Want to start this off with a huge thank you to everyone for the incredible response to our first full trailer for William's Lullaby. We are thrilled with the initial reaction and it has made us even more excited to pull the curtain back on our five-year work-in-progress. For those of you who have not yet seen the trailer, take a look at the link on the bottom of this post. We encourage everyone to continue to share via social media, show your friends, spread the word -- if you want to eventually see the film, word of mouth is truly the best way to make that happen! If you liked what you saw, we encourage you to give it a thumbs up, comment on Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook, Twitter -- we genuinely want to hear from you!
What to say about the trailer? It is a lot more revealing than the initial teaser released in January, I'll say that much. However, there is still quite a bit we're not showing you and a bit of clever editing to divert your expectations. Don't read too much into it just yet. But know that every single shot in the trailer is chosen for a reason and we are definitely giving you more pieces of the puzzle to keep you guessing until you see the film.
Quite a bit of response for the trailer was geared towards the song we used, which also happens to be featured in the film itself, "The Weatherman (Pt. 2)" by Canadian rock band, Alert The Medic. I had first heard this song when driving home from the set of William's Lullaby in August, 2011. Mike Whissell, who was doing some location sound with Stephen Lee at the time, was with me and played me the tune from his iPod, saying he couldn't stop thinking about William's Lullaby when he heard it. Specifically the lyrics: "It's a long way down ... It ain't easy..." seemed to line up nicely with the overall mood of the film. We would go on to listen to the song frequently over the remaining shooting days, travelling to and from set and it quickly rose to the top of my playlist, becoming a bit of a motivator as we pushed through production. It became an even bigger motivator in the editing room and served as a sort of theme song for William's Lullaby and the story of Thomas Splinter's inner-demons.
I find it interesting that the original music video for the song takes on a very powerful interpretation of the lyrics (especially in today's day and age) - that's quite different from how it is used in Lullaby. Anyone in the armed forces or with relatives in the armed forces can certainly feel the power from these images. See the Official Music Video from Alert The Medic here:
However you choose to interpret the lyrics, there is no denying their power and that is the sign of a hit song. I am honoured to feature this tune in William's Lullaby and to include Alert The Medic as part of our team. The song is a powerful fit to the emotionally-charged images and performances in our film and using it in our first full trailer seemed like a very appropriate way to introduce you to our cast, the band and their song.
"When you hear what we've done, Nick... Just you wait--"
That was Devin's voice on the phone to me last week as I went to visit him and Mike on one of their final sound editing sessions before our mix. He was referring to the last few minutes of the film -- the ending. An ending that, in order to be pulled off right, requires the perfect combination of performances, music and sound design. I had been waiting two years to hear the last few minutes of the film the way I did last week and all I can say at this stage is... Mike and Devin were right. It packs a seriously powerful punch. I am so proud of the work and bravery every one has put forth to make this ending (and the entirety of the film) such an intricate and layered piece, and I hope it will churn many discussions amongst audience members as the end credits roll, set to a song I am so proud and honoured to be including in this film (more on that... later!)
I am so incredibly impressed with the work these two gentlemen have done. The care and thought they have put into every sound and every edit is incredible and truly shows as the intensity and rate or your heart rises over the course of William's Lullaby. Sound Design has always been an important factor for me with this film, along with music. It is the missing layer -- the layer of story that brings it all together and truly makes it click for an audience. Mike and Devin have gone above and beyond what is written in the script and have added a layer of subtext and subliminal foreshadowing into the film that will take multiple viewings to unravel. That's Sound Design with purpose and I love it. One of my early talks with Mike discussed how Sound Design was done on The Sixth Sense, a film I have mentioned on here in the past. For those of you that do not know (and I hope this isn't giving anything away), The Sixth Sense follows a young boy who has the ability to speak to the dead. What the sound designers did on that film was brilliant. If you strip the dialogue, strip the foley, strip the music and leave only the ambience -- crank it up, what you are hearing; that hum, that buzz, is the sound of hundreds of people breathing. Of course, this would be next to impossible to figure it out if it weren't for the filmmakers saying it in interviews, but it is chilling to know that even in scenes where Bruce Willis or Haley Joel Osment are alone, you are hearing multiple breaths along with theirs -- there is an added presence. And it adds a layer of sophistication to that movie. Similar to how Hans Zimmer used a switch-blade dragging across the strings of a Cello to compose his theme for the Joker in The Dark Knight. Using this as inspiration, Mike and Devin have added original and unique, subtle details to their sound design. I can't tell you more without giving away crucial plot points. But when the time comes and you are sitting in a theatre, viewing our film -- listen carefully!
