Crossing Axes: The Making of Maryland Deathfest: The Movies, Pt. 1

Maryland Deathfest: The Movie, Official Trailer

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In filmmaking, the 180 degree rule states that the camera should not cross an imaginary axis running through the scene from left to right. David Hall crosses axes all the time. His company Handshake Inc., which has directed videos for Today Is the Day, Hail of Bullets, Jucifer, and other bands, breaks filmmaking rules left and right. Among those is how to, well, make films. In this series of posts, Hall details the process of making documentaries about two editions of Maryland Deathfest.

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The Making of Maryland Deathfest: The Movies, Pt. 1

“So they love the guy in the gold pants and hate your movie?”

That was a friend of mine’s response to a conversation we had on my return from Maryland Deathfest VIII this year. I was telling him about some of the negative responses to my film Maryland Deathfest: The Movie, and the overwhelmingly positive response to Pentagram’s set (and Bobby Liebling’s gold pants) at MDF this year. To be fair, Pentagram was amazing (if you missed it, don’t fret – we’ll be releasing a live DVD of the set, complete with an amazing interview we did with Bobby in Baltimore), and my film may not have been what some folks were expecting – which brings me to the subject of this article.

I’d like to talk about the movie we just released, Maryland Deathfest: The Movie, and compare and contrast it with the movie we will be releasing in roughly a year’s time – Maryland Deathfest VIII: The Movie, the “sequel” we shot at this year’s, eighth annual Maryland Deathfest. I’m going to compare the two movies’ production methods, artistic and technical choices, and post-production execution.

For those of you who don’t know (and for those of you who do, this will be a good refresher), there are typically three stages of production to any film: pre-production, production, and post-production. There’s also a stage called “development” that comes before pre-production, and a stage called “delivery” that comes after post-production. But to make things simpler, I’m going to talk about development with pre-production, and delivery with post-production.

Pre-production

Pre-production is just what it sounds like. It covers all the stuff that has to be organized, scheduled, thought about, planned, and prepared before the cameras start to roll. On a narrative film, this typically includes location scouting, prop and set preparation, art department stuff, the hiring of crew members, casting, scheduling, philosophical discussion, technical tests, and basically anything else that has to be locked down before you show up on set. On a documentary film, pre-production may or may not be as involved as a narrative film, depending on how it is being made and the scope of the subject matter.

Before pre-production starts (pre-production is an official stage of a movie’s production – people start getting paid, work gets done, the troops are rallied, and the movie is to be considered “in production”), there is a stage called development. Development varies from project to project, but it is basically the stage where a small group of people who represent the project (usually the writer, director, and producer; sometimes it’s just the producer) see if they can get the thing made. Funds are secured, stars are attached, script is perfected, and dreams are dreamt.

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Because we fund our own films, Handshake Inc. sort of merges development and pre-production together. For Maryland Deathfest: The Movie, we were in development and pre-production right up until the day before MDF started last year. In fact, for the first movie, we actually sort of technically worked on pre-production elements before we worked on development.

The first piece of the puzzle was getting the rights, permission, and blessing of the festival promoters. Around August of 2008, I emailed Ryan Taylor (one half of the team that promotes the fest – the other half being Evan Harting) and expressed my desire to make a documentary about the film. Four months later, on the eve of the Presidential election, I met with Ryan in Baltimore (I was there with Today Is the Day screening my film Axis of Eden) and we chatted about making the film. It was a pretty basic conversation. He and Evan wanted a film about the fest to be made, and I wanted to make one. We negotiated the terms and that was it.

Development had officially begun.

Pre-production 2008/2009

Due to the logistics involved in making the movie (three days, 3000+ fans, over 55 bands, two stages – one indoor, one outdoor), my partner Dave Cardoso and I had to then jump straight into stuff normally reserved for pre-production: how many cameras would we need, how many shooters (camera operators), what kind of cameras, how would we record sound.

Because we had more ideas than money, we were really limited in terms of gear. Normally on a production, you’d have an equipment budget, call up the local camera rental place, and book what you need. We had no cash and we needed gear, so we looked to our friends who worked in video and asked really, really nicely. Between all the people we knew, we were able to lock down two high-def cameras, three professional standard-def cameras and a couple of camcorders. Luckily, we were able to make arrangements with the soundman who runs the audio for MDF to bring in some hard drives and gear and record the audio for a rock bottom price. And luckily at this point in pre-production, I was able to get a new credit card. Suddenly we had $5,000 to play with. I immediately ordered tapes, booked our hotel, and left about two grand for gas, food, and emergencies.

