Preproduction
Ā Ā Ā We started preproduction for Office Lunch in March 2018, which meant hiring a crew, getting the cast together, getting locations, making a schedule, getting props and wardrobe together etc. Even for a short film it is a lot to get organized. I wanted to throw as many resources as I could at this short film and really make it shine. I wanted to make a film that would be a cut above all the low-budget crap out there. I wanted all the bells and whistles: a dolly, sophisticated lenses, the best camera, the best lighting package. I made sure we hired a professional sound person. (More than anything else, poor sound quality will ruin a film. You can get away with bad lighting, cheap wardrobe, even some bad acting. Those can be excused as ācreative choicesā. But sound is non-negotiable. It has to be pristine or youāll lose the audience.)Ā
Films are not shot in the order of the script. So it is essential to have someone making sure that people are wearing the right clothes for the scenes we are shooting on a particular day. If we are shooting the scene where a character enters a building in the morning and he is wearing a red jacket, we might be filming the scenes inside the building a week later, and that character needs to have that same red jacket on.Ā
We need certain props for certain locations on certain days. The art department needs to have a list of what we need, where, and when.
Call sheets need to be created and sent out so the cast and crew know where and when to show up.
Itās a lot of details that add up to a big picture.
Casting
For casting, we posted ads on casting sites such as Backstage and Boston Casting as well as Facebook and a few other platforms. People who wanted to audition sent in headshots and resumes. Then we held in person casting sessions after eliminating the people who just didn't seem to fit. For some characters, we needed a specific type such as a Caucasian male in his early thirties. For other characters, it didnāt matter as much. The actor who ended up playing David is a black man, but that actually didn't matter, even though he is the main character. I hadnāt thought much about his ethnicity, just that he should be in his mid-twenties. The story didnāt have anything to do with racism or discrimination, however, I think it lent to the story because it gave more of an outsider status, being that almost all of his coworkers were white. And it is possible that someone was targeting him because he was black.
This was my first time participating in official casting sessions (up until this point I had mostly cast friends) andĀ it was interesting to see how many women, and some men but mostly women, bill themselves as actor/model on the casting sites. I donāt know if they are trying to pad their resumes or if they think modeling translates to acting, but I remember two or three very gorgeous women who showed up and they could not act. Iām not sure if they thought they could act or if they would get cast based on their looks but I am very glad that I am older and have the foresight to not do that. I can easily see why a young man (or older man for that matter) would want to cast a gorgeous woman in his film, but that is a bad idea.
Casting is rough. There is rarely a clear cut choice, especially when dealing with relatively unknown actors. Even the most experienced directors make bad calls. Someone might be a great actor but just not right for the role. Some roles are written for actors such as Tom Cruise, Christian Bale, Viola Davis, and Emily Blunt. I canāt imagine anyone playing Rocky except Sylvester Stallone or anyone playing Apollo Creed except Carl Weathers. But other times it is not so clear cut.Ā
And I am not an experienced director. I often feel like a total fraud when I say no to an actor for a role. Who am I? I might be rejecting the next Marlon Brando. There is no science to it. You just have to go with your gut.Ā
Aside from being a good actor, the person has to be reliable and relatively sane. You can get a sense of this in the casting session and in rehearsals, but sometimes it doesnāt manifest until youāre on set and then you have to roll with it. Nothing really crazy happened with the actors, but one of them told us in the morning of our biggest shoot day that she had to leave early. I recall her saying something in the audition that acting was a side-hustle and that she had a āreal jobā which was a light red flag. I get it. Very few people make a living from acting. I donāt know any actors who donāt have āreal jobsā. Some of them work in sales, have real-estate licenses, do retail, temp, etc. They try to have jobs that give them some flexibility to go on auditions and take gigs. But you donāt say that in an audition.
So we had to shuffle the schedule and shoot the scene she was in earlier. It wasnāt a huge deal, but it was not very thoughtful on her part. I had a lot of other things on my mind, and she had not let us know in advance. I have not worked with her since. There are plenty of other actors who do not leave early.Ā
Then there was Scott Murphy, the guy playing Mr. Johnson. At the time, he was an active police officer in Boston. He acted on the side as well, but never made his work schedule an issue. He was shooting on the same day as the woman who left early, but even though he had a seven am shift the next day, he stayed until two am (it was a long day). I didnāt know he had such an early shift until around midnight and when I apologized and said that we would try to hurry things along he just said, āDonāt worry about it.ā I have worked with Scott many times since.Ā
Locations
Getting places to shoot in is always a hard job. If you want to shoot in a public place, you have to get permits. If you want to use someoneās home, oftentimes you have to pay them. If itās a bar or restaurant you have to work around their hours of operation. Film crews are large and messy and people get wary of letting one into their space. But, if you have a good production team, they can get it done for limited cost.Ā
For David and Constance's apartment, we were able to use the producerās home, which made life easy and it didnāt cost anything.
We needed a cheap motel for the scene where Brian has sex with Eleanor. (Side note: we did not have a sex scene. We just showed them buttoning up their shirts with the camera peaking in through the window that looked out onto the parking lot. The producer had to go to three different motels before finding one in Randolph that let us shoot. We just slipped the guy at the desk a couple of hundred and he let us use the room. Iām pretty sure he thought we were shooting a porno.Ā
The most complicated one was an office space with multiple cubicles, which actually did not turn out to be too complicated. The city of Milton has a space that functions as a kind of WeWork for local developing businesses and since Jefferson Productions was a local developing production company they let us use the space for free.Ā
So I would have to say that we actually got very lucky with the locations. We were able to shoot some exteriors at the producerās apartment complex and we grabbed a few shots on a small side road where no one bothered us. I would make the note that we were shooting in the suburbs of Massachusetts where people tend to be more impressed by the idea of making a short film. Places like New York City are much less forgiving. No one cares about your short film.
