An Introduction to You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory

Note: In April, I directed my senior thesis film, titled You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory, which received an Advanced Production allotment last fall from the Tisch School of the Arts. In order to receive the allotment, I had to pitch my film to Professor Yemane Demissie and the class in November. The first part of this blog entry is comprised of my pitch for the Advanced Production Workshop class, and the second part is comprised of text from my IndieGoGo campaign to fund the film (which was launched in February).

You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory Promo Video from Jack Kyser on Vimeo.

The Pitch

To say that my Intermediate Narrative film The Wheels is auto-biographical would be somewhat accurate. The specific events in the movie never happened, but the film does kind of reflect how I feel about a lot of things, and maybe it represents some of the things I wish I'd said to my father, who passed away when I was eleven from alcoholism. But interestingly, making that film became a way of understanding him, and by the end of it, I actually feel more sympathy for his character than for the son. So, I don't know, maybe that says something about why we make these films.

My new film, You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory, is about Charlie, a socially inept twenty-six year-old who compulsively confesses every detail of his anti-social behavior to his mother, Hazel, with whom he still lives in Harlem. When his mother asks him to finally move out of her apartment, Charlie is forced to confront his greatest fears – losing his only life witness and living in a world without his only friend and confidante.

In the latest version of my script, there is no mention made of Charlie's father, but the implication is there - if his father so easily disappeared from this world (as an older draft stated, aside from an obituary and a few pictures around the house, you'd never know he existed), what's to stop Charlie from being forgotten completely, too? Particularly when the people around him – his girlfriend, members of his family, friends who abandon him – are, as he puts it, dropping like flies? At the end of the day, the only person who knows his life story, who has been a witness for his entire life, is his mother.

The film directly addresses so many of my fears and anxieties - of dying without being remembered, the need to be liked or to impress in social situations, fear of abandonment, the necessity of archiving and preserving memory, and wanting to have someone by your side who knows your entire journey, from start to finish. Psychologically, I'm not sure I can say where all of these obsessions come from. Maybe it is from losing my father, or watching the size of my family dwindle down to just a few people. At the beginning of this semester, about two months ago, my mom's sister, my aunt, passed away, and suddenly all of my worst fears embedded within this script were reconfirmed. If anything, that’s made me feel even closer to the project, and more certain that it expresses something that truly matters to me.

The way that the character in my film, Charlie, handles the loss around him isn't exactly mature. He's a self-obsessed character if there ever was one - crying out for love and attention from friends by acting like a buffoon, and then, knowing his behavior was unacceptable, confessing his behavior to his mother and expecting forgiveness, never once thinking of her struggles.

Along with the other three films I have made at NYU - With Love, Marty (2011), The Wheels (2012) and Jake the Cinephile (2013) - this new film represents part of a cinematic biography, with each of these movies dealing with a different aspect of my obsessions. These are all stories of alienated outsiders and social pariahs, of young men with strong, rigid moral codes, and the films concern their disenfranchisement with a world that doesn't share their values. You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory is the culmination of so many of these common concerns and themes.

In With Love, Marty, Marty obsesses over a new romantic conquest every few weeks. His desperate behavior drives his friends away, and his obsessive quest for love culminates in an ill-advised trip across the city to profess his love to a young woman he barely knows. She rejects him, and his night ends in disappointment. The obsessive behavior in The Wheels is the father’s unstoppable drinking – it destroys his relationship with his son, but he can’t seem to help it.

Disappointment plays a large role in these movies. In The Wheels, the son is continually let down by his father, and by the film’s end, he has distanced himself from his dad, not allowing himself to get hurt again. In Jake the Cinephile, Jake prefers watching films to having actual relationships with human beings, because the cinema has never disappointed Jake. When Jake tries to start a relationship with a young woman, his obsessive behavior eventually drives the young woman to throw him out on his feet. To Jake, though, this is simply a re-affirmation of what he already suspected – that people are disappointing and unreliable, and the cinema is his only true friend.

