“All the Others Were Practice” will be screening at The Irving Theater on Sunday, February 14 at 6 PM. That’s Valentine’s Day!
We’ve got a great evening lined up for you. From 4-6 PM meet your friends and neighbors – and the film makers – for a Bite to Eat and a Beer inside the Irving Theater.
At 6 PM, it’s time for “All the Others Were Practice” – the sweet, truly independent romantic comedy of how, with the help of his friends and colleagues, Jôrge navigates setups, hookups, and the guy who works upstairs to find his Mr. Right. The screening will be preceded by Red Nose Studio’s short animated film “Creosote”.
From April to June in 2013 our rag-tag group of filmmakers and actors traversed the cities of San Francisco and Guerneville, California to film “All the Others Were Practice”. We stole quick scenes on the streets and in shops, and spent entire days taking over apartments.
Here is a peek Behind the Scenes of “All the Others Were Practice”.
day 1
The first day of filming took place at the apartment of writer/director Brian Tolle. The familiar environment helped us ease into filming with some b-roll.
As Charlie Ballard gets familiar with his new phone prop, Arthur (the cat) investigates.
Storyboards for day 1 of filming. Shots included laying on the sofa and washing dishes.
Three lights, one camera and an audio recorder.
day 2
After a few days off, the main characters all convened at Travis’s apartment, the location of Pam and Glen’s house. We had to schedule all of Chantelle’s scenes in the first week – she was actually pregnant, and very close to due.
Kathleen Antonia and Chantelle Tibbs prepare for filming at the Haight Apartment location.
Story boards for day 2. Filming included Pam and Meghan chatting in the kitchen.
day 5
We finished out our first full week of filming with a mad dash across San Francisco, picking up random shots all day – Jôrge walking around the city, taking transit, and eating ice cream in the park. We ended the day at the beauty store, thank you Peninsula Beauty!
Charlie Ballard suits up as we get ready to steal a shot on a Muni bus.
Charlie Ballard waits to steal a shot on a muni bus. (These bus shots didn’t make the final cut of the film.)
Charlie Ballard visiting Pink Triangle Park in San Francisco.
Charlie Ballard and Brian Tolle in Golden Gate Park on an unusual hot May day.
Ben Johnson and Charlie Ballard wait for Peninsula Beauty to close up for the day before we film.
day 6
We took over a small office on our sixth day of filming. We covered anything that happened at work that wasn’t in the cubicle or the cafeteria, including all the elevator rides.
Tim Ehhalt simulates the elevator door opening, with light, as Brian Tolle operates the camera.
Charlie Ballard and Liam Vincent (as Jôrge and Terry) await a take.
Terry runs into Jôrge in the copy room (Charlie Ballard and Liam Vincent).
Liam Vincent and Bennie Bell prepare for a day of filming on location.
Scene 66, 67, 68 cover the elevator ride after Jôrge and Terry’s bad date.
day 7
This was George day, with us at back at our first location of Jôrge’s apartment, down to the St. Francis Fountain for their date, then over to the Oakland hills for George’s house location. We had to push the scenes of them meeting, because this was one of the few days where we didn’t make our shot list for the day.
George and Jôrge (Lawrence Radecker and Charlie Ballard) at the St. Francis Fountain.
A quick lunch at the George house location, before filming.
Boards covering their television discussion, and after-movie date.
day 10
Back at Pam and Glen’s house, we filmed a party with no extras, then headed to The Lookout to film Jôrge and Ivan get to know each other. We filmed while the bar was open to the public.
Even though we never had a baby Pearl on set, the crew felt Pam needed an eye line to play to.
Brian waits for props to be set, while looking casual next to a camera in a bar.
Joe Castiglione, Kimberly Maclean, and Charlie Ballard between takes at the Lookout in San Francisco, CA.
day 14
“All the Others Were Practice” is a very small film. There were no equipment trucks, practically no crew, and absolutely no rules. With a lot of planning and dedication we were able to work within our limitations.
Every day Director Brian Tolle brought all of the camera, light, and sound equipment to set, in his Smart car
day 15
We kicked off our fifth week of filming by catching up with Mr. Abbot. We started at his apartment in the Haight and ended up in Civic Center.
With our tiny production footprint, we were able to film in front of Davies Symphony Hall without a permit. (We don’t recommend filming without a permit.)
