Beneath, Between, Behind the Scenes: My First Short, LIFE,Day One
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 was selected for the 2024 Boston International Film Festival.
LIFE: Day 1
We started shooting in Milton at the producer’s condo. The first shot was of David getting ready for work. He is in the shower; we kept the camera outside of the bathroom and just ran the shower. There wasn’t any need to show him in the shower, though it might have played well. But that can get complicated.
He straightens his tie and shirt in the mirror.
His girlfriend, Constance, is making his lunch. Looking back I realize how stereotypical that is. I consider myself a fairly intelligent, sensitive person. How did I fall into that trap? I did have as her background story that she is studying for some kind of degree. I had textbooks that we spread on the table to give her character some depth, but a woman making lunch for her man as he goes to work? What was I thinking?
I have made it my creative life’s mission to break these stupid, hackneyed mindsets. Not only with how I see things like gender roles, but how anything creative is done. So many people fall back into, “No, this is the way it is done. The story has to have a resolution. You need to save the cat. The hero has to overcome obstacles. Characters need to have an arc. There needs to be a lesson”
Blah, blah, blah.
Most people I have met have no arc. They are pretty much the same person at the age of fifty as they were at fifteen. They don’t learn anything. Nothing has changed. If as a general rule, people learned from their mistakes and evolved and became better people, we would not need prisons. We would not need probation officers. People would not cheat on their spouses; they would not use drugs; they would make healthy choices and not repeat mistakes.
But that does not seem to be the norm.
In Taxi Driver, Travis Bickle does not grow; he does not develop. He does not learn anything. The end of the movie is the same as the beginning. That is the way most people are.
So fuck all that.
Constance is chopping vegetables which were color specific. I tried to have everything in the kitchen be yellow, orange or red to match the color scheme of David’s ties as his feelings escalate due to his lunch being stolen.
I like the idea and I am glad we did it. In some instances, I was thinking about the picture as a whole. I was trying to develop a visual theme for the audience. On day one, David is wearing a yellow tie. This is to show that he is excited and happy to have landed this job. He comes from a working class, very decent family. They are religious and have taught him solid values. He is the first in his family to have graduated from college, a local college where he got an Associates Degree in some computer/infosystems type of thing. (I was a History major so I don’t know anything about the computer world.) His parents are so proud (and so is he) that he is putting on a suit and tie for work.
Ironically, the actor playing David came with the shirt and tie and no suit jacket. When I asked him if he had brought a jacket he said, “No. No one said anything about a jacket.”
I thought it would be taken as a given that someone wearing a shirt and tie with dress pants would have a jacket to go with it. But he is about twenty years younger than me, so maybe this new generation doesn’t wear jackets with suits.
In any case, none of this seemed to make any difference in anyone appreciating the film as a whole.
David comes down, hugs her from behind, they exchange a few lines to establish that this is David’s first day at his new job. He grabs his lunch and leaves.
We shot them from the front and in profile. We got close-ups of Constance’s hands chopping and packing the sandwich.
Other than the colors I don’t know why she was chopping peppers. They never went on the sandwich.
I wasn’t thinking things through. It looked good on film but that isn’t a reason to include it in a movie. However, the success or failure of a film isn’t going to hinge on peppers.
Then we moved outside to see David get into his car and drive off. I planned it as one shot and it worked pretty well except the rig the DP used for the camera took almost two hours to set up. He had never used it before and it took a while for him to get the hang of it.
I will never again spend two hours for a shot to get set up; not on a low-budget short film. It is another example of me missing the point. For that type of audience, it doesn’t matter. I was wasting time concentrating on making things look good when the script was not good. It was clever, maybe, but not quality.
Being clever does not count for much. It is a cover for a lack of substance. It’s a con, like the guy at the party who talks a big game and tries to come off as a successful businessman but is barely hanging on. His car is leased and he is barely making the mortgage payments.
I cast three guys to stand across the street from David’s apartment. They have a thuggish look, the kind of guys who do not have day jobs. Local gangster types. When David comes out onto his porch he pauses and exchanges a look with them that is not friendly, as though they consider him a sellout for putting on a shirt and tie to go work for The Man.
The scene looked good but I never paid it off; I never came back to it. It really embarrasses me that I never came back to it. Why is it even there? It seems so obvious now that the conflict should have been pursued.
Later that day, we shot the scene where David arrives home after his third day of work and the third day of his lunch being stolen. He is wearing the red tie in this scene because his anger has been ignited. He feels like there are forces at play that he does not understand. Carl used the camera rig again for this shot. Since it was already set up and calibrated the scene went a lot more quickly. David walks around the corner of the house into frame and Carl walks back with him to then reveal Constance sitting on the steps outside of their condo (it was actually the steps to a different condo which is just part of movie trickery). David sits on the step below her and she puts her arms around his shoulders and he comes clean about the lunch situation. Constance tells him that he needs to report the matter to human resources.
At the time I was satisfied with what we got. The first day is always a little rough. It’s hard to see the forest for the trees. You just never really know.
There is a certain comfort in that.