Screen test
Area artists are finding new ways to make movies, theater
When the world hit “pause” in March, local creatives in theater, film and television launched DIY projects, made masks and put projects on hold until, well, later in the summer.
Now it’s mid-summer, the pandemic’s still here and we have entered the “what’s next?” phase.
Early on, NBC embraced Zoom to produce three “at-home” episodes of “Saturday Night Live” and a “Parks and Recreation” special reuniting the Pawnee parks gang. Others have found ways to break the boundaries of storytelling that go beyond people’s faces in little “Brady Bunch” blocks on a screen. Here are a few examples.
Making cartoons
Writer/director Demetrius Wren decided it was time to get animated, rounding up some of his actor friends and, with the help of home voice recorders, began turning one of his live-action scripts into an animated film.
“It’s just so we can make stuff,” said Wren, who worked with the University of Pittsburgh and Steeltown Entertainment to shoot the 2018 film “Rehabilitation of the Hill” using a local crew.
“We’ve been saying ‘OK, I have these other scripts. How do I convert them so there aren’t any crowds?”
Pittsburgh’s Justin Johnson heads up Wren’s animation crew in New York City.
This isn’t Wren’s first project during the pandemic. His wife, Pittsburgh native Christina Wren, wrote a “Mission Impossible”type thriller that Wren shot with a combination of Zoom and iPhones. He sees no point in dwelling on what ifs.
At first, “we were mourning some of the meetings we weren’t having” about upcoming projects, but he learned to work through his disappointment.
“I was supposed to have a meeting on a feature film I wrote that was going to be pretty big. I was so excited about it. It was going to be next-level, and then it was canceled.”
He began reaching out to creatives across the country.
“It was kind of like the community came together virtually in a way we couldn’t before. We were always separated by geography.”
Screen auditions
Randy Kovitz wears many hats: He is an actor, filmmaker, fight director and teaches in Carnegie Mellon University’s school of drama.
His Acting for the Camera course includes lessons in a growing trend among screen actors: the online audition. A few months back, he teamed with Lawrenceville-based Nancy Mosser Casting for a four-week Zoom class on self-taping. The Wednesday night sessions, which were open to the public, drew an array of students, from a mother and daughter to a drummer in a band.
“It’s not easy,” said Kovitz, who has appeared on screen in “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Parks and Recreation” and “One Dollar.”
“When you [compete with] 500 video auditions, you really have to stand out. … A lot of people can do a good audition but to make it memorable? That’s the kind of stuff that sticks with people.”
It helps to have the right equipment, he added. Before the pandemic, who really knew what ring lights were? Now people looking for flattering light for not just self-taping but office video conferencing and more mundane filming know how to do it.
During one class, Kovitz talked about cue cards and how to not appear to be obviously using them.
“Now is a really great time to take time because we all have some time right now,” he said.
Juggling act
How do you direct a live stage play without a stage and with the actors in three different time zones?
Cameron King, a New York native and rising senior in CMU’s directing program, took on that challenge. She found herself in Pittsburgh this summer, and she and a few classmates were getting antsy.
“At Carnegie Mellon, our education is very much based on high-speed, high-pressure little projects. So when we don’t have those, a lot of us are kind of jittery and craving that kind of thing,” she said.
King collaborated with classmate Rachel Kolb, a sound designer, to adapt an absurdist Irish play in which the characters are never in the same room together. They’re seen on screens or via surveillance cameras. The four main actors performed together from Evanston, Ill, Bethlehem, Pa., Ashland, Ore., and Stroudsburg, Pa.
“None of the characters are ever in the same place at the same time, which was very cool,” King said.
Still, it was a high-wire act. The live event streamed on Twitch, but its director was watching FaceTime feeds from the actors’ own devices. There was a 30-to-60-second lag between the two. Rehearsals were bizarre, she said. “It’s like trying to juggle two worlds.”
King’s father, Pittsburgh native Don Roy King, has won multiple Emmys for directing “Saturday Night Live.” But why did she decide to direct such a tricky project live?
“Somehow, that was never a question for us,” she said. “It was always going to have to be live in order for us to call it theater. … There’s a special kind of rush that comes where you get one chance and that chance needs to happen in real time. It’s a thrill a lot of theater people chase.”
With her internship with Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, N.Y., rolled over to next summer, King said she’s getting ready for whatever “hybrid” learning
experience CMU will endorse this fall.
Ghosts in the machine
There’s nothing intrinsically scary about technology. Usually.
For London-based writer/ director Rob Savage (“Dawn of the Deaf”), his most recent work derived from personal experience. The idea for his new film, “Host,” came from his time as a member of a spiritualist church. It debuts July 30 on the streaming service Shudder.
Early during the COVID19 lockdown, a medium friend told him that business was booming “because so many people were bored with taking quizzes.” This led him to wonder: What would happen to a virtual seance if things began to go very, very wrong?
“I’ve amassed this group of very interesting, very particular friends who all have different, unique skills,” he said.
Using seven screens and smart phones taped to their laptops, they began to shoot the movie. Special-effects artists were able to assist but not be on site with the actors.
“What you see is still going to be impressive,” Savage said. “We want to get people to say ‘How the [bleep] did they do that?’”
Everyone did their own hair, makeup and special effects.
“I think it was about a week-and-a-half shoot. It was a pretty untested thing. We went to Shudder and said we only needed a small amount of money.”
“There was not much we could have spent the money on,” he said, laughing.
Horror, fortunately, has long been a genre that adapts well to various formats. “The Blair Witch Project” — which Savage says is one of his all-time scary favorites — was produced on the cheap as “found footage.”
“I think horror works best when it’s contained, when it’s claustrophobic,” he said.
Tom Savini, a special makeup effects artist, knows all about having to work within a tight budget. The Bloomfield native who still lives in the neighborhood was part of George Romero’s inner circle as they reinvented zombie films.
“I’m a firm believer that limitations make you more creative — not having enough money, not having enough time, not have enough help, not having enough materials.”
In the end, viewers just want to feel something — love, fright, surprise, hope.
“The audience does not care [if it’s a small screen],” Savage said. “They just want to press ‘play’ and be taken on a journey.”
Age of change
Period pieces require the right look: corsets and top hats for the late 1800s, long hair and bell bottoms for the 1960s. Point Park University professor Rick Hawkins imagines the modern-day, boy-meets-girl period piece will have people wearing face masks.
“Look at a film as a period piece, and the period is right now. The social pressure is, ‘Oh, don’t wear a mask, forget social distancing, you guys have to get together,’” he said.
Hawkins, who teaches screenwriting, cites Martin Scorsese’s “The Age of Innocence” as a great example of how to tell a love story under societal constraints.
“There is this wonderful scene where Daniel Day Lewis touches [a woman’s] hand. I think they are both wearing gloves. And it’s so sensual and romantic.
“There’s always a way to tell a story. Since cinema started, it’s always been new technology and trying to solve ways to tell stories with that new technology.”
A pandemic is just one more challenge, he said.
“So what we can do is start with the script and focus on telling a powerful story with the elements that are necessary for a good screenplay, but adjusting it to shoot in social distancing.”
Point Park’s school of performing arts has a course in the fall that divides the junior class into six groups. Each group will make a film. Given COVID-19 restrictions, the students will have to write scripts with social distancing in mind.
“Zoom meetings and brainstorming,” Hawkins said. “There’s always a new way to tell a story.”