Experience Magazine 2010/2011 : Page 29
Sundance by the sea Forget “independent” film. In Portsmouth, the film community is all about collaboration, with some award-winning results. We tag along as a team makes an entire movie in a weekend for the 48 Hour Film Project’s International Shootout. By SCoTT Mclennan The December weekend was a flurry of activity from the first plotline idea to the final “cut” for the zombie thriller. ExPERIENCE 29 ralpH morang
Sundance By The Sea
Crafting scenes and dialogue. Techies tallied cameras, lights, and sound gear.
Actors and actresses ran through lines.
Wardrobe, prop, and makeup experts consulted with directors. A producer fastidiously kept track of the progress as there was no time to waste making this film.
After all, these moviemakers only had two days to write, shoot, and edit an eight-minute film. Roughly 75 people, collectively calling themselves Pineapple Pictures, convened at Hatchling Studios in Portsmouth one weekend last December for the International Shootout of the 48 Hour Film Project. This was actually a follow-up competition in this line of projects that tasked filmmakers with making a movie in just one weekend – the core group had been recognized with an award in June’s national competition. The prize? Move on to go head to head with 54 other teams spread around the world during the International Shootout.
Mining from a wealth of New Hampshire talent – from actors and musicians to camera operators and video editors – the group covered a broad spectrum of experience. One woman worked on the production crew of the TV drama The West Wing.
Lyons of Hatchling Studios and Chase Bailey of Left Bank Films, is producing award-winning independent films of all stripes, from animated comedies, to thrillers, to serious documentaries. But although the movies are independent in the sense that they’re being produced outside major production studios, they are anything but independently made.
Awaiting the 48 Hour assignment, Dole, Lyons, and Bailey began organizing writers, actors, musicians, and production crews. Those who wanted to be in front of the cameras would meet in a small office with Dole and Bailey to do cold readings of practice scripts; those who would be handling the cameras coordinated gear and talked shop. When the assignment – tasking the team to produce something about “the end of the world” – arrived at about 7 p.m., everyone, regardless of a particular artistic discipline, sat in a circle and took part in the brainstorming. Dole watched as the ideas were typed into a computer and flashed from a projector on to a wall in the loft where the group was working. The list grew with funny ideas, somber ideas, ironic ideas. And zombies. Lots of zombies.
As CEO of Hatchling, Dole naturally had a headlining role in Pineapple Pictures as team leader. A little on the shaggy side and accustomed to wearing comfort clothes à la laceless slip-on sneakers and jeans, Dole lets no such casualness slip into his work. His Mito-Kids, for instance, a documentary that puts a very human face to mitochondrial disease, was one of two films that received much of the attention during the New Hampshire Film Festival last year. The other highly praised film, Crooked Lane, was another Portsmouth-based production by Bailey’s Left Bank Films. And it’s no accident that these projects benefited from a shared pool of talent.
Take, for example, Dole’s Mito-Kids, which reached a point where it needed someone to keep the many new pieces to the project all working and organized.
That’s when Karlina Lyons came in to coproduce the documentary. Like many in the Portsmouth film community, she learned and worked in the media capitals of Los Angeles and New York City. Lyons made her home in New Hampshire after wrapping up her long-running work with.
Sesame Workshop, developing children’s television programming for overseas markets. “Technology has made it possible to work just about anywhere,” Lyons said. “But I found this amazing concentration of skill and talent here.
It fits in with the vibe of the Seacoast.
There are a lot of creative minds, artistic minds, nurturing the arts.” Whenever members of Team Pineapple assembled, Lyons invariably was the shortest player in the scrum – yet easily noticeable for her tousle of auburn hair and commanding presence. Not that Lyons was overbearing, but she clearly is not to be messed with or knocked off track when running a production. During the 48 Hour challenge, she marshaled the troops, kept the communication flowing, and even snapped the director back into focus when he was tempted to drift off task. (“Marc, Marc, that is very good and very important, but let’s get this done first,” she said.)
