If you’re a film lover in Bellingham then you most definitely have been to the Pickford. It’s the one indie theater in town, and over its nearly 25-year history, it’s brought a wide range of diverse films to us all.
As film lovers ourselves, we were delighted when they asked us to create a fundraising film for a second theater they are planning on opening up. Delighted, and well, nervous, because they said the film needed to be finished in one month.
That meant creative, pre-production, filming, and editing all finished in 30 days. Our goal is to never make a project that isn’t worthy of the front page of our website, so when we said yes, we knew this was about to be a wild ride.
Creative
Moment Films
Writer
Chris Donaldson
Storyboards
Julien Scherliss
Director
Julien Scherliss
DP
Chris Koser
Producer
Chris Donaldson
VFX
Liam Bateman
1: CREATIVE PHASE
We developed several concepts of varying levels of difficulty. One was a more classic interview approach with a twist, another was a branded short film, and the last was called “The Dream” and that one seemed just right, like baby bear’s porridge. Except for one small detail: it was the most challenging to accomplish.
2. PRE-PRODUCTION
“When you fail to plan, you plan to fail” - Benjamin Franklin
We didn’t have a big budget and that meant our shoot would need to be slim and fast. We knew if we were going to pull this off we needed to plan every detail out so by the time we were on set we had bulletproof directions. Our cinematographer Chris Koser put together a shot list based on the script and then the director Julien Scherliss sketched out storyboards for each shot. We ran them by The Pickford to make sure we were all on the same page, and then we used these storyboards as a map to identify exactly what we needed for each setup.
3. PRODUCTION
There’s a Ken Burns quote that got us through this shoot. It goes something like: You have to learn to love picking up heavy things. That should be the filmmaker’s mantra.
In Bellingham, it’s not uncommon to get a bit of rain during your shoot, but we didn’t expect a torrential downpour the entire time. We were under-crewed, over-soaked, and doing our absolute best the entire time to keep hundreds of thousands of dollars of electronics from a watery death. When the shoot wrapped, everyone gave each other a big group hug, Chris Koser looked over and said, “Man, that was awesome!” Sure, we love ourselves a nice toasty studio shoot, but there’s something about carting a 200lb jib around the Bellingham streets at 1:00 am that changes a person.
4. POST