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!
This week, we're taking a look at the casting process of William's Lullaby and what it was like for us to be first introduced to Toby Bisson, Richard Roy Sutton and the rest of our cast.
But first... We have begun colour grading William's Lullaby and it is incredible the difference it makes. I am very excited with how it is turning out and I thought I would share a little "colour test" with you to give you an idea of the subtle differences that alteration in colour can make to a scene.
Rewind the tape to May, 2011 and we look back at William's Lullaby in its infancy. We began a casting call for William's Lullaby in Toronto and Kingston (where we planned on shooting the film) using print media, radio ads and online casting calls. At that point, all other roles had been cast either internally or, in some cases, prior to pre-production even starting. We were specifically looking for our two leads; Thomas and William Splinter. The result were numerous video submissions from actors and non-actors across Ontario.
From videos and online auditions, we moved on to casting in person and saw nearly 50 people for both leads. We were looking for something very specific in both characters. Both had to be likeable and sympathetic to an audience; and furthermore they had to be believable as father and son.
In walks young Toby Bisson.
Toby will correct me on this (because the difference IS a big deal) but I believe he was six at the time of auditioning for us. He had caught our eye earlier when a video was sent in to us of him dancing to the entirety of Michael Jackson's "Beat It" (air guitar and all) with a closing line of: "I'm Toby Bisson and I want you to pick me for your movie." In truth, he had won our hearts from that point on. And that feeling was further reinforced when we met him in person. He is the William on the page and demonstrated both a youth and maturity beyond his six years that would be required to take on a project of this scope.
This was Toby's first movie role and for those of you that have been following us on FACEBOOK or TWITTER, you know that he has been doing extremely well ever since.
Later that same day, Richard Roy Sutton owned the room and who knew at the time that these two would soon be playing father and son. Well, we did. Very quickly too.
Richard brought with him credentials, experience and tools as an actor with many credits to his resume, a full reel and a previous video audition in which he had already read scenes from the script.
Richard's read was without a doubt the best we had heard. I recall Alex McLean, our co-producer (who read opposite Richard in his audition) commenting after he left the room: "He stared into my soul!"
Two days later and after many hours of auditions and discussion, we made the calls and Toby Bisson and Richard Roy Sutton joined the William's Lullaby team. They became a part of the pre-existing cast that included Kingston's Partners in Crime duo, Ila Lawton and Robert Lawton in the roles of Collette and Peter, respectively. Amy Healey (who also sat in on casting) as the gracious and motherly kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Gibson. Peter Nielsen. Sandie Cond. Marc Veno. Gabe Meacher. Calvin Rea. Braedon Da Silva and many others.
Upon completion of the script, we had thought the roles would be impossible to cast and indeed they were our biggest challenge in the process (a five-year-old involved in intense scenes and carrying a feature-length film is not easy to find). But we had found our Thomas and William in Richard and Toby. And if we were excited with them then, our reaction after shooting the film in August 2011 was one of absolute glee and confidence.
It seems appropriate that this week we take a focus and look at music in film, and specifically, film scoring. I had a great session with William's Lullaby composer, Paul Barton this weekend. He has laid out a score from beginning to end and it is now about fine-tuning what is there and adjusting some of the works, but he is definitely rounding home on what is a monumental achievement for a young musician -- a complete, feature length film score!
And it really is beautiful. I can't wait to share some of it with you. Paul has perfectly captured the tension, mystery, beauty and tragedy that is William's Lullaby. How do you express grief through music? How do you describe the innocence of a child and contrast that with the jaded reality of an adult through musical phrases? Paul's done it. I feel confident in saying that I think it's really going to blow a lot of people away and I hope this turns out to be a big opportunity for Paul in the future. He has certainly put forward the effort.
As I write this, however, I find it hard to describe the working relationship between a Director and a Composer. In all honesty, it is quite a difficult process to come up with the score for a film. It's very difficult and rather strange to describe music that simply does not exist yet, and to try and have working discussions with another collaborator based on that. A lot of it comes down to expressing feelings and emotions, but that can be dangerous too. You can be too on the nose with a score and that is something we tried very hard to avoid with William's Lullaby.
I love music in film. I think it can make or break a film. Music can save a film that is headed for disaster. It can elevate to a level beyond what it was originally capable of. It can also ruin a potentially good movie. Wrong cues, over-scoring, under-scoring. It's quite a delicate process. It's no wonder so many young filmmakers gravitate to copyright music for their film projects -- only to be discouraged when they find out they can't use it. The Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil" adds just that perfect amount of spark, cheeky sarcasm and intensity to a scene about slimy Wall Street business dealers. Although Glee seems to be a little trigger happy with their iPod now, that opening scene in the pilot set to Earth, Wind and Fire's"Shining Star" had just the right kind of attitude to introduce you to a new set of characters. Or how about the brilliant use of Crystal Blue Persuasion in the latest episode of BREAKING BAD?