We will be heading in to our final mix session next week, and as we do, I find myself reflecting back on this process. The end is near -- or is it really the beginning? True, I would probably compare this process more to the birth than anything else. It's just been a really long labour. While work is still being done on colour and minor touch-ups happening here and there, Mike and Devin will be done their work on William's Lullaby by the end of the month. For Mike this is a big deal especially as he has, in a way, been a part of this journey since its conception - back when I emailed him a 140 page script called Ducklings and Swans.
William's Lullaby has always been there. For the last two years, it's been sitting here, waiting for me while I'm at work, stirring in my mind as I sleep. It's always been that 'unfinished symphony.' It's been incredible watching people grow over the course of this adventure, watching friendships strengthen, talents develop, and watching the film itself take shape. We've learned a lot and there is certainly much more to learn in our journey as artists. William's Lullaby is just a stepping stone, for all of us -- but we'd like to think it's a big one.
Patiently, and methodically, we will continue our work over the next few weeks -- perfecting what we have designed and built over the last two years so that it is the best it can possibly be within our ability. And when the time comes for us to sit back and close the book on this chapter, expect an even sappier post from me here. From there, we will breathe life into the film -- a project in and of itself, one that could take another two years to reach its maximum potential. Who knows? That's why I tend to compare filmmaking to having a child (like I could even begin to know what that's like!) but there are similarities. If these next few weeks are the birth, then the next two years are going to be the most crucial as we help the film grow and develop into the piece of cinema it is going to be.
Lots being said about our recently released Official Soundtrack Preview. In case you've missed the news, Paul Barton has finished the score and we've been giving you a little peek of what to expect on our FACEBOOK page. If you haven't seen the video yet, take a listen here and let us know what you think!
Things have been busy, resulting in some irregular posting schedules with this blog -- but I'm keeping at it. I am just on my way out the door to visit Mike and Devin on our first sound studio pre-mix screening of the film with the score in place. From there we'll move on to tweaking the dialogue, foley and atmosphere edits and preparing the film for its final mix session which will likely be spanned over two days.
Still I'd like to keep going with the theme of the previous blogs! The next few blogs following will likely be devoted to updating you on the final leg of our journey -- video, pictures etc... Expect it all!
Jada McCullough was Key Makeup Artist on William's Lullaby and hired based on her impressive portfolio. She brought with her a great sense of what the film and, most importantly, the characters needed. She also had an excellent vision for showing the transition in our protagonist over the course of the film as he continues on his downward spiral towards an inner hell. It's always jarring to me to look at some of these make-up tests, especially when I am so used to seeing the finished product on screen for two years. But take a look at some of the sickly and disturbing looks Jada and her Makeup Assistant, Csilla Lasso were able to conjure up with our two leads, Richard and Toby.
Toby Bisson on the set of William's Lullaby
Toby Bisson on the set of William's Lullaby
Richard Roy Sutton on the set of William's Lullaby
Richard Roy Sutton on the set of William's Lullaby
Richard Roy Sutton on the set of William's Lullaby
Thanks for reading/viewing! Catch you next week folks. Share this blog with your friends if you can. If it's your first time here, check out the archive on the right and catch up on what you've missed.
I had the pleasure of being away in Arizona for two weeks touring with The Best of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis and have only just returned. I am looking forward to focusing solely on the finish line for William's Lullaby. It's been a little tough leading a double life as an entertainer, but we're making it work!
Jerry Lewis, actor/filmmaker/entertainer, on the set of "Hardly Working"
We have production meetings in place all month as we put together the separate pieces that everyone has been working on so diligently.
The blogs will get more and more interesting from here on out. I hope they have been somewhat interesting for you thus far. But as we lead into our final production meetings, we hope to provide with well documented updates on the process of bringing William's Lullaby to fruition. And things are going to be a lot more revealing as we pull back more of the curtain -- stories from set, actor and character profiles, scene breakdowns and tid-bits of information that only you, the blog-reader, will be able to read exclusively here are some of the many things to look forward to in the weeks and months ahead as you wait for William's Lullaby to show up in a city near you.
Keeping along with the thread of "Creating the Look of William's Lullaby" this week, we'll take a look at the wardrobe. This was not too difficult a task for my team in the summer of 2011 as, when one worked off the original script, the wardrobe pretty much presented itself and it was just a matter of locating specific items and organizing them throughout the script breakdown.
