Poster image courtesy i4Life Studios
In August 2012, we attended the Mississauga Independent Film Festival. We saw a number of excellent shorts, one of which was the last to be screened that afternoon, and one which "had only just made it" according to MIFF's Matt Campagna. It was called "Undetected" by i4Life Studios.
Undetected is a twisted tale of two girls with a broken down car on a remote country road, seeking help at a derelict looking farmhouse. At the door, they are greeted by two suspect looking hillbilly characters: a man in baggy Lil' Abner coveralls and a awkwardly shy woman in ill fitting clothes. As the story progresses you are convinced that the hapless girls are about to become dinner for the two country weirdos. There is a very unexpected plot twist at the end - which we will not divulge. The short was really well received by the audience at MIFF, and I think many of us - including other presenters - were certain it would be the winner.
Intrigued about the movie, I sought more information on the clever film-makers who created it. I was fortunate to locate i4Life Studios on Vimeo.com.
Here I found the trailer for Undetected, as well as some other zany projects in which i4Life Studios has been involved.
So who exactly is I4Life Studios? The movers and the shakers in this venture are Cinematographer Ryan Sauve and his wife, Writer/Director/Actress Kristen Anderson-Sauve.
image courtesy i4Life Studios
Since Ryan and Kristen are in Calgary, Alberta, and I am 3,385.5 km away in Mississauga, it was not going to be possible to talk to them face to face, so I opted to conduct an email interview them and here is the result.
After hearing from Matt Campagna that Undetected had just barely made it to the festival, the first thing I wanted to find out was how they managed to do this
Had they sent MIFF the trailer in advance, with promises for the actual film to come in time for the deadline? Apparently that was, indeed the case.
Kristen said "I submitted Undetected to MIFF on Without a Box and originally put up just the trailer, and once the film editing was completed I added the film. I'm actually surprised to hear that it got in just under the wire, but maybe I was coming up to the final deadline."
We asked which one of them came up with the idea for Undetected. The clever plot twist at the end and the dark humour was great.
Kristen said: "I came up with the idea for Undetected. Ryan wanted to film in a ghost town because he thought it would be a quiet location. It took me a few weeks to come up with an idea. My best ideas come when I'm halfway between sleeping and waking."
Something that we really loved was the casting in The Undetected. The actors were perfect in their roles, and we were certain they were all professional actors.
Kristen started taking acting classes at the Company of Rogues Acting Studio in Calgary three years ago. That is where she met Jami, Darryl and Jill . She cast Jill and Jami in the film because she thinks they are great actors and they have a "sweet innocent look" (needed for the two stranded girls).
image courtesy i4Life Studios
Here we see the two stranded girls, with Kristen in character as hillbilly Betty
She cast Darryl as the hillbilly, Earl, "because he's absolutely hilarious and he appears in all of our films for that reason."
image courtesy i4Life Studios
Darryl getting into character for his role as Earl
Kristen cast herself as the sweet but strange hillbilly Betty, because she loves to play comedic roles. Betty wants so much to be liked and accepted by the stranded girls, but she is so socially inept that she just creeps them out.
image courtesy i4Life Studios
Earl and Betty (Darryl Stogre and Kristen Anderson-Sauve)
Given the excellent production quality and the level of professionalism I found in all their projects, including Undetected, I figured they would have had a strong educational background in film. This assumption however, proved to be incorrect.
Kristen is the writer on most of their projects, and sometimes an actor. She learned to be a creative writer and director partly from doing live Improv for three years. She learned to be creative and to form a short story from a phrase, or an interaction between a couple characters. She says "In addition to that, taking acting classes has taught me how to talk to actors to push for the performance that will help the story".
Ryan says that his training is limited mostly to what he has been able to find on the web and books (theory, tutorials, following DPs on twitter, …etc…), trying to dissect what he has seen in movies "(behind-the-scenes stuff is great for this), and just getting out there and filming as much as I can". Some of Ryan's favourite online resources have been blogs such as nofilmschool.com, fstoppers.com, hurlbutvisuals.com, ryanewalters.com, cinematography.com, and deakinsonline.com. Ryan adds: "As you can probably tell, most of these resources (with the exception of nofilmschool.com) are heavily focused on cinematography, which is my passion."
