The Rental Experience #16 - Formal Interviews

a blog-series recounting the making of "Seven Year Rental"

While in some ways our film was just getting started in the spring of 2007, we were also trying desperately to bring one element - our formal interview filming - to a close. 

We'd always planned for an ensemble of former employees to help narrate the day-to-day life we were capturing in the store.  I had a long list of former coworkers I thought would be great for this, and while not everyone wound up sitting for us, we got more than enough great footage from those who were willing to give it a shot.  Matt and Wolf, Jane and Jesse, Kyle, Mike and Theresa - they all came in with an open mind for what we were doing, even when It might not have been clear what we would be able to do with all their talk about Video Plus.  But their responses definitely served a purpose, and I was grateful they were willing to make the time to humor us and play along. 

I had been working my list of potential subjects since last fall and after nine months of pursuing some folks over and over, it was time to give it up.  We had what we needed.

By the end of June we wrapped our formal interviews at the same place we'd started our informal interviews, with Kayla - now a former employee.  It gave us another great sense of time to have interviewed her as a current employee seven months earlier in November, and now a few months removed from working there.  It was a way of keeping her in the film long after her in-store footage had passed and helped to blend the current employee footage into the former employee footage. 

With the formal interviews complete, a weight was lifted from our project's shoulders and we were one step closer to the end of filming.

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The Rental Experience #15 - The Puzzle

a blog-series recounting the making of "Seven Year Rental"

We cut our teeth on the opening sequence and the Jackson store closing, two stand-out pieces for the movie.  We knew what they were supposed to look like and we would labor over those two sequences throughout the entire editing process. 

The first things we noticed when we began combing through the footage were the imperfections in our earliest days with the camera.  There was definitely a learning curve with filming but unfortunately we’d planted a flag for our timeline’s start and could not afford to disregard any of the footage.  The in-store footage was a little muted, we had trouble finding the whites in a store overrun with both warm and cool tinted florescent lights.  And those early interviews –  including John’s – were much darker than we’d anticipated and they required a lot of post-production work to bring them on par with the quality we were producing by the end of our filming run.  As frustrating as it was, it felt good to actually see our skills improve. 

I was present for nearly all of the filming and had in mind a lot of bits to come back to and use.  I would spend the week logging footage and pulling clips into a very rough sequence, and then Jason and I would meet to go through the material and really give it form.  Most of the time we worked off each other in sync, piecing together the puzzle.  Sometimes we'd have these great debates about the inclusion of a single clip or an entire sequence.  We flipped it on its head more than once and looked at it every way we could possibly imagine.  Sorting through It required tremendous patience. 

In our earliest days we were stringing clips together one after the other without any style or shaping, and applauding ourselves for these editing achievements that were not much more than a lineup of clips.  But by the end of our principle editing the following year, we knew the film backwards, and would spend entire nights going through just a few minutes second by second until we were satisfied, quite literally, with every frame that was being shown. We worked through it over and over, start to finish until every wrinkle was ironed out and it ran smoothly.

One year later we declared it complete.  We had a final cut. 

Half a decade would pass before I realized the cut we were so sure was our final was actually just a work-in-progress.

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The Rental Experience #14 - Launching Forward

a blog-series recounting the making of "Seven Year Rental"

The initial formal and informal interviews were gone through meticulously as I mined them for every ounce of substance to justify our efforts.  But the bulk of the in-store footage was just being collected and filed away.  By the spring of 2007 it reached a tipping point, and launching into the next phase could no longer be put off.  We needed to begin editing and finally find out if we actually had a film.

Our editing bay was tucked behind the blue wall in the corner of my basement, and consisted of a new iMac, Final Cut Pro, and an old CRT monitor I had left from college.  The VHS security tapes were lined along the back of the wall, and the back of the wall itself was littered with notes and photos for the project.  This was our creative space, and it actually felt more like a studio than you might imagine. 

I read the Final Cut manual cover to cover to familiarize myself with all the program's tools available to us.  I was by far the most familiar with the footage, and what we needed to do with it, so editing naturally fell heavy on my shoulders.  But as was my problem early on, being that close and familiar with the material was as hindering as it was helpful. 

During our early outline days Jason's perceptions were always the closest to mine, and we knew from the start i would need his help during editing.  We shared a sensibility about the project but he was able to bring an outsider's perspective that understood where I was coming from and where i wanted to go.

The film was there and we just needed to piece it together.

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The Rental Experience #13 - Filmmakers

a blog-series recounting the making of "Seven Year Rental"

In the weeks immediately following the Jackson store closure we regained our momentum and hit our stride.

Not only did we resume with filming formal interviews, we came back with some very strong interviewees, including John.  At that time, John was balancing two jobs (running the stores, and another alltogether different job).  He was incredibly hard to come by, and finding time for us was no small feat.  So his willingness to give us the benefit of the doubt about this whole project and play along meant a lot.

We also had a surge in the amount of in-store digital footage we captured.  We hadn't had too many days with the four of us all available to do the in-store shoots; when we finally did, we were clearly overstaffed.  In the end, we found that the digital footage with customers worked best with a two-person crew; one person to film, and the other to explain the project and collect waivers.  But by this point, the security camera had proved to be the best means for capturing customer interactions, so the digital footage quickly became  primarily one-on-one, with me filming the employee on duty (and coworker) by myself.  Nobody's expectations for the film were ever very high, so the one-on-one footage never felt intrusive..  

Through all this, the fundamentals of our process took shape, and the footage we collected came to define our look and feel.  Once we felt confident we'd be albe to deliver in the end, we turned our attention towards editing.

