May 24, 2010
Topher Bellavia, Brian Coleman, Dave Johnson and Tyler Korba shoot a bearded scene...
Saving Face, team onesixtyone's entry in to this year's 48 Hour Film Project, has been selected as one of DC's Best films and will screen this Thursday night at 9:30.
Also screening on Thursday night (strangely, all at 9:30...) are WIT members Liz Demery (iMusical) with The Big Honkin's Shovel Ready, Karen Lange (iMusical) and Letty Tomlinson (iMusical) with Musky Adventures' The Puppy Wrangler and Michelle Swaney (Jackie, JINX), Jamie Lantinen (Harold Team Private Elevator), Stewart Walsh (Training Program Instructor) and William Hancock (WIT Board Member) with The Quest's Under My Skin. Team onesixtyone's original score was composed by iMusical's Travis Ploeger, rounding out an impressive showing from the improvised musical's cast.
Saving Face and Shovel Ready have each already won the coveted Audience Awards from their respective group screenings, and Thursday night will mark the sixth consecutive year that onesixtyone has made the cut for the Best Of, an accomplishment that is not lost on Director Tyler Korba..
"We're thrilled. We're always thrilled," says Korba. "We look forward to the 48 every year, and it's nice to know that people like what we do. To keep our streak going is fantastic ... especially with a smaller team this time around."
Many of onesixtyone's regular players were out of town during this year's coffee-fueled weekend, leaving the group with only five team members to manage the entire project. "It was strange to get together on Friday night with so few people," confesses Korba. "Usually it feels like more of an event, and we sort of just settled in to this one."
"Friday was less of a brainstorm and more of a brain drizzle," says Catherine Deadman, who plays the love interest in the film. "On the downside there were fewer ideas to bounce around and fewer talented people in the room. On the upside it was a much more concise process and that left us time to focus on and develop our chosen story idea."
That chosen story idea emerged quickly. "Brian (Coleman) showed up for our brainstorm with about a week's worth of beard growth," laughs Korba. "Dave (Johnson) and Topher (Bellavia) had full beards already, and we immediately started to joke about how funny it would be if we told a story about three guys with beards. After a little bit of conversation, we completely committed to it."
The team reviews footage on location on Saturday afternoon...
In addition to the shortage of players, many of the team's usual crew members were helping to put together WIT's annual fundraiser on Saturday night. What seemed at first to be an obstacle ultimately became an asset, as the team elected to shoot the film's pivotal scene during the later stages of the fundraising party.
"Shooting at the party was really cool and worked out better than I think anyone could have expected," says Brian Coleman, who plays the lead character in this year's entry. Deadman agrees. "Going in, it was such an unknown that you just had to relax and roll with it. It's great being cheered at by a horde of party goers for 10 minutes straight for no reason at all."
In truth, the decision handcuffed the team in a fairly significant way. In deciding to tell Brian's story of beard-envy, the team would have to split the shoot in to two sections: Brian with beard, and Brian without beard. Planning to shoot the film's turning point late on Saturday night meant that Brian couldn't shave until nearly midnight, leaving the group with all of the story's clean-shaven moments to capture with less than 24 hours remaining.
"It was stressful," admits Korba. "I was going to be responsible for editing what we'd shot and also shooting what was left to get, so walking out of our planning session on Friday, I wasn't entirely sure of how the math was going to work out."
"At a certain point (on Saturday) all we could do was wait," says Deadman. "Which feels so wrong when you have a rapidly approaching deadline and the lion's share of the work left to do. It was like turning a 48-hour film into a 36-hour film."
Thanks to a good amount of hustle and some quick Sunday morning shooting, the team managed to finish on time. And how do the players feel about this year's entry?
"It's definitely a lot more premise-based than some of the stuff we've done in the past," says Korba. "It felt like a very 'sketch' sort of idea, and I think with a larger group of people cooking up stories on Friday night, we probably would have ended up somewhere different. But I think the five of us saw it as a chance to try something different, and I'm glad it worked out that way. We kept things simple and had fun with the details, and discovered a bit more depth to the story than I think we expected to."
"I've gotten some seriously enthusiastic responses to the cat make-out scene," adds Deadman. "To all the cat mouth kissers out there, you're welcome. No animals were harmed in the making of this film."
All of WIT's member films screen on Thursday night at 9:30 with the rest of this year's Best at the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring. To purchase tickets, visit the Silver Theatre's website.
