2024 Chunky Milk Productions
Director: Owen Swerkstrom
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This was Chunky Milk Productions' ninth year in the 48 Hour Film Project. If our 48 shorts were a cat's lives, the little bugger would be on their last chance.
Our genre picks were "Mockumentary" and "Revenge". We had no shortage of ideas this time, but more on that in a minute.
A mockumentary about an airplane-gliding competition? That turns out to be a real thing people do. A revenge movie where an annoying dog gets their comeuppance? Revenge on a dog seems dark. Orbiting Earth in a homemade space capsule? We really like that scenario and the story we came up with, but, to quote myself, we had "trouble building even the world's shittiest space capsule in Mike's basement".
Dave came to the rescue with one of his classic, weirdly-specific pitches. "A support group for men who are bullied by their pets". We could do that, we each have years worth of pet grievances. It's a really fun concept; we could honestly do a feature mockumentary with the same premise.
The only real location we had available didn't exactly have a support-group looking space available, so I got to my wife's office early and rearranged the break room as best I could. Took "before" pictures so I'd remember what to put back where. Left myself a written note to plug the noisy fridge back in.
As we were setting up the first shot, I spotted a clock on the wall which was to be in the background. "Just a sec, I'm going to take down this continuity error."
How fitting that the most dialogue-heavy movie we've ever made featured zero writing of any dialogue. Each of us has pet stories that can be massaged into tales of bullying or abuse, so we set it up as really just an extension of hanging out sharing stories.
We were sure we wanted this support group to have a ridiculous name, perhaps a tortured acronym for a vaguely pet-related word. At the end of our brainstorming session I asked everybody to come up with a few possibilities. During my insomnia hours, I tried many many word and letter combinations to no real avail before finally coming up with the grammatically-impossible, acuity-challenged TAMEABLE: Therapeutic Association of Men Enduring Animal Bullies Liberation Effort. It's bad, but that is after all what we were aiming for. It's also not a universally-accepted alternate spelling of "tamable", but that also worked in our favor a bit later. Regardless, nobody else offered a name/title, so that won by default.
Even the progression of what would happen or be revealed when was an act of improvisation. We all took it as a given that Mike's storytelling would be the most animated and outlandish, so we figured we would build to that. One regret I have is cutting Andrew's (the group leader, and the only bona fide actor among us) story. The way we shot meant that it would have to be last, and unfortunately it would represent a drop in energy right near the end of the movie. For the most part, winging it worked in our favor, but we were bitten by at least this one case for sure.
Jed turned up halfway through our shooting time and immediately doubled our productivity. Having to set up each shot and sort out the boom mic and its cable in that narrow room was something I could manage, but it was time-consuming. Jed is also much more comfortable getting overhead shots than I am, and we made good use of that.
My aging camera pulled its mysterious "Err" trick again this year, and again it was near the end of shooting. Luckily, the same ridiculous method of magically fixing it worked again too. I should listen to that camera and consider getting a new one, but that is going to be a difficult object to replace. I'm of the velveteen rabbit psychology, where the purpose of a thing is to be loved to death. It feels a bit silly to feel that way about a camera, but I don't mind feeling silly.
Each year we do one of these 48-Hour movies, I feel like I spend even longer than the year before on editing. That has to not be true at some point, but I stand by the general sense of it for this year. I've never had so much audio to clean up, so many run-on sentences to cut, each full of so many "um"s to remove. The actual amount of footage was pretty typical, but I also had a lot of admin to do in collecting everyone's pet pictures. I won't say for sure this was the most editing effort yet for a 48; there were no visual effects to speak of or frame-by-frame shenanigans to deal with. But it was a lot of tedious work trying to make the audio non-terrible.
Mike was very excited to record a goofy ending song, as we had done in The Chair. Shortly after our initial brainstorming, he had a nugget of an idea which he sang to me over the phone. It was promising enough that I had him call Dave, who in turn would reshape the tune into something more somber and grand for an opening song. As it turned out, his rendition was so good we used it to bookend the otherwise-music-less movie. As for the silly song itself, I was at my limits from being up all night editing (as in, I did not go to bed between shooting and turning in our movie) so I barely remember Mike talking me into recording it with him. Turned out cute!
