Check out this
article in the print edition of StudentFilmmakers
Magazine, August
2006. More photos in the print version, including
production stills, scenes from the film, and storyboard sketches.
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Interview with Director Phillip Van
The Making of "High Maintenance"
This feature interview appeared in the August 2006 Issue
of StudentFilmmakers Magazine. Director and cinematographer Phillip
Van is named the 1st Place winner of the 2006 Eastman Scholarship
for film students at the 60th Annual UFVA conference in Orange,
California. Van receives a $12,000 scholarship for his film, �High
Maintenance.�
What is �High Maintenance� about?
It is about a woman who is dissatisfied with her monotonous marriage
and decides to exchange her husband for an upgrade. In the near-future,
husbands are modified and can be bought on the consumer market.
The film uses hi-concept ideas to really focus on a small inner-personal
story about a woman on her search for fulfillment through a man.
Of course, it doesn�t turn out as she expected it to, and she
has to deal with the consequences.
Phil composes his frame. Photo by James Nicholls.
Could you talk a little bit about the origins of the production?
I made this film through the Berlin International Film Festival.
Every year a student-oriented part of the festival called the
Berlin Talent Campus admits around 500 filmmakers from approximately
3000 applicants based on their work. From the 500 filmmakers,
three are selected to make short films during the week of the
festival. The films are fully funded by a production company in
Germany, and are made in a single week. The three films go into
competition at the end of the festival and the 500 filmmakers
in addition to industry guests vote on a winner. It�s the largest
jury vote in the Berlin film festival and this year my film, �High
Maintenance,� won the competition.
Could you talk about one or two interesting things that happened
during pre-production?
I was asked to direct one of the talent movies based on the work
I submitted. They called me a few weeks ahead of time and I accepted
the opportunity immediately. I was pre-producing in New York for
a few weeks � working on storyboards, breaking down the script
and casting from New York by communication with the production
company in Germany. They would send me DP and editing reels and
headshots as well as video reels from the actors. All the actors
we were looking at had extensive T.V. or film backgrounds in the
German film industry, so they were very accessible through their
work. My actress, Nicolette Krebitz, starred in some great films
in Germany and Europe. I watched her in an epic sized production
called The Tunnel, about tunnels that Germans dug to help their
loved ones escape from East Germany under the Berlin Wall. She
had some extremely powerful scenes and it was clear to me she
was a serious ing�nue. It was just wonderful to be able to base
my decision to work with her on these kinds of films.
The last week of pre-production was in Germany. I was staying
there and dealing with the initial culture shock, and at the same
time, trying to get the film off the ground in the dead of winter.
And that was an amazing experience, going every day to the production
company and to the little office they had set up, and speaking
to an entire team of Germans. They were all incredible. English
is a heavily spoken language in Germany, so it was easy to communicate
and get around, but there were still so many cultural differences.
It was great to be thrown into the fire, so to speak, with a crew
from a completely different culture. I storyboarded every shot
ahead of time, and the images helped a lot, especially in the
few cases that crew members didn�t speak English. I was able to
communicate with them in a very exacting way, irrespective of
the language barrier, through pictures, and that was awesome.
How many days did it take to shoot?
The film was shot completely in two days. The entire film was
made, with breaks, in about eight days. We shot in two days, edited
in about two-and-a-half to three days, and then we did final sound
design and mixing in two days. The movies that the Berlin Talent
Campus commissions are all made in the limited span of a week.
It wasn�t like a 24-hour competition, where the time span is necessarily
taken into consideration by those who view the final film. We
had to make what would essentially take a thesis grad film student
three to six months. We had to make that quality and standard
of a film in a week. That was the energy in the air and it was
absolutely my goal and expectation. It was the shortest time I�ve
ever made a full short, and it was difficult but compelling. I
didn�t sleep very much. Maybe about twenty hours the entire time.
It was an intense situation.
Could you share one or two lighting tips or tricks that you
used in �High Maintenance�?
Our location was on the 12th floor of an apartment building, and
we had to shoot day for night. The whole story takes place at
night. We were dealing with a full wall of windows in the living
room, with no porch or access from the exterior. We put ND 1.2
gel on all these windows, but alone, it felt bland visually. We
decided that if it was night and we were in a metropolis-based
environment we should see building and city lights outside. We
couldn�t get a crane to suspend a light outside the window, because
we were too high and on a budget, and of course, none of the buildings
were lit because it was the day.
I work as a DP in the city in addition to the work I direct, and
my great DP, Felix Novo De Oliveira and I collaborated pretty
intensively on our lenses, f-stop, light units, all facets of
photography before the shoot. We basically just used the simplest
New York trick in the book � we strung up a set of Christmas lights
behind the window sheers and in front of the ND, and then taped
some of the bulbs to create different shapes with the light. By
throwing the windows slightly out of focus in the background with
longer lenses and an open f-stop, it looked convincingly like
a city lit at night outside of the windows. It was a true no-cost
solution and it was very effective.
In researching the look of the film, I decided that I wanted it
to be softly lit but to have a high contrast ratio, with graphic
lines and sharp, bold blacks. This dynamic aesthetic felt fundamentally
related to the story, which I visually equate to an off-kilter
mix between a romantic dinner, the film noir genre and a horror
or scifi tale in a graphic novel. Soft light felt romantic, while
dynamic contrast ratios came from the world of sci-fi and film
noir and worked well with the uncanny and sometimes eerie tone
of the film. The intermingling of the two was the way we married
the visual world of the film with its narrative influences.
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