More than anything, though, these four pictures all seem to revolve around characters who are forced to come to terms with their unsustainable way of living. These men are pulled away from their comfort zones and pressured by outside forces to change their way of life. More often than not, however, they eventually retreat back to their original behavior.

When I think about why I've written these pieces, I think about the scene in my Advanced film where Charlie, in an act of desperation to form a connection with someone, goes overboard and starts overwhelming his realtor friend, Jim, with his deepest insecurities and fears. Jim becomes very uncomfortable, and withdraws from the conversation. And I think maybe that's what I'm doing with my work - reaching out and hoping that someone will understand me, or at the very least understand how I feel (without alienating them, hopefully, as Charlie alienates Jim in the film).

So what's different about this new film that I want to make in Advanced Production? If this is the same self-obsessed character making the same mistakes, why make another movie about him? This is what I want to address first.

Working with Yemane in this class has made me even more aware of how my movies deal explicitly with resistance to change. This theme has evolved over the four movies in a significant way. In With Love, Marty, I do believe Marty changes, even if only by a small degree. The Wheels, however, is pretty bleak. The father reverts completely back to his original state by the end of the movie – there is no indication that he will get sober. Jake the Cinephile is trickier. Jake loses both the girl and the cinema, and at the end of the movie, he comes face-to-face with himself for the first time. Is that progress? I don’t know.

Now that I’m aware of this reoccurring theme, however, I’m inclined to do something a little different with You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory. At face value, the ending – in which Charlie moves back in with his mother after being asked to move out – would seem to represent a total retreat back to Charlie’s comfort zone. However, I’ve always viewed the ending a little differently – I think that Charlie has learned how much his mother means to him, and how scary it will one day be for him to let go of her. Rather than moving out, however, I believe Charlie deals with this fear by treating his mother differently at the end of the film, with more care and compassion. Yemane and I have talked a lot about Charlie's journey here, and it's become clear that, although you can't expect Charlie to change radically by the end of the film, maybe we can see a character who is ready to listen to his mother.

Maybe it is unhealthy for mother and son to live together for the years to come. But the end of my Advanced film poses the question, what if they truly need each other? What if Charlie learns, over time, to be there for his mother, as his mother is there for him? There’s a strange sense of comfort, if not hope, in that ending, that I don’t believe exists in the other films. With this movie, I want to work toward a new kind of ending – something that’s still true and perhaps a little melancholy, but one that also acknowledges growth and, perhaps, hope.

Inspiration and Style

I'm going to cross over here to inspiration. With all of this talk of guilt, confession, social anxiety and obsessiveness, there's one filmmaker who I really respond to over any others, and that's Martin Scorsese, who is the king of the cinema of loneliness.

The visual style of Mean Streets (1973) is a big influence on the bar scenes in my movie, not only because they are stylistically similar to what I want to achieve, but also because the beginning chapter of Mean Streets was a major influence on me when thinking of how to introduce my character in my script. In one of the opening scenes in Mean Streets, we follow the protagonist, also named Charlie (Harvey Keitel), through the bar and observe his behavior with his friends. In this scene, Scorsese introduces the camera’s subjectivity toward Charlie, and the bar is also used to represent a world of sin. Look at the way Scorsese follows Charlie steadily as he dances through the bar and makes his way onstage to dance with the woman – this is not totally dissimilar to the kind of subjective camera movement I would like to do in my scene, perhaps when my Charlie walks up to the bar and starts ranting to the bartender, doing his Jack Nicholson impression. We also learn quite a bit about Scorsese’s Charlie based on his interaction with his friends – he’s immediately separated from the rest of his friends because he insists on punishing himself, or testing the fires of hell, by holding his finger above an open flame. We then understand that Charlie exists in a more emotionally conflicted universe than the people around him. We’re introduced to both his physical world and his internal, emotional world.

There are two very different worlds in my Advanced film. The first world, of course, is the world of the bar. It will be drenched in red light – open, spacey and a kind of platform where Charlie can go wild with his behavior. The lighting and production design in this scene will emphasize that we’re looking at this bar as a kind of hell for Charlie (very similar to Mean Streets). This is the world of sin, the world of Manhattan – the world away from his mother. The bar stands in contrast to the later scenes in Harlem.