I always am thinking of colour when I direct my attention to wardrobe. One of my earlier films, The Vicious Circle, featured a lead protagonist with a wardrobe colour palette that mirrored his downfall to rock bottom (going from light baby blue to dark black). It is arguable that in William's Lullaby, Thomas Splinter has already hit rock bottom by the start of the film, but I indeed resort back to this tactic of a shift in colour with his wardrobe as we get closer and closer to revealing the true thesis of the film. The other thing we tried to focus on with Thomas was the idea of dressing him almost like a teen -- in that, with his present state of mind, he would not be paying much attention to his outward appearance and likely wearing and re-wearing the same clothes. This was likely the smallest wardrobe collection for a lead character in the film.
Richard Roy Sutton wardrobe test [2011]
Richard Roy Sutton wardrobe test [2011]
This fits with the idea that Thomas carries on through his adult-life with the emotional stability of a child with certain areas of his past not yet confronted, creating within him a wounded inner child.
For William, we had the luxury of choosing from Toby Bisson's own wardrobe to create his character. Where we zeroed in and became specific was in the accessories. As you come to know more about William's Lullaby you'll learn that a pair of glasses become a very powerful, significant and symbolic item recurring throughout the film and creating a general thread that ties the pieces of the mysteries together. We tried a number of different glasses ranging from child sizes to adults, different shapes and frames and eventually settled on this awkwardly fitting, slightly over-sized pair that engulf most of the top portion of Toby's face -- a poor man's band-aid for poor eye-sight and one that Thomas Splinter would likely buy for his son as a temporary way of fixing the problem.
Toby Bisson wardrobe test [2011]
Actors Ila Lawton and Robert Lawton portray the only true sense of grace and stability with their characters in William's Lullaby and both serve as sort of wise mentors for Thomas as he pushes through his grief and mental anguish. Their wardrobe and colour palette both needed to suggest a warm and inviting, paternal and maternal feeling with a strong contrast to Thomas' rough and unkempt appearance.
Ila Lawton wardrobe test [2011]
Robert Lawton wardrobe test [2011]
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Not long ago, Mike and I were sitting with our foley artist, Devin O'Haire during a spotting session for William's Lullaby and after a particularly tense scene that took place at the family dinner table, Mike said: "You must have issues with family dinners!"
His comment also came from the fact that the previous film we had worked on together, The Vicious Circle, featured a very dramatic scene set at dinner. I've said this before -- I don't feel you necessarily need to have "issues" with anything in order to feature it prominently in your art. But I have always been fascinated with the dynamics of a family dinner. Family dinners are like the board-room meetings of a house-hold and in film and storytelling, they can have the exact same dynamics if you wish. The mood of these scenes, often taking place in late evening/night with warm, ambient light sets a tone to whatever is going on dramatically in the story.
One of my favourite dinner scenes is this one from American Beauty (warning: course language)
"Lose it? I didn't lose it. It's not like 'whoops! Where did my job go?' - I QUIT!"
I thought I would share my very first attempt at a family dinner scene from The Vicious Circle in 2007. This was our first feature film, and as you can see, there is a great deal of work that goes into the writing, choreography, pacing and acting of a scene like this. Tough to pull off.
I write about family dinners in this blog because, rest assured, William's Lullaby features some extremely tense, dramatic, explosive and emotional scenes that take place at the Splinter dinner table. It is an unusual scenario in William's Lullaby, with a middle-aged man sitting across from a five-year-old. The possibilities that dynamic possessed excited me as a writer and director and I think the result will be extremely memorable.
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Things are moving along quite nicely. I am happy to say that Paul Barton has completed the William's Lullaby score and it is truly exquisite. He has done an incredible job of incorporating the themes and story of William's Lullaby in his music and the result is a sophisticated and layered score that will keep you thinking long after the film is over.
I'll be spending quite a bit of time in these blogs speaking about creating the look of William's Lullaby in various posts. I've already begun to do that with last week's post on the transition from storyboards to screen. This week we'll take a look at the William's Lullaby set and specifically creating the look of the Splinter home.
I've always been a fan of art direction and set design. I love the idea of bringing a character to life through his or her surroundings in a play or film. I've mentioned my Vancouver Film School short, "The Boy Who Knew" on here before, but I'll take a moment to show it again in a different light. This was a film where I wanted to explore how you could create a character simply through set design and art direction without ever showing that person in the film. Can it be done effectively? You be the judge.
