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One of the biggest differences between Gonzo and The Confidence Game is that more production time was alloted to this project. The first quarter was spend casting, writing and rewriting, shooting and working on the website. (The website no longer exists, because the server was shut down. I still have the page saved somewhere, though. It was an excellent site.) The second quarter was spend scoring the film with a Playstation game, "MTV Music Generator," and editing the film. Publicity was also given more effort, with Dansen helping handing out leaflets to strangers, the collaboration with thewesternchannel.com, and getting noticed in The Bellingham Herald. Initially, an idea was conceived that in between significant scenes in the movie, we would intercut some scenes with real interviews that we had compiled. We spend a good amount of time going around campus with Sophal, asking students what they thought about pornography and how they would feel about students shooting a porn on campus. Though the interviews had some truly funny moments, we decided that it was unfair that we never did tell them why we were interviewing them, (we have their permission and they do know it was from a student movie, but not a fictional one.) So we felt that for those who opposed pornography, it would be unfitting to place their clips in a movie that was about pornography. Ultimately, we left out the interviewees. A convention that we had to get used to was that it was supposed to be a documentary. That meant that the camera couldn't pan to people who weren't speaking, and it had to look spontaneous and unplanned. Viewing the film, one could notice that the cameraman did seem to have knowledge as to where characters were headed and what they were doing. Oops. It was also great to have the Almighty Turnbull as my sound man, because his contribution to making sure that the shotty sound board on my camera didn't tweak out and bastardize the sound saved a lot of footage. Also, his presence made the film a lot lighter for everyone, because he was always laughing at the actors. Although they say that the best special effect is nudity, I couldn't handle it. Having to direct the few "sex scenes" that we already had was awkward enough for me, although I have a sneaky feeling that the actors rather enjoyed themselves being uninhibited. The best special effects in Gonzo are its long takes, a testament to the great acting by the actors, I think. We did do a lot of takes, but it was worth it. The long takes are some of my favorites scenes, and the actors certainly hold their own. The actors in Gonzo do deserve an incredible amount of credit, because they were not only unpaid, they were also trusting of me that I wouldn't exploit them in any way. There was a few significant locations used in this movie, from the dorms to Mac's motel to 20th Century Bowling to The Bellis Fair Mall (although security did threaten us out of there.) Most of the time we simply went somewhere simple just to shoot a scene quickly. As mentioned before, the movie has been trimmed down to a more watchable hour and a half, and hopefully it will find a new life in film festivals soon. |
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