My Film Shoot Dissected...

So yeah, my latest short film. As I mentioned below, it's called The Haircut and it's about a lonely old barber who suddenly finds himself having to entertain a bald guy- who insists on having a haircut. It's a surreal comedy about how some people take "the customer is always right" credo a little too seriously. For this semester I wanted to achieve two things- first to do a light hearted piece because my last film Blinding made my sisters cry and I still feel guilty about that. Second, I wanted to shoot on Super 16mm film, despite my Uni's insistence that I shoot on DV. They claim that "Digital is the future, so you shouldn't be bothering with film anymore." Which is really a nice way of saying "we can't afford to give you any film stock and we have no decent 16mm cameras available so go shoot on our MiniDV cameras instead." My view was: "if I'm in what you call FILM school, then I'm gonna go and shoot something on film before I graduate." And so off I went. Such a rebel.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm all for the digital revolution. I'm convinced it's only a matter of time before HD finally achieves the same luster and latitude that film has, and that it should eventually become available on even the simplest of cameras and laptops. A lot of people scoff at Robert Rodriguez's claim that "film is dead" but I'm not one of them. I truly believe that digital is opening the door for a slew of hungry young filmmakers who would never have been able to shoot on a medium as expensive as film. But at the same time there's just something magical about negative stock, the realness of it, that I appreciate. While I love how Peter Jackson uses digital tech to create Middle Earth, I'm also a huge fan of the Jim Henson live action puppetry in Labyrinth. And for all it's worth, watch the Hoth and Dagobah planet scenes in Empire Strikes Back or the Daily Planet sequences in the original Superman movie. I've still yet to see CG backgrounds that can match the textures of those hand built sets.

Okay enough fence sitting. Here's how I shot my very first Super 16 film:

Knowing the insane costs of film stock these days I set out to write a story that wouldn't be too complicated, something set in one location, with minimal setups and just a couple of actors. I know it sucks developing a story based on available resources but that's how indies go. So instead of writing a film that takes place on top of the Harbour Bridge with dozens of sweet helicopter 360 shots of the hero waving the Aussie flag, I chose to set the story in a barbershop. Mel then gave me the idea: "What if a bald guy just walked in, asked for a haircut, and left?" Perfect.

(Mel is really great at coming up with scenarios for short films. She'll come up with a cool concept, then lets me sweat and lactate in excitement as I develop the idea into a script. She then does the things I hate the most- looks for money, makes phone calls, books gear- while I do the things she hates- audition actors, work on the script, brood in a corner exploring pretentious themes which eventually get edited out.)

With the script set, we set out to find a barbershop, which, looking back was I think the frickin' toughest part of the production. We scoured Sydney trying to find that one perfect barbershop that had a nostalgic feel to it with the red swirly poles, the paisley wallpaper, the wooden panels and checkered floors. We mostly found hairdressing salons with interiors still set in 1989, complete with posters of models laquered in Aquanet.

(Seriously though, why is that? Most salons always have photos of outdated hairstyles on their walls. Do the owners think that kids today will enter, sit on the stool, point up at Rob Lowe's St. Elmo's Fire mullet and say: "Just like that."?)

It took two weeks to find Sam's Hairdressers, which was located up in Dee Why, a couple of blocks next to La Mesa, a Pinoy restaurant that serves crispy pata sent down from heaven. More on that later. God bless Sam and his willingness to let us use his lovely barbershop for our shoot. Granted, he had a few 80's posters tacked up, but my brilliant production designer Leonie told me not to worry and that she'd cover them up with wallpaper.

Tomorrow: CAST and CREW.