“I think I always start with faces,” says Mark Thiedeman. “I think the creative process starts with writing somebody that you can fall in love with, casting somebody that you can fall in love with.”
Thiedeman was one of six Arkansas filmmakers who spoke at the El Dorado Film Festival Thursday after the fest showed a strong collection of locally made short films. Though all reflected meticulous planning, the filmmakers also allowed themselves to be surprised, whether by a face, a sky, or a location.
When festival executive director Alexander Jeffery asked them about the happy accidents they enjoyed on set, everyone had a good story.
Thiedeman’s film “JJ” was a standout: It tells the story of two young men who live together and share a bed, but think of themselves as heterosexual. When they make an amateur video for cash, questions and feelings they’ve tried to ignore are forced into the light. (They’re played by Oscar Winter and Eric Schanker, both of whom are excellent.)
Besides faces, Thiedeman tries to create compelling living spaces for his characters. The young men’s shared apartment ended up providing one of his film’s happy accidents.
At one point, one of the characters takes a shower. The camera was going to quickly show his back, but when cinematographer Chris Churchill decided to shine a light through a particular window, the look of the scene changed, and Thiedeman realized the shot needed to be longer.
Between the light and the steam of the shower, it’s one of the most mesmerizing images in the film.
Director Emily Railsback enjoyed another kind of cinematic discovery while shooting “The Game Camera,” a story of newly widowed woman who feels her late husband’s presence on their farm. It was co-written by star Kristen Bush, who is fascinating as a stoic woman not sure what to believe. Red Rocket star Bree Elrod plays a key role.
The film was shot in Kansas, but Railsback is based in Arkansas, where she teaches film at the University of Central Arkansas. While on set, a Kansas-born actor who is now based in New York observed, “I just miss Kansas. There’s nowhere else that you can get this 360-degree view of the sky.”
“That just stuck with me,” Railsback noted.
So on the morning of the last day of shooting, she asked cinematographer Gabriel Dib if he could rig a shot that would capture the wide-open Kansas sky. He came up with something that involved laying in the grass in a field, pulling a rope, and moving in a circle.
“I love that shot,” observed Eric White, standing beside Railsback on the festival stage. He and Terrell Case are the co-writers and co-directors of the dark comedy short “No Money Down,” which has a big reveal involving — spoiler alert — twins.
At one point, the presence of a twin was obvious early in the film. But watching their footage in post, White and Case realized the film worked better if the twin was revealed later. So they layered over an early shot that revealed the twin’s presence, to give more impact to his appearance later.
Marc Crandall, one of the producers of “Bruisers,” said location was central to his film’s happy accident. “Bruisers” takes place on a scenic cliffside where two men discuss their dislike of assassin movies. The film was designed to be a straightforward one-day shoot, but location was a slight challenge.
“Part of the problem was finding a place we could shoot in Arkansas, because there’s a lot of beautiful overlooks in Arkansas, but very few that aren’t three and a half miles from where you can park,” Crandall joked.
Director Ashley Hayes ended up shooting at the White Rock recreation area, where the presence of a campground had a surprise benefit. At one point, the production needed some chalk dust to make a hand slapping a rock more impactful.
No one on the set had any chalk, so makeup department head Cassie Self went from campsite to campsite, looking for a family with a baby, knowing they would have diaper powder.
“It made the whole scene,” said Crandall. “So thank goodness there’s campers there.”
The happiest accident of all may have been for “The Hollow,” from writer, director, executive producer and star Raeden Greer. She plays a woman who, while traveling, meets a man (Quinn Gasaway), who initially seems friendly and harmless. But things take a bad turn.
Greer always had one particular hotel in mind for a key sequence in the film, but when she went to shoot in Hot Springs, she learned that it had permanently closed.
Luckily, her producer, Mike Poe, knew the owner of a Hot Springs hotel called The Happy Hollow.
“it was even more perfect than I could have imagined, and also gave me a play on words,” Greer said.
She ended up naming the film after the hotel.
Main image: Raeden Greer and Quinn Gasaway in “The Hollow,” one of the Arkansas Made films at the El Dorado Film Festival.
to want to put a camera in a certain place that observes them feeling something in an environment like also, like an emotional environment, like our house has to be as emotional as they are. And then the rest is playing, you know, I write shot lists in advance, and then I throw them away. We go inside, we find better stuff. I don’t really reverse the script. I just sort of meet with actors and talk for three hours about who these people are. I spent a long, long student call with the actors asking them, lik
Marc Crandall, one of the producers of Bruisers
Emily Railsback, director of Game Camera
The Hollow writer-director-star Raeden Greer
JJ writer-director Mark Thiedeman
Strapped for cash in a declining industrial town, two young men perform in an amateur adult video, bringing up repressed feelings that could jeopardize their lifelong friendship.
Terrell Case, Eric White co-writers and co-directors of No Money Down Eric White stars
