By Sean Axmaker

Hollywood lore is full of stories of five-day masterpieces and two-day wonders, scruffy little B-pictures shot quick and cheap that eventually became classics. But did they have a challenge like the Seattle International Film Festival's Fly Filmmaking program?

Three directors are given local crews and a pool of Seattle talent to cast from (all volunteers), digital video cameras and bare-bones equipment, a budget that couldn't pay a parking ticket, and six days from casting and production meetings to the world premiere of a finished short film. Fly Filmmaking isn't about merely shooting at a sprint, but editing, mixing sound, composing music, and fiddling with the niggling postproduction details that can normally drag on for weeks or months.

Now in its fifth year, the challenge has evolved from its initial incarnation where participants–including directors Eric Schaeffer (The Life and Times of Wiry Spindell), Tim Blake Nelson (O), Miguel Arteta (Chuck and Buck), Adrienne Shelly (I'll Take You There), Julia Sweeney (God Said "Ha!"), Meg Richman (Under Heaven), and Jim Taylor (screenwriter of Election and Citizen Ruth)–were given 800 feet of 16mm film stock (about 11 minutes of film).

This year, every crew was given a Cannon XL1 digital video camera and practically unlimited tape, but held to a finished running time not to exceed five minutes, including credits.

How does one complete a film in six days? I followed one director, Guinevere Turner (star and co-screenwriter of indie classic Go Fish, and a busy actress on the independent film scene), through the entire process.

"I had already written a script and had been waiting to make a short, so I was thrilled when Fly Filmmaking invited me on board," Turner remembers. "I had never directed a film before and it's hard to get the opportunity." Her script, Spare Me, is a one-location piece about four thirteen-year old schoolgirls talking and sniping at each other during a school break.

The other two directors taking SIFF's 2001 Fly Filmmaking challenge are Shaya Mercer, whose Trade Off won the Golden Space Needle award for Best Documentary last year at SIFF, and Dan Mirvish, director of Omaha: The Movie and co-founder of the Slamdance Film Festival.

The process began about three weeks before shooting commenced, when the directors were chosen and assigned producers (who they only met through phone, fax, and e-mail). While the filmmakers wrote and re-wrote scripts, the producers put together crews, scouted locations, and conducted preliminary casting. The groundwork was laid, but the real challenge lay ahead.

Sunday July 10 - Preproduction
The directors had arrived in Seattle the night before and were introduced at a 10:30 a.m. press conference to both public and to their producers. At 11 a.m., when the press conference wrapped, they launched immediately into final casting. Turner had two hours to cast four leads–Mandy, the bitchy leader of the group; Caitlin, a kind of yes-man sidekick; Michelle, a camp follower hiding a moody uncertainty; and Annie, the shy, sunny girl wrapped in mystery bandages–and eight supporting parts from a group of 35 finalists.

"All the kids were professionals," says Turner. "They had résumés longer than mine: commercials, theater, TV. They were all poised and at ease– all good at being little adults. It was hard to get them to be awkward and hesitant, which is what the film is about."

Turner's producer Kathleen McInnis (who also created the Fly Filmmaking program and coordinated the entire 2001 program) takes the reigns of the production meeting, where director and crew introductions are brief. There is plenty of ground to cover.

The shoot is centered in an outdoor courtyard at the Busch School on Lake Washington, a private grade school in the midst of finals, and there are issues and restrictions to deal with: noise, parking, crowd control, keeping the faces of the school students out of the film. "No smoking, of course, since this is a grade school," warns McInnis. "If you need a smoking break step off the school premises. This is something for you, Craft Services. We need a bin or something for cigarette butts because we don't want to litter the streets. It's important to me to keep these people happy because they've gone way out of their way to help us."

Questions are answered, equipment issues addressed, loose ends attended to. The meeting breaks with McInnis smiling: "6:30 call tomorrow morning–sorry."

As I walk out the crew signs wavers that legally acknowledge they are donating their time. These are professional crews, after all, who waive their fees for the "privilege" of working on this pioneering festival event.

Meanwhile Turner is off to location scout, final talks with the director of photography Lulu Gargiulo, and perhaps one last full night's sleep before the production begins in earnest.

