Short films, Calling Card Films, Thesis Films, & Distributing Short Films

War Stories about Making and Distributing A Calling Card Film

On November 23, 2009, Ylana Kellar and I curated a night of shorts for the
Cinewomen NY-NYWIFT screening series entitled Women in the Reel World: Sarcasm,
sycophancy, a dead aim, and other useful tools for coping with the everyday.  
You can read the original program announcement, or download the full program, here.

LITTLE CANYON directed by Olivia SilverLITTLE CANYON directed by Olivia Silver

One of the things that struck me about this program is that most of the films were thesis films that the filmmakers had made in their film programs; this was true of all of the films except for Loose Ends by Rachel Gordon.  My next blog entry will be all about Rachel Gordon's films so I won't say more about her films here.

What is a Calling Card Film?
A Calling Card film is a short film produced by an independent filmmaker to showcase their talents. Most often made by film school students as their thesis films, but also by independent filmmakers. Budgets run approximately $3K per one minute of film (16mm and low level HD).

Because of the sudden increase in mobile screening devices, such as ipods and iphones, not to mention laptops, short form filmmaking is becoming more and more popular. NYU Film school now teaches a course on how to produce films for cell phones. "Cell Phone Cinema" is now an industry term.

I love the way Professor Bardosh pronounces "Global Village." But though he advocates producing films with cell phones, its not clear how a revenue stream for cell phone films would work.

The usual support organizations for filmmakers offer plenty of support for short-form filmakers:
Support organizations for independent filmmakers:
The Independent Feature Film Project, (NY)
Film Independent (LA)
Women in Film and Television
The Sundance Institute
The International Documentary Association

But the filmmakers in our series mostly made their short films as a stepping stone towards longer films, a career path that might not work so well anymore.


The biggest challenge for short film filmmakers is finding screening outlets and getting distribution. This is one reason why  Cinewomen NY & NYWIFT maintain the screening series which Ylana and I occasionally guest curate for.

After the screening (in the Maya Deren screening room at Anthology Film Archives) the filmmkaers who could be present made a few remarks and answered questions about their production process. Rain Breaw and Susan Metzger could not be there to represent their films so they sent some production notes which I have included below.

The first thing to note is how hard it is to get a short film made, even at film school. Rain Breaw said:

Secret Agent was made as part of an intermediate filmmaking class at USC.  Each semester, USC selects 10 directors, 10 producers and 40 scripts from a batch of submissions.  The directors and producers team up, and each team selects a script.  10 pitches are then made to the professors of the class, and out of those 10 pitches, the professors select 4 projects.

The class funds the projects and requires that the budget not go one cent above $3000 (though film stock, processing, editing and sound facilities are covered by the school and not part of the $3000 budget).

The project must be shot over the course of three weekends, and this is non-negotiable.  Also non-negotiable is the amount of film stock you have (16mm film).  I don't remember what the amount was, but I do remember that it basically works out to a 4-1 shooting ratio, which is incredibly tight, especially for a stunt-heavy movie! :)


The limitations placed on film school films often lead to other challenges, especially when filmmaker's have to work with donations, such as donated space:

A good portion of the film takes place in a church, and the weekend limitation made it nearly impossible for us to find a church that we could use!!!  The church we ended up using is connected to UCLA, and somehow that made them more open to our problem. I think we looked at over 100 churches before finding and settling on that one.  I was also a bit of a diva when it came to church selection.  There were a couple of smaller, raggedy churches we could have used with more flexibility outside of LA, but they were too raggedy.  I wanted something pretty.

The weather was also a challenge. It literally rained ever single day we shot.  Not kidding.  The big stunt scene at the end was supposed to be shot first.  It ended up being the last thing we shot, and since it was in the rain, I had to completely re-choreograph the entire thing while we were shooting in order to keep my actors out of the rain as much as possible.

The weapons we fired and the  sophisticated stunts require a significant amount of safety considerations, most of which cost a lot of money.  Most of our budget was spent on safety considerations for the guns and stunts.  The shot of Katrina firing the gun out of the church was actually filmed in the warehouse on the day when we had a weapons marshall on set.

As a class, every top billed crew member is actually enrolled in the class.  Dailies are screened in front of the entire class (the crew doesn't get to see them first).  Additionally, we also don't get a monitor while shooting - directors have to trust their Directors of Photography are getting what we want them to get!  I had a nice embarrassing moment in class one day when a beautiful boob shot came up on the screen.  The shot was a long shot that rack focused from the younger sister in the foreground to Katrina arriving at the warehouse in the background.  I did not know that the beginning of the shot was actually this fantastically enormous in-focus super-boob, and then the focus racked to the car.  I saw it along with the rest of the class (of about 50 people + 8 faculty).  I had two DPs, a male and a female, and everyone immediately accused Chuck of the offense. In reality, however, the shot was done by Cindy.


Another challenge of making films in film school are the limited expectations which sometimes manifest as impossible-to-meet expectations and not-so-well-hidden prejudices:

My actors are great, but they were not martial artists, secret agents, weapons proficient, etc.

I gave them a daily routine to practice for two weeks leading up to the shoot based on my marital arts training. Occasionally I worked with them on the routine.  We practiced kicking, etc.  We also worked a few times with a top-quality stunt coordinator who's pretty awesome, and he got them  doing cool things as well.

I wanted them to really look like they knew what they were doing with the guns, so we spent time at a local LA gun club, and I learned (and looked like an idiot) right along with them.

I also had them carry a toy gun (a neon colored one for safety - didn't want them getting shot at by LAPD!) on them during the entire three weeks we were shooting.  They were supposed to carry the gun in their purse at all times, and I'm pretty sure they didn't lie to me when they said they did it.  I gave the toy guns some weight and told them no one was to ever realize they had it, not their dates, their friends, no one.

