More from MORGAN'S CAKE--Scene-building/shot-by-shot info, with l7-year-old Morgan Schmidt-Feng performing some perfect IMPROV for the camera. <www.filmsight.com>. "A delight"-Janet Maslin, NY Times.

<https://vimeo.com/168153085> (SEE FULL MORGAN'S CAKE MOVIE HERE (Free!)

(Excerpted from THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CAKE––Production Secrets of a $15,000 IMPROV Sundance Feature").

During the fragile beginning stage of pre-production you must be extremely careful who you talk to. All that most people know about moviemaking is that it costs a ton of money and needs professionals to pull it off. You must remind yourself that you are, indeed, reinventing the wheel. When you set your life on the path of feature-length film or DV moviemaking, there’s really no one available to help you gain confidence. There must be a self-generating energy force – positive energy created from identifying small victories and breakthroughs. A great location, or an actor friend who fits into the role, all add up to a successful production. The “little” movie (no-budget, non-actors...like Kevin Smith's hit, Clerks) must issue from your gut instincts, then radiate out to your relationships with the people and locations that surround your everyday life. That’s what “going with the flow” is all about. That’s how the script of Morgan’s Cake got written, and how the subsequent 87-minute movie got produced.

Scheduling the Shoot

Once I had received an assurances from my two-person crew that they were available for the initial week-long shoot – Nick Bertoni as on-location sound recordist, Kathleen Beeler as director of photography – I was able to start the production countdown, identifying that period of time when everything must finally come together. Before the start date is set, the moviemaker must determine (1) location(s) at which to shoot, which are quiet enough for the recording of clean sound (get those Location Releases beforehand if possible!), (2) shot-list of scenes, preferably in order of story development, (3) morning call time for cast and crew (3) food/meals you will supply (always lunches, possibly dinners, perhaps arranging to have catered food delivered daily right to the set). A shot-list can represent anything from tightly scripted, storyboarded scenes, where framing and cut points are completely determined, to much more vague scribbling, amounting to little more than a laundry list.

Day-One/Starting the Movie

I had set an 8:30 AM call at the office location above Jumbo’s, figuring that I’d pull off the first shot sometime around 9:00- 9:30 AM. I had been assured by the woman artist in the adjacent studio across the hall that she would be available for a short scene sometime around mid-morning (10:30 AM), so I’d have another character beyond Morgan to enrich the first few moments of shooting. Morgan, Kathleen and Nick all arrived promptly at 8:30 AM and that gave me a good, hopeful feeling. The one thing I didn’t need on the Day-One was a late cast or crew member holding up the entire production, short-circuiting my tender mental and emotional state. So, I thanked my helpers profusely for being on time, knowing they would be giving up whole days of their own lives to help with my project, for only a token payment and deferred payment/profit points.

While I had signed everyone up in a profit-sharing contract, this movie was a long way from being able to rain down profit points into people’s pockets. I think I paid Kathleen $1000 for the 7+ days of camera rental and her expertise, while Nick got a few hundred dollars salary (we obtained a free Nagra audio recorder from a local college, which helped defray on-location sound costs). With their minimal pay, their gig with me could only be considered “a freebie.” I owed them a big one, that’s for sure.

That first morning, while Kathleen and I readied the camera and Nick geared up to record sound with mic on a boom pole, Morgan kept asking me what he was going to do and say, and I kept repeating the same answer – I’ll tell you after we’ve got the camera placed. I had written about sixty pages of a script, but didn’t feel like using it in the traditional sense of handing out copies to the actors (Morgan, his real girlfriend Rachel, and his best friend Leon) to memorize. I didn’t want anyone to memorize lines, figuring I could just feed the basic dialogue in voice commands as I shot, letting these novice actors improvise off of what I called out from behind the camera. But this kind of free-fall approach to moviemaking doesn’t necessarily instill confidence in the players. After all, they don’t know what’s expected of them.

What I had planned on for the first day of the Morgan’s Cake shoot were some basic story-building blocks: (a) Morgan in the office, introducing himself directly to the camera, (b) the woman painter down the hall relating a message from Morgan’s mother (just “Hi”), and (3) Willie Boy Walker working in the restaurant below, talking to the cook about his son, Morgan, turning eighteen in a week.