But with editing, we were once again starting from scratch.

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The Rental Experience #12 - Raw Footage

a blog-series recounting the making of "Seven Year Rental"

The most exciting part about filming the Jackson store closing was that it gave us a well defined event to capture - with a clear beginning and a clear end.  It was sort of like we were putting together a short film to include within the feature. 

We shot as much as we could to show the progression of events, which meant we did a lot of "shelf-panning" as we pushed our tripod around the store.  It felt like a pretty solid collection of footage as we filmed it, but later on the panning shots didn't really feel as powerful as we'd hoped they would.  And the camera didn't glide around the store as we imagined it had; it bumped along as if we were pushing it down a gravel road.  But there was more than enough good stock footage to use.  And the interviews - especially those that reflected on the closing from a personal perspective - gave us the narrative we were looking for to bring it all together.  

After Jackson, we used the tripod exclusively for stationary shots, and kept the panning to an absolute minimum - two lessons it was good we learned early on.

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The Rental Experience #11 - By Chance

a blog-series recounting the making of "Seven Year Rental"

The apprehension I was feeling was soon alleviated when we finally got together to discuss the outline.  Everyone agreed that it was the most solid footing we'd been on since we'd began.  And even though there was still a lot missing, what had been put together on the page gave us confidence that our efforts thus far hadn't been fruitless.

Soon after that, I found out by chance that the Jackson store would be closing within the next few weeks.  We'd planned to focus solely on the Hubertus store, but since I'd spent a few summers working at the Jackson store as well, I felt comfortable extending out project there

We weren't sure how well the Jackson footage would tie into the footage we'd already collected, but it was a significant event for the chain that warranted the attention. 

And it might be the only chance we'd get to actually capture a store closing.

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The Rental Experience #10 - The Way It Was

a blog-series recounting the making of "Seven Year Rental"

I went through all the interview footage, and all the security footage, and tried to find our film.  And I put it together, really, as it naturally fell into place – both similar to the outline we already had, and completely different.  Some parts were strong, some parts were weak.  But it was by no means a “final cut” outline.

I gave it to Jason, Bill and Richy - more than a little scared that they'd look at what we actually had, and really think it wasn't coming together.  But I needed to be confident, and at the end of the outline, I wrote, "To be straight with you, I’m going to finish this.  And I’m going to make sure it’s good.  And while it’s been tough, and there’s a long way to go yet, I hope you’ll join me for the ride."

We set up a meeting to talk about the new outline.  As confident as i wanted to be, I had this very real feeling that they were going to tell me it was time to give up.  And without them, it couldn't be done, and that would be the end of it.

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The Rental Experience #9 - Actuals

a blog-series recounting the making of "Seven Year Rental"

By January 2007 we had a small but solid collection of footage. 

The informal interviews we filmed with Kayla, James, Alex and the store's manager at Video Plus really complemented the formal interview footage, and gave us a foundation for the in-store digital and security camera footage.  Together, the project was showing some potential.  But before we went any further with this, I needed to find out if we really had anything coming together.

So I began putting together a new outline that - for the first time - was no longer filled with hypotheticals. 

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The Rental Experience #8 - A Difficult Situation

a blog-series recounting the making of "Seven Year Rental"

Within just a few weeks our momentum had stalled. 

While our first formal-interview day had moved us in the right direction, we were struggling with our in-store filming efforts.  I had only spent a handful of nights recording security-camera footage and we had only made a few attempts at working with our digital camera.  We still weren't very comfortable with the digital camera, and trying to figure out how to overcome this became a point of contention.  We still didn't even know how well we'd be able to work that footage into the formal interview material.  Some of us questioned whether we should pursue the in-store filming at all. 

We were stuck.  I didn't know how to move us forward without more footage, but we wouldn't have more footage until we moved forward.  We were all getting a little burned out and I blame myself for a lot of the frustration the five of us were feeling at that time.  I failed to derive a clear path forward from all of the discussion and debate we’d worn ourselves out doing over the past few weeks.

But we'd put in a lot of hours with this since May and I truly believed that if we continued on we would work it out, and if we abandoned it we would regret it.  And I believed that everyone else felt the same way.

But in mid-November Brian told me that he just wasn't enthused by the project, and he didn't want to work on it anymore. 

I feared that it might all collapse if anyone else decided this wasn’t working for them.

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The Rental Experience #7 - The Blue Wall

a blog-series recounting the making of "Seven Year Rental"

It wasn't anything fancy, but the blue wall we built for our "set" provided a formal atmosphere removed from the store to interview former employees.  But more than anything, it was the ultimate manifestation of our moviemaking progress.  It was a monument of sorts.

On November 4th we began our interviewing - and the movie - with Crystal, JJ and Jared.  They were among the first I'd contacted about sitting for us and were ready and willing whenever we were available.  I hadn't anticipated that the formal interviews would give us any trouble.  It was all pretty straightforward and could be accomplished in just a handful of weekends easy enough.  Everything fell into place quickly for that first day and the content they gave us was exactly what we were hoping for. 

After that day we felt good.  Everything seemed to have gone well and we were excited to keep our momentum going.  But the next interview day we started to plan for fell through because the folks I'd contacted were either unable or unwilling to find the time to sit for us.  Many of them ended up never sitting for us.

And then the holidays arrived.  And after the new year my focus shifted from formal interviews to in-store filming just to keep the project going.

It was March before we did our next formal interview.  By then it was clear that they weren't going to come easy.

The blue wall was up for nine months.

 

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