Hank & Asha - a dynamite no-budget film

It was my pleasure to catch the charming film Hank & Asha at this years Slamdance festival. I saw several films, all of which could be considered great examples of micro-budget filmmaking, but Hank & Asha was by far my favorite. And for once in my life, I am not alone, as I’m happy to announce that it went on to win the Audience Award at the festival.



Hank & Asha is a simple story about two lonely people, one a student far from home in Prague, and one an aspiring filmmaker, far from home in New York. Through video chats the two meet and fall in love. It sort of has a similar plot to Lost in Translation, which I personally didn't enjoy much. I think Lost in Translation was less about lonely people, and more about bored people, and I don’t think bored people make good subjects for movies.

 The entire story of Hank and Asha is told through their video messages. While this format could quickly become tedious, in the able hands of first time writer/director/producer James E. Duff it soars with personality, charm, and an innocence that I find lacking in most independent films.

Director James E. Duff directs Andrew Pastides (Hank)

Reading the brief synopsis in the program, I went in wondering if it would be just shot by the two lead actors, with just source light, etc. Happily it was a well-shot, well directed movie. Because the two protagonists are a filmmaker and a film student it’s plausible that their video messages are more than just chats. In fact, the film is one of the better looking that I’ve seen shot on the 5D, so a big shout-out to DP Bianca Butti.

 The biggest compliment I can ever give a film is that I’m jealous of it. I was definitely jealous of Hank & Asha. Jealous if the idea, of the skill displayed by its creators, and jealous of how much fun it seemed to make.

I was fortunate enough to sit down with James and his wife/co-writer/editor/producer, Julia Morrison, for a few seconds in Park City to get some of the details. James and Julia said that they wanted to make a movie that was personal and true to who they were. That said, they don’t seem to be cynical folks, but seem to be a genuinely happy couple with a positive outlook on life. Though the film isn’t autobiographical, it has autobiographical elements (Asha is a student at the Prague school where James and Julia taught for two years). The film that people seem to be comparing it to is Once, which James admits he saw four times in the theater.

The film was shot over twenty-one days: ten in Prague, followed by eleven in New York. Their DP, Bianca, came with them to Prague, but other than that, they had a Prague crew and a New York crew. That crew consisted of some co-producers, their DP, an assistant camera person/gaffer, a single person art crew and a mixer. Julia said her one regret was not having a location manager. This is a role that is so frequently overlooked. As a former location manager I am always cutting that line item thinking I’m going to save money if I do it myself. I vow to the world, right here and now, that I will never do it again. You want a location manager. You NEED a location manager. There’s so much you as a producer have to focus on, without worrying about the location, or staying behind to clean the toilet.

Their locations were mostly friends’ places, restaurants and bars where friends worked, etc. But both New York, and especially Prague, are shown off and exploited for all their gorgeous effect.

The lovely and talented Mahira Kakkar (Asha)

Holding the film together was the stellar cast of Andrew Pastides and Mahira Kakkar. This is a movie that is made of almost entirely of close ups on these two actors, so their performances are critical. James and Julia said that if they couldn’t cast it right, they wouldn’t do it. They were fortunate to know casting directors Elissa Myers and Paul Fouquet, who hit it out of the park. My hat is off to these two amazing actors who I’m sure will resurface in other things soon, and who I would cast at the drop of a hat (the hat I already have off, in fact).

So the takeaway: Make a movie that reflects your heart. Don’t worry about following the latest trend or worrying about what people want to see or what festivals want to program. Make it personal, and hopefully that personality and passion will reflect on the screen. James and Julia’s personality is one I’d be happy to return to again and again.

 For more information go to http://hankandasha.com.

More from Kickstarter

I will be giving a full account of my experience raising over $70,000 via Kickstarter later. I promised a blow by blow, and I intend to keep the promise... but it's a longer post and requires the one thing I don't have much of: TIME.

In the meantime, another project of mine has launched its own Kickstarter. I know, crazy right? AN HONEST LIAR is in post-production and we are hoping to raise $148,000 to get us through. We'll see what happens.

Grief

I very sadly pass my well wishes and sympathy to all the family and friends of the extremely talented David Fetzer who passed away at his parents home last night of unknown causes. David was the star of a great little film called Must Come Down that I had the priveledge to line produce. He was very talented, a genuinely good soul, and someone who left us far too early. My last little bit of conversation with him was when I was trying to find an actor to help out a student friend of mine for a project... even though it was a student film, and no pay, he was happy to do it, just to hang out and help out. Just a great guy who will be deeply missed.

Yes, I have a Kickstarter

So, I recently launched a project on Kickstarter. While I have had multiple projects get some funding via Kickstarter, I have never run my own campaign. Fortunately I was able to learn as I watched many friends run successful campaigns and was able to plan a strategy by watching them.