The other world, of course, is that small, cramped Harlem apartment where he lives with his mother. These two environments will stand apart drastically with the film’s production design, as the apartment will be full of furniture, scattered boxes on the floor, and dirty clothes. My hope is for the apartment to convey a real sense of confession, as if Charlie is in a dark confessional booth, defeated by his own behavior. It is almost as if Charlie, squeezed into that Harlem apartment, is forced to come to terms with his inappropriate behavior, whereas the wide-open bar is a playground, where he is free to act like a buffoon and go wild.

The Campaign – The Crew and Logistics

I'm incredibly lucky to get to work with so many people who have been on my creative team for the past three films, as well. Our incredible crew includes producers Erica Rose and Harry Tarre, cinematographer Benjamin Dewey, sound mixer and sound designer Bobb Barito, and production designer David Jaffe – many of whom did outstanding work on my previous films. (Current Jack here – take a look at Ben’s latest cinematography reel below, which features footage from You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory and The Wheels).

Ben Dewey 2013 Cinematography Reel from Benjamin Dewey on Vimeo.

The Impact

We truly believe that if you help us, you will be part of a great and powerful movie. Without the proper financing, however, the film cannot be made. The costs for film equipment, location fees, transportation, and meals for the cast and crew, among many other things, are overwhelming, and outside financial support is critical to the successful production of this film.

As I’ve been making more movies and working with slightly larger budgets, with each new film I think I’m getting closer to achieving what I want in terms of style. For one, I’m trying to incorporate more and more expressive uses of camera movement. Jake the Cinephile is really where I started dipping my toes into a more subjective, expressionistic kind of filmmaking, experimenting with a moving camera – and that’s what I’m hoping to really embrace and expand on with this new film.

My Intermediate Narrative film The Wheels won the Best Student Film award at the 2012 Metropolitan Film Festival of New York, and was an Official Selection of the 2012 Coney Island Film Festival. The film also received high praise from professors at the Tisch School of the Arts. My previous film, With Love, Marty, was an Official Selection of The 2011 Big Apple Film Festival, the 2012 World Music and Independent Film Festival in Washington, D.C., and the Emerging Filmmaker’s Series in Rochester, NY.

We already have an incredible ensemble of actors line up to star in the film, including Mike Wesolowski, who will play Charlie. Mike is a senior in the Atlantic Acting School at the Tisch School of the Arts, currently studying acting under Alec Baldwin. Mary Goggin, an extremely talented actress who has acted in films such as Little Children (2006), will be playing Hazel.

What We Need & What You Get

We need your help. As you can imagine, as a senior thesis film, the scope of the picture is far-reaching. We truly want this to be a film where New York City itself plays a key character in the story, and so we are shooting in many different locations around the city – including a three-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, a bar in the East Village, a restaurant to double as the Times Square Olive Garden, another restaurant in the West Village, along with several night exteriors in midtown Manhattan and Harlem.

Our budget includes fees for these extraordinary locations, additional equipment rentals, transportation costs, anamorphic camera lenses, and meals for an entire week of shooting. The shoot begins in a little more than one month, and in that time, we need to raise as much money as possible.

As I head into rehearsals with the actors and continue pre-production with my longtime collaborators, I cannot tell you how much I would appreciate it if you would consider contributing to this campaign. We will not be able to make this film without your help. And if you are among those who were so generous to contribute to Jake the Cinephile last summer, I’m so excited to share that film with you in the very near future.

We are working as hard as we can to make this picture a reality by April. Any donation you can make – however small – would be absolutely incredible. Our deadline is quickly approaching, but with your help, we know that we can make this film. On the right, we have listed the perks for contributing to this production. (Current Jack here - thank you so much for reading about my new film, and lastly, please take a look at our wonderful Steadicam operator Patrick Morgan's reel, which includes footage from You Can't Put You Arms Around A Memory):

Patrick Morgan Steadicam Reel Spring 2013 from Patrick Huw Morgan on Vimeo.

