Beneath, Between, Behind the Scenes: Keep the Big Picture in Focus
M. Francis Enright is a filmmaker. His first short film, HR, was accepted into zero of the 23 festivals to which it was submitted. His second short film, The Routine, was nominated for Best Dark Comedy at the Georgia Comedy Film Festival. His third short film, Say Your Name, won Best Drama and Best Director at the Top Shorts Films Festival and has been selected for the 2024 Boston International Film Festival.
In the endless swarm of the trivial, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture.
What seems simple on paper becomes very complicated in execution. For a sight gag, we had about twenty-four Tupperware sandwich containers stacked in the office refrigerator. They all had the same color lids and were labeled with the same color sticky notes.
We needed stuff for the kitchen, food for David’s lunches, and for the office. For a sight gag, we had about twenty-four Tupperware sandwich containers stacked in the office refrigerator. They all had the same color lids and were labeled with the same color sticky notes, which changed each day as part of color-coordinating the mood of each day.
The character is an older guy with a series of ailments that required jars of Vaseline, creams, ointments, and medications like Pepto-Bismol, antacids, aspirin, etc. We had a hemorrhoid cushion and an enema kit.
Then there was Carl’s car.
In one scene, David is in the bathroom and hears Carl’s voice calling to him from the stall, where he is having some difficulty on the toilet. He asks David to go out to his car and get his cushioned ring because he is having a flare up. David really doesn’t want to do this, but he cannot leave this poor man in distress. He goes out to Carl’s car, which is an utter wreck and filled with all kinds of gross refuse. Using two fingers, David gingerly picks Carl’s ring from atop a heap of discarded newspapers and carries it back into the office building where he presumably gives it to Carl in the bathroom (we didn’t film that scene.) I don’t like bathroom humor, but I wanted the audience to know that David was willing to go the extra mile to help those around him. I thought it would make the audience sympathetic to him and his plight of having his lunch stolen by the office asshole.
The props/art person, Michelle Potts, had gotten the car from someone with a junk yard and it had been towed to the parking lot, where she and her assistant filled it with trash. It really looked great, but it did end up costing about $500 for the day.
The scene played out well; the shot of David walking to Carl’s car was shot from the angle of a surveillance camera, as were some of the other scenes in order to let the audience know that someone was watching these human dramas play out.
I had a great idea for a coffee gag. David is making himself a cup of coffee in the break room. A coworker, Chris, comes in and they chat about an upcoming meeting. David offers some of his coffee to Chris, which David grinds at home and brings to work. Chris then does a Samuel L. Jackson impersonation from Pulp Fiction where Jules compliments the Quentin Tarrantino character about his coffee. “Damn, Jimmy! This is some serious gourmet shit!” David looks at him funny and Chris, rather crestfallen that his impression didn’t land says, “That’s Pulp Fiction.”
I thought it would be really funny. It wasn’t. The lines just didn’t land. Plus the whole scene apropos of nothing. I never showed David making coffee at him. The issue is that the scene existed purely for the gag, which is not good filmmaking. It had no context.
They worked for each individual scene but taken as a whole, they could not make the film more interesting.
I overloaded and lost focus. I was trying to do too much and I forgot about developing the characters. It never gelled; the individual pieces did not create a whole.
Keep it simple. Focus on what is important.
