I think the best stories suitable for short films are told by kids. Kids are the ones with the best imaginations, and aren't tainted with the very real drama of adulthood. It was this simple notion that inspired me to write and direct my sixth short film.
In a way, filming Loose Change was bringing me full circle, because it brought me back to a time when I realized I had an imagination. The story, about a goofy guy who looses his lunch money and then spends the duration of the film chasing after it, was inspired by a fantasy story I conjured up in front of a classroom in the fourth grade. The class was put into groups, and everyone in the group had to come up with a segment of a fantasy story. As it turned out, I was the only one in my group that had an imagination. I remember telling a story dealing with a kid who dropped a coin, chased after it, and then lost it down a sewer grate. Somehow, the coin turned into a pizza before it got away. But it was fantasy - anything could happen.
After spending more than a year developing Eden, I wanted to do something that was simply fun. I was also inspired by Steven Spielberg's reality show that summer, On the Lot - basically an American Idol-type of series that replaced aspiring musicians with aspiring filmmakers. Every week, the contestants had to write and direct a three-minute short film, and then America voted on their least favorite films. The winner would win a one million dollar production deal with Spielberg's production company, Dreamworks.
There was also the 48-hour Film Project, a competition in which independent film crews get together and film a movie in two days based on a category they pick blindly from a hat. Based on that, I decided to do a film that was short and sweet - and film it in 24 hours.
I wrote the five-paged script in all of an hour, and then called my friend Matt Weatherford to see if he wanted to do it. Matt was among the people I hung out with post-high school, and since 2002 we made a series of interesting video skits that we posted all over the Internet. He had never worked on a short film before, and because I told him we'd be doing it in the span of a day, he was interested to devote time to it.
The night before we started shooting, I went around the house looking for round objects - anything that would roll. Finding various objects, I wrapped them all in tons of aluminum foil. Throughout the course of the story, the protagonist, Luke Adayami, chases a quarter, which gradually grows larger and larger. The largest rendition of the coin was actually two garbage can lids taped together.
It had to be the hottest day of 2007, as we shot most of Matt's scenes outside and around the block from my house. We spent hours doing take after take, with Matt trying to roll these small objects down the sidewalk. I hooked the camera up to a flatbed, which allowed for some really nice low angle shots of the coins as Matt chased after them. I also tried making use of a monopod for some of the handheld shots, but they were a little shaky.
I got a friend of my dad's to play a part in the film, as a disgruntled driver who nearly hits Matt with his van.
We shot a third of the film at Shepherd Park - the same location we shot Oedipus seven years prior. Although quick editing makes it look like Matt was really trying to catch up to the quarter, in reality we could only get it to roll for about two seconds with each attempt. My favorite shot is where he chases the quarter down a hill, and then we cut to him running down my block.
The one segment of the film I was never really happy with was when the coin turns into a pizza, which comes out of nowhere. Originally, there was going to be some sort of transition, in which we actually see the coin transform. We went to the local pizza place to order the pizza, and attempted rolling it down the sidewalk. It failed miserably. So we were forced to leave the pizza in the box, and when it rolls toward the sewer, it just falls flat above the sewer grate. It was kind of an effects-driven film, so some of those shots I had trouble pulling off.
I wanted to actually show the pizza falling through the sewer grate, and I shot the pizza box against green screen. I didn't have a lot of experience shooting with green screen, but I understood the concept. However, the finished effect shot didn't look very convincing, so I left it out of the film altogether, and just had Matt looking through the grate.
We finished shooting around 5 p.m., just enough time for me to start cutting the film together. Before midnight, the film was completely edited. Overall, I was satisfied with the results. It has its share of technical flaws, but everyone who watches it generally enjoys it. It was certainly the most fun I had shooting a film since my high school days of amateur video production, and again, it showed how I was growing as a filmmaker.