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When the Acorns Fell... Home Page I S T O R Y |
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It's been a strange process looking back over the making of this film. It's been both enlightening and humbling. Not only have I recognized the drastic and subtle changes that have taken place to the film over its years in making, I've begun to realize the growth that has occurred on a personal level as well. It all started near the end of 1994. The sky was dark. A shaft of sunlight burst through the gloom to reveal a small rodent-like creature gazing at me. I was frightened, yet intrigued. I ran . . . ran from those small penetrating soulless eyes. As you might have surmised, that small creature that struck fear into my heart was none other than a simple, brown tree squirrel. A harmless animal . . . perhaps. Yet, after careful contemplation of the incident, its purpose slowly became clear. The squirrel wanted nothing other than the complete eradication of the entire human race. I somehow knew that this was the beginning of a long journey. I was entering my final semester at the University of Texas and wanted to work on an independent project, specifically a mock-documentary about what happens when squirrels start attacking people. My earlier encounter with the squirrel provided the necessary "inspiration" for the movie. I spoke with the professor from my Film III class, Nancy Schiesari, and she, for some unknown reason, agreed to sponsor me and my unusual idea. My last two films had just wrapped up (I worked as cinematographer on both of them) and I felt the urge to direct. Little did I realize the monumental task to which I was committing myself. The project was just a wisp of an idea. The estimated running length was about twenty minutes and I expected to have it done by the end of the semester. In retrospect, I really can't help but laugh. I had no idea that once a project was "born," it took on a life of its own. This demanding child grew into a "soul sucking monster" that ruled every free second of my life. I enlisted the help of my good friend, Kirk Gillock, to aid in the rearing of this unruly spawn of my subconscious. The two of us primarily ran around with a camera and a microphone that whole semester frantically enlisting any and all of our friends to help out. Kirk used to be a stand-up comedian, so it was an easy choice to cast him as the documentary host. His comedic contributions to the project were immeasurable. Much of that time period is a bit fuzzy as I try to recall details, but I do remember frequently struggling to make the story work. When the Acorns Fell . . . was my first attempt at a lengthy project and I still had much to learn. What made it particularly difficult was that there was no script. Yet what makes some of the scenes work so well is the very fact that there was no script. The whole point was to make the mock-documentary "feel" as fresh and realistic as a real documentary. In practice however, scenes often ballooned beyond their original scope. The actors were given a character sketch, a motivation, and specific topics to be discussed during the interview. It became easy to dwell on a scene too long as the characters improvised and found themselves. Because of time constraints, we were rarely able to rehearse with the actors beforehand so they could become familiar with their characters. I highly recommend doing this! The improvisation was, however, always extremely entertaining. This is not the best way to shoot a film, especially one that you want to keep short. We seemed to always wind up with much more footage than was needed. Fortunately, video is cheap! It was Spring 1995. I was about to graduate and I had only a few weeks to edit this "time-sucking monster" of a project. I distinctly remember editing over an entire weekend, rarely sleeping, often hallucinating and slowly going crazy. I now have an all-too-clear understanding of how hellish editing is with poor equipment. After numerous breakdowns, computer crashes and several all-niters, the project was suddenly due. We had completed about twenty-five minutes and still weren't even close to being finished. I turned in what was done and somehow came out of the class with an A. It was summer, and by this point, Dave Friedman, my roommate, had become more involved with the film by contributing the musical score for the project which he wrote and performed. A perfectly subtle and beautiful score, I might add. (Dave had been busy with a little project of his own. You may have heard of it: Moonrise.) Sometime during that summer the project was put on hold indefinitely. Kirk, Dave and I had other plans: WaterMill Productions, Inc. (our former name) to be specific. Formed at the end of July 1995 as a video/film production company, we decided to try our hand at running our own business. Other changes also took place over the summer and fall of 1995. William Garcia, a friend and fellow UT graduate joined the three of us to help form WaterMill/Wandering Moose. We acquired new equipment in the form of a light kit, a camera and a nonlinear editing system. We were ready to go. Only, we weren't sure exactly where we were going. At the beginning of 1996 we (Wandering Moose Productions), decided to stop trying to make money at video/film production and instead chose to focus all of our energy on doing our own projects. Sometime over those last few months of 1995 we realized we weren't quite functional as a self-supporting (keyword) video/film production company. This ultimately meant changing our schedules to work on our own projects in our spare time while paying the bills with our full time jobs. At this critical juncture, we decided to finish When the Acorns Fell . . . . Instead of simply using the footage that had already been shot, we decided the story needed a different ending. After agreeing on a new storyline for the second half of the movie, we spent the first five months of 1996 shooting our newly revamped script. The new version (let's just call it "version two"), added a couple of new characters and a more compelling explanation for the squirrel attacks, in the form of a "bad guy." Version two also added about 50 minutes of screen time. It added a subplot which vaguely explained why the squirrels were attacking people in the first place. It all came back to a very smart evil guy whose problems started with his dysfunctional rural family. Fundamentally, he was doomed to fail because he wasn't even introduced till the third act. By the time the summer of 1996 rolled around it was time to edit. The editing of this film was one of the most painful processes I've ever had to endure. It wasn't that the editing itself was hard. It was that the system we were cutting on was extremely temperamental. Imagine having a scene load and play correctly one minute. Then, after simply requesting to see it again, it decides not to play the clip at all and instead expresses it's displeasure of having to work by locking up and demanding a full reboot of the system. It's thankfully impossible to convey the level of frustration that was experienced daily for the year it took to edit this giant (remember, we could only work on it in our spare time). I can look back now that this is finished and be proud of what was accomplished, despite the endless problems that always seemed to show up. Part of the process of getting this film ready for the festival circuit included a preliminary screening for our friends and family in order to get the feedback necessary to make it as good as possible. The screening was on November 15, 1996 at the Dobie Movie Theater. We were able to draw a very good crowd, roughly about 200 people (the guinea pigs). From the information we gathered afterward, we determined that it should have been much shorter. Our newly revamped second half was apparently the problem. In our naive attempt to further engage the audience and provide an answer for everything, we somewhere forgot to make it as funny as the first half and instead created unnecessary chaos. I had a hard time letting those scenes go. If you add up the time spent working on those . . . OK, OK. I know. One of the first and most important things you learn while editing is that you often have to cut precious scenes in order to make the story work. This is roughly the equivalent of cutting off your arm or sacrificing your beloved pet. Yet, it had to be done. Everything, . . . everyone . . . pointed in that dreaded direction. So I did it. I cut off my arm. Unfortunately, no one told me the phrase was metaphorical. After recuperating from emergency surgery, (I've recovered full use of my arm, by the way) I then, symbolically, cut off my arm (the unneeded subplot), which I discovered was horribly ridden with gangrene. It felt great, well . . . at least pretty good. Once a lengthy hour and forty minutes, the film now came in at a spry fifty-nine minutes. We haven't missed it. Well, that's not entirely true either. I really loved the final confrontation with Hermann Gerber . . . plus, Kirk and Will had some hilarious lines. But ultimately, the editing sacrifices we made were for the best. This past September I finally, and for all time, finished editing When the Acorns Fell . . . . The end of an era was completed. As I've discovered however, the process doesn't end with the editing. The distribution of a film involves a whole different set of throbbing headaches. Yet even after realizing there's still more to be done, it's nice to look back and realize that it's already been worth it. |
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