An Introduction to Jake the Cinephile

Note: This summer, I wrote, directed and starred in a new film titled Jake the Cinephile. In a series of new posts, I will describe in great detail the production process of this picture. On July 19th, my IndieGoGo campaign to finance Jake the Cinephile officially ended. Not only did my team and I reach our $3500.00 goal, but - thanks to the enormous generosity of our contributors - we exceeded our goal by more than $500.00! The following is an email I sent out to our extraordinary IndieGoGo contributors a few days after we wrapped shooting: 

Dear Contributors,

Last weekend, my crew and I successfully completed principal photography on Jake the Cinephile. Thanks to your incredible contributions, we were able to have the most wonderful film shoot possible.

Jake the Cinephile Promo Video from Jack Kyser on Vimeo.

After a long day of renting out film equipment from several equipment houses on Thursday, July 26th, we began shooting early Friday morning at Tavern on Jane, a terrific West Village restaurant owned by the wonderful Horton Foote, Jr., who very graciously let us shoot in his establishment. After shooting there for five hours, we moved to our cinematographer Benjamin Dewey’s apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn to shoot one of the longer passages of the film, taking place on his apartment stoop and the sidewalk. The actress, the incredibly talented Bethany McHugh, and I shared one of our most important and poignant scenes, and this nighttime exterior accounts for some of the most beautiful footage in the film.

We shot Jake the Cinephile, by the way, on a Red Scarlet camera – one of the finest cameras available – thanks to the generosity of our 1st Assistant Cameraman, Justin Levine, who owns the camera. Ben and I decided to shoot the film with anamorphic lenses, which means the final film will have very wide frames.

On Saturday, one of our gaffers, Jon Annunziata, drove the crew and me up to Beacon, New York in a passenger van, where we were granted permission to shoot in the Beacon Theatre all day, under the supervision of its extraordinarily kind owner, Mr. Jim Brady. Our Assistant Director, Mike Cheslik, drove our equipment up separately with Ben, and we commenced shooting in the afternoon all the way into the late of night in the cinema. The footage from the theater shoot is quite fantastic – not only did the Beacon Theatre provide us with some outstanding production value, we were able to pull off some impressive camera movement in the space (and these scenes also allowed many of our crew members, including Mike, Jon, producer Erica Rose, gaffer Alexander Fofonoff and boom operator Charlie Rivera to make cameos in the movie as unruly cinema patrons). Also, actor Tom Corbisiero, who starred in my Intermediate Narrative film The Wheels, and actress Karen Mcfarlane, who starred in my film With Love, Marty, both joined us in Beacon for the shoot, and they did extraordinary work as even more obnoxious cinema patrons.

Because a large skylight overlooks the Beacon Theatre stage (and it is nearly impossible to block out the light with a tarp, as we did not have roof access), Ben and our G&E department ingeniously constructed a forty-foot tall, forty-foot wide silk on the stage with outrageously tall pipes that successfully blocked out the light for our entire day of shooting (until night set in) – you’d have to see this thing to believe it. After wrapping shooting for the day, the owner presented me with a souvenir from the theater – an original, large marquee letter (K, for Kyser) from when the Beacon first opened as a cinema in the 1930s (before then, it was an opera house that first began operating in the late 1800s).

After getting home late Saturday night, we set up early the next morning in my Lower East Side apartment for the most intense day of shooting yet – the ten-page climatic scene that ends the movie. This was a difficult performance day for both Bethany and me, as the scene gets fairly intense, and we had to run the oftentimes brutal and uncomfortable scene an endless number of times. Luckily, our art director, Madeline Wall, had already completed the outstanding production design in my apartment (including putting up wallpaper, re-decorating our bookshelves and kitchen area, and changing the look of the apartment entirely) the week before shooting began. This scene really makes the movie, and although it was a physically exhausting scene (I admit to losing my voice completely by the end of the shoot), it was an exhilarating thing to film, and I couldn’t be more proud of the work we did.