You have to be stubborn and somewhat thick-skinned to survive these first few moments of improvisational moviemaking. DP Kathleen was asking technical/artistic questions for which I had no answers. She was mainly inquiring about where to place the camera for the first shot. (I didn’t know!). Finally, because I wanted to go minimal on the artificial lighting side while still using fine-grain Plus-X Reversal B&W 16mm film stock, I told her I would shoot Morgan at the office’s only window, using Mother Nature’s illumination to fill-in most of the lighting. That framing allowed us to set an F-stop for the outside street activity and still maintain exposure for Morgan’s face. So in that first decision of camera placement, I put a limitation on the usage of lights for the entire production and created a nice shot that had some real depth – cars and people far in the distance beyond Morgan's medium close-up framing. That decision also added some drama to the opening, by allowing Morgan’s face to have a dark side. That shadowy side, which was given a slight hit of artificial light to keep it from going completely black, also helped to break up the flat lighting. I had known all along that I wanted to shoot the movie with B&W stock, and was later delighted when screening the rushes, to see that first window shot had such a luminous elegance.

Rules of Improvisation/ Day-One Progress

After the opening shot was set, I gave Morgan his instructions for improvising. I told him to begin by introducing himself, giving his name, and explaining the true fact of how his mother and I had named him for the lead character in Morgan, a 1966 British black comedy staring David Warner and directed by Karl Reisz.. As I was fine-tuning the framing of the shot, shifting Morgan around and having him place his surfboard in position so part of the board was framed into the medium close-up shot, Morgan chatted almost to himself, mumbling to soundman Nick about there being three kinds of surfers, the normal guy (himself), the poser, and finally the want-to-be. My moviemaking antenna being on highest alert, caught the conversation and directed him to start the scene with that surfing-character analysis, before launching into his personal introduction. And I reminded him to just remain silent if he forgot some of the topics we’d discussed. I’d give him a voice command from behind the camera, right in the middle of the shot if necessary, in order to tell him what to do or say next.

OK. With Morgan settled in his position there was no sense in stalling any longer. Actors can easily become unnerved by the lengthy set-up time. I called, Roll sound. Nick set the Nagra's tape rolling and said, Speed, a few seconds later. (“Speed” meant that the tape was moving at the correct clip for recordings). After Kathleen called out the vital information (Scene one, take one), I clicked the camera on, reporting, Camera rolling! Kathleen repositioned the slate (“Clapboard”) to a visible-to-the-camera spot (I acknowledged it was in focus and in frame), and she clacked it down sharply. I then called, Action, and a new movie had begun.

With the camera set stationary on its tripod, Morgan moved into and out of the frame at the window sill. I think I told Morgan to move in farther after the camera was rolling (that voice command and all others were removed from the sound track later during editing) Nick Bertoni (now famous since the Utne Reader's coverage of his Tinker’s Workshop in Berkeley), set the boom into place, miking Morgan from below. Happily, Morgan hit all the marks, clearly defining the three kinds of surfers, next explaining how he was named from the movie Morgan, while continually adding his own special improvisational touches. Instead of saying, “I wish my life was as funny as that film,” as I had penciled into the rough script, Morgan made an improvement. He said, “It’s a pretty good movie. Kind of wish life was kind of like that movie, just...unserious and funny.” With his deadpan delivery and teenage angst-ridden expression, Morgan made the scene sparkle.

What would I have done, you might ask, if Morgan had performed poorly with his improvisational dialogue, made my script less instead of more? Would I have fired him? Fired my own son? Of course not. I would have just shut down the production. I mean, I seriously doubt that I would have imported another actor to play my son Morgan, in a movie centered on Morgan’s real life. But you can never really tell how well an actor or non-actor will hold up to the pressures of the real moviemaking process – hot lights bearing down, camera on tripod staring in their direction, other cast and crew personnel huddled around, with the moment of truth approaching...(What are my lines???). So I did my best to make it all seem normal, no big deal, just Rick fooling around with a camera.

When Rachel, Morgan’s real-life girlfriend, joined us on the set, I tried to impart a relaxed atmosphere, as if participating in my movie-making activity was no different than watching Morgan’s dad change a tire, wash dishes, cook some chicken on the barbecue grill. No biggie. Just Rick’s thing – setting humans in front of a movie camera and recording personal truths they’re willing to share.

While I had written a partial script in the months leading up to the shoot, I couldn’t help wondering about the slippage between what I, a 43-year-old, wrote for teenage dialogue and what the real 1987 teenager would say in the situations I envisioned. I’ve always found it exciting to hear what an actor will come up with. I love to see the actor’s mind at work. So I’m not overly attached to any exact words I’ve created.

The movies I make are more like a partnership between my initial concepts and the innate intelligence of the actors/non-actors who participate. A brew of ideas. I’m willing to take a risk with people in front of my camera. And more often than not, I find I can trust a person whom I hardly know to deliver truly great stuff.

