Taron Lexton graduated from Los Angeles Film School at 19 and went on to direct award-winning work. He talks about his films, festivals and going global.
Taron Lexton graduated from Los Angeles Film School at 19 years old. The young director went on to shoot “United,” a human rights music video which received critical acclaim and won numerous film festival awards, including the 2005 Grand Jury Prize for Best Short Film at the New York Independent Film and Video Festival. The film then qualified for the 2006 Academy Awards ballot in September 2005, after it screened in west coast theatres before “War of the Worlds.”
Lexton spent 8 months shooting the short in downtown LA and on location in 13 other countries. Collaborators on the project included approximately 2000 young volunteers and Youth For Human Rights International, a human rights organization founded The short tells the story of a young boy in the inner-city whose basketball game is interrupted by a group of bullies but, with the help of a few well-aimed paper planes, he enlists the help of children around the world to win back the right to play on his court. The story is simple but its humanitarian message is strong. “United” has aired around the world to rave reviews.
Lexton, now 21, has moved on to several new projects, including 21 public service announcements. The young director talked about his award-winning music video, shooting abroad and how to make the most of a festival experience.
LS: When did you know you wanted to be a filmmaker?
TL: I knew when I was seven, when I first got hold of my mom’s video camera. I’d be with my friends, and we’d go into the back yard. We had no editing programs, so we’d shoot the scenes in sequence. And that’s where it started. I got interested in a lot of arts – drawing, music, architecture. There wasn’t a way for me to do everything. I realized through film you can incorporate all the arts. I just realized that film is the ultimate art form.
LS: Did your mother inspire you to make this film?
TL: Well, I finished film school, and she offered to help put my training to use. She said, “We really want to make something that’s going to really appeal to kids, that’s going to open the minds of kids.” I mean, this was her idea. I thought she was crazy … It was supposed to be “not cheesy,” with broad appeal? That’s difficult to do. But I just went from there.
LS: How did you develop the storyline?
TL: The basic storyline came to me very quickly. But many of the details were born out of necessity, in true guerilla filmmaking style. Basically, as we were shooting, we couldn’t always do what I had imagined, so I had to quickly figure out what we WERE going to do, before the actors left and we lost our location. I think some of the best ideas come out of that process of fighting limitations. As counter-intuitive as it may sound, barriers are sometimes good because they force you to be more creative.
LS: Could you describe any of these situations where you had to cheat or change something to make the story work?
TL: Sure, for example, the paper airplanes. Originally, I had a much more elaborate idea of what these paper airplanes were going to do. But as we actually traveled through these countries, it became evident that it needed to be something that we could grab quickly without any permits, actors, lighting or special effects. So I resolved to just throw the airplanes in front of landmarks, and nothing else.
Another example was the basketball scene. Originally, it was much longer, and had actual dialogue. When we got to the basketball ball court location, though, it was in Downtown LA on a major street, with cars roaring by all day. So recording sound was out of the question, and I had to quickly come up with a new version of the scene without dialogue. And I think it works much better.
LS: What cameras did you use for production on “United?”
TL: I used two cameras, both made by Panasonic: the DVX-100A, which is 24p MiniDV, and the AJ-HDC27 Varicam, which is HD with variable frame rates. I edited the video on Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 on a Sony VAIO computer.
LS: What kind of technological challenges did you encounter during production or post?
TL: Well, we used several new technologies, including the— then—new 24p DVD format and the variable frame rate Varicam, which was at the time the only non-film variable frame rate camera. The main challenge was dealing with the 24p in post. It was kind of a nightmare. See, Panasonic was very clever when they built the DVX-100A, because it automatically converts the 24p to 30i in the camera, thus allowing any conventional editing software to treat it like normal footage, and edit it on a regular 30fps timeline. Effortless, right? Well, that worked just fine until Adobe came out with Premiere 1.5, which recognized DVX footage and provided a special timeline for it. Only trouble was, not all of my footage was 24p or from the DVX, so I had some interesting brain racking to do before I got it all to sit together happily.
It’s important for young filmmakers to pay attention when using the new 24p camera systems out there, because that is consistently the issue that bites them in the butt, right at the tail end of the project.
Also, because we combined both DV and HD in the final edit, there was a lot of color correction needed to make them match, which I did with the Magic Bullet Editors plug-in in Premiere. That gave me full control over the colors, saturation, and was my only hope of making these two mediums integrate seamlessly.
LS: What do you do differently when you’re making a music video as opposed to a dialogue-driven short?
TL: Well, for one thing, there’s no attention on sound, which makes a huge difference. But otherwise, I really tried to approach “United” as a film rather than a music video. The biggest difference came in the editing room, because I had to cut exclusively to one song, which had a strict rhythm and length. So a lot of things got cut out. I think we shot 50 hours of footage and got 5 minutes of runtime.
Taron Lexton on the set LS: Do you think there’s typically a different aesthetic or does it depend on a director’s taste?
I really think it’s the director’s taste. The main thing about music videos is they should follow a strong central theme. If that manifests in a storyline, well then fine. If it’s more montage-like, that’s fine too, so long as it holds true to the theme. I just think it’s easy to look at a music video like an extended montage of cool shots and neat camera tricks, with no substance at all. People respond better to stories.
