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| Damon Packard
Innerview...........
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This was your
first real digital flick. Earlier efforts involved film and video. How much did
having the post-production at your fingertips determine how you shot various
scenes, and how much did you decide later in post when you could manipulate the
footage to your content?
First off, I've always been a film
person, never took video or "digital" footage very serious. In fact I've
generally always hated the look of 'vid-e-o' (uttered with disdain), never
thought I would ever be caught dead with a video camera (unless I was
documenting a family trip, which I'd still prefer to shoot on film if it was
affordable)!
 But things change, and it became a necessity on this
film, for various reasons (not financial) mostly sneaking cameras onto
amusement park rides, dark interiors, steadicam shots, etc. I used CineLook,
CineMotion, Cineon 3 and light film damage filters in Final Cut Pro to make
certain scenes more filmy. Pretty amazing what you can do these days wih
editing software. CineMotion is a filter that creates a simulated 3:21
pull-down effect which is associated with film transferred to video
accomodating the frame rate difference.
One of the stand-out set pieces involves our heroine wandering
the Universal back lot and stumbling upon Steven Spielberg shooting
Something Evil. How did you so accurately capture both the look and feel
of not only Spielberg, but the actual period itself?
Well thats
hard to explain. I had to be careful what I was shooting on the Universal
grounds; very little remains from the old days. And shooting in
 Super8 helps. The actual 'back lot shots' of the girl wandering
through "old town" (a perrennial street setting which hasn't changed in 40
years) was acheived through the help of an inside connection.
The
Spielberg scenes obviously were shot at another location, a rented old
soundstage lot in Culver City (The Chandler Group). Finding young Spielberg was
a prime case of what William Friedkin (during The Exorcist casting) has
often referred to as "the movie Gods". I had searched long and hard, found
vitually no-one, set one young kid to do it,
 he dropped out at the last minute 2 days before shooting. Then I
stumbled on Dean working at Aarons Records in Hollywood the very night the
other actor dropped out. Thank God Dean agreed, he was perfect.
But he
too temporarily vanished about 12 hours before the shoot. His roommate kept
saying, "Oh yeah, he's real flaky, probably forgot you guys were shooting." It
was non-stop anxiety. But we picked him up in the morning and slapped his
Fedora on -- "C'mon Spielberg lets go!" I should have paid him more. I got away
with $100 for his fee and feel guilty about that.
Is it true you were barred from the Universal
Studios Theme Park? What I find incredulous isn't you were tossed for 'life'
from Universal, but that you were able to get as much of the clandestine
footage as you did 'grab'-ture on the go.
Yeah, thank God I had
90 percent of the footage I needed before they got me. Those fucking bastards,
the staff at Universal are the worst assholes on this planet, they really
ticked
 me off. I was there by myself, doing nothing illegal or bothersome
to anyone, just casually, harmlessly filming backrounds and inserts. The
Security staff and Sheriff Deputies swarmed on me like an Afghan in a turbin
with a
 suitcase nuke. And this was well before 9-11, no way I could've got
all that footage afterwards.
I have no idea why they treated me like
they did, it makes no sense. I'm not sure what they thought I was doing. They
didn't tell me anything but came close to arresting me while sitting around for
30 minutes deciding 'my fate'.
I can tell you nothing but death would
have stopped me from getting the footage I needed if I had not already
 achieved it. They could have thrown me in jail, I would have just
kept coming back over and over and over until I was shot and killed. When I'm
working on a film, and forces like that attempt to stop me, it makes me more
furious and determined than any level imaginable by the human mind, and I would
probably irrationally put my life and well being above all to get the film
done. It's something I feel very strongly about. |
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