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by Ryan Tavlin
Co-Creator and Writer
Our project began like any other — two friends sat down in a basement, put pen to paper, and emerged days later with a story. over the following months, Ben and I would send pages back and forth from Chicago (him) and New York (me), bit by bit defining our characters, tone, arc and theme. Though countless revisions and rewrites would follow, some crucial things would never change. This was a story about a boy and a girl, one of whom held a terrible secret, the other held on to a dream.
We brought the script to California, two old friends with a draft and a dream of our own. There, friends Adam Pray and Aprill Winney were among the first to read our handiwork. "Everything about this move has fallen into place [from there]," says Pray, who loved the story and took the helm as the film's producer weeks later. Montague Films, our LLC, was born days after that. I think I chose the company's name. My friend Ben Montague, the raving megalomaniac, didn't fight it for a second.
New Years Eve, 2005. We do a stage reading of the script in a Chicago high-rise, trying to get a feel for what works and what doestn'. It goes off like gangbusters. The positive feedback was overwhelming, the constructive criticism from our participants helped set the course for some wonderful changes.
by Adam Pray
Producer
At the heart of the story is a man who decided to take charge of his own life and achieve the things he desired no matter what the obstacles and no matter what the consequence. This is how I think we all felt about ourselves. Here we were, a group of kids trying to make a movie with no money and we were going to do ti no matter what. We took pride in the difference being that it didn't take us facing our deaths to decide to do it.
It was a blind optimism that carried us through this whole process and it was that type of positive visualization that created the womb-like environment that was our production. I like to think that because we were a group of young artists with a dream of creating something beautiful that the elements of nature and society were on our side. Had we been a bunch of capitalists trying to make a slasher movie for a quick buck, then maybe the weather wouldn't have been so cooperative or maybe our cast wouldn't have been such a dream to work with. We were on perfect rhythm the entire time. A wild thunderstorm would rage through our location a half an hour after we wrapped for the day and the sun would come back out an hour before call the next day.
The opening scene of the movie was to take place in an entirely different location than what ended up in the film. We were out on the street shooting the cop scene and 20 minutes before we were to move inside I got a phone call saying that we weren't going to be let in with our equipment because no one had filed a request for the freight elevator and it was now too late. Our day was going to be ruined and this was a production that had no room in it to lose and entire location or half a day's work.
Twenty minutes later as we wrapped out on the street, our company was ready to move into a new location, one block away from the original. Ryan, our writer, EP and locations manger just made it happen because it had to happen and in the end, the new location was far more visually exciting than our original!
The crew was amazing. On the first day of production I almost cried about a dozen times when I would look around and see everyone working as hard as they could - pitching in with other departments and doing what they could to make the day run smooth.
The entire experience has been a dream come true and a validation of everything I've ever believed. I know that Counting Backwards has a wonderful future because it has momentum that no amount of friction can abate.
by Aprill Winney
Director
The entire making of this movie has been the time of my life. A year later, I am still as passionate about telling this story as I was the first time I heard it. Besides the movie itself, and being in love with that, there is the making of it. It is overwhelming to have so many people work so hard fro your vision. Seeing them sweat and labor over just one of the many elements required to tell the story is incredibly touching. I have seen that again and again in this process. I am still seeing it now in the final stages of postproduciton and I am reminded of the first time I saw it on the set of Counting Backwards.
It was the first or second day of production, early on and pretty hot. We were at the farmhouse which was our first location and where we would be for three days. We had arranged with the homeowners to have a section of their property tilled so that our Art Department could plant a garden. However, when we arrived to start shooting, it hadn't been done and we had to come up with a new solution. There was no good way around it, the fairly big section of the yard would have to be dug by hand.
I knew the art department that consisted of two petite young women would do this, but I decided to put it out of my mind in order to focus on my already stressful job of directing the interior scenes we started with. I stepped outside to grab a cup of coffee and I looked out into the plot of land where the garden was being dub. I was amazed at what I saw: every available hand was out there digging in that garden. This includes every PA, the Gaffer, Key Grip, wardrobe assistant, make-up artist, the producer and the writer. Not only were they working their butts off and getting filthy dirty, they were having a blast.
Later, Ashley the set costumer came up to me and told me how much fun she had digging the garden and how great she thought it was going to look. The production was brand new, the crew was still learning each other's names, and yet, they all went out of their way to work for the greater good. Digging this garden was only the responsibility of two petite girls, but no one hesitated to go out and help without even being asked.
I was so touched at everyone's positive attitude and lack of ego over this task. Our crew became like a family very quickly and this kind of attitude became commonplace. Many many people have gone above and beyond in order for Counting Backwards to become the movie it is today. I cannot separate this collaborative energy, seat and tears from the end product. It is the heart and sould of independent filmmaking and why I love it.
