"Death Suspects a Murder" Production Blog

[iMatt]

Written by Matthew S. Robinson “Death Suspects a Murder” or DSAM for short is a feature length film that the Pepperdine Film Society, my friends and myself are currently working on. DSAM is a neo noir murder mystery surrounding a string of murders taking place at the secluded Chaplin Christian College. Believed to be the work of a serial killer two LAPD detectives and a top level campus safety official must work to find the killer before s/he strikes again. That is just a little background on the film, the main purpose of this post is to blog about the ongoing production of DSAM. This will log my personal efforts and the work of others throughout the roughly 3 month production schedule of “Death Suspects a Murder”. As the writer of the movie and as one of the producers I will stick to mostly talking about what I know. Hopefully within the next few days both the director Jenn Marlis and the Director of Photography Robby DeVillez will join in blogging about their experiences on set. One thing I should make clear: My blog posts will feature NO SPOILERS! I wouldn’t want people to stop reading because they felt I would divulge too much information and I wouldn’t want too many people reading thinking this will spill major secrets. But enough formalities let’s talk DSAM.

On Friday November 18th I was a mess. I was running on just over an hour of sleep, I had work, school, a premiere for a sketch comedy show I work on (“The Randumb Show”), more work and the very next day the first day of shooting for DSAM. Talk about stress headache, it was a wild day and I just wanted to take a breath and sit down, but that was a luxury I could not afford: there was work to be done. DSAM had been in pre-production since basically May and it was now coming down to this. I still remember when Jenn and I had been talking about making a feature length film from the very start we were on the same page with all the major factors. The first being that we wanted to make something that wasn’t a comedy. The reason that is important is because this film was to be a Pepperdine Film Society production and Pepperdine in recent years has a reputation for most films being comedic in nature. There are of course certain exceptions like the beautiful “Eleven Eleven” but in a general sense it’s about the humor not the drama. And even “Eleven Eleven” is something I’d consider somewhat of a dramedy. So I was very happy to hear that we’d be going for more serious subject material than usual.

There were a few minor things Jenn and I had early differences on. I for example wanted the lead detective to be female or perhaps a male lead detective and female rookie cop for his partner. Jenn wanted two male detectives for the leads and honestly now it’s hard to imagine the same script with different genders for the characters. Everything seems to fit. Robby DeVillez a fellow Randumb Show producer quickly joined onto the project as well. Robby is a craftsman when it comes to cinematography and also has a keen sense of story and acting performances. I felt he was the obvious choice for the film’s director of photography and as a producer. Robby also contributed several key elements into the story including fashioning the killer and certain character motivations. It’s hard to find a director of photography you can truly trust. I’ve directed several short films and even one feature and I find that DPs can sometimes ruin the on set atmosphere. Directors, actors and DPs are by nature at risk for being the biggest divas on set. Maybe it’s a stereotype but you just don’t hear much about the audio master or key grip going on these huge rants/meltdowns on set. Maybe in private but rarely while shooting. So it was important to have a DP I could trust with the script I was writing and with the director. Jenn pretty much right away wanted to direct DSAM, after all it was her concept so it seemed right to have her at the helm. As a producer I have no problem stating that I feel everyone on crew is the right person for the job. The point being that a director and a DP have to work well together, and the DP can’t take over the project from the director and vice versa. DPs find the right shot, they create the image we see as an audience onscreen. The director makes sure the image is worth seeing. DPs can have huge egos at this level of filmmaking, and it’s hard for them not to. To compete at the Indy level you need good camerawork and a DP can supply that. A DP (and I write this with some hesitation) is somewhat indispensable once they have gotten on the project. All DPs have a certain distinct style and or signature. It’s nearly impossible to mimic so once you have your cinematographer you are pretty much stuck with him/her. Sure you can fire the DP and find a new one but that almost always means re shooting everything for consistency purposes. What makes Robby a great DP is his willingness to be a role player, focus on the task at hand and not let his ego get in the way on making a good scene come to life. It also helps that he’s probably one of the best cinematographers I know and a personal friend. Him being easy to work with is almost a bonus.

