Director Pablo Schmidt of FARE GAME one of the entries in this year’s Corpus Christi 7 Day Film Festival which celebrates its third and most successful year offered his side of the story about the creation of a truly unique short film that had enough twists in the making as in the actual storyline.
‚ÄúMy brother in law Steve O’Malley shot out the basic idea of a cab driver who kidnaps a girl named Samantha, etc. I came up with the ending twist.
It took about 24 hours total to shoot. One 15 hour day, and one 9 hour day.
1st day: We started at 9am and we did all the cab shots. That ended at about 8 pm, where we moved over to the house and did the dinner scene in the next 4 hours.
The following day we shot the shed scenes. The “funny” part was that we had planned having all the passengers tied up for the final shot, but no one could come over except for Autumn, so we had to revise the script idea and figure how to work just her in the end.
After first day of shoot I watched all the cab footage and realized we were going to need a narration. There was not enough dialogue going on. So I mentioned this to Alan Thornburg, Cab Driver, and he quickly cam up with a basic outline for a script.
So we shot Autumn for the ending scene and the next day went to work on the edit. Alan came over and we started recording his voice over. We probably recorded 200 lines till we got each one to say the right thing and sound the right way. It was tough. The idea was to have his dialogue fill in the gaps between dialogues…
We edited about 30 hours. The last 5 were just audio tweeking. Getting the levels right.
We shot on a Sony HVR A1U, natural lighting except for dinner scene where we used a couple of Low level lights.
The last scene in the shed was lit only by the actual light bulb prop that appears. Though we did light the background, we used a blue tint to appear as moonlight when the Cab Driver walks…
We never planned out the light bulb until we went over after first day of shoot to see shed. When we got inside we saw that old “dental” magnifier and thought how creepy it was and how well it would work. I guess we got lucky. We were going to use a regular bulb as the prop, and we find this thing in the shed. ‚Äú
FARE GAME received special mention as one of the actors Santiago Villalobos was named Best Supporting Actor for the Short Film Festival where he played a Rock-N- Roller from Flour Bluff that played in a band called The Bluff Ratz. Villalobos is also in the feature “El Segundo” and “Atanasia”.
Schmidt adds, “Santiago’s lines were all ad lib. He improvised it.”
Check it out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U48WdN1OVi8
Not sure you’re ready to spend your hard earned money or time on an indie film? Here’s something to whet your appetite: the prologue to El Segundo. Animation by Jack Myers, narrated by Carlos Guzman.
Jeffrey Velazquez, our 1st AD and a great filmmaker in his own right, took this super 8 film detailing all the craziness happening behind the scenes that I didn’t even know about.
Another short film from the Gorilla Film Factory.?جø¬? This is your car on drugs.
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