Bradley Tangonan talks about his award-winning sci-fi drama short Coaster and how flashbacks, cuts to black and split screen drive the story.
California-based filmmaker Tangonan wins first place in the 2007 Annual Summer Shorts Film and Video Awards with his science fiction drama, Coaster. In Coaster, a man’s encounter with a missing co-worker leads to discovering a mysterious website that allows him to see everything that could have happened in the last 24 hours of his life. Main character Nick learns that seemingly trivial decisions can have drastic consequences, and he tries to regain his sense of self-determination amidst paranoia and the fear of looming catastrophe.
Bradley talks about his use of flash backs, cuts to black, split screen, and other devices to drive Coaster’s story forward, as well as his experience winning first place in the competition.
Is Coaster your first film?
Bradley Tangonan: Yes. Well, I did make a money-saving PSA for a Merrill Lynch video contest as a freshman in high school. But that was over a decade ago.
What cameras did you use to shoot Coaster? And, were there any particular advantages or disadvantages?
Bradley Tangonan: I was planning on using a Panasonic GS-250 that I received as a birthday present from my parents, but it was stolen from my apartment two days before shooting! So I shot with a borrowed GS200 and DVC30, and eventually sold my electric guitar and amp to buy a DVX100A (off of an actor in LA who played Joel Rifkin in an episode of Seinfeld, among other things).
I would have used the DVX more if I could have, since the image quality from the GS200 suffers quite a bit in low light conditions. It was hard synching the different cameras in post and even harder trying to match the look of the footage. I wouldn’t recommend using different cameras on the same project. If I could do it over again, I’d use the DVX100A, shoot in 24p and shoot most or all of the scenes at night.
Could you tell us more about the lighting issues you came across?
Bradley Tangonan: I wanted to shoot everything at night. But my primary camera performed poorly in low light conditions, so I chose to do most of the scenes in the day. The scene where the main character visits the website was lit with practicals. I like the way it turned out.
What kinds of storytelling techniques and mechanisms did you use in Coaster to drive your story forward?
Bradley Tangonan: The first half of the short consists mostly of straight-on medium to wide shots from a tripod. This was done to convey the mundaneness and stability of the main character’s world when the story begins. I incorporated more close-ups and handheld shots as the film progressed to emphasize the uncertainty and fear building underneath the surface of the story. On a technical note, I pushed the master pedestal down to -3 in the bedroom website scene to really crush the blacks and give the scene a stark, harsh look.
The sequence where the main character goes home to visit the website consists of a number of cuts to black. This was actually an accident. There was a blank space on my timeline that happened to coincide with the song playing underneath. It looked so cool that I just had to use it. It gives the viewer the sense that it’s only getting glimpses of what’s happening, not the whole picture. This is exactly what the main character experiences when he views the alternate reality video, which contains hard cuts and pauses.
Could you tell us about your use of split screen, flash back sequences, visual effects, and time lapse?
Bradley Tangonan: All of it was pretty straight forward. Split screen is easy to pull off in Adobe –just punch in the position values for the clip. I used simple white cross-fades to transition to and from the flashback scenes, which were all desaturated to about 30%. For the alt-reality video, I used key frames to pause the end of each shot. As far as visual effects, I went for a bleach-bypass look on the alt-reality video to give it a heightened sense of reality. I accomplished this using Adobe After Effects, and it involved having two layers, one for high brightness and contrast and the other for non-saturated color. I did some basic color correction using the fast color corrector in Premiere to match footage from different cameras and to fix white balance mistakes.
In my mind, the split screen, time lapse, flash backs, and cuts to black all serve to make the viewer aware that they are watching a movie in the same way that the main character knows that he is watching a video of his life on the website. In retrospect, I think this makes for a meta film watching experience that ironically immerses the viewer in the story because it puts the viewer in the protagonist’s shoes. Also, these techniques allowed me to cut the film down from 10 minutes to 5 minutes.
Did you use storyboards?
Tangonan:
I storyboarded everything ahead of time, but the shoots were so hectic that I ended up abandoning Jenoa Harlow as the bartender. Jing Cai as Bar Regular #1. View the movie and post a comment at: http://www.studentfilmmakers.com/movies/2007/10/20/coaster/ the storyboards and just going with my instinct. Even if you don’t end up using them during the shoot, I feel storyboards are useful tools for pre-visualizing the film so you have a good idea for the shots you need.
What did you use to edit Coaster?
Bradley Tangonan: I edited on Adobe Premiere, which I didn’t know how to use at first. The last time I had edited was back in high school A/V class when everything was linear – play, pause, record! It took me a solid two weeks to learn the program and edit the short. Part of the problem was that I had to meet the 5-minute time limit, and I was pushing 10 minutes for the full version. In the end, though, I like the shorter version because it’s tighter and faster-paced.
By the way, what was your experience shooting in the store, bar, streets, and offices… Anything wacky come up, or did you do everything by the book?