Charlie Ballard and Monterey Morrissey rehearse, as Travis Valentine and Brian Tolle prepare to film on the corner of Van Ness and Grove St. in San Francisco, CA.
We had the next day off, but it was all about preparation for our trip to Guerneville for filming days 16, 17 & 18.
Day sixteen was a make-up for missing Jôrge and George Meet at lunch downtown, then we met Gus and Becky and headed north.
days 17 &18
In Guerneville we filmed for two full days. We got in the evening of the 16th. We had hoped to get the scene at the fruit stand, but the stand we were going use closed early that day. We didn’t make up that scene, but we had a a pretty good dinner from the veg.
The first full day we covered all of the vacation interiors and exteriors around the house, plus the driving sequence. The second day was all about the hike and picnic, then we packed up and drove back to SF to film George driving away. We made that day without any overtime.
Our first day in Guerneville, we filmed all of the interiors for the vacation.
Ow. Leigh Wolf (Becky) would need to go to the hospital if that wasn’t make-up. It is a quick reaction shot, and her sunburn needed to read very quickly.
Becky and Gus (Leigh Wolf and John Lennon Harrison) prepare to celebrate with “The (J)Georges”.
In Guerneville, CA Leigh Wolf (Becky) hangs out in the shade, to make sure her sunburn is only a make-up effect.
break
And then, we took two weeks off.
We had filmed for five weeks and we had covered all of the connective tissue of the story. But we didn’t have any of the muscle. We had not filmed any of the office interiors or cafeteria scenes. And we were having trouble securing locations.
So we took two weeks off and focused on pulling something together. We ended up building a set for the office cubicle at the Boxcar Theater studio space. It is the only set used in the filming, but it allowed us to remove the walls and get close in with the characters in a way we would not have been able to on location.
Joe McGovern and Brian Tolle paint flats for the office cubicle set, the only set built for the film.
Kerry Bitner helps to paint the flats that will become the office set.
Some rented flats, a few cans of paint, and lots of faith.
When we finally secured the Academy of Art cafe, we could not get in before we filmed. We had to scout if from outside.
days 19 & 20
On our office set, we packed four days of filming into two. We never would have made these days days without all of the help we had with sound, camera and grip.
The office set, nestled in the black-box theater.
Dressed for the final scene, bankers boxes ready to go.
Kimberly MacLean (as Tina), with Gloria Suarez between setups.
Removing this wall allowed us to get close-ups of Jôrge as he looks at his computer.
day 21
The cafeteria sequences were originally scheduled over nearly three days. We had a long one day, and we got a version of every scene on the schedule. As written the cafeteria was intended to be a bustling place full of employees. We could only rustle up two extras. But we made it through the day.
Molly Goode and Susan Monson jumped into the fray, bringing a much needed boost of energy to out final day.
Eve helps fill out our frame as one of our two background actors for the day, she had many different outfits during the day.
Careful framing of shots helps the geography of the location fit the needs of the script a bit more.
The servers don’t take crap from anyone, you’ve been warned.
We should have changed the line where Glen says the table is “in the sun”.
If you can’t find an appropriate location for a scene, find a white wall and dark doorway.
Filming boards helped communicate the angles that we would be filming for each sequence.
After twenty-one days of filming, spread over eight weeks, we were finished, filming.
We strived to keep the actor’s filming days to 8 hours, and most days we did. We filmed all of the pages we intended to most days. The only scene we missed outright was the Jôrge and Larry at the bbq, but we missed it on the second day and it seemed we would have time to make it up, but we did not.
It was crazy and hectic and impossible, but we made it through with something resembling the film we had set out to make.
On Thursday, October 8 at 7:30 PM, we invited our friends – and for the first time the general public – to a screening of “All the Others Were Practice”.
It was a great crowd! Thank you, everyone who was able to attend. It was a beautiful theater and really set a different tone from any previous screening.
If you missed the screening, and would like to see the film, it is available On Demand. Search for “All the Others Were Practice” on your favorite platform, starting at .99¢ USD.
At the end of March, I started exploring self-distribution options. I knew that I wanted to make the film available as easily and as widely as possible, but I had no idea how to go about that.