One worry I did have using my own son in the lead role was that he might talk back to me during the shoot, try and correct my thoughts and ideas, like he occasionally did in real life. I knew I could not withstand any of the usual teenage banter and one-upmanship. Early on, I made it clear to Morgan that I could not tolerate that kind of second-guessing on the set. He was smart enough to understand that if he employed that annoying tactic it would ruin any chance we had of creating something good together. And I was extremely impressed at Morgan’s restraint as we began. It was a new Morgan that stood before me that first morning and knocked out scene after scene without complaint or argument. Perhaps it was because someone had finally given him his due, allowed him to fully express his intelligence and acute observations of life. In fact, the moviemaking system he found himself ensnared in demanded that he embellish concepts and articulate his views, delivering something of interest. I had finally given him the sufficient soapbox from which to present his beliefs and youthful humanity.

Cheap Main Movie Titles

Before we wrapped up Morgan's introductory shots in the office, I had Kathleen help me shoot a title sequence for the movie. During my free-flow pre-production period I had prepared a clear plastic acetate sheet, 24" by 40", on which my wife Julie applied press-on letters to spell out “L.L. Productions Presents,” and “Morgan's Cake,” plus the date “1989,” leaving about a foot of space between each title, room enough to get an unobstructed framing of each grouping by itself. After push-pinning the acetate to each side of a door jam, with Morgan and his dad’s room seen out of focus in the background, I practiced rolling from one title to the other sitting in a borrowed wheelchair (Kathleen pushed me back and forth in this no-budget dolly), camera in hand. I hoped that moving shot would supply the movie with a still shot of the date, then a smooth move over to the main title. Later, in editing I would correct the slight camera shake, getting a freeze frame made to hold the words “Morgan's Cake” perfectly still and centered on the screen). The costs of the main titles, including $10 worth of press-on titles and a sheet of clear plastic, would run a couple hundred dollars with the optical freeze, processing and work- printing (two other main titles, “L.L. Productions Presents,” and “A Film by Rick Schmidt,” would be created in the traditional way, typeset, mounted on an animation cell, and shot at the lab). Once music was added to the dolly sequence (I ended up using original piano compositions written and performed by friend Gary Thorp, musician and more recently author), I hoped the movie's opening would deliver the right feeling for a story about the inner life of a teen.

Shooting for Built-In Cuts

Moving the shoot through the first half of Day-One, we next staged a wide shot in the second story hallway. What I wanted to accomplish was a seamless cut from the first “Morgan-at- window” setup, to Morgan going about his daily business. I repositioned Morgan back at the window (now seen in wide shot), and had him repeat pulling his surf board back from the window sill (we saw him do this in the initial medium close-up introductory shot), lifting it up, gathering his things and heading out the office door. By changing the camera angle and repeating an action that took place in an earlier shot, you should be able to make a seamless cut between two sequences. If I shot the wide shot correctly (had it in focus with the same basic lighting/exposure reading), there would be several cut-points I could depend on once editing began. A short list of editing possibilities would include cutting the two shots together when: (a) Morgan first grabbed the surfboard with his hands, (b) when he had pulled it halfway toward his body, or (c) when he lifted it up, rotated around toward the door and prepared to leave the room.

In order to film a reverse angle shot that would later work as cut from one angle of his walking action to another, I set up the next framing that again overlapped the previous action. With the camera again repositioned, aimed toward the back of the second floor lobby, I framed him in a wide shot, turning the corner at the top of the banister, catching the look on his face as he descended the stairs. And I’d be able to see the painter, Lee Chapman, open her door in the background, as soon as I cued her to come out by calling loudly from behind the camera. (My voice command would be removed later in editing, replaced with room tone and the sound of Morgan’s footsteps descending down the stairs). The sequence would consist of Morgan rounding the corner at the top of the stairs (a cut-point), surfboard in hand, and getting just a few steps down before Lee opened her door and called out his name. It took two tries to get Morgan to halt quickly enough to include her in the top part of frame with Morgan near the bottom. Hardly turning around, Morgan halted on the stairs just long enough to hear Lee say that she had a message from his mother. “Yeah?” Morgan responded in a slightly perturbed voice, staring pretty much straight ahead down the stairs. “She said to say, HI,” Lee told him before retreating back into her painting studio, closing the door behind her.

When I wrote the dialogue I had no idea the spin Lee would put on that simple “Hi,” and how much emotion Morgan would add to the mix with his mumbled response. I never showed the script to either Morgan or Lee, only telling them the lines that morning. The subtle changes Morgan incorporated, his low depressed tone and failure to make eye-contact with Lee made the scene much deeper. His wordless reaction explained his relationship with his mother, that it was troubled in some way. Because I had given the actors freedom to change my scripted words, routinely feeding them only the concepts and parameters, they were free of the pressure of memorizing lines and were able to make the scenes real from their own perspectives. In this way, the movie’s interior emotional landscape was completely remodeled by the flow of filming.