For the record, in reality this bedroom was originally a teenage girl's room, complete with a bunk-bed. My Art Director at the time, Red Albert, did a phenomenal job, in my biased opinion of transforming this into the bedroom of a boy prodigy and it fits well with the mood of the final product:
For William's Lullaby, I assembled a small team of extremely creative filmmakers and artists from Kingston, Ontario. Together we worked hard over five months of pre-production to create some of the very specific details needed for the Splinter home. Our goal was to create a home that was missing two crucial ingredients -- love and family.
For William's bedroom (as seen above) we decided that a running theme throughout his environment would be a love for medieval knights and mythology, and this can be seen subtly with everything from the frame of the bed, the royal bedsheets, the knight's helmet on his dresser to the hand-drawn images of kings hanging on the wall. At the same time, we wanted William's bedroom to be very stark and bare, cold and unwelcoming -- as though slightly unfinished. The baron white walls leave much to be desired, casting harsh dark shadows which we can only imagine would terrify a young five-year-old in the dark.
For our next image we see the Splinter basement:
The script originally called for a living room environment, describing Thomas as often sleeping on the couch. During our location scout, this house provided us with an unfinished basement that peaked our curiosity and provided a much darker, sombre environment for Thomas. It made perfect sense to us that this man, suffering from depression and perhaps even a fear of raising his own son would create a safe haven from that world, a sanctuary of his own, off limits to his young five-year-old son where lost memories and ghosts abound in photo albums and home video flickers in the night light.
Thomas' bedroom had to have the same stark, bare and cold feeling of William's but on a very different scale -- from the adult perspective. And my art team, made up of the wonderfully talented Amanda Shaw, Kat Rush and Sierra Chaykowski did a wonderful job of adding subtle details, bringing to life Thomas Splinter's past AND present in one single room. Fantastic work, if you ask me. I won't spoon-feed you, rather I'll leave you to explore the clues. Very telling reveals of character in these pictures.
That's it for this week folks! Remember to join in the conversation on FACEBOOK, TWITTER and comment below! We love to hear from you.
We have been working like crazy these last few weeks and will continue to for the next while as we near the finish line. Mike and Devin are working hard on preparing the film for a pre-mix and I'll be sitting down with Paul Barton in the coming weekend to go over the score in what will possibly be our final spotting session.
Meanwhile, on my end we've been colour balancing the film and preparing it for grading. Amazing progress has been made in regards to licensed music and we have a few surprises for everyone that we will reveal in due time. Biggest lesson here is -- never give up and exhaust all resources. Never assume the answer is 'no.' You will be surprised at what happens when you simply ask.
Gary Carr also began work on the end credits of the film. He is responsible for the ghostly "William's Lullaby" that appears in our teaser, using Leslie Martin's design. So to make a long story short, the end is in sight and the pieces are falling into place. But we are all aware of the fact that it is going to take a great deal of work in the coming months to get there. Game on.
A few posts back, I talked about how I storyboarded the entire film prior to casting as a way of preparing myself mentally for the task of bringing the visual style of the film to life. I thought I'd do a little less talking in this post and show you some examples of how those storyboards influenced the final product. If you take anything away from this post, it's that you don't need to be a great artist to storyboard -- stick figures will do! It's the idea that counts.
In most cases I was able to use stills from my location scout to visually lay out my shots. I would read the script line by line and picture the film, cut together in my head. What did I visually see? I would then do a few rough outlines, then pen the final drawing. Spending a great deal of time on each frame allowed me to really contemplate my reasoning for that shot and as you can see, for the most part, I stuck with that blueprint once I got to set.
As you can see in this scene, Richard and Toby bring a great deal of life to the image that I, unfortunately, can't quite express with my pen. Often, their motivation for blocking and action dictated slightly different camera positions and movements as seen by the slight difference between what is going on in my storyboard vs. the final scene.
Again, we were quite flexible with straying from the drawn image once we got to set but you can see that the essence of it is still there. Toby is a ball of energy and his jumping up onto the bed (as seen in the final scene) is far more dynamic than what's on the page and offers more excited camera movements to match his energy.
I said I wouldn't talk much in this post. I lied. There you have it. An example of just how much storyboarding helped me, and continued to help me in the editing room.
