From the very first frames, you could tell Matthew was going for something different. Shit, film students don't even usually make features. And it's not because of the cost, it's because of a fear of failure. Because it's really hard to make a good feature, especially when you're just starting out. The faculty, in fact, didn't have much to do with the film and there was a backlash among his peers. They were certain he wasn't going to get the performances. And frankly, this is where a film like this almost always fails. Student films from prestigious programs always get the technical stuff right, but the really hard stuff, the subtle, honest writing and the authentic acting, this is much harder. These kids aren't pulling from a huge pool of Los Angeles or New York based SAG actors. |
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Fortunately, North Carolina School of the Arts has a strong acting program, and Matthew, who also stars in the film, knew how to create an environment that was conducive to getting good performances. First, he spent plenty of time rehearsing. He also made the set a safe place, so there was no fear of failure. He knew what kinds of notes he responded to as an actor, so he was able to apply that thinking to his directing. But what probably worked best for adjusting what an actor was doing was to change what he, Matthew, was doing in the scene. About half of the dialogue was improvised, too, which meant that his young actors could voice these young characters accurately and naturally. And the first edit of the film was cut for performance, not structure or pacing.
Rather than tell a story about people he'd seen in other movies, stories with superficial action, like gunplay or martial arts, he chose to tell an incredibly personal and vulnerable story. He followed the mantra, "why are you the one telling this story?" If you can't answer that question, don't make this film. While the events in the film are fictional, the backstories of the characters are based on real people, friends or people he knew from high school. Matthew's character Will is based on his own backstory, and this is where the film really comes alive. If you've gone through the experiences Will goes through in the film--dealing with first love and rejection, an inability to express love or connect with deep emotions, opening up your heart for the first time--you will immediately relate to those feelings and situations. These moments aren't handled in a cliched way; they're handled very specifically and subtly. This is the mark of a talented filmmaker.
I asked Matthew who his influences were and the answer was not David Fincher or Christopher Nolan. Unsurprisingly, it was filmmakers like Cassavetes, Linklater, Truffaut and Bergman. This answer wasn't meant to be pretentious--he saw his first Cassavetes film and couldn't believe that other people liked this sort of thing, because he loved it. He's not interested in being cinematic and loud.
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The film was shot with a Blackmagic 2K Cinema Camera. Most of the film takes place at night and the image holds up incredibly well, considering the Blackmagic is not known to be a great low-light camera. They used the Neat Video plug-in in post to reduce the noise, which made a big difference. There are a number of car scenes and they used a variety of small LED lights to get those shots, even employing a sheet to bounce light off. They were pulled over a couple of times by cops for that one! The crew ranged from as many as 20 to as little as 4, and they all came from the university program.
One of the more impressive technical accomplishments in the film is the opening title sequence. A hauntingly beautiful dance of Christmas lights, the effect was obtained by shooting an old Hasbro Lite Brite using a combination of stop action photography and Photoshop. It took as much as one hour to get one second of footage, but the effect is spectacular.
Matthew test screened the film several times during the edit and always got the same note, that the first act felt slow. After trying to nip and tuck here and there, a faculty advisor, (who is also an LA-based producer), suggested he just cut out the opening 12 minutes of the film. Presto, that made all the difference, not only getting the movie going sooner but also eliminating unnecessary exposition, things that the audience eventually figures out for themselves through little revelations. This emphasizes an important point with these kinds of films--don't spoon feed the audience. Don't be afraid that the audience doesn't understand exactly what's going on at every minute. That keeps them leaning forward.
In The Treetops only plays one time during the festival and I encourage you to see it and meet Matthew Brown, who will be available for Q&A after the screening. In The Treetops is a moving, beautiful film of unusual maturity and introspection. It is also an outstanding example of no-budget filmmaking--a small story told very, very well. See it this Sunday at 6:45pm! |
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