The last shot in the “Morgan leaves for surfing” series was a view from inside Lee Chapman’s studio. The cut point that I designed was the split-second where she closed the door (she's now inside) after giving Morgan his mother’s message. So all I had to do was have her stand in the open doorway, repeat the message (“She said to say, HI”), as I re-shot the exchange from inside the room. After she closed the door I could still hear Morgan descending the stairs in the distance. Chapman then stood there for a second (as I directed her), paint brush in hand, thinking about Morgan’s poor response, before she turned back to her painting. In editing, I added more sound of Morgan clomping down the stairs to this shot (recorded a first time during the first wide-angle sync take where Morgan was on the stairs facing the camera), so that his descending footsteps would be heard far in the background while Chapman stood there contemplating what she’d just witnessed (a son estranged from his mother).

So that series of shots performed a lot of separate jobs for the construction of introductory narrative building blocks. Lee was a character we’d use again, as a fellow painter visiting Morgan's mother (played by Bay Area painter Lulu Stanley) at her studio.

NOTE: Always have your actors complete an action, even when off-camera, so that their sound can be used as background soundtrack. During the shoot you will want to repeat certain actions just for the sound effects you can record with your digital camera.

Scenes Shot in a Real Restaurant

Around 11:30 AM of the first morning of the shoot, I entered Jumbo’s restaurant and checked in with the cook/owner, Carolyn Moore, to see if she was still fine with me shooting some scenes. She had previously given me the assurance that it would be OK, and fortunately the lunch crowd hadn’t hit early. She said she didn’t see a problem with going ahead. Although I have stated that the pre-production was accomplished mostly during the shoot, there were a few basic things determined and controlled before that first kick-off morning. I had gotten assurance from Moore that she would not mind if we filmed in her establishment, and that it was OK if I substituted one of our actors (Willie Boy Walker) for a member of her kitchen help. She gave me her opinion of the optimal time (not during the lunch rush). So I had informed her of the approximate time we would show up (11:30 AM) and had had her sign an Actor’s Release before I arrived.

What I’m getting at is that when you make a commitment to shoot in a private establishment like a restaurant, it is imperative that you arrive promptly at the pre-arranged time. If you can’t avoid being late, at least call and explain. You must hit the marks of your shooting schedule. Getting signed Actor’s Releases (also Location Releases if possible), and adhering to a pre-determined shooting schedule, is vital to the success of this by-the-seat-of-your-pants method.

NOTE: Always carry extra Actor’s Releases on your person, to hand out for unexpected group shots, etc. (I needed several extra copies right off the bat, for kitchen helpers in Jumbo’s restaurant on Day-One).

You can see the value in setting some parameters at least 24 hours in advance, about how to spend a shooting day(s). At any rate, there I was, hand-holding the camera and bracing myself against the long diner counter, with soundman Nick Bertoni recording sound at my left, via a boom held above the actor’s heads.

I began by shooting Morgan’s movie dad, Willie Boy Walker, working behind the counter with the regular waiters, standing there “on the job” as Morgan breezes in to inform him of his intention to “go surfing.” Imagine trying to blend into a restaurant’s ambiance holding a large 16mm camera (Eclair ACL) wrapped in a barney (a thick cloth cover that reduces camera sound that would otherwise interfere with clean sound recording). There I was, cradling something the size of a small baby in a swaddling blanket, accompanied by a sound person with a 15” by 14” by 8” Nagra recorder draped over his shoulder, his boom pole with it’s protruding microphone extended out over the counter, intent upon catching the off-the-cuff dialogue in a noisy, fully-functioning kitchen. Fortunately, we had a scaled down, minimal-as-it- gets two-person film crew, and didn’t load the room up with lighting kits or even a tripod. And frankly, even if there had been funds to control and stage such a restaurant scene, I wouldn’t have wanted to proceed in this manner. It wouldn’t have been as realistic – or fun – to shoot according to the “professional” approach, which would have easily taken hours of setup time. Instead, we were in and out of the restaurant in under a half hour, beating the noon rush. So, you see, I really do believe guerilla tactics are the way to go, although some shots may have to become unusually degraded (low-light or flared) because of that direct approach.

Since I had decided to shoot Morgan’s arrival from inside the restaurant so as to see his face as he walked in, approaching the camera, I had no choice but to aim the lens out toward the front window and street beyond, which blew out to “white” with the lens fully open at f1.9, as needed to get any exposure in the relatively dark eatery. In the end, though, this white-out effect added a special, unearthly texture to the B&W scene.

NOTE: Take some calculated risks when you shoot! When you work with professional cinematographers you’ll find that they try to talk you out of such marginal, high-contrast shots. You have to be able to experiment a bit as you make your movie (so much easier when shooting DV!). Make the process the invigorating adventure it should be. When your moviemaking “mistakes” become assets for the work you’re creating (all those unusual effects...), then you know you’re doing something right!

SEE MORGAN’S CAKE here (all the beginning scenes I’ve discussed above are in the first few minutes!)

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