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I was having a conversation recently with a friend I hadn't seen in awhile. I was telling him about William's Lullaby and how long of a process it has been and how eager and excited we are to finish. I had mentioned to him how I had started writing the first draft of the script, then called Ducklings and Swans, when I was 17. He was confused by this. "It was different when you wrote it, right?" he asked. I explained to him that the crux of the story, the majority of it and especially the last 10 pages have stayed the same over the last five years. Again this baffled him. "When I was writing scripts at 17 they were about not knowing what to do after high school or the girl I had a crush on," he explained. He couldn't figure out where I would draw the inspiration from to write about parenthood and specifically the woes of being a single parent, especially after I further explained to him that my childhood was hardly Dickensian and I had been raised by two loving parents.
While the inspiration for William's Lullaby came from something far deeper than the simple father/son relationship that is portrayed on the surface the idea to bury the thesis in the framework of a father/son relationship came from many cinematic inspirations over the years.
Going back to 1979, there's Kramer vs. Kramer with Dustin Hoffman
A very emotional film following the struggles of a recently divorced man fighting for the custody of his son.
Road to Perdition with Tom Hanks showed a father/son relationship under strained and tense circumstances...
But one of the classic father/son imageries of cinema for me comes from Mr. Charlie Chaplin himself in, The Kid...
If you are feeling a little nostalgic when it comes to film after a night with The Oscars, lucky for you, Chaplin's entire masterpiece is available on Youtube:
The father/son relationship has been portrayed in films since the very beginning. And I think it's because there is something quite special in that relationship -- a child's desire to be like his father, a father's passion to give his son a better life than his own. William's Lullaby and the films I have listed above all portray fathers who are thrust into single parenthood, sometimes unwillingly and coping with it under heavy circumstances. Whether I wrote this at 17 or 25, single or married, parent or not, I don't think really matters. In William's Lullaby Thomas is written as a man who, although trying to understand his role as a father, really is lost -- and in some ways child-like himself.
There's something incredible about imagining the potential of a child, not yet tainted by the outside world. At a certain point, a parent can no longer protect their child from being hurt, from hurting others or themselves. It's with this idea that William's Lullaby begins.
N.
What are some of your favourite father/son moments in film? Comment below!
I remember seeing The Sixth Sense in the summer of 1999. It was the drive-in double feature. I was nine years old. First billing was Inspector Gadget for us kids, which we were likely to fall asleep to. I was still awake when it finished and what followed was a film that got under my skin and has stayed there ever since.
I never ended up making it through that first viewing. After a chilling scene in which young Haley Joel-Osment meets an unexpected midnight visitor in his kitchen, it was decided (most likely based on our white knuckles) that this film was not appropriate for young kids -- or rather me, as my siblings were likely asleep. It's true. The film had traumatized me. But there was something about it that stayed with me, and though I had only seen an hour of the film, I could not shake what I had seen. To this day, I'll admit that the hairs still stand up on the back of my neck if I'm walking into a dark kitchen in the middle of the night.
It may have been a year or two later, maybe even less, when I was finally able to convince my parents to allow me to see the film in its entirety. Seeing The Sixth Sense from beginning to end was when I realized that a horror film can be more than just a horror film; that a ghost story can be about more than just the ghosts; that the reason why this film scared me went beyond some of the frightening sequences it featured.
I have since watched The Sixth Sense hundreds of times. I've read the screenplay over and over, and know the story by heart. A lot has been said about M. Night and I'll be the first to say that, along with directing one of the best films I've ever seen (The Sixth Sense) he's also directed one of the worst (The Happening). But whether The Sixth Sense was a one-hit wonder, or a fluke, or not -- it is a gem of a movie that I believe will remain a classic much like The Omen or Rosemary's Baby. And it has greatly influenced my filmmaking.
The haunting atmosphere, colours and even music in my short film The Boy Who Knew are inspired by the overall design and feel of The Sixth Sense and I watched M. Night's masterpiece quite a bit during my directing research for that film.
Even The Boy Who Knew features an ending (although much more subtle) in which the protagonist, alone, comes to a revelation which brings the story together -- much like the over popularized ending of The Sixth Sense.
For me The Sixth Sense is on my list of influential films because of how well it executes a very real theme through the horror/thriller genre. I love films that have a supernatural edge to them but are based in reality -- and this is The Sixth Sense through and through. The film, in a nutshell, is about a young boy who has the ability to see the dead. What the film is really about is communication -- amongst the living. Who can forget this unbelievably powerful scene. It has been a long time since a "horror/thriller" has featured incredible writing/acting such as this [MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS ... although not the big one]:
The film is riddled with symbolism and moves at such a steady pace. It knows where it's headed and as an audience member you feel like the storytellers are in complete control of their masterpiece.