What I thought would be a few web searches and phone calls turned into an expanding list of film print variations, a new 5.1 mix, new artwork in a array of sizes, hundreds of gigabytes of uploads and downloads, and weeks of waiting.
And all of the pieces are nearly in place, resulting in a DCP – a digital final print of the film.
It’s almost time to meet Jôrge.
When All the Others Were Practice was finished, the plan was to submit it to as many festivals as we could and see what happened. We chose festivals that seemed a good fit for the film. Some were queer, some smaller or local or specifically for very low budget films. If the film was accepted to a festival, it might have a little visibility. If it didn’t get accepted anywhere, well, we’d have to cross that bridge when we got to it – we only have festival rights for some of the music so we couldn’t have our own screenings.
Festival submissions can be expensive. We wanted to submit to as many as possible in a first wave. Then, if there was any interest, we’d invest in the second wave of submissions. By September 2014 we’d submitted to thirty-six festivals around the world, spending a couple thousand dollars on entry fees, screener discs, and mail.
As I’d think about updating the blog, there was always another festival about to announce their slates. Maybe I should wait until there was news of a screening? A post about not screening at a festival seemed like sour grapes.
Now, I have no illusions of the odds that any film has of getting into any festival. There are thousands of films of every stripe produced every year. The competition is fierce for every film. Festivals are looking for films that align with their mission, and will get butts into seats. I know I shouldn’t be surprised that we haven’t gotten accepted in a festival, yet there is a hubris in expectation. Why couldn’t this little film find a little festival?
Over the fall and winter the polite “thank you for your submission” letters stacked up and it became apparent that every festival was ‘receiving an unprecedented number of submissions this year’. The letters were all encouragingly worded – some seemed like they had actually watched the film and enjoyed it – but no one was programming All the Others Were Practice.
It’s now the end of March and there are just two submissions that haven’t announced their slates. It’s time to figure out the plan to make the film available for you to view.
On Saturday, May 17 2014 we rented the Variety Children’s Charity screening room in downtown San Francisco for our cast and crew screening. It had been nearly a year since we wrapped filming, and it was great to see the cast, musicians, and our friends.
We’ll take a little breather, submit a bunch of festivals, and see what it takes to get this little film out so everyone can see it!
In 2009 I decided to take some story ideas that Jon and I had been playing with, and use them as the basis for a script. I wanted to write a script that I could film on a small budget but one that didn’t feel like the typical three-people-in-a-room independent film. My other goal was to write a queer film that didn’t rely on the standard tropes of queer cinema. I wanted a film that wouldn’t have a picture of shirtless guys on the poster.
The first draft was finished in about two months, and over the next year and a half, it was revised and workshopped and polished into the filming script. I kept trying to reduce the number of roles, but every character seemed to be justifying their place, even if they were only in one scene. A few characters got combined and some single lines turned into glances, but the final filming script had twenty-five speaking roles.
By early 2011 we held auditions to find the core actors for the ensemble and started to plan a fall filming schedule. We vastly underestimated how hard it would be to raise the budget for filming. Our savings were small, crowd-funding is over saturated and wealthy investors didn’t seem to be clamoring at the chance to spend their cash reserves on an unknown director with an unknown cast. Fall 2011 came and went and we were still trying to figure out how to raise a bit more than a hundred-thousand dollars to film with a small crew. We had calculated the bare minimum crew would be about five people on set every day.
2012 found us following a series of promising but ultimately fruitless leads. There were grants and donors and investors, and none of them panned out. So we were faced with a question – can we film for less money? We needed the actors, the equipment, the locations. We scaled back props and wardrobe, made sequences less complicated. The only place left we might cut was the crew. If we couldn’t afford them, did that mean we couldn’t film? Even the most enthusiastic supporter would be pressed to carve out six weeks to volunteer on a film.
So we asked a different question – what would filming look like if we didn’t have a crew?
I had filmed short films before with me as the only crew member. It was a juggle, and it was only for a few days. Could I do it for a feature? Having no crew would put certain limitations on what we could film. There could be no camera moves, no focus pulls, no lighting of large rooms — because we wouldn’t have any crew to physically operate the equipment. We couldn’t get just a single crew member – a cinematographer needs gaffers to move the lights. Having less crew also meant that we would have less gear, because there would be no crew to move it. If we had no crew members we could cut all the production costs associated with them. We didn’t have to organize parking or trailers or transportation, and food costs were slashed for every filming day. But could we actually make a movie with no crew?