Turner is both nervous and excited: "Tomorrow I step behind the camera for the first time. I've been on so many film sets that I really look forward to finally directing. Especially with such a scrappy crew." Fly Filmmaking may be the epitomé of scrappy.

Monday, July 11 - Shooting
Rain and drizzle delays the production by hours; the first shot isn't taken until 10 a.m. "It kind of worked out for the best," says Turner, who used the down time for rehearsal, letting the girls get comfortable with each other. By then, of course school is in session, and after two hours, lets out for lunch break. So does the shoot. The courtyard is overrun by kids scurrying for the lunch room while some of the younger students scream and cheer as they bat around a piñata in the background.

Noise is an issue. According to Fly Filmmaking's version of the Dogme 95 rules, sound is recorded directly into the camera. Surprisingly, notes script supervisor Terri Murphy, they have "more problems with airplanes than student noise." Sure enough a flight blares overhead as she finishes, just to drive home her point.

Editor Todd Howard is on the set to get a feel for the material and the images: "So I can hit the editing room sprinting." He can't touch the footage until Wednesday morning 8 a.m. Another rule.

As the courtyard quiets down Turner takes personal charge of the mummy-like bandages on the face of Jordan Valacich (who plays Annie). There's an autobiographical dimension to this piece of the drama, and she wants it to be just right.

"I broke my jaw when I was thirteen," Turner confesses. "Some kid came sledding into me. I didn't see him and fell face first onto an icy sidewalk. This was New York in the middle of winter. It wasn't bad enough to have my jaw wired shut, so they just wrapped it in tightly in a bandage for four weeks. I pleaded with my mom to have my jaw wired shut. When the doctor finished wrapping me up I had hair sticking out in clumps and he said, 'Boy, you’re funny looking.' I just cried."

The shoot picks up momentum and wraps late, at 7:10 p.m.

Tuesday, July 12 - Shooting Continues
Call again at 6:30, and shooting begins at 9 a.m. The weather is gray, the rain intermittent, and the ground wet. At least the shots will match.

"The girls came in their costumes and did their own make-up. They were ready to go." Turner has nothing but praise for her young divas, but keeping their energy up, take after take, calls for some improvised techniques on the director's part.

"I didn't want to stop and start so I'd often just let the camera roll. We were working with four 13-year-old girls and they were getting tired, so for one take I said 'Okay, I want you run through you lines as fast as you can.' It was zoom zoom zoom, they just ripped through it. Kate (Bayley, the continuity supervisor) hadn't heard my direction and leaned over to me and asked 'What are they doing?' When it was over they cracked up, giggling 'Let's do it again!' It got their energy levels right back up."

Turner takes the time to re-shoot the master a little tighter "because the whole idea of the piece is to get closer and closer, to get right in on the girls." Suddenly ahead of schedule, they wrap hours early at 1:30 p.m.

Wednesday, July 13 - Editing
Editor Todd Howard knows all too well the restrictions: "Only 27 hours from booting up the machines to handing off the finished edit." The session begins at 8 a.m., but at 10 they're still logging shots and wrestling with the transfer from the Cannon camera to the digital editing system at Westwind Computing on Ravenna, which donated time, equipment, and roomy editing suites to all three teams. Finally Todd pulls out his own camera and solves the problem. They later isolate the problem in a setting in the software: "A click away from the solution," comments Todd.

"It's been a stop-and-go morning," laments Turner. "This is par for the course," remarks Howard. "We probably won't even make a cut until 1 or 2 p.m." The marathon session stretches through the night and into the morning without a rest. "We broke at 5:30 a.m. for a seventh-inning stretch," remembers Turner. "We stepped outside, sang 'Take Me Out to the Ballgame,' and did jumping jacks, and then headed back in for another session." The final edit is completed at 9:20 a.m. "We shook hands and started stressing about the credits."

Thursday, July 14 - Editing, Day 2
"I though directing was hard. This editing process was WAY harder. I've been in editing rooms before and watched the process, but this is the first time I actually was responsible for it." muses Turner. "I'd say 'Why isn't there a close-up of so-and-so for this shot,' and then realize, oh yeah, because I didn't shoot it. We had some continuity problems, we had some coverage problems. I grew up in those hours."