After the story was plotted out I began work on the script, it took me about 4 days to finish the 90 page script. I was on fire during those few days writing the final 60 pages within one rainy day in Cincinnati. Once the script was fine tuned in August we started looking for more crew members. Most people selected were Pepperdine Film Society members or were made members by their participation. The first additional producer brought onto the project was Michael Montgomery, having worked with him on “The Randumb Show” I know he’s a hard worker and I also value his opinion. Plus Montgomery is one of the few people I know who actually likes doing audio work on sets. And boy did we need audio on our first shoot, but I’ll get to that in a moment. Other producers were added throughout the course of pre production: Matthew Ontiveros who has shown a real passion for the craft and Whitney Coleman who also doubles as the productions’ stunt coordinator. For music the talented Houston Fry who works under Academy award winning composer Hans Zimmer also signed onto the project. Fry is just a joy to work with in every way. For any aspiring film maker you will learn that musicians and composers can be often difficult to deal with, luckily for me most of my recent experiences with composers have been positive. Fry is such a hard worker and his music sounds beautiful, I cannot wait for the complete soundtrack to finished. I’ll probably listen to it on my ipod for the rest of my life, and that’s the honest truth. Several other people joined the team but I’ll mention them at the appropriate times.

Casting was very important, this was actually the first time in my life I had proper auditions for movie roles. Up until this point I generally cast whoever I knew was available and fit the part to some degree in my mind. Now there were actual tryouts and it was a nerve wrecking but ultimately fun experience. Jenn Marlis and Robby DeVillez also led up the audition process. There were several occasions where I was alone with Robby or Jenn during the casting stage and it was interesting to hear their thoughts on each performer. Robby is very curt with his critiques, he rarely dances around what he really wants to say. Sometimes he even tosses diplomacy to the side for honesty, it’s a good trait to have when you are selecting actors. Especially actors that you know on a personal level. This made casting difficult, you have to eventually say “no” to someone you like perhaps even admire and not necessarily because they are bad actors, just not right for the part. But in the end everyone we chose for the characters I felt good about. There isn’t one link in the cast in my opinion and they truly seem to have a command over their performances.

So on Friday I’m sitting there at 10.30 at night with Robby and Jenn mulling over the first scene we will shoot, one of the first scenes of the movie. Without spoiling anything of importance it is the crime scene that is the starting point of the film’s plot. The detectives Chris Michaels and James Summers meet with head of campus security Rachel York and police photographer Jerry (we never gave the character of Jerry a last name feel free to make one up for him) as they try and piece together what happened to the murder victim. I personally wanted this to be one of the first scenes we shot because it sets the mood of the movie so well, it gives the actors and the crew some perspective. I feel in retrospect that it worked and that people have an idea of the movie’s tone. Still it was not an easy shoot, as I said it was 10:30pm and the next morning at 5:45am the crew had to report on set.

Some might say that having such an crack of dawn type shoot so early on in the production might hurt morale but I think the opposite is true. Try and do one of your most demanding sets first, that way your actors when they will probably be at the peak of freshness with the project will be motivated and afterwards any other shoot you do will seem like comparative child’s play. How many crew members or actors are truly going to complain about a 10am call time after a 6am one?

I left Jenn and Robby after discussing the scene a bit around 11:30pm I needed my sleep and I had to be there before anyone else making sure all the equipment was ready, thankfully the resourceful and very helpful Jessica White was there to help me with her big truck. Jessica is playing the role of a college student named Joanna Jordan in the film and was not in this scene but she came to help anyway as our make up woman, and even helped control the set by making sure foot and car traffic disrupted the set as few times as possible. She even got a tour to postpone viewing our area until we were done shooting. Something tells me Jessica could sell snow to an Eskimo if she wanted to. Everyone starts to show up and I learn that Robby and Jenn didn’t even go to sleep until 3am, I did not envy their positions at all. It was at that moment I was very happy to be a producer and not a director.

We had one problem that set us back when we started setting up the scene: the parking spaces. See I had reserved 3 parking spaces by the set because in the film the two detectives step out and then get back into their car. We needed those spots and despite campus safety clearly placing signs in front of the spots saying they were reserved for the film society some jerks still parked there. Thankfully the matter was resolved rather quickly but it still put us about an hour behind schedule. Which was fine as it allowed Whitney and Matthew to run and grab the coffee and food for the actors. Which they didn’t even get to eat until midway through the shoot. Oh well I suppose, next time they’ll have piping hot coffee not just the luke warm stuff.

