"Blue Car" Arrives (online at http://www.apple.com/hotnews/articles/2002/05/bluecar/index.html)
Final Cut Pro and Cinema Tools tune indie feature "Blue Car" for Sundance and Miramax
Every year a thousand blue cars make a run at Sundance. These low-budget indie pictures roll film (probably tape) then roll out of Austin, Los Angeles, anywhere for the push to Park City. Many overheat on the side of the road, out of money or luck; others are pulled over and sentenced to video distribution. The survivors are rewarded with an even steeper test-a near vertical climb to successful theatrical release.
This is the story of the "Blue Car" that - in the most recent rally of I-think-I-can's - could. First-time feature director Karen Moncrieff's picture, a critical hit at Sundance 2002, was the first film bought out of the festival, by indie rainmaker Miramax Studios, for a reported $1.5 million dollars.
Moncrieff can't entirely explain its success, but she parks it close to the curb when she cites the efficiency of her production team in translating a pin-money budget into a high-production film. "We found a way to put all of the resources we had on the screen," says Moncrieff, crediting as primary engines of that translation Final Cut Pro and Cinema Tools (formerly Film Logic).
Critical Difference David Waters, a producer for "Blue Car," and the person responsible for setting up the Final Cut Pro-based production workflow, is unambiguous about the root success of the film: "Linda Obst said the most important things you can do when producing is buy the right script and hire the right director. We got both with Karen."
Heavy-hitting critics from "Variety," "Premiere," "Rolling Stone" and "Newsweek" agreed, most notably Peter Travers, who called "Blue Car" the most haunting film he saw at Sundance. The object of their affection is a harrowing film featuring an 18-year-old aspiring poet who draws support from her high-school English teacher that only partly closes the holes in a cut-away home life she shares with her shut-down mother, self-mutilating sister and the memory of happier times with the father who abandoned them.
Found Art Moncrieff, a former actress, struggled to find the subject of her script until a friend urged her to write the movie that she wanted to see. Because Moncrieff favors coming-of-age stories, a chance sighting of a girl poet cleared the way to her story.
"I was in an adult poetry workshop at the time," says Moncrieff, "but there was this really beautiful young high school student. She would sit through the entire workshop doodling on her jeans and hands, then stand up and read this amazingly beautiful poetry. She took root in my brain. I wanted to send her on a journey of self-discovery so she would realize how splendid she was."
Moncrieff quickly wrote the first draft of "Blue Car" and submitted it to the only producer she knew, Peer Oppenheimer, whom she'd met on a set on an acting job. Oppenheimer optioned the script in 1998, just before it won an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship for new writers.
Cast Away Moncrieff cast her film as carefully as she wrote it. In fact, she successfully pre-cast a principal role, the high-school English teacher Austin, by custom-writing the part for indie icon David Strathairn, who accepted the role.
For the starring role of Meg, however, Moncrieff was drawn to newcomer Agnes Bruckner, whose performance drew critical raves at the Sundance. "I didn't know Agnes Bruckner when I wrote the part of Meg," says Moncrieff, "but she came in and just blew me away. A lot of girls came in who were bigger names, or with more experience, but she just really got to me. She was my heart's choice."
On the Cheap Although Oppenheimer and Waters were able to generate plenty of interest in the script, they couldn't catch a green light. Three years of development and 400 planning breakfasts culminated in a declaration from Oppenheimer to Waters: "We're just going to make this film. So how cheaply can we make it?"
Waters pulled together a budget for a digital shoot, but director of photography Rob Sweeney lobbied hard for film. "We didn't know which way to go," says Waters. "The budgetary considerations were the film stock, the cost of the lab and the telecine. Somehow we got it on 35, and I'm glad we did, because you see how beautiful our picture is."
The production team saved wherever it could, including shooting in Dayton, Ohio, instead of Columbus to take advantage of Wright State Film School alumni and students living there, shooting Meg's home in the LA-based crew's rented apartment and cheating the beach scenes by making Oxnard, California, a proxy for Miami Beach. Even the Panavision camera was donated for the run of the shoot.
Tools Kit The creative austerity on set carried through to postproduction, but with a twist. Waters needed to set up the least expensive, most flexible post system possible without knowing whether the film would finish on video or film. "We knew we would have to deliver an online master to some distributor, worst case Showtime or a video feature. In our hearts we wanted theatrical distribution, even though we didn't have the budget for a film finish."
Waters, who sets up flexible post for filmmakers through his company Entertainment Industry Solutions (EIS) in Burbank, backed into a solution: "The first things I look at before a film start are delivery requirements." He resolved his endgame dilemma by designing flexible offline and online stations around two Power Mac G4s, an Aurora Igniter card, Final Cut Pro and Cinema Tools. These systems allowed him to shoot on film, edit on video and finish as needed when a distribution deal was struck.
Director Moncrieff saw advantages beyond flexibility: "Final Cut Pro was an economical decision, but one of the nicest things for us is that we were getting to look at uncompressed materials. So it was beautiful the whole way."
Print to Sundance The flexibility of Water's post systems was severely tested by wonderful news: "Blue Car" was accepted at Sundance. To qualify for the festival, the production had submitted a Digital Beta online master. But to play the festival, they needed to ship a film print in just three weeks.
Although Waters had set up for just such an eventuality, a late decision by Moncrieff to insert an additional title sequence to the online version meant it no longer matched the offline version. The "true" online Digital Beta version lacked the edgecode numbers required to produce a lockbox copy for the negative cutters, but the offline DV version no longer reflected the final cut.
Using Cinema Tools and taking advantage of the QuickTime media format,Waters was able to reconnect his online and offline media and produce both a correct online version with edgecode numbers and a true cut list. The film print of "Blue Car" just beat the Sundance deadline.
Open Road "Blue Car" is currently parked at Miramax, scheduled to open in New York and Los Angeles in early November, 2002. Moncrieff emphasizes that "Blue Car" is still in the middle of a journey, but she's pleased enough to acknowledge its significant progress.
"This was our best case scenario," says Moncrieff, who just adapted Edith Wharton's novel "Summer" for her next directing stint. "To get into Sundance, and then to be picked up by Miramax after our first screening, that's pretty much a dream come true for any filmmaker. It certainly is for this one."