I didn't get it done in time for the version we turned in, but for the version on-line here I added a subtle color grade to the interior shots. Blues got a little tealer, skin pops out just a bit more from cream-colored walls, darks get a little bluer, and what little green was present is drained out. The most noticeable effect is that Andrew's hair got a touch darker; the rest is almost subliminal, a slight removal from "realistic" color and into suspended-disbelief, movie-magic appearance. It's not a thing you'd spot unless you look for it, but I wish more movies would do subtle grading instead of the very harsh crushing-most-color stuff that is so popular now.
Early on, we thought it would be fun to end with the old "every year, some sobering statistic, for more information visit this website". Once we knew the acronym, we knew I had to set up a little site just in case anyone who watches decides to look up the URL.
Post-48, the site also got some visitors after the Scream It Off Screen show. More on that later, but this time we got to collect a story or two from people who emailed me from the site. Their stories have now been included. Like the movie says, visit tameable.org for more information.
I didn't have to regret cutting Andrew's scene for long, as I realized the website was the perfect place for it.
What didn't make the cut was what turned out to be a fairly minor gag, one that worked well in my head but just didn't fit into the flow of the movie itself. The snacks on the table were chosen because their peanut shape also somewhat resembles a bone-shaped doggie biscuit. The idea was, Mike would enter and continue to be triggered (just as he was at the door with a distant dog barking). A glance at the table would see a pile of messy, stinky dog snacks instead of tasty cookies. In a flash they'd be gone and he'd continue with the meeting. If there had been some third trigger at some point, I think it may have worked. But as it happened, it wasn't that great a bit, and I couldn't (and have not since) thought of any way to sneak it into the edit in a way that wouldn't go against the grain.
The Minneapolis 48 is not quite the roaring beast it once was, but this year was a big step up from recent years. Mark Ruppert, who started the 48 in the first place, personally managed things this year to mark 20 years of Minneapolis hosting 48HFP events. About half of the entries in our screening group (this was the first year to need multiple screening groups since pre-covid) were new to the 48, which was really wonderful to see. The most senior group among us screened their 14th 48-hour film!
Our movie got a lot of laughs and a very warm reception, which felt great. The sound, the area I always struggle most with, seemed very clear, which is difficult to manage in an actual cinema. I'll never be 100% happy with any movie I have a hand in, but the process was so much fun and the crowd filled with so many others who just do this stuff because we love it, that I have to call the screening a success.
Feels unlikely to me. But crazier things have happened.
Update: Crazy things happened!
"Best Song" is an award Mike and Dave will have to share, because they each
nailed it.
For "Best Editing", I'm going to be that guy and say this was not
my best work -- the version we turned in contained actual errors, though
perhaps only I noticed them. What I will do is thank Mike for being my
co-editor on this and most of our other movies.
"2nd Place Best Film" was a lovely surprise! I'm pleased as could be that
people had such a positive reaction to the movie. It goes to show that to
connect with an audience, you don't need fancy equipment or grand cinematics
or even to think things through very well -- just have something fun or
interesting to say and do it in earnest.
Second update: One more crazy thing happened!
During a night of fairly serious drinking, Mike convinced me to submit
Tameable to the next Scream It Off Screen (at this point, that was the October
2024 one). Drunk-me thought we may get gonged. Drunk-Mike thought we would
win the night. We had other disagreements that night too, dumb ones not worth
rehashing, but sure enough,
we walked away with our third SIOS win, and our first with a recycled 48HFP
movie.
As usual, I went through a cycle or two of thinking the movie was good enough to turn in, then after all the paperwork and forms were wrapped up and I'd caught some sleep, I got pretty down about what we created. It was embarassing to watch. By the night of the screening I'd come around again, and hearing the reactions it got in a cinema that's starting to feel like a second home, I was on-board and pleased with Tameable.
Lately I've been quite wrapped up in story structure. In particular, the
gospel according to Dan Harmin,
cyclical structure,
has been swimming in my head and shaping all the thoughts that come and go.
