Break a Leg

Okay, this is a question to anyone (and everyone) in the BaL crew.

How did you get started in the filmmaking business? Any inspirations that you had, revelations...a rich aunt...?

Tell us your story! Well, tell me your story.

I wasn't a filmmaker at all. I started as an actor and I mean that loosely. I acted in middle school (Aladdin was my first role!) and then in high school. I was always very into art, too, I've taken painting and drawing classes since I was a kid and I was going to try and go to Academy of Art for some sort of drawing, either computer animation or something of that nature.

The summer before college I decided I'd go to a community college first because all the art colleges were really expensive. That summer we watched a lot of Monty Python, and decided to, for the hell of it, write some funny sketches and film them.

We did it, and it was fun and amusing and no one ever saw them but us, but they were amusing. I started college then and Mint and I took the same class -- Theater Workshop. Where they wanted you to create your own play, basically a whole production, from script to set to showcasing it in front of an audience. No one had a script ready and I had a few sketches laying around (Dashiell did too) -- so we said why not, and put up a show.

The show was a sketch comedy show and the actors were me, Mint, and three other people -- two of them you don't know, one of them was the guy who slams the door and says he hates mimes in Episode 1. Anyway, we called ourselves The Overpopulated Quartet (there were five of us), did our show and, to our surprise, everyone loved it.

And I learned I really liked writing. So, we put up another show and in the meantime I wrote a short play called Courting 101 (which is now published.) I met Daniela (Francesca) in school and she was the lead actress in that play (along with Mint and I.) That play, too, was a big hit, and I started writing more and more.

I wrote another play, a Shakespeare satire, that's my claim to fame as far as theater goes, as it's not only been published but performed all over the world (Botswana, China, Canada, weird places).

At some point I put up another play that everyone liked and that a few filmmakers told me I should turn into a movie. At this point, Daniela introduced me to her best friend Justin (Chase) -- who I had met previously and really disliked, and another guy, Mike, who moved in to live with Mint.

They were both filmmakers and I had just turned that play into a movie, so we said, hey, why not.

At that point, I knew nothing about film, literally, nothing. I starred in one indie feature film called Froth (if I can find the trailer, I'll show you guys) so I learned a bit about it, but I knew nothing. Mike and Justin are illegally talented, though, so they basically gave me a four month film course while we shot the movie -- called Life Noir.

The rest you guys know. I really got into film, Dashiell came back to college and joined the group, Mike started making documentaries and pursuing world-changing activities so he was less free to shoot with us. We did Break a Leg and the rest is history.

Justin? Dashiell? Anyone else?

Growing up I had never really thought about acting, but my brother and my sister and I quoted movies all the time, which is sort of like acting, but without any audience but yourself...which sometimes is better. Then, my junior year of high school, some people from the drama department came up to me and said "Hey, you're weird: we're doing a play and have this part that we need to fill and were wondering if you'd be interested." "What's the play?" I asked. "The Devil and Daniel Webster," they said. "Never heard of it. What part do you want me to play?" I replied. "Daniel Webster," they answered. After the show was done, the drama teacher asked my if there was any particular play I would be interested in doing the next year. I had just finished watching The Dead Poet Society, so I said "Midsummer Night's Dream", which was really one of the only plays I'd ever heard of at that point. Lo and behold, next year came around and the audition sheets for Midsummer Night's Dream went up on the wall. I was Puck. It was fun.
After that, I joined the Army and didn't think about much besides not being in the Army. When I got out I decided I wanted to get back into acting. So I started taking courses at College of Marin (none of which were acting courses) where I met Yuri. I worked on the play that later became Life Noir, and then worked on Life Noir. And now Break A Leg. I've been an extra on TV and a movie or two, but mostly I do theater, which is why Yuri is constantly telling me to be more subtle. Well, I ask him: how can I be enthusiastically and ridiculously subtle? Unfortunately...that's an actor problem.

Well I don't think I ever really started off wanting to be a filmmaker, actually I started off wanting to make robots. If you had asked me when I was anywhere in the ages of about 5-19(maybe 20) I would have told you that I wanted to be a robotics engineer, how I got that crazy idea in my head I have no idea. I'm just gonna go ahead and blame my parents, damn you for supporting me in my wild notions! Why couldn't you have made me be a lawyer!

Anyhoo, I'd always been into the arts (and also crafts, I just didn't want to say them together because then it makes it sound like I'm into making construction paper houses and collages (which I am, it's just not the only thing I do)). Right, so I was into the arts, whether it was drawing, building, filming, or what have you, and my mom had had some experience in hollywood when she was younger, I grew up watching Monty Python and classic films and assorted tv shows (thundercats was a huuuuge inspiration :0P.) and I'd done a number of film projects for school stuff and just on my own, as Yuri mentioned we filmed a bunch of really random skits and made some sketch comedy for theater and so on. And right aroudn the time that Math stopped being numbers (Damn you Vector Calculus) I decided that hey, I'd actually like to do something that I enjoyed doing. So I switched my major over to film & digital media, and went on to make a few shorts for college (they're ok, nothing worth showing really) then came back to SF to help my high school buddy Yuri and the duo of douches Justin and Mike on what was then Life Noir, then that transitioned into Break a Leg and the rest is history.

Justin and Mike aren't really douches, I just felt like saying that. Ok well, that's not completely true, let's say MOST of the time they're not douches, sort of. They're sort of most of the time not douches except for when they're douching.

-D

Chad and I made some serious ground in the last episode when I gave him this note, "I know this is against everything I ever tell you... but can you do that a little bigger?"

Jokes aside, that's a big difference in theater/film acting. They say that in theater, people should read your emotion on your body, in film it's in your face. A lot of theater actors have a problem realizing that the slightest look or wince will not only read better but be much more interesting than a large gesture.

That said, most good theater actors can adapt quite well to film and are usually the best film actors. While a lot of film actors couldn't do theater if their life depended on it.

Which is one of the things I appreciate most about being involved in BaL: getting the practice and being small.

Wow, really interesting to see how this whole conspiracy sitcom started.

In Drama class of my junior (or maybe senior) year of high school we were given the option of choosing our own project. Be it, to write a play, create costumes, research a play write OR create a short movie. Since it was my dream to act in the movies since I was 7, it was the closest thing to being on the silver screen that I could find.
So myself and a few of my friends including Mike (worked as crew on Break a Leg as well as performed as Pogo #2) and Ben (has worked on sound for episodes 2 and 3) got together and did remake of an old twilight episode I saw around 2am one morning which we titled "The Beach". (and no Leo's beach movie didn't come out till February so they copied us)
Lets just say it wasn't some of my best work. And that it was the last movie I made in which I left the time and date displayed on the footage - the best if the cutting back and forth during a phone conversation and watching the date switch back and forth from Oct 12, 2000 to November 17, 2000.
And well since then I was hooked on making movies and not having a social life!

youtube?

Hehe
I don't know if I'll ever let that movie see the light of day....

so what you're saying is....a midnight screening?!?

awesome!