Or this unbelievable use of The Rolling Stone's "Thru and Thru" in The Sopranos:
I think Scorsese is brilliant with his use of licensed music, from the very beginning with Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore:
To his incredible choices of music cues in Goodfellas. Note this scene where with one music cue, one perfectly paced push-in and the brilliance of De Niro's silent acting, we quickly realize everything going through this character's head:
But using pre-existing music is all well and good. And there will be a touch of that in Lullaby. Those songs evoke feelings of their own and using them in a scene is a great way of making your audience feel a certain way based on that song. There has to be a reason you paid thousands of dollars for it, right?
What about an original score? That's tricky. We're now talking about music people have not heard yet; music that audiences will not have a pre-exisiting connection with; music that should not over-state or under-state a scene. I found this brilliant round-table discussion with the 2012 Oscar nominated film composers. If you have the time to watch it, or are able to play it in the background while you do your laundry, cook or read this and other articles, I recommend it:
These are the big guys! The masters. They usually stand before an orchestra of 100-200 musicians, in front of a gigantic screen projecting the picture-locked film which they play along to. An example of an orchestral film scoring session can be seen here:
Paul doesn't have the luxury of an orchestra like that. Our scoring sessions, and his work-flow is similar to the scoring of the Oscar-nominated film Beasts of the Southern Wild. It's quite incredible what technology can do now. Take a look:
Lots of surprises to come with the music of William's Lullaby. We are working hard to make it a very powerful and visceral experience for you, the viewer.
First a little update. Mike Whissell and I met with Toronto foley artist, Devin O'Haire last Monday and had a good in-depth discussion about what the film needs and how we can give it the finished polish we're looking for. Things are looking up. And it's game on. Together, the three of us laid out the ground-work for a solid timeline to finish the film completely -- picture, sound, everything. I won't tell you exactly what that timeline is, because anything can change and we won't compromise the finish of the film if it means taking more time. However, we have what we believe is a solid time-line to complete William's Lullaby with certain milestones to hit along the way.
Foley will begin in about a week. For those of you reading this who are unaware about the process of Foley in film, I found this interesting video from my alma mater Vancouver Film School explaining it all. It's quite fascinating the amount of work that goes into sound design and creating everything that you hear in a film. Even a drama. We'll be venturing into this soon. Take a look. Or a "listen":
Second thing I wanted to do in this blog was provide access to some of the amazing write-ups that have been done about us in the last couple of weeks. Buzz is slowly but surely starting to build and people are beginning to hear about William's Lullaby from different sources of information. And there's plenty more to come. This is just the beginning.
FROM "THE TORONTO FILM SCENE"
"Toronto filmmaker Nicholas Arnold's latest endeavour 'William's Lullaby' has entered the sound-design stage of production and to get your anticipation up, they’ve just released a teaser trailer. Shot in Kingston, Ontario this past August, the film features a cast and crew of Kingston and Toronto-area artists and is aiming for completion in time for the 2013/2014 festival circuit... READ FULL ARTICLE HERE
FROM "(RE)SEARCH MY TRASH"
"Your upcoming movie William's Lullaby - in a few words, what is it about? Well, what can I say without giving anything away? In a nutshell, William's Lullaby tells the story of Thomas Splinter, a newly single father struggling to raise his five-year-old son. Thomas fears his abilities as a parent but makes a strong effort to build on his relationship and get his life back on track... READ FULL ARTICLE HERE
FROM CKWSFM.COM
"Nick’s latest independent film “William’s Lullaby” was made right here in Kingston in the summer of 2011, and will soon be able to be seen on the film festival circuit starting later this year. The movie stars two gifted Kingston actors, Richard Roy Sutton (“SICK”, and Lifetime’s “A Nanny’s Revenge”), and seven year old Toby Bisson (CTV’s “Saving Hope”, “Mikka”, and “Cracked”). The entire cast and crew are from the Kingston/Toronto area... READ FULL ARTICLE HERE
FROM KINGSTON THIS WEEK
"William's Lullaby, an independent feature film shot here in Kingston, has launched an online teaser campaign that has piqued the curiosity of many indie film lovers. A one-minute trailer has been released on major social networking sites, and is already creating a buzz. In one version of the dialogue-free video, viewers are shown snippets of a man...READ FULL ARTICLE HERE Pgs. 18, 40
Many thanks to Lindsay, Mike, Dave and Tricia for those great write-ups. Also thanks to all those who have retweeted us, mentioned us and plugged our teaser on Twitter. There's more to come so do check back on our social media sites as we begin to reveal more about the film.
WANT TO HELP PROMOTE?
If you would like to write about William's Lullaby and would like to request an interview with any of the cast or crew or would like access to promo materials for your blog, website, media outlet, please don't hesitate to contact us at williamslullaby@gmail.com
Lots of stuff happening with our cast and crew, as well as the film itself. To keep track of everything that's going on, make sure you're "plugged in" online!