Throughout the shoot, producers Harry Tarre and Erica Rose (as well as Line Producer Liz DeBold) provided us with nourishing food and water at all times, and Mike ran our set with more energy and efficiency than I’ve ever seen from an Assistant Director (which was essential, given that I was both directing and acting in the film). It’s also worth mentioning that Mike drove our Budget Van with all of our equipment the entire weekend – I cannot thank him enough for that. Both Bethany and I received feedback and acting advice constantly from script supervisor Nicole Cobb, who accompanied me to many rehearsals and served as a back-up director and reinforcer of performance notes. And my roommate and good friend Bobb Barito was our sound mixer, and I feel so lucky to continue my collaboration with him (he’s well-known as one of the best sound designers at our school).

If you are friends with me on Facebook, be sure to check out some of our set photographs that I have posted in an album (taken by our set photographer and media manager Jeremy Keller, who backed up our camera cards of footage every day on several hard drives). This will give you an inside look behind-the-scenes of our massive shoot. In the coming weeks, I will post stills from the actual film. Ben and I are in the process of un-squeezing all of our footage at the Tisch School of the Arts Post-Production Center (which essentially means converting the footage to the right anamorphic settings). I hope you’ll find that the movie looks as extremely professional as I do – because of your generosity, we were able to shoot with state-of-the-art film equipment, obtain incredible locations, and provide for a crew that nearly exceeded twenty people at one time. In short, I have you to thank for the professionalism of this film.

I also want to thank the entire crew of Jake the Cinephile – I can’t begin to express my gratitude to Bethany and the outstanding crew of geniuses, including Ben, Mike, Erica, Harry, Bobb, Nicole, Justin, Madeline, Jon, Nicholas Giuricich, Tomson Tee, Alex, Jeremy, Liz, Dennis Dembeck, Tom and Karen. I’m so honored to work with these brilliant and talented individuals.

IndieGoGo will only let me post one image per update, and it’s incredibly tough to just show three pictures from our extraordinary shooting weekend. They don’t represent even one-eighteenth of the things you made possible with your contributions! I do not know how to begin thanking all of you for your enormous kindness and support in making this movie possible. I look forward to keeping you updated with the progress of Jake the Cinephile, as we finish shooting pick-up material this upcoming week and head into post-production on the film. Thank you so much for believing in me and this project.

Sincerely,

Jack Kyser

The Making of "The Wheels"

Writing, directing and producing my Intermediate Narrative film The Wheels was a long and fascinating process that began well over a year ago, in Professor Selma Thompson’s Fundamentals of Visual and Dramatic Writing class, where I first wrote the screenplay for The Wheels as a class assignment in the fall of 2010. Originally, the film took place almost entirely in a Ferris Wheel cage, but Professor Thompson and the class assisted me with creative changes that ultimately resulted in a final script with which I was very happy. Professor Thompson, knowing that this was a particularly personal piece and something that I hoped to shoot at New York University, specifically helped me refine the screenplay so that it could potentially get approval from the NYU insurance office. This meant rewriting the Ferris Wheel scene such that the Ferris Wheel never actually moves or operates in the film – for if we needed to shoot the movie in a moving Ferris Wheel, we would have a far more difficult time finding a location and receiving insurance certification from the university.

During the spring semester of my sophomore year, I wrote and directed a short film outside of class titled With Love, Marty. I asked most of my friends who had crewed on that picture to return to work on The Wheels the following semester – including my producer, Erica Rose; director of photography, Benjamin Dewey; and sound mixer and sound editor, Bobb Barito. Having assembled a large part of my crew over the summer, I spent time during July and August writing letters, making phone calls and contacting amusement parks in the Tri-State area – mostly in New Jersey, Brooklyn and upstate New York. On my birthday, I heard back from Dennis Vourderis, the owner and proprietor of Deno’s Wonder Wheel in Coney Island, offering me the opportunity to shoot at his location. This was perfect - Deno’s Wonder Wheel was my first choice as a location (as their Ferris Wheel cars are exactly what I had in mind).