I plan on spending a lot of time evaluating the success (or lack there of) of my campaign once it's over... but now I'm way to stressed out and consumed with the slow creep toward our goal.

For two weeks I have been pleading with everyone I know to share our page with everyone on their blogs... without doing it myself (shameful).

So please, PLEASE, help us out by supporting our Kickstarter campaign for our feature film FACING EAST. If we haven't raised $65,000 by December 14th, we don't get any of the money currently pledged. For a pledge of just $35 you get the DVD long before it will be available in retail, plus there's lots of other great rewards.

Check it out here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1742408579/facing-east

Thanks.

SAG ultra low budget salaries... hidden costs

SAG Ultra Low rates are $100 a day. There are, however, some hidden costs. The most notable being that technically that is for an 8 hour day. The final four hours of a standard 12 hour day are calculated at  time and a half, which means $175 for a day. SAG also expects you to be fully payrolled. Meaning they expect you to pay for Unemployment Insurance and taxes etc. When you're shooting for only 25,000 these are significant additions. My go-to accounting guys charge a minimum of $700 for payroll services for a feature. That said, I don't know what the understanding at SAG is, but I've made several ULB shows that did $100 for a 12 hour day without doing payroll expenses. I think for the smaller films SAG often looks the other way, and figure that as long as none of the actors are complaining they'll let it lie... but don't take my word for it.

Updated rates: In 2015 SAG raised the rates of the SAGIndie contracts to: Ultra Low Budget: $125; Low Budget Modified: $335 daily or $1,166 weekly; Low Budget $630 daily or $2,190 weekly.

Happy birthday to the National Film Society

Congratulations to Patrick Epino and Stephen Dypiangco on their first anniversary of launching the National Film Society. They started the National Film Society with the intent of taking over the world. Well, that may not have been their intent, but it's been the result. Since they've launched they've been picked up by PBS and have been lauded for their unique and quirky style of reporting. They've been very generous to me, naming Surrogate Valentine as their film of the year (or something like that) last year. Anyway, I don't need to promote them here, because the only people who read this blog are people who know me, and consequently are well aware of Patrick and Stephen. So, simply congratulations guys. Love what you do and keep at it.

 

The anxiety of the man uploading video to withoutabox on deadline day...

Monday was the deadline for the Sundance Film Festival and myself and every other filmmaker in the world was anxiously trying to get our submissions in on time. Being rejected from Sundance is an annual event coinciding with Christmas that allows me to be just a little less jolly during the holiday season, and just a bit more bitter when I go watch the films that did somehow get in. Seriously, living in Utah I do try to see some of the festival every year, mostly to cheer on my friends who did get in. It's a great festival and I do not envy the programming department which seemingly has to view every movie made that year.

Most festivals in the US let withoutabox.com handle their entries. Withoutabox is a web site where you can search festivals and in a one-stop sort of way, apply to as many as you like. The web site is owned by Amazon, which owns IMDb. One of the conveniences of withoutabox is that you can upload your video to their site for festivals to view, so you don't have to submit DVDs to all the individual festivals.  Withoutabox's video feature is an extension of IMDb's video content platform. Well, it seems like a good idea, but so far the technology doesn't seem to be there yet. Hopefully reporting on this will help others in the future as they try to upload their own projects.

I went to upload my latest project THE LEMONADE TRADE, which is an 8 minute movie, and a 500MB Quicktime file. My first attempt didn't seem to be working...

"Do not leave this page during the upload," it says quite clearly. So, do I listen?

The status bar is empty and the bar above where the URL seems to be stuck at only a quarter. But what should I do? It tells me that it's uploading, and in no uncertain terms says DO NOT LEAVE THIS PAGE. Well, I let it run for several hours, finally started again and got the same thing. This I let run for about six hours. In the meantime I had sent a help inquiry and had finally gotten a response.

I was told I should be using Chrome or Firefox. I was on Safari. That information up front would have been helpful. Since the day was already up, I was granted an extension due to technical difficulty.


Firefox or Chrome weren't much of an improvement. The status bar was showing that it was reading the file, but it would freeze up after three hours or so. Then the Help Message I got suggested using an mp4. Again, that would be good information from the beginning. On their website they say only Flash Videos (with Sorenson or VP6 codec compression) or Quicktime.

Firefox finally showed me something going on in the status bar. Every thing looked good. Finally, after a total of about 15 hours of attempts it looked like I was on my way. After about five hours, however, I discovered it had frozen up.

Well, it was time to get Old School. I burned a DVD in about four minutes and dropped it in the mail. So much for convenience.