The shoot went very well, Jessie Jolliff and Genevieve Smith were our set design team and worked hard to erase all tire marks and footprints on the muddy set for consistency reasons. You should have seen them go, they had a bucket, a push broom, a rake and they made miracles with them. I had to double as the assistant director/script supervisor on this particular shoot as our AD was already scheduled in advance to be out of town for this week, it wasn’t a big deal I had fun and I think I would have been bored just sitting around watching things happen. Though in a weird sense I’m looking forward to a shooting day where I get to do more of that. But of course that won’t happen I am naturally too concerned with every detail of the project to get lazy like that.

The actors all did a great job on set, I don’t want to mess with their game by making any comments too particular so I’ll just make a blanket statement and say they all acted with sincerity and really brought the characters to life. Two things I will say Mitchell Snow was directed brilliantly by Marlis to portray a sense of near fanboy nerdom towards Karl Andrews who plays Chris Michaels something when I wrote the script was not in mind, but it was such a good acting note that made an impactful difference in the character I much enjoyed. Poor Sam Smith had to lay on the cold ground on a 54 degree morning with a wind chill, it wasn’t like her clothes were very warming either. On top of that she had to deal with your literal garden variety of insects crawling around her and even a bee managed to pass away inside one of her shoes. Jessica did a fantastic job with her makeup, she truly looked dead and it’s harder than it sounds to play dead. The detectives especially when looking back at the dailies look like detectives and that is so important they blend so well together, Robby’s use of a color scheme makes a beautiful effect and he did it all while fighting the sun and with the help of Whitney compensated for the near constant lighting changes.

The only real major problem we kept running into was planes. I had gone out to this location the week before and written down all the times a plane would fly over. I figured it would be the same the next week give or take but I didn’t take into account that it was now the weekend leading into thanksgiving week or that when I first recorded the times it was on a particularly rainy day. Montgomery did his best but I know as one of the editors of this project I’m in for a real nightmare in the editing booth.

In the end everything worked out, we ended about an hour behind schedule, but since we didn’t get started until an hour behind schedule I’d almost consider it a wash, plus it was the 1st shoot things will get better and faster as time goes along and most of the shoots will be indoors which allows better control over the invariables. This is the A-team of Pepperdine, I am so excited to be working with all of them and I think DSAM will be a movie all of us will be proud of when complete. Stay tuned to this thread for more updates and also photos like the ones below:

Source: RFMP

[DramaShark]

Wow Matt you seem to have put a lot of work into this, I realy can't wait to see it! Your spoiler-free blog has definitely peaked my interest

[iMatt]

It’s taken me a long time to find some legit free time to write this latest installment of the DSAM production blog, and I hope you’ll find a few minutes to spare in order to read it. There have been 4 shooting dates since I last posted so there is a little to catch up on.

For Thanksgiving I went home to Cincinnati to see one my best friends get married. I stayed in my hometown a bit longer than the break and so I was on a plane when the 2nd shoot of DSAM ever took place. I was still doing a lot of producing work while in Cincinnati over the computer and one of the major issues was a very small crew and problems finding an appropriate location for the scene. Eventually Jenn Marlis, the director realized that we were in a frenzy for no reason and suggested her apartment right off campus for the shoot. Brilliant, one of those “why didn’t I think of that?” kind of moments. Anyway the shoot was set up though not having a key grip proved to be the most difficult issue. There was a lot of stress as I was miles above the earth in a plane waiting to land in L.A. I just wanted to know how the shoot was going, if all the cast and crew were comfortable, if everyone was getting along, how long was it all taking? All I could do was watch the Samuel L. Jackson version of “Shaft” which I had forgotten featured Christian Bale in it. Anyway the point is I was worried and I knew I wouldn’t know how the shoot had gone/was going until I landed in Los Angeles.