The immediate difficulties were obvious – we needed to shoot at Deno’s Wonder Wheel before Columbus Day Weekend, the expected closing date of the Wonder Wheel for the fall. Mr. Vourderis and I settled on a shooting day of Monday, October 3rd – for a six-hour shoot. This meant shooting nearly six pages of material in six hours – which, at first, seemed nearly impossible. In addition, the shoot was scheduled so early in the semester that I quickly realized that I must have everything prepared long in advance during the month of September.

Still, even though I arrived to New York City in late August and hit the ground running with the pre-production process, I did not expect some of the many challenges that came immediately. After visiting Deno’s Wonder Wheel and taking extensive set photographs on Labor Day weekend, I attended the first day of my Intermediate Narrative production class to learn that students were not allowed to shoot their films until the weekend of Friday, October 21st per Tisch School of the Arts guidelines. Fortunately, having emailed the Executive Director of Production Studies, Gay Abel-Bey, over the summer and pre-approving my October 3rd shooting date, I was technically in the clear to move forward and shoot on that date. Thanks to the incredible generosity of Ms. Abel-Bey, my professor Josh Sternfeld, Production Supervisors Jeff Stolow and Ted Wachs, an arrangement was made so that I could have an early Safety Tech from Mr. Wachs before my first day of shooting. However, Professor Sternfeld warned me that if I was going to go ahead with my plan to shoot on October 3rd, I would have to move fast and furiously to ensure proper insurance approval, transportation, fundraising, casting, rehearsals and finding a way to shoot a large part of the film efficiently and quickly. Because the alternative meant finding another location (something that I didn’t particularly want to do), I decided to plow ahead. Benjamin Dewey and I met, and we prepared a shot list and style of shooting that would make it possible to shoot six pages in six hours. I created an IndieGoGo campaign to raise money for The Wheels, shooting a Promo Video over the weekend and beginning the fundraising campaign twenty-six days before our first day of shooting. In those twenty-six days, I raised $1331.00 – almost double the amount of my $750.00 goal. Because I was shooting my film long before anyone else, not as many people were flooded with Kickstarter and IndieGoGo campaign contribution requests for other films, which was a blessing.

I started working on the lengthy production insurance approval process, which meant creating a cast and crew contact sheet; drawing floor plans and finding maps of the location; visiting Deno’s Wonder Wheel again, taking more location photos and labeling them accordingly; finding maps to the hospital, police station and firehouse nearest to the location; creating a specific, shot-by-shot shooting schedule with my Assistant Director, the great Matt O’Brien; working out a specific, item-by-item budget with my producer; describing in detail what equipment I would use from the Intermediate Narrative allotment and where that equipment would be staged during the shoot; turning in an equipment Pick Sheet to the NYU Production Center; creating a Call Sheet for the first day of shooting; making a rental reservation for a moving truck from Budget Van Manhattan, with my driver and second Assistant Director Mike Cheslik; providing proof of one million dollars worth of liability insurance from Budget Van Manhattan; making a detailed pick-up and drop-off schedule for October 3rd; and detailing any red flags or potential production dangers in the script. All of this information needed to be documented and completed in about a two-week period, so that I could turn in the information to Professor Sternfeld, who in turn gave it to Mr. Stolow, who then officially cleared my production for approval a few days later. Only after Mr. Stolow approved the production could I file for insurance and send all of this information over to the NYU insurance office. Students are not allowed to shoot until they have received insurance certification from NYU – and, in my case, the insurance office emailed me questions about potential red flags before giving me approval. Generally, you should have your production checklist ready to submit to the insurance office a full two weeks before you shoot, although, at that time, my film was the only project that the NYU insurance office had to inspect.

I also began assembling a crew of students who were able to shoot on a Monday – this was a little difficult, as many students have class on that day. Furthermore, I was simultaneously planning my second day of shooting, which was to take place on the weekend of October 21st (when I would have normally shot my film if I did not have this extraordinary location and the permission to shoot early in the semester). A further complication was the availability of crew members for both days of shooting – for instance, I had promised to work on several of my friend’s films in other Intermediate Narrative classes, and it wasn’t until I had been assigned specific shooting weekends for my crew in class that I realized that Benjamin, Bobb and I, in particular, would have overlapping shooting days.