Stills
A jib shot filmed at the Museum of Science and Industry's Observatory, with CG by Casey McClain
Joe's choreographed 'fight' sequence with Frank
by Shadie E
Assistant Director, 2nd
ADing what SAG calls an Ultra-Low Budget Feature is generally described as stressful, but in retrospect is usually pretty hilarious. Your creative input is usually limited to the shots you didn't allow the director to shoot because of a fading sun, or worse, a fading crew. Or you could boast a couple of extras, sorry, background artists, "crossed really well." And whilst other people remember that brilliant jib shot, sumptuous costuming, riveting performance or lavish set design, the AD's memory is best jogged by the trials and tribulations induced by Murphy's ole Chestnut about how everything that could go wrong, no doubt will. Such concerns are only exaggerated by the independent setting. Gone is the permit to block entire city blocks to shoot, and instead our understandably grumpy and unpaid Production Assistant is expected to block traffic armed with his body and a cup of coffee as tepid as his enthusiasm for the impossible task.
But it's the sheer ingenuity when confronted with blatantly ridiculous situations that is most memorable. Day 7 of our luxurious 14-day shoot saw us avoid a company move by filming the parking Garage in the basement of a Chicago high-rise as we prepped Joe's bedroom 19 floors above. But more annoying than the contrivedly diminutive elevators were the radios, whose range failed to bridge the distance between the disparate units. Solution? A dedicated PA somewhere on the 7th or 8th floor, able to hear both units, and relaying messages back-and-forth at an altogether comically inefficient pace.
And only those who experienced first-hand the manic panic can read between the lines of the casually, tactfully and unemotionally written production reports:
Live events in the vicinity caused sound difficulties - which really means thousands of people gathered for a marathon, complete with horns and loudspeakers, causing our sound mixer to pout. Gaffer and dolly got stuck in freight elevator for 20 minutes - obviously not funny at the time. Owner's cat let out of house, causing problem with location owners - calling in a favour to use a mate's house as a location barely explains the carnage likely to ensure. But when you misplace the cat you might have to rewrite the rest of the scenes that took place in the house. Brandon cut his finger while grabbing ice - that's fairly precious. Schedule completely altered by rain - it says 'schedule completely altered,' but at the time it feels like 'world completely ending.' But the world didn't end, and everything worked out. Apart from the cat…
Cliché or not, this was the closest a crew has come to feeling like family and coming from a hard-ass, cold-hearted AD, you know that it might not just be press kit fodder. As an AD, everyone's problems quickly become my problems, but this was the first time I felt like my problems were everyone else's problems too. I can't help but feel that the sense of unity and mutual affection shone through to the finished movie, in which case maybe we all did have a little influence.
The Soundtrack
A Note On The Music
"After getting listed in the various trades we began to receive phone calls from actors, crew people, vendors and all sorts of random inquiries. Far and away, we received more calls from composers than any other group," recalls Producer Adam Pray.
The editor, Robin Gonsalves, had a friend in London named Kieran MacManus who is Elvis Costello's brother and an aspiring composer that Gonsalves felt would be a perfect fit to the Counting Backwards creative team. "Kieran had read the script and love it. He immediately began writing music offering it up to the movie from the inspiration of his heart," says Director Aprill Winney.
In addition to Kieran there is Marc Jackson and his musical library, Zoo Street Music. "The music that Kieran brought to the movie set the emotional palette so much that when Marc joined the team he was turing over tracks in a matter of days," says Pray.
Between the two of them, Counting Backwards has an original score that makes the movie a 3-dimensional experience. "Bringing in the music makes the movie pop right off the screen," says Winney. "I've noticed that when a good music cue comes into an emotional scene, it always makes me cry."
Wherever there is diegetic music needed, tracks and beats from musicians in Chicago's local music scene have been placed. The 4 Chicago locals who contributed their beats and hip hop tracks are DJ Josuha E, Vince Riley, Nevsky Prospekt and APOC. "Having real Chicago musicians create the music that the characters are listening to really authenticates the setting for me," said Pray.
The lead of the movie, Benjamin Montague, has some music of his own i the movie as well. "At first I was hesitant to put Ben's song in the movie because I thought that it was a little tongue-in-cheek to have the actor in a scene where his own voice is singing in the background. But when I heard the song it doesn't sound anything like Ben so I thought it'd make a fun little inside joke," recalls Pray.
Montague and Pray also wrote some music together that made the cut. "Ben and I were watchign the movie together one day and started talking about the music. Instead of trying to explain myself verbally, I just began to lay down tracks on my computer with a crappy little Midi-FX keyboard. A few hours later we had written two songs on GarageBand. We had two computers going at once — one for video playback and one for recording the music. It was as homegrown and lo-fi as you can get but that method has worked for every other aspect of the movie so why not the music as well?"
You can visit Marc Jackson's online music library at www.zoostreet.com
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