LS: Erika Christensen, Isaac Hayes and Jenna Elfman have cameo appearances in “United.” How did that happen?
TL: Yeah. We didn’t have any money at all [for casting]. All the actors donated their time. A lot of the crew were kids. One thing that LA Film School teaches you is how to make a movie with nothing. I came straight from that [atmosphere]. We got some small donations. The people who came on board came with a lot of faith. I knew you gotta have big names attached to make it slightly more marketable. So we shot the main scenes, and I left slots where I thought that [the stars] would go. We sent the video out to each of the celebrities, and they thought it was great. We tried talking to them, but they didn’t really get it. After they saw the video, they really got it.
LS: What was your favorite part of shooting the film?
TL: My favorite part? I have to say it was the big leg of the shoot we spent around the world. That was 35 days of pure bliss, because I love to travel. We’ve got shots of the [paper] plane landing in different parts of the world. There are no special effects. A lot of people think there was blue screen or something.
LS: Of all the countries you visited, which was your favorite?
TL: I have to say Thailand. There’s a warmth. If you’re a filmmaker, you’re always looking for texture – physical texture, emotional texture … in places like Thailand, India, South America, everywhere you turn there’s something to capture.
LS: There must have been a lot of logistics to work out. How easy or difficult was the experience?
TL: Traveling around the world is an adventure unto itself. You have to treat it like an adventure and be willing for absolutely anything to happen because it always does.
For example, in Nepal, we arrived the day before a full-blown terrorist siege of Kathmandu, which meant that we couldn’t drive in cars, walk on the streets, or do anything without the threat of being shot at or bombed. Of course, we had to do it anyway, or our time would be wasted. As we drove around, we would hear on the news that several places we had just been were now in flames. At one point, we called ahead to our next meeting location, about ten minutes before we were supposed to arrive there, and found that it had just been bombed and torched by the terrorists.
So it wasn’t always peaches and cream. But it was certainly worth it. And the footage speaks for itself. I certainly could not have done it without the DVX-100A. That little camera allowed me so much freedom, being small and discreet, yet produced such beautiful quality images. And it withstood thousands of miles of dirt, grime, and abuse without even a hiccup—very impressive.
LS: What advice would you give to others about shooting in foreign countries?
TL: A key thing to realize is that many of countries have stereotypes associated with them; you know, the National Geographic, iconic images. So sometimes you have to search far and wide to find some place that actually looks like the country you’re in, to the layman viewer. In many countries, if you pull out your camera in the middle of the city, it can look eerily similar to the U.S. That’s why many films shoot in other countries for stories set in the U.S. So, in a nutshell, you just have to the take responsibility for what’s in your frame and make sure it screams Africa, or India, or whatever.
LS: Last year, “United” worked its way around the fest circuit and won several awards. Could you explain what the process was like, for those who are looking to get their work into festivals?
TL: The trick to getting accepted into a lot of festivals is submitting to a lot of festivals. We submitted to over a hundred, I think, and we got rejected from most of them. But we also got accepted into about 30 of them, which is quite a large number.
The festival circuit is a funny thing. It’s kind of self-gratifying. Getting accepted or even winning doesn’t carry with it any particular fame or fortune – even winning Sundance, as several of my friends have. You have to make festivals work for you, meaning you have to actively utilize the opportunities festivals present to you – such as networking. Many, many filmmakers, new and old, attend film festivals, and it’s a great place to meet people. Also promotion – you can write press releases and things to promote the fact that you’ve gotten into festivals, but you’ve got to do it yourself. Nobody’s going to do it for you.
LS: More and more people are devoting themselves to the short subject. What career opportunities are out there for filmmakers who focus on shorts?
TL: I think that short format filmmaking is the wave of the future. It allows so much creativity, and forces you to be so much more Taron Lexton filming in India concise and effective than with a feature. From my experience, filmmakers who are really good at short films have a much easier time stepping into the world of ads and commercials, which can be considered merely another category of short film. I truly feel that commercials today are the best venue for new talent, and a perfect next step for short filmmakers. It’s also an excellent stepping stone towards feature films, if only because you gain experience with bigger crews, with bigger budgets, and of course, bigger egos.
LS: What are you working on next?
TL: Next up for me are two feature films, one of which I am not able to talk about publicly. The other is a semi-biographical film about football star Simeon Rice, who plays for the Tampa Bay Bucs. Both projects are in the scripting stage, and should be going into pre-production soon.
LS: What’s the biggest piece of advice you’d give to an aspiring filmmaker?
TL: I would want to dispel a common myth that all the problems that you can encounter will be solved once you have buckets of money. That’s absolutely false. My best advice is to act as though you’ve got [money] already. Once you realize that, you realize you’re kind-of in the same category as the filmmakers who have it all. What matters to me is what is in the frame.
Lauren Simpson is an undergraduate at New York University’s College of Arts and Sciences (CAS), majoring in Journalism and Dramatic Literature. In addition to writing for StudentFilmmakers, she is a staff writer at Washington Square News (http://www.nyunews.com/), NYU’s award winning student newspaper. Lauren fenced competatively for 7 years and now focuses her time on writing. She is currently working on an original screenplay and hopes to attend graduate school for film. Music Video United by Taron Lexton view movie online at http://www.studentfilmmakers.com/showcase/TL_united.shtml
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