In the midst of this production process, I also had to focus on the most important aspect of the film – the casting. I held three days of auditions at the Todman Center for Film and Television, and after hearing many actors read for both roles, I ultimately cast Daniel Hasse, a nineteen year-old Tisch sophomore, as the ‘boy,’ Harry. Although Harry is written as a much younger character, I felt that a slightly older actor would be more capable of capturing and understanding Harry’s complex emotional arc in the film (not to mention the fact that, considering all of the other non-stop production concerns, it would have been a monumental challenge to cast a minor in the role, which would have resulted in even more paperwork and parental supervision on set). The actor I cast as John, the father, unfortunately dropped out of the film less than two weeks before we started shooting – on the evening of our first rehearsal, in fact. Luckily, it was a tough decision choosing between two different actors for the character of John, and once the first actor dropped out, I immediately called the other actor – Tom Corbisiero – and asked if he would be available to play the role. In the end, the first actor dropping out was a blessing in disguise – I couldn’t be happier with Tom’s commitment, professionalism and, most importantly, his wonderful performance. He signed on right away without hesitation, and he joined Dan and me for four rehearsals in the span of one week – and that’s a real commitment for an adult actor with a day job. The rehearsals were spectacular – these two actors worked very well together, and we had enough time to explore these scenes thoroughly.

In the midst of rehearsing with Tom and Dan (and assembling their costumes, as I knew I wanted Tom in a blue jean jacket and Dan wearing a Boston Red Sox baseball cap), Matt, Benjamin and I traveled back to Coney Island and scoped Deno’s Wonder Wheel, taking a last look at the location and addressing any shooting concerns. Mr. Vourderis and his son, who supervised my crew and me during the actual shoot, were incredibly kind and helpful throughout the entire process, particularly in regard to my requests for a specific Ferris Wheel car, the exact set-up of the water balloon game and the time it took to get them the insurance certification from New York University.

Meanwhile, Professor Sternfeld suggested particular shots and gave some fantastic notes about the script itself, which is an easy thing to forget about in the rush toward production. In short, I feel much of the success I had with this picture is attributable mostly to the pre-production period. It was a stressful September, but having secured the location over the summer was an excellent thing. Despite the last-minute replacement of an actor, I feel I succeeded most during this pre-production phase (especially with the help from the NYU administration – they made all of this possible).

The first day of shooting on Monday, October 3rd was very smooth. After so many rehearsals with the two actors, I was certain that the relationship at the center of this film, between a father and his son, would be wonderfully acted. However, during our last rehearsal, I asked one of my Assistant Directors, Mike Cheslik, to take notes. After that last rehearsal (which Benjamin filmed), Mike and I re-watched the recording of the rehearsal and made specific performance notes. Because Mike knew the specific things I was looking for in the performances, he was able to help me articulate and note what I loved versus what I didn’t love in the final rehearsal. On set, I asked him to keep the list of acting notes we made the previous night handy, and check in with me every once in a while to make sure the performances matched what I liked best during the rehearsals. Basically, I wanted Mike to work as an Assistant Director in the sense that he would actually be assisting with some of the directing – I thought this would be a good idea, as we had such limited time to shoot at Deno’s Wonder Wheel, and I didn’t want to sacrifice the great performances for the sake of time (it’s easy to plow forward during a shoot and assume that you have everything you want performance-wise – only to find that you needed that one more take in the editing room later). Mike’s position was kind of an experiment, but it wound up working wonderfully. He was honest with me when he thought that the actors didn’t quite have what I had wanted, and as a result, he helped me keep my priorities straight both on the first day of shooting and on Sunday, October 23rd – after all, I wanted more than anything to have rich, believable performances at the center of this film.