And it's not over: a server crash at Westwind slows the transfer of credits from one computer to another. While Todd works with the technicians to solve the problem, Turner hunkers down with composer Tom McGurk. "Now that I've seen what kind of piece it became, I'm open to scary suggestions. I thought it was going to be campy and broad, but it turned out intricate and miserable, with a few melancholy laughs." McGurk, who has just seen the finished cut, is full of questions. "What's wrong with the mom? What happened to Annie? What's with the sister?" Turner tosses them right back: "What do you think?"

The 1:30 p.m. deadline is pushed by both Turner and Shaya Mercer, who struggles with her own editing problems. The tapes are late in getting to Rocket Pictures, where the raw cut is transferred from the Mini D.V. master to DigiBeta and BetaSP tape for sound mixing. It's a smooth process and by the end of the day everyone is back on schedule. Turner reviews the tape at Bad Animals with sound mixer Kristofor Helroth and then checks out at 5 p.m. for "dinner in a restaurant, a martini, and a good night's sleep."

Friday, July 15 - Sound Mix and Color Correction
"The sound is so much fun," smiles Turner, refreshed and energetic. Wild sound is laid over the background, which immediately pulls the shots together, and composer Tom McGurk is in another room furiously reworking music to play over Michelle's moments. The original melancholy chords just don't feel right to Turner. "It sounds like her mother's dying or something." The problem is solved by taking out the strings and leaving just a plaintive solo piano behind the scene. McGurk has already written and produced peppy little pop song for the credits–all in 12 hours! Turner loves it. "Isn't it great? It's like a TV theme song for a girl's show. 'The Fact of Life' for today."

"I was talking to Todd (Howard, the editor) about how much fun it would be to come back every year and shoot a five-minute piece with the same girls. Just five minutes in the lives of these characters through the years." Turner's off-the-cuff comment sparks an idea.

"If this was a TV show, would SIFF want a cut?" she asks McInnis. "No, only credit: With the participation of Cinema Seattle." Their conversation digs into issues of ownership, intellectual property, financial details (Darryl Macdonald, the director of SIFF "always said he didn't want to make money off this program," McInnis explains), responsibility to the cast and crew, and other details before they turn back from Spare Me: The Series to the five-minute short at hand. One project at a time.

After laying in the last of the sound effects, the tape is sent to Modern Digital for final color correction. "That was so cool. I had a couple of bright sunlight shots that stood out from the rest of the film, and now you can't even tell." By 9 p.m., every film is finished.

Saturday, July 16 - The World Premiere
About 800 people, among them the film casts and crews, crowd the Moore Theater for the 5:30 p.m. premieres of the finished works: Shaya Mercer's Baby Express, "a mix of McDonald's commercial, Hal Hartley film, and Sleeper," according to Shaya's producer; Dan Mirvish's Open House, a comedy short that Dan condensed from a feature script ("If there are any major Hollywood producers out in the audience, or any small independent producers, I have copies of the feature script," he plugs during the Q&A following the film); and finally, Guinevere Turner's Spare Me, the lone drama of the trio.

"I though the film was going to be a comedy, campy and bitchy, when I started it," Turner reflects upon seeing the finished film. "I didn't really know the film was about Michelle until I finished it."

The Future
Where do they go from here? First stop is the Digital Film Group in Vancouver, where the D.V. masters are transferred to 35mm, and then McInnis hopes to set up an industry screening in Los Angeles this fall to show off the films and showcase the transfer process. And then it's off to the film-festival circuit.

"We submit them to Sundance, Slamdance, Toronto, and others. And we stream them on the SIFF site." Past Fly Films have been featured on IFC and Bravo cable channels as well as the Sundance Film Festival and the New York International Shorts Film Festival.

McInnis is currently watching over a special DVD showcase featuring all three 2001 films plus the shorts from past years, the "making of" documentaries from the past three years (shot, like the films themselves, on the fly), and oodles of helpful supplements for the aspiring D.V. filmmaker, including complete equipment lists for each shoot with specs, interviews with the directors and crews, bios.

Sean Axmaker (seanax@home.com) is a featured video columnist for the IMDB (http://us.imdb.com/Recommends/), film reviewer for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (http://www.seattle-pi.com/movies/), and member of the Online Film Critics Society (http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com/).