Making of an Indie Short Film

Film making comes in many guises. You may want to just produce family video for friends or you may want to produce a drama like this short indie film. 
 
The following will give you an insight into how and why this film was made.The idea was conceive at a visit to Swansea beach just looking for ideas. Coming across the railway arch on the beach brought back vague memories of the short story by Dylan Thomas and we went from there. It was a tight schedule with script written within a day, the filming took just 3 hours in a studio using a simple black backdrop (incidentally the studio was used recently for some of the green screen work in the latest Star Wars film, The Force Awakens). The editing kept Brian Marijena working over several full nights, his favourite time for this work. I hope you enjoy and learn both ideas and techniques. Please make any comments and ask any questions. And we hope that you will be inspired to make your own dramatic film. You don't need huge sets, costumes, lighting or cameras. Although this was made in a professional studio with a professional camera and lighting that was for convenience and not necessity.

This particular story takes place entirely under a railway arch where the locomotives ran along the beach road before turning inland and towards Manchester. Although the track ran parallel and next to the road it was constructed on the sand. There was a drop from the road and path to the beach and anyone standing under an arch would have their head just above the level of the road. The scene is night-time and of course there was little, if any, street lighting at that time so the characters are lit naturally from the elements and occasionally from a match or glowing cigarette. The magnificently descriptive narrative includes many cameos and these can be filmed, or a montage of multi-media or just narrated over the face of one of the three characters. Dylan has broken the story into two sections: the first part being mainly descriptive and scene setting; whilst the second part is the story of the two strangers. Both sections can be incorporated into the film so that anyone who had read the book would instantly recognise not just the setting but each and every detail.

It is important to note that the book is set around 1933 and that it would be expensive to replicate scenes, costumes and props for the entire production. This then sets limitations for the film-maker but also gives him the opportunity to use his imagination and ingenuity. An opportunity to go back to basics. Like the original silent movies where the director used gestures and lighting to convey translation and moods, so here glimpses and suggestion can make us believe we have been transported back in time without the associated usual high costs. 

This is project particularly relevant here in Swansea and at

         

 

 
this time because Dylan Thomas was a Swansea man who died over half a century ago, was and is generally regarded by the majority of the local inhabitants as a drunken layabout but who is now regarded as the second most quoted poet in the world and who is highly regarded across the world on the celebration of 100 years since his birth in 1914. The stories are good entertainment but also, because of the factual descriptions, are of historical importance.

There have been other great short story writers such as O’Henry, John Steinbeck and F Scott Fitzgerald who have crafted beautiful stories that are like gold nuggets to film makers. Interesting, however, is that few films have been made based on stories of any of these writers. They are all of a similar period but can be adapted at little cost to the story line, characters or background. We have had the same characteristic traits since time immemorial, love, hate, greed, love of companionship, morality or not, lust and fear to name just a few. The great writer manages to weave many of these traits into their stories to give in-depth real people who often seem to stride off the page. So it is with surprise that few of these stories have been transposed into movies. Longer stories such as The Great Gatsby, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s  have worked well. Some short stories have been adapted for TV in the past.

Dylan Thomas’s stories in The Artist as a Young Dog for example are vivid descriptions of the actions and raw emotions that he experienced as he grew up in Swansea suburbia from a small boy and through his teenage years and abound with such vivid description that images just fall off the page. On first reading his stories one is struck by their simplicity and reality. It is as if you are there, in fact his stories have become woven into other peoples reality. People who read his stories whilst they were young have found that they have become part of their own memories. An incredible skill that is only obvious in others such as Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemmingway, Truman Capote and James Joyce.

It is a fact that all these writers were describing current events and so are a living history that is often far more interesting than most history books, adding fine detail about real lives, places and back-drops that bring the book, and hence the film to life.

This skill makes their work perfect for the short-film maker who can almost shoot off the page. Taking “Just like Little Dogs”, a story from Dylan Thomas’s “The Artist as a Young Dog” is a typical example. Let’s look at the opening paragraph.