Now that some time has passed and The Wheels is well into the post-production period (I edited my own cut of the film, and then handed it over to my friend Jonah Greenstein, who is a much better editor than I am), I have been able to reflect about my experiences on set. In terms of my craft developing in the coming years, I hope to keep pushing myself technically in terms of my filmmaking. I come from an acting background, and so my primary concern will always be the quality and believability of the performances. Luckily, Benjamin Dewey is a brilliant cinematographer, and he is always giving me great ideas about how to film a particular scene. With The Wheels, I do think I conveyed early on to Benjamin what I wanted in terms of camerawork – a hand-held, gritty, realistic approach – but, as a director, I want to be equally interested in camera and performance. I do think I made progress in this department on The Wheels compared to my last movie, but I can do better.

If I can draw any lessons from this production experience, it would be that pre-production and rehearsals are the most important ingredients in making a successful movie. And, to be honest, there are still lessons I am learning with this particular movie – for instance, working with Jonah in the editing room was a fascinating experience. I was initially opposed to a major cut Jonah made in an early scene in the film – an entire exchange of dialogue was cut – and I had to determine if it actually worked better for the movie without the scene, or if the scene actually added something to the movie (in the end, Jonah was right - I was a little too attached to the footage, and it didn't particularly add anything to the story).

Overall, I learned so much about making a movie with the help of the Tisch School of the Arts and my wonderful crew, and I cannot thank Professor Sternfeld, Mr. Stolow, Mr. Wachs and Ms. Abel-Bey enough for their tremendous support and help throughout this process. I am very happy with The Wheels and the experience I had making the movie this semester – it was an incredible opportunity.

Behind the Scenes of "The Wheels," Part Two

For my Intermediate Narrative film at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, I wrote and directed The Wheels, a very personal story about an alcoholic father and his young son, and a study of their strained relationship over the course of a long day at an amusement park. In order to raise money for this production, I created an IndieGoGo campaign in early September, where I received extremely kind contributions from friends, family and coworkers. In less than twenty-six days, the campaign raised $1,331.00, almost double the amount of my initial $750.00 goal. I sent the following update to the wonderful contributors after our second and final day of shooting on Sunday, October 23rd. Here is a link to the IndieGoGo campaign:

Dear Contributors,

Thank you all so much again for your incredibly kind contributions to my film The Wheels. As I said before, the production of this movie would not have been possible without your help, and the fact that you have successfully funded this project means the world to me.

After a long day of incredible work on Sunday, October 23rd, The Wheels is officially wrapped. From an artistic standpoint, I could not be happier with the results of this shoot. The two lead actors, Tom Corbisiero and Dan Hasse, gave searing and wonderfully moving performances, and I know that when it comes time for me to review their performances in the editing room (which will be quite shortly, in fact), it will be challenging to choose among the many extraordinary takes from each scene.

The cast and crew arrived in Coney Island early Sunday morning, and we began by shooting the opening scene of the film, which takes place on the Coney Island Boardwalk. At noon, we began shooting the final scene of the picture, which takes place on a sidewalk just outside of Deno's Wonder Wheel. After an equipment move back to Manhattan, we shot the days final scene in the bathroom of New York University's Todman Center for Film and Television, the only scene from the film not shot on location in Coney Island.

It is worth mentioning that the people who crewed on this film are not only my very talented peers and classmates at the Tisch School of the Arts, they are also my dearest and closest friends. Without their support of this project and dedication to their craft, this film would not exist. The crew consisted largely of the same people who worked on The Wheels on the first shooting day, with a few welcome additions: Producer Erica Rose, Art Director Madeline Wall, Assistant Cameraman Andrew Griego, Gaffers Jon Annunziata and Ryland Tews and Set Photographer/ Digital Imaging Technician Jeremy Keller. Returning veterans from the first day of The Wheels shoot included the extraordinary Ben Dewey (Director of Photography), Bobb Barito (Sound Mixer), Mattheau OBrien (Assistant Director), Mike Cheslik (Assistant Director) and Miki Benyamini (Boom Operator).

As The Wheels officially moves into post-production, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your contribution to this film. With your help, I was able to make an extremely personal film, with the best possible group of people, all in less than two months! Thank you so much.

Sincerely,

Jack Kyser