Sex & Camping: The Making of a 2006 Cannes Film Festival Official Selection

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“Sex & Camping”

The Making of a 2006 Cannes Film Festival Official Selection

 

Interview conducted by Jody Michelle Solis

“Sex and Camping” is an official selection for the Short Films Corner at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. Directed by Adam Matalon and produced and co-written by Kevin Burke and Adam Matalon, the dark, romantic comedy was shot on location last summer in Westchester and Putnam Counties, New York. Burke also served as the Director of Photography. The film stars veteran Broadway actor and writer Stephen Temperley, and newcomers Dayci Brookshire and Kyle McDaniel. Before the film went to Cannes, it premiered at a free screening at the Paramount Center for the Arts in New York.

When I heard the project was written, cast, and shot within a 6 week time frame – I figured that “Sex and Camping” was going to be a 38 minute dialogue piece with no music and no camera movement, hence “Clerks” with a lot of heavy dialogue and just one camera sitting there – which it’s obviously not! Was the film edited and music composed within that time frame as well?

Adam: It was not edited or the music composed within that time frame. We did the old Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney thing and said, let’s make a movie. And we wrote it, cast it, set up our production team, did our locations, did all of that – and shot it and got it into Cannes all in six weeks. The editing and music then was probably another six weeks of work last fall – although I have to say that during that period, it wasn’t like we were working every day on it. So we shot it and then took about six weeks away from it because we had some other stuff we were working on. And then we sort of went back to it again in the fall.

How significant was the Panasonic SDX900?

Kevin: It’s significant for a lot of reasons. …It’s a very affordable camera, but just the looks that you can get with the camera, the amount of control you have with that camera as far as painting and creating the image that you want. It’s almost like having Photoshop at your disposal because you can totally control saturation. And the nice thing about it as well is that you don’t really have to do a lot of lighting with that camera to get a beautiful image. I think with video you still have to watch your contrast and be mindful of focus and depth of field… But the camera just gives you a lot of control, and it’s just a very nice camera to work with. Actually, since I’ve been using it, I’m really less likely to ever want to shoot 16 mm again. It’s one thing with 35 – but this camera, I think, actually rivals 16 mm as far as image resolution…

Did you experience any disadvantages?

Kevin: No, it’s like any video camera, you know, they all produce too much depth of field, so we rented some prime lenses. Like anything else, we tried to use longer focal length lenses because the wider ones tend to give you that kind of video-looking image, whereas longer lenses will give you that depth of field, and they just seem to give you a more graphic image.

Adam: We had a 9 mil, a 14, 24, and 35. I think that from my perspective, meaning directorially, we phased out the 9 fairly quickly because of that depth of field issue because even with the prime lens, I wasn’t feeling like we were able to control it as much. And because we were in confined spaces when we were using that, we weren’t able to back the camera up. So probably half way through the first day, the widest we shot was the 14 mil. But then we stayed pretty much on the 24.

Truthfully, is lighting really less of an issue when you’re shooting with the SDX900?

Kevin: You could shoot in less light and get an acceptable image. My philosophy of lighting is really you kind of look at what’s there, and you just punch it up. So I don’t use a lot of lighting when I light either. I know a lot of times, it’s dictated by budget, but for the most part, we tend to use a couple of big lights, and we use some small lights for tweaks. For a student filmmaker on a tight budget, it is a great camera because we’ve actually done some test shots inside a dark room where the only light was just ambient light coming from the outside, and the image was gorgeous. I think the one thing, you know, for student filmmakers – I know even when I was starting out, I had the tendency to kind of over-light everything.

And really “less” is definitely “more”. … But you have to control your contrast, and video needs a certain amount of light to get that nice skin tone… So it’s important to pay attention to how something is lit.

The interior tent scenes looked great. You weren’t in an actual tent?

Kevin: First of all, we really were in a tent. It was very hot. We didn’t have a tent that we had gutted. In other words, we were able to get cables in underneath, we cut a few little holes – mouse holes for cables. But inside that tent really were the two actors, the various props, Kevin, and then myself. And I was trying to stay out of the way with my script… It really is a two-person tent, and I was really pleased with the way this came out. We managed to flow some lighting through the mosquito netting on one side, we came in from the top, and we had this whole, huge conundrum of audio cables for the mics – which, we had a lot of mics, but we didn’t actually have them on the actors themselves. We had the mics pinned to various places on the tent. So obviously that scene is very phonetic physically. And we couldn’t get a boom in there… So, we spent quite a bit of time setting it all up, and we just kind of got in there and kept shooting. And the actors got very sweaty.

What inspired the idea for the movie?

Kevin: A lot of it came from the need to shoot something quickly. We actually wrote an earlier version of the script that had much older characters in it, and they were married. But Adam and I had equipment for a Sunday that wasn’t doing anything, and we needed to shoot something. So the basic parameter was, let’s write a film that can be shot like in one location and can be shot in the day. So, you know, two characters, maybe three characters… And we shot in Adam’s house, we had a therapist’s office in his basement, we had the living room, of course, in his living room, and then we had the camp ground in the backyard. And the original punch line of the film was that the couple was actually camping out in their backyard.