Bailey – a gregarious James Coburn lookalike – pulled local talent as well,Including Dole, to help produce and edit Crooked Lane. But he also enlisted some Hollywood-based staff, like producers who had worked on Being JohnMalkovich and Finding Neverland and actors like Ann Cusack from A League of Their Own and Brett Cullen of Lost. The big names weren’t a coup for Bailey; hisResume includes work on The Libertine with Johnny Depp and The Life Before Her Eyes with Uma Thurman, among others. He likes to stay connected to one big-budget feature-length film a year, yet he enjoys smaller projects closer to home just the same, something those trying to get a toe-hold into the industry through the 48 Hour project couldn’t complain about. “Come on, just to cold-read lines in front of him is pretty amazing,” one nervous auditioning actor admitted.
Katie Ennis falls in that category. Two years out of Boston University film school, she has worked on the set of Ugly Betty and was a production assistant on films that Hollywood studios were shooting in New England with Brendan Fraser and Tom Cruise. But before any of that happened, Ennis simply went to the New Hampshire Film Festival looking for a break. “I just wanted to meet people,” she recalled. And before long she fell into the Seacoast scene, cataloging video for Mito-Kids, working on the set of Crooked Lane, and jumping into an early round of.
The 48 Hour Film Project with a team of her own. “Working in New Hampshire let me wear a lot of hats and meet a lot of people,” she said.
And many of those people she met were together for the second round of 48 Hour action.
“I like the office of death, and maybe something with the four horsemen of the apocalypse,” Dole told his brainstorming team in a relaxed tone that belied the fact that the project was rolling into its second hour without a solid idea to play with.
By the third hour, however, two scripts were not only in production, but solid enough to give prop and wardrobe mavens a list of tasks. (“Hey Karlina, do you have a human skull at your place?” one inquiring mind wanted to know.)
By the seventh hour, a full script for The Bureau was done and available to all members of the team. Before sun-up, an assistant director had call sheets prepared for cast and crew. To make sure there were enough dead souls to overwhelm the office of death, team members reached out to anyone they knew who might like to be dead on screen. One “soul” showed up from Connecticut.
After the project was submitted on deadline, high-tech high-fives rifled among the team via congratulatory e-mails, many accompanied with messages of wanting to strengthen whatever working relationships took root that wild weekend. In the end, Pineapple Pictures didn’t win an award for The Bureau, but that hardly seemed the point to the heavies running the show like Bailey and Dole and helpers like Chris Murphy. Murphy runs a commercial video studio in East Kingston and was dropping off camera gear for the production.
Before leaving, he became a member of the team. And was honored to do so.
“I’ve worked in LA three times.
There’s a lot of work out there, but not a sense of being part of a creative community,” Murphy said. “Here the community aspect is so important. You feel like something is happening here.”
Another was a card-carrying member of the Screen Actors Guild. A third was a newbie anxious to learn the ropes as a catch-all production assistant. The one thing everyone in the room shared was a willingness to check egos at the door and pull together as a team for the sake of making as good of a movie as possible.
Thanks to some hefty tax breaks, Massachusetts has begun to build a reputation as “Hollywood East” for its ability to lure big studio productions into the state. Just across the border in New Hampshire, though, especially around the Portsmouth area, a scene is taking hold that one is tempted to call “Sundance East.” The Seacoast network of filmmakers, which includes Portsmouthbased icons like Marc Dole and Karlina .
Lyons of Hatchling Studios and Chase Bailey of Left Bank Films, is producing award-winning independent films of all stripes, from animated comedies, to thrillers, to serious documentaries. But although the movies are independent in the sense that they’re being produced outside major production studios, they are anything but independently made.
Awaiting the 48 Hour assignment, Dole, Lyons, and Bailey began organizing writers, actors, musicians, and production crews. Those who wanted to be in front of the cameras would meet in a small office with Dole and Bailey to do cold readings of practice scripts; those who would be handling the cameras coordinated gear and talked shop. When the assignment – tasking the team to produce something about “the end of the world” – arrived at about 7 p.m., everyone, regardless of a particular artistic discipline, sat in a circle and took part in the brainstorming. Dole watched as the ideas were typed into a computer and flashed from a projector on to a wall in the loft where the group was working. The list grew with funny ideas, somber ideas, ironic ideas. And zombies. Lots of zombies.
