[Fink on Filmmaking] The 48: On the Front Lines with Monolopolus Productions for 'Before Christmas'

photo credit: Monolopolus Productions / Tal Kissos

The 48 Hour Film Project is not for the faint of heart – nor those that are tittering on the edge of sickness as I found myself about a week ago. Luckily I was with, shall we say, loved ones – folks I’ve worked with before on the set of Ryan Monolopolus’ Before Christmas, which premiers tonight at 7PM at the Pierce Arrow Film & Arts Center (1685 Elmwood Avenue Buffalo NY).

I’ve been an outside observer on the 48 Hour Film project, blogging on behalf of my friends city producers J. Garrett Vorreuter and Rachel Stover for their social network/production company The FVC. I’ve always admired anyone who could put together a project in 48 Hours; typically the contest provides “teams” with a genre, prop, a line of dialogue, and a character they must incorporate into a 6-minute film. The “Holiday” edition, a new one this year, allows you to chose any genre or holiday while throwing in a line of dialogue, character and prop to the mix.

The process is as ungodly as Lars Van Trier’s Dogma 95, and damn nearly impossible especially as it does force one to jump start the creative process via a series of shortcuts (mine, as you’ll read on involved balling up in the fetal position on the floor of some stranger’s apartment and listening to the kind of music I normally have on while writing – Bruce Springsteen and the Gaslight Anthem).

Independent filmmaker involves a series of sometimes shady tactics that get the job done, short cuts that are necessary to get done what you set out to do on the tiniest of budgets – here time and money were the enemies. The 48 Hour Film Project is a trial by fire, but like all productions good planning makes all the difference.

Ryan Monolopolus is above all an assembler of good people – he has a co-producer credit on Brandonwood, my first feature film because he would frequently feed us crew members “you need someone tomorrow, give me an hour – I’ll should have three guys calling you”. With Before Christmas, this was key along his production manager Jeremy Cournyea, who assembled a 20-person team of various units – a meeting two nights before we started almost buckled the floor of the Monolopolus’ home.

Without giving away Ryan’s secrets certain elements including locations had been planned, I was brought in as the co-writer and helping hand – working on the creative side of the project, in essence to ensure the quality was present on the performance/delivery end and especially the dialogue. This was actually increasingly difficult given the technical considerations of the project – our lead was a Muppet-style puppet performed by Cameron Garrity.

So – to review – 20+ people on set, puppets, unknown elements given at a meeting on Friday night, I’m sick and miserable prior to shot one (without having had time to stop at Starbucks for my daily earl grey tea latte) and it’s go time. While we’re getting our matching orders folks have already left their homes in route to our first location – The Market in the Square own in West Seneca for 7PM – the old man goes shopping, alone – really for no other reason than this scene will work in any context.

I head over, after a trip to Starbucks and another stop at the GNC next door for anything that’ll keep me up (after of course downloading the inspiring Icona Pop song “All Night” which is played about 40 times this weekend). We go slightly over Jeremy’s schedule getting the shots right – here’s where I should note one the hardest things to do is to keep two people in focus while dolling – here we had to make a puppet look realistic.

The next set was down at UB for a wide shot that may or many not have worked as well as intended – but I think made the cutting room floor. After a data dump (here’s where things get tricky – Ryan and team decided to in list an editor in NYC to work on the assembly cut – sending out files via UB’s high speed internet) we headed to our second location for a writing meeting – from 1AM to call time (3AM).

After a nap, the set was quickly dressed by a team lead Emily Pumm (many of the folks on this team worked on Dien Vo’s Let The Have It Their Way) with the assistance of Britt Tirabassi – also an undergrad at DMS. Ryan, who I’m convinced doesn’t sleep  - and I sat up planning how we’d incorporates the elements of we were given along with new dialogue that would move the story forward based on the rough outline Ryan conjured up. The story had been intended to be a Krzysztof Kieslowski-style Christmas film in the lonely landscape of Main Street Buffalo – a zone that’s dead really anytime of day save for the Hyatt (which thankfully didn’t mind us using their bathrooms).

And here’s is where I went to work – we had a short period of silence (every time I closed my eyes Ryan would talk to me, Gitmo ought to hire him to torture Al-Qaeda) – and I balled up into a corner with a note pad sprawling down ideas from music that typically inspires me choosing Bruce Springsteen and Gaslight Anthem. The ideas did flow eventually and I returned to my MacBook and final draft to bang out the rest of the script including stuff that would be shot in 12 hours downtown Buffalo.

The apartment stuff was brutal – 20 folks cramped into a decent sized apartment shared by 3 college folks who were more than accommodating. At this point an all nighter was rare – I’ve pulled an all nighter exactly three times in my life: once was prom night where it wasn’t worth it to go to sleep (we were getting on a bus the next morning at 6AM – I stayed up watching episodes of Perfect Strangers on TVLand), the second time was more recently when I had experienced a quazi-heart break and couldn’t go to sleep – instead I stayed up all night and then saw Anna Karenina to cheer myself up, the last incident where I stayed up late was thanks to fitness supplements that I took way too late and paid the price.


I passed out and eventually had to get some sleep – I was sick after all – and headed back to my apartment at 7:30AM, in bed by 8 I spelt till 1PM – I still had the script to finish and I needed to focus on getting healthy. I decided after finishing the script in a half hour to go have a smoothie, a message and a big lunch (I took a lot of flack especially from sound recorder and one of my good friends Michael Bouquard). Back on set we finished various sequences efficiently moving throughout downtown Buffalo in a way that I think those that know downtown will appreciate.

This of course is a little absurd – considering on the day we began I had to see The Best Man Holiday for The Film Stage, which features Ralph Wilson Stadium in Orchard Park, NY filling in for the Meadowlands. In fact they morphed the Empire State Building in the background of what would be suburban Western New York. Details, baby, details – the results I think were impressive – featuring a good chunk of Main Street highlighting and really using the abandoned landscape of a city that’s too large for its population.

This is the great thing about making films in Western New York: part of the story that’s not told as well it should be is the availability of many looks within a 20-minute drive of each other. From abandoned downtowns to affluent suburbs, beaches, cornfields, malls – - America, baby. Before Christmas, which I haven’t seen (I wasn’t required to be around to edit on Sunday – instead I slept in and spent 3 ½ hours in a dark movie theater – ie: heaven, seeing Oliver Stone’s JFK on the big screen) – was perhaps the most ambitious undertaking I’ve been apart of. With that said – you should come see it tonight.

Before Christmas premiers tonight as part of the 48-Hour Film Project, Holiday Edition

7PM
Pierce-Arrow Film & Arts Center
1685 Elmwood Avenue  Buffalo NY