What we came up with was a filming budget that was very similar to the one we’d tried for two years to produce, except it had no paid crew positions. The other main difference was that we could afford to produce it. The budget was whittled down to cover only what was in front of the camera.
By the spring of 2013 we had found two adventurous small investors and a few credit cards and there was a plan in place for filming. It worked out cheaper to buy our equipment, so we bought a camera and as many lights as we could carry in two trips. Remarkably nearly all of the original cast remained intact from the 2011 auditions, Travis came on board to Produce the production phase, and we were off.
The production was scheduled for six weeks starting April 25, 2013. For most of our locations, I would see them for the first time on the day of filming, so I couldn’t plan too much blocking. I sketched a series of storyboards before each filming day and we would use those to communicate to the cast what were filming. We also used these sketches to plan the day, and as we X’d out each panel, we would know what was filmed and what was missed. It was a very stressful filming period, but with determination and sheer will we pulled it off. The busiest days we had a few extra crew members to help keep things moving, but for at least half of the filming it was just myself, Travis and the actors.
There were a few schedule shuffles because our office and cafeteria locations kept falling through. We ended up taking two weeks off and coming back to film for three days. We couldn’t find a suitable (cheap) office, so we built our own cubicle on a stage. All of the cubicle scenes were filmed in two days. The cafeteria scenes almost didn’t happen, we ended up filming them all in a single long day – our last day of filming – on June 15.
We went directly into post production. At eleven months, the post period was longer than I’d hoped, but there was much to do. We had a few hiccups, but overall the post phase has gone smoothly. We had a lot of in-progress screenings and the edit was locked at the end of January 2014. The sound and picture have been cleaned up, and the All the Others Were Practice is finished.
This afternoon, we have a cast and crew screening to kick off the next phase of the film – getting it out into the world so you can watch it!
The teaser Trailer for All the Others Were Practice has finally arrived!
The films’ edit is nearly finished, and we’re starting on the color and sound mix. Festival submissions have begun, and we are on track to have the film finished by January 2014.
We had a few false starts and the original rough edit was never recovered, but we had the technology and we re-built it. (It was actually re-built a few times, until I figured out why the files kept getting corrupted.)
On Friday 9/6 we watched a full edit of the film for the first time. It was rough, and there is lots of work to do, but a great little film is in there. I think it’s going to be funny – the entire cast gave everything they had and the moments they’ve come up with are great. I can not wait to share this with you.
Over the next few weeks we’ll get it polished up as much as we can before the first wave of festival submissions. Through the fall we will finish the audio and color. We seem to be on track to begin showing the film in January.
One of the first things to do, now that we have an edit, is to find all of the music. We will start to get in touch with the bands that have contacted us, and if you’ve been thinking of submitting your music for the film, now is the time.
We have been very lucky on this production. On the technical side we have tried our best to anticipate problems and filming went very smoothly, all things considered. We had redundant video and audio recording, all the footage is double-archived. In post we have been backing up all of our files.
On Friday 7/26 we had our first major ****-up.
The edit has been proceeding nicely. By Friday at lunch there was only about fifteen scenes left to rough out for the first assemble edit. It had taken about two months to get to that point, and even though it was the first pass at the edit, there were a lot of moments and jokes that were working nicely. I was happy with it, and we were just days away from finishing.
And then the edit file crashed, and it couldn’t be opened. No problem – the program auto saves a backup. Except it seems that it crashed while saving the backup, so neither file nor backup will open. No problem, the system backups everything. On Thursday I had checked to make sure the system backups were working. And they were.
Except there was one file that was missed in the system backups. Only one file wasn’t backed up, and it was the file that crashed. And this one file is the single file that links every edit to it’s clip. We have tried everything, and the file is broken and can not be fixed, and a copy can not be recovered.
Our entire edit is gone and we need to start from scratch. It was so close to being done, and it’s gone. We haven’t lost any footage.
We are going to burn the midnight oil, but we don’t want to rush the edit. The backups are working so this can’t happen again, but it will take about a month to rebuild the edit.
As soon as the edit is finished stay tuned for the first trailer!