When I landed I knew I had a long day ahead, I had to take the public bus back to Pepperdine and if you have ever had to take the public bus in L.A. you know that involves a lot of smelling dried urine and avoiding awkward conversations about how the government wants to harvest fluid from our spines to feed a master alien race. (This is a real conversation I had on the bus in ’08.) When I got back I found out that problems with lighting had slowed down production but that the shoot was finished and that everything looked good. Again the key grip was not on hand for the shoot, thus proving how important every role is on set. I finally got to see the footage the following day and it looked real solid. Good performances from the actors and really well done cinematography and set design. A key set design note I wanted in the story had to be cut out due to lighting difficulties so that was slightly disappointing but in the end I was very satisfied with what I saw. I’ve already started mapping out an editing plan for DSAM so it is encouraging to see that everything is looking good.

While looking at the footage several things came to mind, the first being that shooting interrogation scenes can be challenging and I wasn’t even on set but I saw that Robby Devillez the cinematographer had to get creative with some of the shots. Of course he made everything look fantastic and without a true key grip to help him light everything. Jenn pointed out a problem that will need to fix when Haven Nutt’s character Savannah White is being questioned there is a digital radio and clock right next to her, the problem is that because of different cuts and multiple shots the clock changes time several times. It’s a small mistake but something that will constantly need to be tweaked. Via editing cleanup I might be able to hide it, perhaps even fix it. We’ll have to see but its one of those editing mistakes that once seen on screen cannot be unseen so I want to cover it up as much as possible.

The next shoot was that Saturday, it was going to be a long day we all knew that going into it. We were slated to shoot for 7 hours and that is asking a lot of people. (Was there a lunch break? Of course.) I expected cast and crew to be testing the levels of their patience but everyone seemed fine. Then again maybe they were just you know…acting….The point is everything appeared to be fine despite falling an hour behind due to some set issues, which I’ll get into later. Robby and I were grabbing all the equipment for the shoot which would have several inside and outside shoots which was going to require: light flags, c-stands, audio equipment, reflectors etc. So were carrying them up to the CCB when I receive a call from one of the actresses Samantha Smith she has shown up an hour before her call time and is asking if WE need help. What an awesome approach, its a shame it was her last day shooting its always so cool to have a performer on set who wants to go the extra mile for the cast and crew. In fact after Robby and myself made it onto set we found out she had brought the cast and crew donuts. Off to a good start for the shoot.

I can’t reveal everyone who was on set for the 1st shoot because of plot reasons but it went well and all the actors did a good job. We had to deal with some major wind issues but thankfully Michael Montgomery is our audio guy so I had little to worry about. Me and Jessie Jolliff one of the set/production design heads went down to the 2nd location to help get things set up. A recommendation to any indie filmmakers who are shooting multiple locations on one day: have some sort of 2nd unit. It makes everything go faster when you have a team no matter how small there to get everything prepped before the primary cast and crew.

For this particular scene we needed to create a classroom. Sounds easy when you’re shooting on a college campus, but it’s not that simple. You see we only had a limited amount of extras two of which were just passerbys who were kind enough to work with us. That meant we had to take a very large room with an overabundance of chairs and make it seem like a normal sized classroom. This was not easy for me and Jessie as we needed to also give Robby a good field for his camera work. We couldn’t reveal too much and yet also enclose the shoot so much it looked disproportionate. So Jessie decided the best thing to do would be to put the desks in a corner so that way the center of the shot would be the corner of the room thus making the room look smaller but also making it look like a more full classroom. It looks great on camera and when seen in the context of the film nobody in the audience (except perhaps the ones who have read this blog) will be the wiser.

Shooting this scene required a jib. Basically a piece of camera equipment that allows the camera to pan up/down/left/right in a smooth manner and also can allow it to dropped lower than most people can go and higher than most. Setting up for the scene proved to take longer than expected, as it became a little complicated to block, but Jenn worked with the actors until they had it down. A little side note about this scene: we decided to create a little story within a story involving two of the extras. Matthew Ontiveros our co-producer and Jessie Jolliff have been made into “the happy hipster couple.” I can’t exactly remember who came up with it. I feel Ontiveros and Jessie came up with the idea and then Jenn fleshed it out. In the script during a scene there is a specified happy couple that is seen. The idea is that these two extras will play that couple earlier in the film before we see them in their “big moment.” So Matt and Jessie can be seen now in several scenes progressing through meeting each other, dating and then becoming boyfriend and girlfriend. I have no idea how many people will actually pick up on it but it’s nice to widen the depth of this movie’s universe. Of course little plans like this and also needing to figure out some more complicated than expected blocking put us behind by about 45 minutes.