I'll talk about quite a few films that have inspired me in this blog, but from a creative writing and directing stand-point, it's safe for me to say that The Sixth Sense is one of my greatest influences.
Hopefully we'll be able to post exciting updates on the progress of the film very soon. Mike Whissell (sound designer) and I are still hard at work fine-tuning some of the more intricate details of the film. Mike and I are itching to get a foley session going which will happen soon -- and we'll post an update once it does.
Paul Barton is progressing with the score and doing a fantastic job. I had the opportunity to meet with him in Kingston, ON over the holidays and heard a good chunk of what he had been working on. I am incredibly excited to share it with all of you. Those who have spoken to me in the past know how much music in film is important to me. And this film is no exception. It is called William's Lullaby, after-all.
This week, I wanted to take a moment and talk about how this all started in the first place. I will start off by saying that I think every artist has "their way." I don't believe there is a right or wrong way of going about creating art. I guess I'm saying that because I don't want to make it seem like I am putting myself on a pedestal as an 'expert.' In these blogs, I can only say what has worked for me as an artist.
Took a few days off this past week to work on an small outside project. While I did, I learnt a lot about the importance of prep and planning and it got me thinking about the beginning months of Lullaby.
Naivety was my best friend as a young filmmaker. Truly. Having that childlike naivety as a teenager is what allowed me to tackle some of the daunting projects I did back then. When I was fourteen-years-old I had the audacity to think I could make a feature length film with a cast and crew of over 100 people by the time I graduated school. Any film instructor would tell me today that in order to do so I would need a budget in the hundreds of thousands, a professional crew, gear, training etc... in other words, they would give me limitations. And on some level, they are right. Those are some of the things you need to produce a professional piece of work. But where there is a will, there is most definitely a way. And when you find you are restricted with your resources, planning becomes your best friend.
See, I was stubborn. Back in 2004, I hadn't made a dramatic film before, let alone a feature. A few docs here and there and a multitude of backyard films starring my siblings, sure. But nothing of this magnitude. Yet, I refused to take no for an answer and despite people telling me to start small, I committed to creating The Vicious Circle -- a feature length film on bullying and hatred.
I may have been naive, but I wasn't stupid. I had an inkling of how daunting this project was and knowing this, I gave myself the time to pull it off right. Four years really. When a merry band of high-school go-getters and I finally brought the project to life in our tenth grade year, we cast the film over a period of two months... 6 whole months prior to shooting it in the summer of 2006. During those 6 months we rehearsed heavily with our cast and planned every detail of the shoot, so that when July 1st, 2006 rolled along we were ready.
Waylon Baur and Anthony Kinsella in a 2006 rehearsal for "The Vicious Circle."
Of course, we were still kids. Things still fell apart, we made tons of mistakes, but we managed to pull through and premiered the film on September 28th, 2007 to a sold out room in Duncan McArthur Auditorium in Kingston, ON.
Actor and Musician, Jim Patterson, speaks at the 2007 premiere of "The Vicious Circle"
Had we not planned -- truly done our homework -- over the course of our making of the film, I think The Vicious Circle would have fallen apart for good and never seen the flicker of the silver screen.
A film about kids, made by kids -- that was always the goal, and that's how the film will forever remain. Of course now that I have gone through school, learnt about filmmaking and begun to hone my craft through other projects, there are times when I look at The Vicious Circle and re-cut it in my head, even re-shoot it with more purposeful cinematography. I re-write the script in my mind. But I'll never touch it. Though it may not be a great showcase of my skills today, it is a wonderful time capsule of where I was creatively at age 15, as well as what being a teenager is like through the eyes of teenagers -- quite literally (only fifteen/sixteen-year-olds peered through that lens.) And I like to think that there's something quite powerful in that.
Of course, pictures are always better than words. Here's a fun video that showcases the achievement of a group of teenagers, who did their "homework," and pulled off something memorable.
In the years since, I have directed more, worked on numerous projects and learnt more about my craft. Part of the reason I am so excited about Lullaby is that it truly showcases where I am at today with my filmmaking and storytelling. It is beyond what I have done before, professionally and creatively, and this again goes back to strategic homework and planning.
Between 2010 and 2011, it had been about a year and I hadn't directed anything. I did one quick short to keep my brain working, but other than that -- nothing. There came a point where I had to ask myself what I was doing -- what was I waiting for? I had a script. One that I had written while still in High school. Surprisingly, when I asked myself if I felt I could direct that script tomorrow, the answer was 'yes.'
So what was I doing??