Adam: That kind of evolved when we were trying to develop it, and we wanted to make it a bigger film. The original concept was like an 11-page script. Then it became a 40-page script. For me, what inspired us and what inspired me to want to do this kind of film was just that I find it fascinating – the roles that people impose upon themselves about dating and relationships. And I kind of said, well, what if you take these two young, attractive people that theoretically shouldn’t be chaining themselves down with all these rules and regulations, and make it so impossible for them to relate with anybody. And out of those situations come the kind of comedy.

Since you and Kevin have known each other for a while and worked together for a while, what’s your process for writing together, is their a set routine or a set process?

Adam: I don’t think there’s a set process. I think that we’ve evolved a couple of ways of doing it. I think what we start out with, is the story. And we say, well, what is the story, what is it about? And then we try to map out the events of the story. We say, okay, so these are the major events of the story. And then we’ve worked in two different ways. One has been, we’ve each taken a particular part of the story – a scene, and we’ve basically written it. We’ve talk about, well, who are these people? How do they tick? And armed with our very personal opinions of what that means to us, we’ve gone out, and we’ve written these scenes; and then we’ve come back and kind of married the two together. I think what has been very effective for us as well is also sitting face to face and just really talking it out and almost playing the dialogue. I’m not saying that we improvise the scenes per say, but I was actually just laughing about myself earlier because I was saying to Kevin, it’s very difficult for me when I’m in a creative mood to sit down. So I tend to get up, and I jump around, and I just stipulate all over the place… We kind of tend to try and make each other laugh especially in a kind of comedic setting. And because we both look at things visually as well from different perspectives, we’ll try and write something, and then we’ll often talk about, at the same time, well, how do we shoot it, how do we show it? It’s almost like a backward editing process. We’re almost censoring our own idea.

Like if we say, oh, how the hell are you gonna do that… Sometimes we say, oh, well you can’t shoot it that way, so therefore, let’s write it in a different way… So we do a certain amount [of writing] away from each other and a certain amount face to face.

It doesn’t seem like you’re “jokey” guys or do punch lines and gags – like someone tripping over a sofa or having something explode in someone’s face – except for “the tampons”. Your comedy comes out of the situation. Is there a formula for writing comedy, or what is your formula?

Kevin: I think basically right now what makes us laugh – when it really comes down to it. I think Adam and I both have a fairly similar sense of humor, which makes writing comedy together easier. …I know there are things that make me laugh. I always like situations where people are behaving kind of ridiculously and not aware of it. That for me is very funny.

Adam: For me what’s important about comedy, and it really relates back to how the actors play it, I’m passionately involved in my actors’ work, meaning as a director. I love things to look beautiful, and I love things to be great, but I’m very invested in how actors play the scene. And for me, comedy does come out of situations… when you put people in a situation where they are very seriously trying to solve a problem that’s a matter of life and death for them. And if you put someone with great seriousness in a situation that is ridiculous, you get comedy. Case and point, with the tampons in his nose, he really does get a nose bleed. The only way he can solve his problem is to put a tampon in his nose. So his desire is to stop his nose bleeding. By making him do it with a tampon, we create comedy… For me, it’s really about putting people in real situations where the seriousness of it is what allows us to laugh at them.

Can I ask you how you went about casting the actors?

Adam: We did a combination of calls to an agent who we know, and we also took advantage of several casting websites… That was kind of a crap shoot not really knowing whether you can use any of these free services. But in fact, we did cast our leading lady off one of them. Our leading man came through an agent. In fact, several of the others came through agents, but we did cast Dayci through one of these websites. She submitted her own stuff. …I tend to try and not use casting people, and so we were able to look at every picture and resume that came in. And of course, you know, you have to put a lot of time and energy into that… I was pretty happy with who we saw by and large. I think casting is a really difficult thing, and my one piece of advice certainly to students out there is help yourselves by developing relationships, for instance, with SAG. They’re very, very supportive of student filmmakers. They make it pretty simple to get the required approval to cast SAG actors. There’s certainly paperwork, there’s certainly administrative stuff involved, but at student filmmakers’ disposal is the ability to go out there and at least give professional actors the ability to do something with them, and therefore, to use professional actors.

And of course everyone wants to know the secret of getting accepted into Cannes, and please don’t say hard work.

Adam: …Time, energy, and submitting. I would say that a lot of people probably don’t even submit their film to Cannes because they think, why – it has such a kind of huge reputation, so why would you bother because you won’t get accepted. …The Cannes Short Films Corner is actually a very inclusive environment, and actually very easy probably to become a part of short films… So my take on it is, especially for American filmmakers – is really investigate. Investigate the international film festivals because I think a lot of them are very keen to include American film.

What is your advice to aspiring filmmakers?

Kevin: Make a movie, is really it. Get out and make one. Stop talking about it. I know that it’s actually advice that Adam and I sometimes give to ourselves on occasion because it’s really a value. You’re a filmmaker, you make films. Just like writers write… So,  yeah, pick up a camera, and make a movie. Stop talking about it.

Adam: …It comes down to practicing your craft. If you’re a director, you’ll work with actors. Grab some actors and a script, even if it’s a script that everybody knows. And direct actors, talk to actors. Learn all the departments. Understand what all the people do so that people can’t treat you like an idiot. Because I think again the bigger the scale of the project and certainly where we are at our professional lives, there are times when I find people talking to me because they assume that I don’t know what they do. I have the advantage of actually having really worked my way up in this business, and most of the time I’ve done that person’s job at some point in my life. So it’s all about learning your craft and practicing it.

 

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