Well, Gee Whiz, Ryan who would have guessed that? Certainly after reviewing some of his work online, there is no doubt that Ryan's passion is cinematography!
image courtesy i4Life Studios
Ryan behind the camera with Kristen behind him
I wondered how long these two talented people had been involved with or been interested in filmmaking.
Kristen said "I made a film about the "Adventures of Dimbo and Dumbo" with a girlfriend when I was a teen and it felt like my calling, but I dismissed filmmaking and went on to do a Computer Science degree." She continues "Then I met Ryan and he and I discovered that not only were we meant for each other, but we were also meant to be film makers. Ryan was learning to use a camera and I was learning to do improv, act and write. We made a few early films that Ryan acted in, but eventually he settled in behind the camera."
Ryan told us that for him, it was a matter of discovering the video function on a newly purchased Canon t2i that got him interested in making films. He said that he was blown away by the quality he was seeing from others who were using the same camera. That was essentially the catalyst that propelled him into the world of cinematography.
We asked Kristen and Ryan if filmmaking was a full time job for them.
image courtesy i4Life Studios
Kristen (in makeup) and Ryan on the Undetected set.
Kristen responded "I wish! Ryan does corporate film work professionally, but we also both work full time. When one of our films gets picked up in a lucrative distribution contract then we'll quit our day jobs." Ryan adds "It will be once we win the lottery, ha ha. "
So what do they do for "day gigs"?
Kristen is an IT Business Analyst for an Oil and Gas company. Ryan builds and project manages e-learning courses for the same company (on the same floor). Ryan also gets quite a few corporate jobs making films.
Their work, from what I've watched, shows a quirky sense of humour running through it - and I wondered which of them (or both) is responsible for that.
Kristen responded "I do most of the writing, but Ryan and I share the same sense of humour. Darryl Stogre, who is an actor who appears in all of our films, also shares our sense of humour. We are starting to find a few more actors who really gel with us too."
We know Kristen does most of the writing, but we wondered if she ever gets behind the camera herself.
Kristen put us straight on that: "I filmed my Brother's wedding reception, but I wouldn't get behind the camera for anything that really mattered! Just kidding. But seriously, Ryan is the visual genius and I defer to him for all visual decisions. I get behind the camera to watch the playback and decide if I have to tell the actors to adjust their acting. Ryan is also a better editor than me, but I do a lot of editing too. I'm good at finding the best acting takes, and Ryan's better at the more technical aspects of editing. I edited Undetected, and then got Ryan to look it over and he used after-effects to make the light move across the wires in the communication device."
There must have been a few challenges in filming the Undetected, what were they?
Kristen responds "Undetected was filmed in two days and the location was a three hour drive from Calgary."
Ryan says "The black flies"
In reality they didn't even see the location until the night before the shoot. Ryan suggested they find a ghost town because it would be an interesting, quiet and simple set. They found a ghost town which was three hours away, so they knew there would be hotel and food costs for all of the cast and crew, but they couldn't resist. Luckily, the ghost town was absolutely perfect and fit the spooky feel that they were looking for.
The filming was very rushed and it took two full days to complete filming. Since Ryan only saw the location for the first time the evening before the shoot, he had to storyboard in one night. Kristen had the challenge of remembering all the food, props, make-up, and figuring out all the logistics. Once on set, she also had to act in and direct the film, which is always a challenge.
How long did this project take from start to finish?
Kristen says it took her a few weeks to come up with an idea for a film in an abandoned town. She wrote it a week before they shot it, and they shot it in one weekend. The editing took several months.
The look and feel of Undetected was so professional and smooth, we wondered what sort of sophisticated equipment they used. Turns out they were pretty minimalist.
Ryan said "It was a pretty DIY project. I used a Canon t2i and for lenses, a Tokina 11-16mm f2.8, a Zeiss Distagon ZE 35mm f2.0 and a Canon 50mm f1.8. For sound, we used only a Rode Videomic attached to a lightbulb changer for a boom. The sound fed into a Zoom H4N that we then synced to the camera audio in post. For lighting, all we had were a few home depot 500w halogen work lights with some CTO and CTB gels. Because of our gear limitation, the challenge was to use the available light as best as we could."
Did they enter Undetected into many festivals and was it well received?