I was allowing $$$, $$$ to get in the way! Looking at the script again, I realized that, although being a complex story, it didn't require much to bring to life -- small cast, minimal locations. I looked back over an email Mike had sent me in 2008 when I wrote the first draft of the script. His email read:
"Nick, I just read the screenplay, I think it's great. I would love to work on it -- I don't know how we're going to do it. We'll need to do a lot of planning, but someway we'll make it work."
That's the spirit!
Ensuring that, years later, Mike was still on-board, I took the plunge and in January 2011 committed to shooting William's Lullaby in late August. In the meantime I would plan and do homework like I never had before. Although William's Lullaby was already raking up dollars double that of The Vicious Circle, we still had to think creatively and economically with our pre-production.
One thing I did for the first time on this project, and will now continue to do for the rest of my directing career, is storyboard. I have storyboarded scenes/sequences in the past before, but never the entire film. Because I knew we would be shooting the film with little resources, a small crew, and a jam-packed schedule, storyboarding every shot of the film was, for me, an exercise in patience and truly helped me study every word of the script I had written. I was thinking about every shot of the film months prior to being on set. When the time came for me to stand and direct, I would know my script like the back of my hand. I would reach this level of understanding through hours and hours of storyboarding as I prepared for shooting.
The result was an enormous binder filled with over 400 frames. It became my bible on set. I would walk around with it and use it as a constant resource for myself and my actors. If ever there was a question as to why we were doing a certain shot, what it meant in the grand scheme of things, or what was ahead visually -- it was answered in the storyboards. Having done this much homework also allowed me to improvise on the day, if ideas came up from cast or crew or we wanted to try new things. I was comfortable enough in my planning to know when to be adventurous and try something risky.
This experience was invaluable and the result, I feel, is a meticulously-put-together film that is purposeful and well thought-out. I will storyboard again and again, on every project I direct, no matter how big or small. Perhaps I'm just a visual guy -- but this way of planning really works for me.
Of course, I could go on and on, talking about planning and homework. I could talk about re-writes, for which there were many. Rehearsals. Wardrobe/camera tests. Set sketches. Camera schematics etc... and perhaps I will down the road.
Bottom line is, when you are against the odds with a project that seems larger than life or perhaps unattainable and beyond your means, giving yourself the time to strategize and make it happen is the key to success -- for me anyway.
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Well, we have officially released our teaser materials to the public. As filmmakers this is the best kind of incentive. The filmmaking life can be a very quiet one, especially if you are in the post-production phase. It can be years before you hear any sort of feedback from an audience for your work. And if you're not careful, years can turn into years and years. Being a perfectionist is, of course, a blessing and a curse. So, needless to say, it is definitely a strong incentive to finish Lullaby now that we have gone ahead and told the outside world that's what we intend to do. Releasing our Facebook page, Twitter page and website on January 1st seemed like the perfect New Years Resolution to us. It is a clear sign of what we plan to accomplish in 2013.
The teaser materials that we have released are just that -- a tease. We are not showing much and we know that. Of course that may be to the annoyance of some, but there is an art to teasing and if you look closely, we are actually showing you quite a bit. Well, that is to say, we're giving you a few starter pieces to the puzzle. And over the course of this year we will give you more. It is still some time before you'll see the film. There is plenty of work to be done and marketing is a strategic journey of its own. Giving you too much now just wouldn't be fun. So bit by bit we'll give you the pieces to what we hope is a very complex puzzle.
When I first met with Leslie Martin almost a year ago to discuss designing the promotional materials for William's Lullaby I stressed simplicity for the first phase. We both agreed that each phase of teaser materials would have its own level of simplicity and modesty. This is, in the end, a very quiet film -- loud in some of the taboo subjects it tackles, but quiet (and perhaps chilling) in its simple execution. Both Leslie and I wanted this to be reflected in our first teaser poster.
I never would have thought that so much work and thought would go into the selection of a font, but Leslie assured me that when you are creating what is essentially a logo (and one that you'll look at for years to come), it is a vital step in the process. After many different options, we came up with this is our final word-mark for Lullaby.
I love this look. Simple but chilling. Exactly what we were looking for from the start. The all-caps font is a bold choice. And the way the last few letters in "Lullaby" seem to separate suggests something far more sinister than a simple title, let alone one that reads as harmlessly as "William's Lullaby." The way the letters seem to drop into the black also suggest something much darker is at hand and this is something we wanted to make clear from the get-go.
