If the Dress Fits - the Making of a $99 Movie

by Jana Segal

After I recovered from the trauma of making a 17 minute Western in 18 hours, several people from my directing group suggested that it might be easier to make a really short short next. At that time, IFP Phoenix (then called the Phoenix Film Project) had a 24 hour film contest that allowed you $100 to shoot a three minute film. That was all the inspiration I needed! I started pre-production by reserving a mini DV camera and lighting equipment at Access Tucson http://accesstucson.org/ and writing a three page script called, “If the Dress Fits.”

The $100 budget rule was very freeing because when I approached merchants requesting donations, they couldn't haggle over the price. I enlisted the help of the Tombstone Chamber of Commerce president convincing her that my $100 video would be a great advertisement for the tourist town of Tombstone. Together we moseyed down Allen Street where she introduced me to several local merchants. Meanwhile, I was also making a documentary on the making of a $99 film, so there was a video camera aimed at the merchants while I hit them up for donations. This proved to be extremely helpful. I'll never forget the nervous smile on one dress shop owner's face when I explained I couldn't pay because of the $100 rule. (And I don't have to because I got it on tape! Hahaha!) But she came through by volunteering her shop for a location. (I have admit it was cool to shoot where one of Tombstone's notorious bad guys was shot.)

I don't know if it was the loaded camera aimed at them, but everyone in Tombstone was so nice and helpful. Whenever I'm in town, I still stop by to say, “hi” to the nice woman who let us shoot in her historic B & B. She had even recruited her whole family to work as extras in full period garb.

“If the Dress Fit.” is the story of a modern city gal who is dragged to Tombstone, Arizona to approve the "Wyatt Earp" suit her dorky fiancee wants to wear to their wedding. She tries on an antique dress that triggers memories of her past life in the 1880s. After reading my script, my directing group gave me some excellent feedback. They said it seemed like an awfully complicated story for a three minute film. I really should have listened, but I was dying to shoot my story in Tombstone. When I first visited Tombstone in 1996, I felt an instant connection. (Which is strange because I never really liked Westerns growing up.) I especially felt drawn to the Birdcage Theater which I visited every time I was in town. I loved hearing the history of this wild honky-tonk and the rumors that it was haunted. I can still point out all the bullets that riddle the walls. Eventually, the manager started letting me in free as honorary Tombstone resident.

Thrilled for any excuse to visit Tombstone, I went there to scout locations and do some casting. I was tickled to get the Tombstone Cowboys who performed my favorite stunt-show at the Heldorado stage. One of the stuntmen at the time was Chris Simcox (who later earned notoriety for starting Civil Home Defense to patrol the border with guns.) We recorded one rehearsal where I explained my convoluted story to him. He mugs into camera as if to say, “What the heck is this crazy lady talkin' about?”

I returned to Tombstone for a read-through with the cast. The Birdcage manager kindly let us use the backstage area for our rehearsal. I was so jazzed! I thought rehearsing there would help my actress get closer to her character (who had worked at the Birdcage in her past life.) But when we toured the theater, the actress started feeling nauseous and faint. I figured it must be allergies to the dust. She finally ran out of the room holding her stomach, “I have to get out of here!” Later, she explained that she had seen someone she knew from a past life up on catwalk. Spooky. I guess she was a little too close to the part.

The 24 hour rule worked to my advantage and disadvantage. The fact that it had to be shot in one day was a great selling point for my volunteer crew. I was lucky enough to get a professional DP (camera man) and experienced actors to agree to work for free for only one day. Of course, it would only take one delay to throw the whole schedule off. But what could go wrong?

Anyone who has ever worked on a movie set knows – anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. We were all set up to shoot the first scene, but one of the actors showed up late throwing off the whole schedule. When we finally got to the next location, all the extras for our crowd scene were long gone. When your DP brags that he can make two people look like a crowd, don't believe him. He cant. Without the crowd to show that it is a gunfight reenactment, the movie doesn't quite make sense.

So I learned two lessons from this: 1) Listen to your director friends when they tell you can't make a complicated story in three minutes. 2) Don't have more then one or two locations for a one day shoot. Unfortunately, we had four: the dress shop (exterior and interior), the stunt-show set, the bordello room. A shot of the Birdcage would have been nice too. Very nice.

The Making of a Micro Budget Western, Desert Angel

Heidi Brozek and Milt PapaGeorge in "Desert Angel." 

by Jana Segal

While I was working on my Tombstone comedy script, I started to get the itch to make another short. I was doing a lot research on Tombstone in the 1880s trying to get into the mind set of that time period (the language, the customs, etc.) So I read a collection stories of the old West and found Charlotte Hall's 1880's story, "The Fruit of the Yucca Tree" about a pioneer couple lost in the desert on Christmas Eve. I thought this would be the perfect second project because I could keep my head in the same general time period that I was already researching. Also, it could be shot all on one set much like a play - so I could concentrate on adapting script and working with the actors. (It also didn't hurt that it was in the public domain.) Heidi Brozek, the actress I worked with at the directing workshop, had suggested that I write another short that we could produce together and that became, "Desert Angel." We decided to have the pioneer wife be of Polish descent so the wife could share one last Polish Christmas with her dying husband. We incorporated Heidi's Polish heritage by using Polish costumes and customs including paper cutout tree ornaments and the tradition of hiding hay under the place mat.  I think the Polish customs really make the film. We screened it for a Tucson Polish club. They were so moved by seeing their customs on film, that they passed a hat to help pay for the expenses.  