We got a lot of flack in the class for the fighting and the shooting.  Every time the dailies screened, a select group of guys talked about how it wasn't realistic.  Never mind that I probably know more about the technicalities of fighting than anyone in that class...!  Outside of the class, however, I've gotten numerous compliments on how real both the fighting and the gunfire looked.  I honestly believe the flack in-class was merely due to the fact that I'm a female director and my actors were women.  If we had been male, I don't think anyone would have said anything.


When asked what her biggest directorial challenge was, Rain answered as follows:

The biggest challenge with the entire script/film was making sure that one single shot of the groom enabled the viewer to understand Katrina's conflict.  He couldn't be a shmuck.  He also couldn't be super-hotty who'd be seen as "the great catch."  He had to be perfect for her, really likeable, not cooler than her, and we as the audience had to get all of that, and that he loves her very much, in one single shot.

I had a lot of people thinking that would completely fail.  Major fights with one of my producers surrounding this one single issue.  But I was extremely confident in my casting and went forward anyway.  While I wish I'd gotten a shot that lasted just 2-3 seconds longer than it did (we used every second of the shot we got - I was too conscious of my lack of film stock), I believe the shot worked.

It's hard enough to find distribution outlets for short films under any circumstances, but sometimes things happen that make just that much harder:

Unfortunately, the completion of this film coincided with a horrid hurricane named Katrina.  USC rules are such that I could not change the name of my lead actor -- [a name that is fully pronounced in the film only once]. name.  The film was locked, set in stone, done.  As I was sending the film out to festivals and screening it, the biggest question I got was about the character's name, though it was entirely coincidental.


Secret Agent was written by Susan Metzger, whose film, The Red Ace Cola Project, which she wrote and directed, was also part of the series.

Susan Metzger got her inspiration for The Red Ace Cola Project from a chapter in a book called
 Fast Food Nation [Susan was inspired by the book; later a documentary was made based on the book.

Susan  says:

I was inspired by the chapter on film about flavorists and the creation of artificial flavors, then I started thinking about the characters that would inhabit this laboratory world. I love the Coen brothers and I wanted to make this story like a fairy tale or fable in that style.  It’s a story about innovation and how we must break down old barriers in order to innovate and move forward, and it’s also about a woman who must stop “being nice” and really push herself in order to achieve her dream.  I infused Elizabeth’s experience in the chauvinistic science community with some of my feelings about working in the male-dominated film industry.  (Elizabeth’s experiences are exaggerated of course!)  I sometimes feel people don’t take me seriously as a director, and I think a lot of that anger came out in this film.

I feel extremely fortunate to have found actors who really took the concept and characters and made them their own.  The most fun and rewarding part of the whole experience for me was working with these fabulous actors.

One of the most important elements in creating the world and tone of the film is the production design.  A lot of blood, sweat and tears went into the design of this film!  I started by selecting a restricted color palate, (only black, white, and red) and worked from there.  All the locations were found on the USC campus.  The laboratory, which was by far the most important location, was an abandoned floor in a science building on campus that has since been torn down.  We cleaned and prepped the entire floor of labs, using some of the glassware that was left in the building and supplementing with materials from prop houses.  Just a note, the exteriors in the black and white footage and the exterior shots of Elizabeth walking down the hall to the building are at the actual lab location.  We affectionately called it the “cheese grater” building.

The “drowning” dream sequence was shot partly on a stage and partly outside in a kiddie pool in the parking lot.  We were able to piece together the sequence by using some key shots and creating a partial wall that we put in the kiddie pool with Ilana to look like she was neck high in soda.   

We shot on 35mm and finished as a film print. The black and white footage was shot on 16mm, the grainiest stock we could find and then projected and shot again on 35.

If I had the money, I would shoot 35mm and finish on film every time!  For this project, Kodak very generously donated the film prints and we were fortunate to secure a grant to help finish the film.

The Red Ace Cola Project is my thesis film, so the budget and all the production decisions were up to me.  My crew was composed of classmates and friends who generously gave their time.  I’m very proud of both films and I learned a lot from both experiences.



I think these two sets of war stories amply illustrate the challenges of making a short film, even within the (usually) supportive environment of a film school. However, a drawback to producing a calling card film in film school is that the film school retains partial ownership of the film. In the case of USC that is not necessarily a bad thing, as USC is very pro-active in helping its students get their films out to festivals and so on.

Still, the environment for short filmmakers, especiallly those who can go to film school, is much better than it was in the mid-1980s, before the advent of online distribution, festivals that showed only short films, and short film sidebars at other festivals. I made my own thesis film, Union Square, at NYU in 1986-87, which we included in the series. Listening to the younger filmmakers talk also made me realize how much  things had changed for women filmmakers. When I started my MFA in Film Production at NYU in 1983, I was one of six women in a class of 88. Today the numbers are closer to 50-50. I found it nearly impossible to find someone who would shoot my thesis film; in the end I had to look outside of my class to find someone. Rain had two people shooting for her. 

 

And finally, there is the ability to post one's film online. For those of you making your own calling card films, here is a starting list of online distribution outlets for short films; typically there is no pay:

PBS has an online short film festival:

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/insideindies/shortsfest/?gclid=CK6o_oDO_JcCFQGHHgodPjIJDw


Atom.com is great for edgy comedy:

http://www.atom.com/


And a few others:

http://www.indiefilmpage.com/short.html

http://shortfilmsonline.com/content/

A couple of sites that link to numerous  other sites that showcase short films:

http://www.cinemaspot.com/watchonline/


http://shortfilmsonline.com/content/