Standing alone under a railway arch out of the wind, I was looking at the miles of sands, long and dirty in the early dark, with only a few boys on the edge of the sea and one or two hurrying couples with their mackintoshes blown around them like balloons, when two young men joined me, it seemed out of nowhere, and struck matches for their cigarettes and illuminated their faces under bright-checked caps.

Interestingly the whole paragraph is made up of one sentence, comprising of 77 words. It’s as if Thomas’s imagination or memory was running at break-neck speed. This could be transposed into an opening scene of long moving images fused into one silent night-time atmospheric take such as the opening sequence in the famous Orson Wells “Citizen Kane” with matching music straight off the page. Or it could be run as a single shot within the confines of the railway arch (where the entire story is centred) with a voice over reading the words as if reminiscing of a past experience. Both work, the latter more suitable for a low budget production.

This is followed by a descriptive paragraph about the two young men so that they can be cast to perfection. In fact the only drawback in filming the work of theses authors is that the images conjured up are so real that by miscasting the spell over those who have read the story will be broken. And interestingly the attention to copying the detail from the book by Truman Capote in creating “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” has brought the book alive for many readers. And it was possible because so much detail was included in the book.

“Just like Little Dogs” is a typical well crafted short story (of just half a dozen pages)  that has a beginning, middle and end, complete in the old-fashioned style compared to many stories nowadays that leave the reader baffled and confused. This also helps to  make the film-maker’s work easy because the finished product will be rounded and the film-maker can concentrate on film techniques rather than interpretation of the text. He can make small additions or changes if he wishes without unnecessarily altering the wording or style.  

The story continues with superb description that could narrated over material using a mix of new and old photos, live and historic film blended to match the descriptive text straight off the page. This should be in the style of the opening of Under Milk Wood. Thomas is the master of plays for voices so that many of the images used in this sequence could be suggestive and a background to the rich text. The narrative should be that of a deep male voice with a soft Welsh lilt.

Within this paragraph there is action descriptions how the two young men lounging against the wall under the archway, their cigarettes glowing and sparking in the wind. This will give the camera the chance to return to the two strangers within the descriptive filming and cement it together.

Paragraph four continues in the descriptive vein with Dylan lighting a cigarette so that the light reflected in the two strangers faces and gave Thomas further opportunity to describe Swansea life as it was then.

Here Dylan’s thoughts about each stranger and what he should be doing and where he should be builds a lovely picture of Swansea “where girls were waiting, ready to be hot and friendly, in chip shops and shop doorways and Rabbiotti’s all-night café, when the public bar of the “Bay View” at the corner had a fire and skittles and a swarthy, sensuous girl with different coloured eyes, when the billiard saloons were open, except the one in the High Street you couldn’t go into without a collar and tie . . . . “

The overall story finally becomes a dialogue between Dylan and the two young men and a story within the story is drawn out. This is a simple story about the two young men and their marital arrangements but Dylan has managed to embroider some fine detail about area and social aspects.

In fact this story, more than any other Thomas wrote, is so descriptive that it can be compared to Under Milkwood in that both are really plays/stories for voices but both have transformed well, and I have tried to follow the narrative with as much descriptive period photography as possible. I have produced this film using a single set, black and white throughout and with a montage of old photographs and some movement where I caught some people having a barbeque under the arch and was able to shoot them as if they were vagrant characters from the Thirties as described in the short story.

Looking at other well written stories they show remarkable authenticity for the period and everything associated so that clear descriptions of speech, people, clothing, furniture and other background detail is included. Interestingly the films made have become of historical importance. Included are Breakfast At Tiffany’s by Truman Capote, the story of Holly Golightly a larger than life character, the Great Gatsby about the young mysterious, but larger than life,  millionaire Jay Gatesby, and the range of John Steinbeck’s stories with what appear to be humdrum normal families but are in fact big personalities – in Grapes of Wrath which grew out of a series of newspaper articles about the Great Depression of the Thirties.

As I said before. Your comments are really appreciated as are you questions. This could have been filmed with a smartphone, in either a home studio or on location in the open using either street lighting or a low cost portable video light, costing around £20 ($30). We used a full black backdrop. You can buy a set of 3 backdrops (black, white and chromakey for greenscreen with a stand from around £40 or $55 on Amazon)