|
|
The Making
Director's Notes As such I decided to make Dealer; quite simply a true film about drug taking outside our apparently crumbling inner cities that aims to dispel a few urban myths and provide a few genuine warnings. A story about hash, E, acid, and the people that take them, told by the poeple that take them, all seen through the eyes of the guy in the middle of it all; the dealer. It also seemed a great idea that after 5 years of shooting zero budget analogue stuff with my friends on the Coffee team, it would be great to put all those experiments together in a final project before moving on to digital technologies and celluloid itself. So my trusty 3 year old Sony Hi-8 camcorder and VCR decks were dusted off one last time, parts were cast from the people around me, and after a ton of research and a couple of false starts we were ready to shoot.
January 2002 Shooting opened, as is only right, with coffee, spliff, and Playstation. Dave Smith had the misfortune of taking on the central dealer role; I wanted someone against the type of the grubby evil scumbag as it simply wasn't always the case, plus he was naturally the kind of laid back and understated person the part needed; all the colour came from the people he came into contact with. I don't think either of us fully appreciated how much work it was going to be though, I seem to remember saying something about "3 months, tops", what a prick. Sorry Dave for taking up a year and a half of your life with "there's just 3 scenes left and that's it!".
Much of the film takes place in the Dealer's flat (my flat, sorry landlord) and we got off to a great start, the acting was surprisingly natural and simple, with Neil Jordan and Gelli Graham doing great jobs of their parts, things went great, but it soon became clear it was going to take a lot longer than expected.
Spring 2002; As the weather picked up we started on exteriors in the backstreets of town, and occasional evening shoots in the Dealer's sitting room, I started shooting the acid trip sequence with Matt Bremerkamp, and Kev Rye did an impressive turn as one of the dealer's mates. Unfortunately for me Dave was starting to get busy with his job and couldn't give as much time, plus as the "easy" scenes got shot we started getting down to the "difficult" scenes; requiring large numbers of people, or out on location in town, and every time a shoot was about to go someone got tied up with something else or the weather would be wrong; for a film intended to look like winter the weather was getting pretty wrong all round.
Summer 2002; Shooting continued in the Dealer's sitting room, by now I was pretty resigned to having to shoot into and possibly beyond next winter; we slacked off for holidays and work and other projects, it was also around this time my now 4 year old trusty Sony camcorder caught it's peripheral lens on a doorframe and split into two pieces. Lots of panic and sticky tape later it came back together but refused to playback and would only switch off by removing the battery. Continuity became a concern in terms of hair growing and shortening and stubble and beards appearing from nowhere, or simply when Dave wore the wrong socks, we did all we could and kept Jackie Chan in mind.
Autumn 2002; We returned to exteriors of the house and immediate area, as well as getting a few extra shots polished off in the Dealer's kitchen, I was just waiting and praying for the weather to turn shit. We did finish off the acid trip with Matt, Tim McGregor, and Gary Cantan though; shooting the entire scene through Dave's POV meant I needed one less actor which was just as well as it took a lot of filming; about 20 takes on one line Matt just couldn't get out without sounding like an oak table (finally got in the bag the day before he left for Australia for a year), innumerable miles of trekking through the local countryside, blagging of hire cars to cope with breakdowns, lots of digging up my back garden, and the all encompassing "well it can be part of his tripping" excuse whenever fears about weather, car, or hair continuity were raised.
Winter 2002/2003; Things began to pick up pace again, off set I finalised a great soundtrack featuring twelve original compositions by four different artists; Amir Baghiri, an Iranian "tribal ambient" composer living in Germany, The Committee, a collective of young hip hop artists from the USA, Cliff Lassnig, an English musician, and Gary Cantan, one of the Coffee faithful. Chris Malbon got to work on the designs for marketing at festivals, and Rob Fairlie came on board sorting out a bucket of duplication for the finished product. Sequences started getting finished, a structure started to take shape, and eventually it really was just 3 more scenes; the most difficult scenes of all, needing actors to trek all the way down from Scotland and London, one scene with lots of extras on a really tight schedule, 3am shoots, and the all important ending to the film, the only scene genuinely requiring "acting" in the whole film...
Dealer is currently still shooting, and is expected to wrap this summer, it really is.
Steve Piper Photography by Gelli Graham ©2003 Coffee Arts and Media Ltd
The Making
|
All content ©2004 Coffee Arts and Media Ltd; copyright and privacy details