I always get a bit rebellious when thinking and talking about the structure of
movies. I feel it can be a crutch; it can take in a
beautiful idea and
crumple it up into
hollow bullshit
with only the illusion of story. If the protagonist is dressed-down
after the initial action sequence just because
the formula says that's how it should work,
then we're not telling stories -- we're draping random subjects onto
established armatures. All that said, Harmon's more human-living-rythm
approach speaks to me in a lot of ways, and has set up shop in my head.
Tameable doesn't actually tell a story, in the story-circle sense of a story.
We don't go on a journey into the unknown, we don't attain what we seek at a
price, we don't return home changed.
...or so I kept thinking.
I get caught up on physicality when making movies. I held my nose shooting
this one basically all in one room. I want that visual flare, and as much as
I loved this concept, I was internally bummed that nobody was going, doing,
finding, sacrificing, changing.
...or so I kept thinking.
I was trying to convince myself that it's okay not to adhere to a story
formula or even structure; not every movie needs to tell a story. Maybe this
one is about the experience. A farcical experience, sure, but imminently
relatable; everybody has pets who cause trouble, everybody takes things
personally which we shouldn't, everybody seeks support from others in like
circumstances. So maybe Tameable isn't a story at all, it's just an
experience, finding one's people. It didn't need a you;
It didn't need a central character.
...Well, okay, it sort of does have a central character; I spent the time and
shots and musical duration getting him into the meeting. But he doesn't
really need anything.
...Well, okay, he gets irked by even the distant unknown dog barking; he does
want to address or cope or somehow deal with being bullied by his own dog.
Fine. But he doesn't go out into the unknown.
...Well, okay, he does go to this new-to-him support group. Going up a
couple floors instead of literally down into the underworld makes no
difference. If anything, maybe it suggests we're ascending to a safe space
to explore our own baggage without lugging it along.
There's even a little nod to the call to adventure
(or, well, stretching) being both refused and accepted by members of the group.
...But whatever, he doesn't search for a remedy
to his troubles, he just sits there.
...Well, he does search for his voice. He's invited
(non-verbally; entirely through my own editing choices) to speak early, but
holds off until he's listened to more pet bullying stories.
...Well, if he's searching for his voice, then he does find it when
it's his turn to share. His new companions buy in, relate, listen. Ah, but
does he take? Does he actually obtain anything?
...Well, he does, in a way. He takes ownership of his experiences. He
gets so into telling his stories that he finds
himself on the floor, miming out his bully's and his own postures. Even
if he sort of loses the crowd along the way. Huh.
...So does he return, changed? Does any change come about
at all? He doesn't even leave
the meeting, we do a cheesy freeze-frame and gag overlays of how this
situation is everywhere... I mean, he has returned to his seat, to his home
base as far as the therapy session is concerned.
He's returned from his own storytelling, and even if no solution
has been found, he now has people around him in unanimous support.
...Well what do you know. This story circle stuff really is
universal and instinctual. I even fought against it while putting this
thing together and it still more or less fits.
If I look hard enough, I bet even the individual pet bullying stories
would have some semblance of an actual story, as would the story of my
own acceptance of whether this movie has a story. Uff da.
Update: I got covid just before the best-of screening, so I wasn't there to see the other top movies or to pick up our awards, but happily Mike was! I was in a virus- and drug-addled state (still am...) when he texted me about each award in series, and my final verdict has to be the same as my initial reaction: I'm glad we made this movie, and I'm happy it went the way it did.
Second update!
As ever, Scream It Off Screen was a wildly fun night. We were the
second-to-last movie.
The crowd chanted "Chunky Milk!" as Mike took to the stage to indroduce us.
Throughout the show, there was cheering for each pet and for each tale of
bullying. The doubts I had about our movie were forced to shut up, at
least for that night. I'm grateful for much in life, not the least of
which are the silly people I make and share these movies with.
I need to fix how my microphone attaches to the boom pole, to include a damping rubber mesh. The current adapter is rigid, so any tiny clunk or finger repositioning along the pole translates into an audio hitch. Audio in general is something I'd love to get much better at (capturing and processing). Making a habit of always recording background noise at the end of every take is the single most important lesson I need to drill into practice.
What are these? See here for more info.
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