COMPLETED:
premiering Thursday, June 26, at 8:15 pm
filmmakers will be present for Q & A following the movie
[project diary] [production stills] [movie clip]
Benjamin Fingerhut
Chump Change Productions
Chicago, IL
USA
project title:
Down Into Happiness
executive producer: Benjamin Fingerhut
writers: Adam Kline, Benjamin Fingerhut, Astrid Fingerhut
directors: Benjamin Fingerhut, Geoffrey Fingerhut, and Astrid Fingerhut
producers: Kelley Maher, Stuart Slack, Geoffrey Fingerhut, Erin Fingerhut, Gabrielle Goodstein
directors of photography: Geoffrey Fingerhut, Bill Frye, Brian Winger
tagline:
Winners are those who play the game well, not those who choose the best game.
treatment:
Down into Happiness
is three short stories linked not by action but by the theme of life's losers
whose goal of happiness makes them winners.
The first story is
about a thirty-something woman obsessed with being famous. Her walls are covered
with celebrity photos and bookshelves filled with celebrity magazines and
books. Her desire to get discovered by a film producer or modeling agency
is somewhat hurt by the fact that she lives in a tiny Indiana town and walks
dogs for a living. Everyone around her seems to achieving their dreams of
getting married and having a family and the such while her dream of celebrity
seems to be going nowhere. Unfettered by the enormous odds she presses on,
dolling herself up each morning hoping that this is the day she will start
the journey toward fame. Her optimism declines into despair and the realization
that she will likely never be famous. Just as she is about to reach rock bottom
she gets a knock on the door from a film producer who happened to be in the
area. It turns out that her car would be perfect for the lead car role in
the film The Big Lebowski and he wants her to audition her car. It ends with
her overjoyed as she opens The Big Lebowski DVD and dims the lights.
The second story is
about a thirty-something man who is obsessed with fear of his parents dying.
He is essentially frozen by this fear. The story starts off with the man coming
home from work (he lives in the basement of his Mom and Dad's house) and his
Mom is on the couch looking like she's dead. He drops everything and yells
in despair, "Nooooo!!! Noooooo!! Mom! Not now!" It turns out that
she is actually just taking a nap and her annoyed reaction to him shows that
this has likely happened before. As we get to know the man further it becomes
more apparent how stressed out he is about this subject of his Mom and Dad
dying. He tells his friends how his only wish is that he wouldn't have to
see them die. He has trouble sleeping, working, and eating; constantly calling
and checking up on them. One day as he looks terrible like he has been awake
for days he checks his cellular phone as he crosses a street. He calls to
check up on his Mom and is suddenly slammed into by a car. As the man lies
on the street ready to die he forces out a smile and dies. His desire to not
see his parents die has been achieved through his own death.
The last story follows
the life of a fifty-something drivers ed instructor completely dissatisfied
with his life. As we get to know him we find out that his zest for life has
been crushed by his menial job and his unloving family. The herd of fake deer
on his lawn and a house full of cats does nothing to raise his spirits and
he passively walks through his life searching for some sort of meaning. Despite
being named co-employee of the month two times he is fired from his job for
sleeping while an old woman crashes the driver's ed car. He goes home looking
for comfort from his wife and two kids and is met only by, "you're such
a loser, Dad." He goes to the fridge looking for a beer finding only
a bottle of ketchup and a jar of pickles. He opens the lid of the ketchup
and chugs it down quickly. The next day, walking around the house only his
underwear and a stopwatch he starts timing himself chugging down bottle after
bottle of ketchup. His daughter looks on with a mixture of intrigue and disgust
and he just simply smiles at her. It ends with the man on a stage at a ketchup-drinking
contest. He dramatically and triumphantly wins the contest and thrusts his
hands in the air.
statement of style:
Well, practically speaking Down into Happiness is clearly influenced by such
films as "Personal Velocity" and "Amores Perros" in that
they are of different short stories that are somehow tied to one another.
"Amores Perros" ties its stories both thematically (love is a bitch)
and through the car crash. "Personal Velocity" primarily uses the
theme of female empowerment as its device of tying the stories together (although
there is something about a car crash which is on the radio in the background).
Frankly, "Happiness" would be more along the lines of "Personal
Velocity" in that the connection between the three stories is thematically
based rather than event based.
My style is definitely
character-driven and often is about fringe characters or underdogs. I'm interested
in the story behind the story. I'm definitely influenced by such filmmakers
as the Coen brothers and Wes Anderson.
timeline:
Basically the idea is to squeeze as much action out of 72 hours as possible.
One of the primary
reasons for us to break the movie into three separate stories is for the sake
of time. We would use three separate crews, sets, and editors all going at
the same time, thus enabling us to add more scenes and making the stories
a bit more complicated.
Each set would be
similar in practice since they are similar in length and the amount of locations
and sets, etc. Each story has been limited to very few different sets, for
the most part no more than 5 different sets. We would plan on shooting 16
hour days with the editors getting 8 hours of editing time while everyone
else sleeps. We would pre-light each set before we begin shooting so we're
able to simply move the actors and cameras to the next location without having
to light each location again. The only down time would essentially be travel
and rest time. Since we'd be shooting with the very forgiving format of DV
the amount of time tweaking the lights would be drastically reduced as well.
Since it is essentially
three different sets going at the same time there is very little time needed
to physically edit together the three stories. Basically it would just be
the time needed to add the three computer files together at the same time
and add the credits.
To summarize: It's been my experience on the films which I've shot that the bulk of the wasted time comes from setting up and tweaking the lights and packing up and moving from location to location. To combat these wastes of time we will have very few sets and everything will be pre-lit thereby enabling us to simply move from scene to scene easily. While the cast and crew are sleeping the editors will be doing their job cutting what we had shot earlier in the day. The entire process would be rehearsed and rehearsed in order to make it run smoothly on game day.
score: 20 out of 30 possible points
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