As CEO of Hatchling, Dole naturally had a headlining role in Pineapple Pictures as team leader. A little on the shaggy side and accustomed to wearing comfort clothes à la laceless slip-on sneakers and jeans, Dole lets no such casualness slip into his work. His Mito-Kids, for instance, a documentary that puts a very human face to mitochondrial disease, was one of two films that received much of the attention during the New Hampshire Film Festival last year. The other highly praised film, Crooked Lane, was another Portsmouth-based production by Bailey’s Left Bank Films. And it’s no accident that these projects benefited from a shared pool of talent.
Take, for example, Dole’s Mito-Kids, which reached a point where it needed someone to keep the many new pieces to the project all working and organized.
That’s when Karlina Lyons came in to coproduce the documentary. Like many in the Portsmouth film community, she learned and worked in the media capitals of Los Angeles and New York City. Lyons made her home in New Hampshire after wrapping up her long-running work with.
Sesame Workshop, developing children’s television programming for overseas markets. “Technology has made it possible to work just about anywhere,” Lyons said. “But I found this amazing concentration of skill and talent here.
It fits in with the vibe of the Seacoast.
There are a lot of creative minds, artistic minds, nurturing the arts.” Whenever members of Team Pineapple assembled, Lyons invariably was the shortest player in the scrum – yet easily noticeable for her tousle of auburn hair and commanding presence. Not that Lyons was overbearing, but she clearly is not to be messed with or knocked off track when running a production. During the 48 Hour challenge, she marshaled the troops, kept the communication flowing, and even snapped the director back into focus when he was tempted to drift off task. (“Marc, Marc, that is very good and very important, but let’s get this done first,” she said.)
Bailey – a gregarious James Coburn lookalike – pulled local talent as well, including Dole, to help produce and edit Crooked Lane. But he also enlisted some Hollywood-based staff, like producers who had worked on Being JohnMalkovich and Finding Neverland and actors like Ann Cusack from A League of Their Own and Brett Cullen of Lost. The big names weren’t a coup for Bailey; his resume includes work on The Libertine with Johnny Depp and The Life Before Her Eyes with Uma Thurman, among others. He likes to stay connected to one big-budget feature-length film a year, yet he enjoys smaller projects closer to home just the same, something those trying to get a toe-hold into the industry through the 48 Hour project couldn’t complain about. “Come on, just to cold-read lines in front of him is pretty amazing,” one nervous auditioning actor admitted.
Katie Ennis falls in that category. Two years out of Boston University film school, she has worked on the set of Ugly Betty and was a production assistant on films that Hollywood studios were shooting in New England with Brendan Fraser and Tom Cruise. But before any of that happened, Ennis simply went to the New Hampshire Film Festival looking for a break. “I just wanted to meet people,” she recalled. And before long she fell into the Seacoast scene, cataloging video for Mito-Kids, working on the set of Crooked Lane, and jumping into an early round of.
The 48 Hour Film Project with a team of her own. “Working in New Hampshire let me wear a lot of hats and meet a lot of people,” she said.
And many of those people she met were together for the second round of 48 Hour action.
“I like the office of death, and maybe something with the four horsemen of the apocalypse,” Dole told his brainstorming team in a relaxed tone that belied the fact that the project was rolling into its second hour without a solid idea to play with.
By the third hour, however, two scripts were not only in production, but solid enough to give prop and wardrobe mavens a list of tasks. (“Hey Karlina, do you have a human skull at your place?” one inquiring mind wanted to know.)
By the seventh hour, a full script for The Bureau was done and available to all members of the team. Before sun-up, an assistant director had call sheets prepared for cast and crew. To make sure there were enough dead souls to overwhelm the office of death, team members reached out to anyone they knew who might like to be dead on screen. One “soul” showed up from Connecticut.
After the project was submitted on deadline, high-tech high-fives rifled among the team via congratulatory e-mails, many accompanied with messages of wanting to strengthen whatever working relationships took root that wild weekend. In the end, Pineapple Pictures didn’t win an award for The Bureau, but that hardly seemed the point to the heavies running the show like Bailey and Dole and helpers like Chris Murphy. Murphy runs a commercial video studio in East Kingston and was dropping off camera gear for the production.
Before leaving, he became a member of the team. And was honored to do so.
“I’ve worked in LA three times.
There’s a lot of work out there, but not a sense of being part of a creative community,” Murphy said. “Here the community aspect is so important. You feel like something is happening here.
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