Confident we had enough of the pieces in place to actually make the movie we wanted, Dave C and I started contacting the bands playing MDF to ask for permission to film them. Technically, you need anyone’s permission to film them, and since we would also be recording audio, we needed permission to capture that, too. Ryan and Evan supplied most of the contacts, and then ones they didn’t have we tracked down through MySpace and band web pages.

By the time we got to MDF VII, we had been in touch with all the bands except for Cattle Decapitation and Napalm Death. Also, out of all the bands playing, the only ones who respectfully declined were Bolt Thrower, Mayhem, and Deströyer 666. Luckily, I was able to talk with Shane Embury from Napalm and Travis Ryan from Cattle Decapitation at MDF and get their blessing to film. Also, just because we had permission to film the bands didn’t guarantee they’d be in the movie. It’s one thing to get permission to film a band; getting permission to use a band’s song on film is a totally different animal.

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So, back to pre-production/development. By this time it was late April. We had been working on the film for close to a year, and Dave C and I hadn’t really had any discussions about what kind of movie we were going to make. We knew we wanted to have at least one performance from each band, but really that was it. So Dave and I went and rented a ton of music-based films and docs and started watching.

After a few films, we popped in Woodstock – the doc about the huge love and music fest that took place in the ’60s in upstate New York. It was evident after the first few minutes that Woodstock had hit on something special. There was no narration, no titles, no hand holding – just pure visual poetry. Over the next few months, we watched Woodstock a bunch of times. It was our inspiration and model for the film we were going to make, and for better or worse, we stuck to that vision to the end. What did that mean for the production of the film? Basically, it meant we choose passion over reason, beauty over technicality, and above all, creativity over convention.

So we had our gear, enough cash for gas and hotel, a crew, and a creative vision. Somehow everything had come together. We left for MDF VII on the day before the pre-party. All told, there were 10 of us, including three interns from the University of Western Ontario.

Production 2009

The border is a real jerk, let me tell you. Crossing into the United States from Canada on any kind of business can lead to problems. If your purpose of going to the States is not simply “on vacation”, you are instantly wrapped in a million red flags, and if you don’t have your story straight, you are in for a world of hurt – as we experienced crossing to Baltimore for MDF VII.

There were seven of us in the van, plus about 30 grand worth of gear. I had done extensive research and spoken with many a U.S. and Canadian Customs Officer before we left, and my homework led me to the conclusion that legally any Canadian citizen can go to the U.S.A. for up to 90 days on business and bring up to $10,000 in property and/or cash with them. That doesn’t mean a Canadian can make money or work or sell those goods while in the States without a visa, but they can conduct business. Since we weren’t getting paid to make the film, and since there were enough of us to cover the spread on the 30 grand in gear, I assumed we would not have any problems. Boy, was I wrong.

The border guards didn’t like all our gear. They didn’t like that we were going to make a movie. They didn’t like that one of our crew members had applied for a work visa nine months ago and been refused. They didn’t like that Dave shook his head at one point while they were screaming at us. And at the end of the day, after 12 hours of being interrogated, they refused us entry and told us if we tried entering at any other border and got caught, we’d be arrested.

So that was it. Denied entry. No U.S.A. No Maryland. No Baltimore. No Deathfest. And no movie. We were all pretty devastated. Seven months of pre-production for nothing.

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I let defeat enter my mind for about three seconds, then cleared my mind, and went back to talk to the border guards one last time. I asked them theoretically what would have to happen for us to get through. We weren’t breaking any laws, and none of us had any criminal records – they were denying us based on suspicions – so there had to be something we could do. One of the guards was in a good mood, I guess, and told me I would have to get a commercial customs bond for all our gear, and then we’d be let in. I had no idea what a commercial customs bond was, but boy did I find out.

After 12 hours of paperwork, emails, phone calls, faxes, and whatever other hoops I had to jump through, we had our bond and headed back to the border. This time when we got there, it was a different set of guards working, and whatever threat the previous guards had seen in us, these new guys saw none. They waved us through without even looking at our paperwork and without so much as a peep in the van. Either way we made it across. We stopped for a quick burger, then drove like a bat out of hell up to Baltimore.

So after a one-day hold-up at the Canada/U.S. border, we made it to Baltimore. We missed the pre-party, but our spirits were still high. I live by the mantra that “every production has at least one major roadblock”, and I was confident that we had gotten our roadblock out of the way early.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Order Maryland Deathfest: The Movie on DVD