After lunch we all got to work shooting several scenes that are part of a montage. The hard thing about shooting a montage that takes place in multiple locations even though you have very little to shoot, you have to move around a lot and the actors need to keep changing costumes. Jessica and Samantha were fantastic with this, its a lot asking someone to change at least 4 different times in one day and asking that each outfit fit a different situation in time. They had perfect outfit choices for each scene and did a fantastic job acting. In one scene Jenn directed them to ask naturally and then Robby while only signaling to me recorded both Sam and Jessica without them knowing so they were joking with each other being natural and didn’t even know the camera was rolling. It looks great on film.

Another piece of advice for indie filmmakers that I cannot stress enough is to make sure that you have CONFIRMED extras. Extras apparently flake out more than dandruff on a dry scalp. Extras are hard to find but thankfully a few people actually did show up to help and for that I truly am grateful. But you can run into problems on a shoot that requires extras, because you can’t shoot the scene until people show up to fill in, and you can only use your crew as extras so many times.

So the time came to shoot a scene that took place in a movie theater, we went into our school’s auditorium and came across a mini-miracle. There were just people hanging out by the auditorium so we asked them to be in our movie and they agreed and the scene looks great because of it. Robby used a nice trick to create the feel of a movie theater and held up a LED light and with the help of Assistant director Nick Law flashed a thick light flag over the light to create the flicker effects a screen makes in a dark room. Jenn was of course directing the actors to act out a range of emotions. I really love that clip of the montage, not exactly sure why. But I love it.

At the end of it all the actresses had to shoot a really emotionally tough scene, when I wrote the script it was one of my favorites. I really wish I could reveal what went down, but I’ll just say that both Jessica and Samantha are tremendous actresses and I am so happy with their performances. As I stated in my last blog post I don’t like dissecting an actor’s performance too much while a movie is still going on, not unless I’m the director. Since I’m not I guess we will just have to wait until the DVD commentary for me to reveal my full thoughts.

The shoot ended up taking about 8 hours, something Jenn, Robby and myself were not happy about. We were about an hour overtime, we really wanted to knock down on all those long shoots, but hopefully we’d get better. The next day we had another shoot, that went….okay…the first scene went pretty darn well but the 2nd scene had a major blunder, and its 100% my fault it happened. See when I changed the shooting schedule I sent the new schedule to the actors but I never made it clear enough where scenes had been moved around. Or rather not clear enough, two of my actors just didn’t know it had been switched and so we had to cancel the rest of the shoot because they weren’t ready for it. Not their fault at all, they are top notch actors if they had known they would have nailed it I’m sure. But everything ended up working out, the crew was tired and so they had no problem with ending the shoot that day, maybe it all was for the best.

The next shooting date featured Will Bouton who plays radio shock jock Marty Edwards in the film. He really embodies the character and on our last shoot of the semester (but far from last shoot of the film) he had to really be unhinged and just filled with rage. Will really had a mark on this its hard for an actor to really just let loose and be angry while not going over the top but he did it. It was a small set, one that also required Jenn to be in the men’s bathroom so we had to have Nick Law stand guard on the usually empty bathroom so we could shoot everything. Jessie and Genevieve Smith did all the set design work and Genevieve also took photos for the scene that were very important to the plot. We ended the shoot 15 minutes ahead of schedule and so we all felt good, we had done a good scene and we had done it fast. Doesn’t get much better than that.

So that’s it for a while most likely, I’ll continue to keep you update once we start shooting again in January. Really looking forward to finishing this film, we also now have an official premiere date: Friday, April 6th. There will be a red carpet, suits, dresses, photographers, heck who knows what else?! I’m excited for it all! If you want to look at more photos from the shooting dates check out the gallery below and don’t forget to become a fan “Death Suspects a Murder” on its facebook page. More updates to come soon!

Source: RFMP

[King of Camelot]

this is awesome work man.. relly love this ^^