Kristen said that Undetected was an official selection for eight festivals in LA, Sonoma, Sweden, Atlanta, Columbia, Montreal, Calgary and of course Mississauga. It did not win any awards. Unfortunately not much feedback comes from the festival directors, but at one screening she attended in Calgary
Kristen says "There was a lot of laughter in the theatre. It's always thrilling to hear which parts of your film the audience laughs at. It's interesting to think back to when you were writing it, or filming it and think about whether you knew that would be a funny point."
What's next for Kristen and Ryan?
Kristen says "We filmed a 15 minute romantic comedy this summer, called Maybe it's Me. It just (Nov 22nd) won the Calgary based "Shoestring Film Awards" (www.facebook.com/pages/The-Shoestring-Film-Awards/365187683551374) and an Audio Post Production package worth $50,000. We're really excited to get it sounding as good as it looks. Once the audio editing is complete, I'll market it to film festivals. I'll start with the Toronto International Film fest and cross my fingers. I'd also be thrilled if it got accepted into MIFF for next year."
Wow! Congratulations to Kristen and Ryan for this win. They also made another horror-comedy called Reunion for a local 48 hour film race: vimeo.com/52718837, which they won, by the way, and I watched it. It's EXCELLENT!.
They plan to do a few more short films for film races. The 100 hour film race is coming up in December. In addition, Kristen is also writing their first feature length film called Office Gossip. She is working on it in a writing class "to make sure it has the proper three act structure that all features should have. It's important to take more time to write a feature length film because it's a lot more complex." Kristen says "They always say that you can't make any money from a short film, so we're going to see if a feature film can make some money. We'd like to quit our day jobs and make films all year round, but we can't see it happening any time soon."
We asked Kristen and Ryan if they had any advice for novice filmmakers.
Kristen says "This question is more for Ryan. I can give writing, directing or acting advice. For directors I suggest to take a lot of Meisner based acting classes. It's important to understand the actor's point of view and learn how to talk to actors. And for writers, a good way to learn to be creative and form story-structure would be to take a long form improv class or two."
Ryan says rather modestly "This is tough for me to answer because I consider myself a beginner learning the ropes and I’m scared that I may not offer the best advice. From my experience though and from what seems to have helped me develop since I started, I would recommend (for the technical side):
1. Research the theory (composition, lighting, color, …etc…) online (check out blogs like nofilmschool.com and the other ones I’ve mentioned above) and read some good books (stuff like “The 5 C’s of Cinematography” by Joseph V. Mascelli. I’m currently reading Masters of Light: Conversations with Contemporary Cinematographers by Dennis Schaefer and Larry Salvato and it’s fantastic)
2. Watch a lot of movies with the sound turned off so that you get a good sense of how the visuals come and work together. Pause any given scene that you think looks nice and try to guess where the light sources are coming from. The eye lights usually help determine this on close-up shots. And watch audio commentaries! They often explain why certain scenes were setup the way they were.
3. Try to be an extra on a big shoot. It’s not glamorous work but between takes, you can watch and observe how the crew works. I was lucky enough to have the chance to do this on the set of Goon in Winnipeg a few years back.
4. Get a hold of a local filmmaker and buy him lunch in exchange for the opportunity to pick his brain. I did this with Bobby Shore, CSC (FUBAR 2, Goon) and found it invaluable, even if it was just half an hour.
5. Most importantly, get out there and shoot! Find an excuse, any excuse. Participate in some of those local film races (24, 48, 100 hours). There’s no better teacher than experience. You’ll learn what works, what doesn’t, and you have fun at the same time.
An additional question suggested by Kristen: Is it hard for a couple to work so closely together on projects?
Kristen answers "It can be hard to work together when we're stressed out and tired during a long and rushed day on set. We are getting better and better at staying relaxed, though. Ryan is the time keeper, so I can understand when he gets a bit testy about keeping us moving along quickly. And we try not to step on each other's toes. For example, I can make a suggestion on an angle or camera movement, but Ryan gets the final say. We have different skill-sets, and we trust each other which helps."
And all I can say in closing is that this talented couple deserve to win more awards at film festivals so they can keep on bringing us more of their excellent material.
Still photography used in this article is courtesy i4Life Studios.
image courtesy i4Life Studios
On the set of Chasing Fin