Bradley Tangonan: We shot everything on location in San Francisco. It’s a very cinematic city, it turns out. We got permission for all the locations ahead of time to make the logistics of filming easier.
Nothing really zany happened. About an hour into the bar shoot the real life bartender became visibly annoyed at our being there during business hours. I thanked him and his patrons with a round of drinks and that seemed to mitigate the situation. The convenience store scene was a nightmare because the refrigerator hum completely drowned out the actors’ voices. We had to ADR the entire scene. Fun.
What was your most favorite scene to shoot, and why?
Bradley Tangonan: The alleyway scene was fun. One of the actors couldn’t make it, so I had to fill in as the kid who gets jumped and direct from in front of the camera instead of behind it. Also, that was the first time I got to lay my hands on the DVC-30, which was neat. The mood on the set was good since we had just gotten pizza, and it was the last shoot of the day.
Could you tell us about your team?
Bradley Tangonan: The team consisted of mostly friends, who were amazingly supportive and helpful from day one. My co-worker’s sister was the only crew member with video production experience, and she helped with the DP work, blocking, and overall coordination of the shoots. She was great. She was originally going to be the editor on the project, but I capture everything on my PC and she has a Mac, so I ended up doing all the editing. Steve Jobs – please make a PC version of FCP. Pretty please.
How did you cast your lead?
Bradley Tangonan: I posted my project on castingconnection.com, sent out emails to interested actors, and held auditions in my apartment. I lucked out on finding Josh, who was actually a last minute replacement for the original lead. He has a great attitude and is really easy to work with.
And your supporting actors and extras?
Bradley Tangonan: The same. I also casted a number of my friends as supporting actors and extras. The supporting cast did a great job.
How did you choose the music for Coaster?
Bradley Tangonan: I was looking for music that would convey the sense of isolation, indifference, and paranoia that the main character experiences throughout the course of the film. I logged on to MySpace music, entered “Portishead” in the “sounds like” box, and then went through the results. I contacted Alu and The National Pool, and they were surprisingly very receptive and eager to give me permission to use their songs in the short.
What kinds of thoughts and ideas did you have in mind while conceptualizing your film, Coaster? And, did you know you were going to enter it into a film competition, and have it become an award-winning film?
Bradley Tangonan: I wanted to use science fiction to study the themes of memory, regret and consequence. The detective story structure of the film allows the audience to follow the main character down the tragic path to his eventual mental disintegration, the nature of which is depicted in the behavior of the cyber-junkie, Nick.
I’ve always wanted to make a short film, so one night in July I Googled ‘short film contest’ and ‘StudentFilmmakers Summer Shorts’ was the first one that popped up. I immediately sent my friends an email essentially saying, ‘Who’s coming with me?’ a la Jerry Maguire. I said, ‘The point here would not be to win or place in the contest [though that would be awesome], but to finally make something.’ At the outset, I thought there was no way we’d even place, and that would have been okay. No matter what, I knew that at the very least I could say I did it. That I made a film. Anything else would be a bonus.
What was it like winning the competition? And do you have any tips to share with other indie filmmakers on entering film competitions?
Bradley Tangonan: You’d have thought I’d won the lottery. It was a week before Christmas, and I was back home in Hawaii for the holidays. For some odd reason, my mom was Googling my name when she came across the winners for the Summer Shorts 2007 contest. She said, ‘Brad, come here now.’ When I saw the list of winners and read my name at the top of the list, I flipped out. I ran screaming around the house like I’d just won the World Series. I immediately wrote a cheesy thank you email to the actors, musicians, and all of my friends who worked on the project. I even quoted It’s a Wonderful Life, ‘No man is a failure who has friends.’ I still can’t believe I won.
My advice to beginner filmmakers is that all it takes is some basic video equipment, a few dedicated team members, and above all else a story. To me, story is to film what melody is to music: movies live and die by story. The best thing to do when you come up with a story is to tell it to anyone who will listen and give you feedback. Pin down the story events and climax before you start writing. Build a strong foundation on which to base the entire project.
The project was a harsh lesson that if you try to be the jack of trades, you’ll end up the master of none. My main regret in making Coaster is not interacting with the actors because I was so distracted with setting up the shot and operating the camera. If I have any piece of advice to beginner filmmakers, it’s this: Rehearse with your actors and get someone else to be cameraman. My ideal short film making crew would consist of five crewmembers, with various roles spread out among them.
What’s up next? What should we look out for?
Bradley Tangonan: I’m currently working on a short romantic drama called, Seconds. It’s a story about second chances, taking risks, and making the same mistake twice. I plan on entering it into the Edgewise Media / Panasonic competition at the end of this month. It’s not up yet, but I’ll be putting up all my work on www.btangonan.com very soon.
I also recently joined a film co-op in San Francisco called Scary Cow Productions. I teamed up with Kurt Yaeger, the actor who played Nick in Coaster, to make films for Scary Cow. I’m really looking forward to it.
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