Pension Plan - 48hrs of Hell

If you've ever woken from a blood soaked nightmare, clutching your cotton bedsheets hoping to feel something tangible, then in a startlingly moment of clarity, look down at the faint rigor mortise setting in underneath your fingernails and realize it was no nightmare, it was in fact real and you were holding the knife when your wife and her sister's necks were split open like two fatted calves, and you were the one who spilt their blood so callously the liberal judge who convicted you reinstates death by hanging, then you might know what's it's like to make a 48 hr film.

Film in itself is a demanding beast. Not one part of it can be overlooked or oversimplified if you ever want to achieve anything other than what my teacher calls a "Student Film." He calls his student's films "student films" when he wants to insult us. I guess the titular application works well enough, I am a student after all, but he implied that if my stuff looks like a student, it probably means I suck.

So if I live up to only what I'm defined as, I SUCK.

Fair enough logic for a fellow lunatic like me.

I suppose that's why I bother to kill the demons in my subconscious when it comes to the 48hr Film Festival. I'm not really qualified to lead a production on a large scale at all. So I abuse all the resources I have to make a large scale production.

From actors to locations, everything and everyone I work with is the product of a previous working relationship. Very few new elements are introduced, save the plot and an actual deadline.

Jeff Palmer, the lead in Pension Plan, is a 3rd time veteran of the Schantz Camp. He's been cast in one production normally, and the other two times he swooped in and saved us from certain disaster. When the lead in the upcoming short Birthday Boy was scheduled to be deployed to Florida during the summer of of '08, Jeff came in to save our ass and play the second male lead.

The morning of Pension Plan I placed a call to what I had hoped would be our lead actor, whom I had spoken to the night before. I called to discuss his wardrobe for that day, when he responded by asking "Oh, that's today...?"

Four hours later, the script I had written was completely revised to reflect the changes in characters, once again, Jeff had stepped in, this time back in the lead.

Jeff has an uncanny instinct with the characters he plays, and he's been instrumental to me in learning how to direct actors. Jeff's loud, a little foul mouthed, and always hilarious. He's been embedded in the Art Institute since his debut in my trailer, Sweety, and has been going strong, building a following of colleagues and friendships, kicking ass on clown hookers, cops, gangsters, office workers and his liver ever since.

I'm proud to have something to do with him.

The rest of the cast are returning from their roles on Birthday Boy, save two members. The most notable being Juan Carlos Lemus, the second detective, my co-worker at the law firm. Always giving me shit for not putting him in movies, I gave him the chance he wanted.

I don't think he fully regrets it yet.

The office used in the film and the alleyway are located at Capsity Offices, 2321 P street. Another working relationship that stemmed from Birthday Boy, Capsity has been integral in my growth as a businessman and filmmaker by facilitating the process for my needs and theirs. I owe a lot to them when it comes to helping build relationships, and even my own aesthetic.

No one would be more supportive of going 5hrs over shooting time in their location like they were. They've truly emboldened me by enabling my bad habits.

Bad habits are tools, tools needed to build the foundation that becomes my film. Bad habits like over shooting, over rehearsing, and too much attention detail to lighting. Before you can master these areas, you must repeatedly subject your actors and crew to the same scene and situation over and over again until they can all act and light the goddamn piece themselves.

Nothing taps into an actors emotion and depth the way onset frustration does.

Frustration is the second most essential in film making.

Not feeling frustrated means you're not really trying.

"Show Business is a hideous bitch-goddess."

You're goddamn right George Burns. (Don't let me know if he didn't say this, I don't care.)

Film making shouldn't be fun. It's a horrible act, that ravages peoples lives and ruins personal relationships.

Now put all that energy and self destructive nonsense that goes into making a regular short film, condense it into 48hrs, and now maybe you understand why I make a 48hr film.

Because I shouldn't.

Every reason in the world says it won't and probably shouldn't happen, but goddamn it, I like to defy the universe. I've been going against the grain of existence since my birth and peeling away the fibers ever since.

Nothings more thrilling than getting away from the scene of the crime and knowing you're getting away with it, knowing they'll never trace the fingerprints back to you, not with the bodies chopped up and placed in the oil barrels and dropped off the banks steep cliffs of the Big Sur Coastline.

Looking in the rear view mirror and staring at the carnage that was my weekend, I could only smile and patiently ponder who to lacerate next.

I guess overall, what I'm trying to convey, is see Pension Plan when it opens as part of the 48hr portion of the Sacramento International Film Festival, April 4, at the 24th Street Theatre in Sacramento.

I'll be looking for you.