This also applied in Leslie's design of the first teaser poster in which the text, which fills the entire page, seems to drop into blackness before revealing, in all-caps, WILLIAM'S LULLABY at the very bottom.
Also, and this is what I mean when I say "look closely," the text that fills the page is of vital importance to the film. It is the classic story of The Ugly Duckling -- a duckling who did not fit in and felt himself unworthy, questioning himself, his looks etc... until one-day he finally transformed into the beautiful swan he was meant to be. Starting our teaser materials off with this was something we felt would be an excellent hook.
Leslie also came up with a second teaser poster which essentially has the same information, in a slightly different form.
The William's Lullaby Duck Logo is also the face of our Facebook and Twitter page.
Again, Leslie has taken a simple, harmless image of a duck and transformed it into something quite ghostly while maintaining its simplicity. The medium she has used -- a rough, pencil-sketch like drawing reveals something dark and menacing.
We are suggesting, right off the bat, the idea of The Ugly Duckling -- that story and what it means in terms of loneliness, grief, depression and destiny -- is a major part of the story we are planning to tell. It might be of interest, given this information, that the original title associated with William's Lullaby years ago was "Ducklings and Swans."
I look forward to working with Leslie more on some of our upcoming teaser materials. So far I think she has done a brilliant job at "showing" rather than "telling" and holding back while still giving quite a bit. What do you folks think?
I'd like to briefly mention our first teaser trailer. I am perhaps guilty of showing too little here. But I do like holding back at this stage. What I can say is that this initial teaser has introduced you (very quickly, mind you) to Toby Bisson and Richard Sutton, two of our brilliant actors in the film. Furthermore, you catch a bit of Paul Barton's haunting score in the background.
If you've found us here, you're likely already following us on Twitter and liking us on Facebook. If you're not yet, be sure to check out those pages too for updates, videos, pictures and plenty more teases to come.
It's 11pm on a Friday night and I have hours of compositing ahead of me. Just waiting on a render. Though I must say that is not as much of a pain as it used to be thanks to Final Cut Pro X's background rendering. Back in September 2011, we made the decision to edit William's Lullaby on the new Final Cut Pro X, feeling that, despite mixed reviews, it would provide us with the appropriate tools we needed to complete the film and give it the polish we wanted -- and it hasn't disappointed. Sure, there have certainly been the odd hiccups and frustrations, the rare temptation to toss a computer monitor through a window or the flop sweat when you think you have backed your project into a corner it cannot escape, but we've made it through! The finish line is in sight. Still a ways to go, and still some time before we'll pull back the curtain on our baby. But we're getting there. And we're mighty proud and excited.
There are a total of 63 shots in the film requiring adjustments/compositing or additional things added to them/removed. Some were planned, others not so much, but this is all part of the process, albeit a tedious one at this point. We are about half-way through fixing up those shots at which point the locked picture will be ready for colour grading and correction. The edit itself has been locked since June 2012.
Meanwhile, my Sound Designer, Mike Whissell has been diligently putting together the Dialogue Edit, adding in the ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement) that we recorded with our cast back in November.
We were graciously hosted by Zane at North of Princess Studios in Kingston, Ontario. Who knew that such a beautiful mixing and recording studio existed in the heart of the city?
Once that's complete, we'll move on to Foley (sound effects) and prepare the film for its sound mix. We both agreed from the beginning that the sound design in this film bears an enormous weight and so it has proven to take the longest in this filmmaking process and seems to be providing us with the most challenges -- in a good way! Mike has been with this project since its infancy (back when it was called "Ducklings and Swans"), so it truly is a pride and joy to work with him and see this project to completion together. You can keep up to date with Mike's progress on his website: http://www.karprecords.ca/
At the same time, I've struck gold with a talented young composer by the name of Paul Barton. The tracks he has been sending me are goosebump-inducing and completely capture the mood and theme of William's Lullaby. Hear a score he did for a brilliant short film by Kurtis Chen here: https://vimeo.com/33149647
Paul's Lullaby score is going to blow you away!
What I'd like is for this blog to be an open communication device between filmmaker and viewer. I'll keep you up to date on our progress, meanwhile, I'd like to hear from you! I value your support and interest in our film. And I'm not just saying that. Without you, this film collects cobwebs on a shelf. It happens more often than you think! This is a project that has been marinating with us for the last 6 years and we are eager to show it to you. Please share this blog, tweet, retweet, post -- do what you can and join in the discussion! Like on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and when the time comes, we hope to see you at a William's Lullaby screening in your neighborhood.
