John Ott Interview - "Natural Victims"

 

John Ott is the first filmmaker to complete and release a #2wkfilm during the October 2009 round. His film is called "Natural Victims" and you can see it online for free here.

Here is an interview with him discussing filmmaking and the #2wkfilm process.

Why did you decide to do #2wkfilm?

Because I had a sleep surplus I needed to cash in. (laughs) Actually, I had a blast doing it.  It felt very good to be out there making a movie again, which I hadn't done in too long.  I took about three years to do post-production on my last short film, a little 10-minute horror tale called "Stull."  The idea of making a feature and calling it done after just two weeks was really appealing.  Plus, reading about the first round of #2wkfilms and watching them got me very excited and inspired.

What are the things you learned by doing #2wkfilm?

Too much to go into detail.  I'll have to just put into a platitude: I learned to embrace the moment.  Wow, that sounds ridiculously platitudinous.  What I'm trying to get at is that #2wkfilm forces you to rely on instincts, because you don't have time to second-guess yourself.  That said, now all I'm doing is second-guessing my decisions of the last two weeks.  It was good for me, because it gives the side of me that wants to be a perfectionist an excuse: ya did what ya could with the time you had, Ace.  My perfectionist side talks like a 1940's film noir character.

What would you do differently?

There's always the shot you forgot, or didn't think of.  My biggest regret would be in how I approached the story with the actors.  I wanted it to be very collaborative, and to do some rehearsals and really get the backstories worked out.  Well, I wasn't able to get the movie cast as fast as I thought, and so there was one pre-production meeting with the cast.  I wouldn't even call it a rehearsal.  And the actors, who are all trained long-form improvisers, really didn't want to know the backstories going in.  It's more fun for them to discover it in the moment.  We literally didn't know the characters' names until they introduced themselves on camera.

I wish I had stuck to my guns, because by the middle of the shoot, I realized that they would've been fine with a bit more rigid definition of their characters.  It all turned out fine, but the writer in me regrets not being able to shape the story more closely during the shoot.  The editor in me was quite happy though, to be able to create the story in the editing room.

If I had been able to stick to my original schedule, there are a lot of things that would've been better.  One of the actors got a last-minute conflict early in the shoot, which meant we lost some precious days.  That left less time for editing, which meant I had to give up on having a whole day just to compress and upload the movie, which meant it premiered online the day after I had told everyone it would.

I also didn't do enough looking over the footage during the shoot.  There is some stuff we could've re-shot if I'd caught it in time.  I also shot a fair amount of scenes that didn't end up being needed to get to the one hour time threshold.  I think one day I'll do a directors cut, because there's a lot of interesting/hilarious material that you won't see in the present #2wkfilm cut.

 
What would you expand on?

I think the relationship between "Billy" and "Carter" is good in the current cut, but I'd like there to be an even better sense of how they've been friends since they were kids, and how betrayed they feel by each other.  I had originally imagined the movie as a point-by-point disintegration of that relationship, one of those train-wreck-in-slow-motion things that's wrenching to watch, but impossible to look away from.

The original cut of the scene where "Carter" first takes "Angela" for a walk was much longer, and I think one of the sacrifices I had to make to pick up the pace of the movie was to cut some material that makes it more believable that they make a real connection.

There's a whole monologue from the serial killer at the end that's not in the movie, but that really goes to a central theme about the media spending too much time on unimportant things, like serial killers -- an astronomically unlikely threat -- and too little time on important things, like health insurance reform.  The killer quotes that CNN statistic about 45,000 Americans dying every year because they have little or no health coverage and asks which killer is capable of killing thousands.

 
What are you going to do about the release and distribution of the film?

Well, the movie is released and distributed, as far as I'm concerned.  I'm not waiting for any distributor or festival programmer to make it available to the masses.  It's free to watch at naturalvictims.com, with the caveat that if you like the movie, you have to tell people about it.

 
 Would you do #2wkfilm again?

Absolutely.

Has #2wkfilm changed the way you approach filmmaking?

I don't think so.  Conceptually, I think I approached the #2wkfilm how I approach every project.  Given the constraints, how can I tell a good story?  Of course, literally, the approach is all about speed.  I definitely said "move on" after shots that were workable because I knew there wasn't time to wait for something that was good or perfect.  But I built that into the aesthetic.  I always knew the edit style would be full of jump cuts and that the camerawork was going to be pretty raw.  As someone who trained for years as a screenwriter, it's a bit scary to go make a movie without a script.  But I think my trust in the actors was rewarded.

Did the cast and crew like the #2wkfilm process?

I think so.  Obviously, it would have been better if I could afford to pay everyone.  But I was able to keep my policy of feeding everyone excellent food, which generated a lot of good will.

The good thing about the way we shot is that it's more like theater, or perhaps real life.  There was never an identical take.  It was always new, and we were shooting at a tremendous clip.  It can be relaxing to stand around on a movie set, but I think most people prefer to be actively creative.

I think it was also pretty exciting for people to work on an improvised feature, something that's kind of an anomaly.  I've been a big fan of long-form improv, this method of inventing extended comedy scenes that was developed by a well-known theater director named Del Close.  A lot of very funny people come out of the schools that have spun off from Del Close's teachings - Second City, The Groundlings, iO (formerly Improv Olympic) and the Upright Citizen's Brigade.  I've been dreaming of adapting that style to film in a way that keeps some of the spontaneity of live theater.  Natural Victims is just a first test of that, and has really encouraged me to keep exploring it.

 
Would the cast and crew do another #2wkfilm?

You'll have to ask them.  I hope so.  They're all phenomenally talented people and a pleasure to work with.

What has been the response to your film so far?

Well, I just put it up, so I haven't heard very much yet.  But from the few people I have talked to, it's been super-positive.  I sent out a press release a few days before I completed the film to a handful of outlets and so far there's been no press coverage.  This is baffling to me, not because I think my movie merits any particular attention, but because I think the #2wkfilm movement is one of the most exciting things going on in the world of movies and new media.  This is an absolutely new format that has a lot to recommend it both from the point of view of the artists and also the audiences.

What else would you like to say about film and filmmaking?

Oh, so much.  And I have.  You can check out the filmmaking website makingthemovie.info, which I've been running since 2004 and find loads of opinions, speculations and futurist musings about film.