The thing I love best about filmmaking is working with talented artists of different disciplines - actors, costumers, cinematographers, photographers, set designers, writers, musicians, etc. I reconnected with my old Brandeis classmate Paul Sedgwick after finding him on his didgeridoo website.  Paul, who played the crusty banjo picking prospector, researched the music of the time and performs it on a vintage banjo accompanied by the West River Band.  Richard Tompkins wrote the touching song, "If I Could Only Fly" especially for the short.

DESERT ANGEL had it's premier screening at Scheffalin Hall in Tombstone, Arizona to an enthusiastic audience. Here is my post-screening speech. 

Once, I read in a low budget filmmaking book that the micro budget filmmaker should make a list of all the things he has free access to such as locations, vehicles, props, etc. I thought how easy it will be to put a wagon out in the desert and shoot it all on one set. We live in the desert and I see wagons all over town. It turned out to be REALLY hard. First, you need to find a wagon and get it to the desert. It is actually pretty hard to move those antique wagons. Then you need electricity for the lighting equipment. In our story, the pioneers are lost in the desert, so there probably wouldn't be any loud generators out there. And then you have to be able to legally have a camp fire. I researched different state parks and they required special licenses. That was more trouble than it was worth, so we ended up shooting in Old Tucson Studios where they had electricity and they let us have our fire. We paid a discounted rate of $500 to shoot for two days. (Their usual price is $1,600. a day.) And we also had to have $500 insurance. But that price included three costumes, moving the wagon, security guards and a horse. And everyone at Old Tucson was just so helpful. It was definitely worth it. (The entire cost the 17 minute video was $3000 which included an airline ticket for our banjo player, the props, costumes, a wig, an additional light set to supplement our free Access Tucson equipment, a propane tank to keep the campfire consistent, and yummy craft services.)

Unfortunately, there were record winds on the day we shot. So we had to shoot between gusts of winds. (And around the Park's stunt show schedule -- which we happily agreed to because they gave us such a swimming deal.) When the wind finally died down at 2 a.m. we heard AIRPLANES overhead! And cars -- in the middle of  the night! We shot for thirteen hours getting burned by the sun in the day and shivering at night. Despite wearing a protective hat and constantly reapplying the strongest sunscreen, my face was puffed up from being out there in the extreme elements so long. We pulled off a minor miracle shooting a 17 minute Western in 18 hours!  Needless to say, we didn't get up for our 4 a.m. sunrise shoot. But we were there when the park opened and heard the train ride conductor announce that we were shooting a movie on the High Chaparral set! (If you listen real carefully you can hear a train whistle in the last scene of our film. This is funny when you consider that our characters where supposed to be lost in the desert and they were within hearing distance of that train the whole time! Makes me chuckle anyway...) Still, what a thrill to shoot on the High Chaparral set and at the same studio where John Wayne shot many of his Westerns! 

The Rocky, Twisted Road to Finding My True Passion

by Jana Segal

I spent my childhood dreaming of being a musical theater actress. There weren't many opportunities for acting in the small towns where we lived in the high desert and then rural Missouri. And there was no money for dance or singing lessons. Being a writer herself, my mom always supported my art and drove me to an nearby town to be in a couple of community theater productions. Mostly I checked out Broadway albums from the library and sang along with them. I had always had a gift for writing songs but I had never played an instrument, so I couldn't write them down. So I would sing my creations over and over until I learned them and then sing them into a tape recorder. One of my best memories of growing up was sitting on my mom's bed and singing her my latest song.

No one in our family had ever gone to college, but I put together an audition piece from the musical, "Chicago" and applied to Avila College. By the time I got to Avila on a performing arts scholarship, I was longing to act. But they didn't let Freshman perform in plays. My heart was set on doing musical theater, but I found that the other Performing Arts majors had years of dance classes and voice lessons. Anyway, it didn't help that I threw my knee out (trying to do the splits on the couch like my gymnast sister) right before taking my first ballet class. But I did my best to amuse the nursing majors in the dorm, practicing my clumsy pirouettes down the hall. One of my wiser ballet teachers said that I had the soul of a dancer (if not the body.) At this time I was also writing plays and songs, so I tried to learn to read music and sight sing. Unfortunately, there was a mean nun who would humiliate me in front of the class because she resented that I had never learned an instrument. Overwhelmed by voice lessons, piano lessons, dance lessons, scene production, and acting, I never did learn to sight sing. But encouraged by my playwriting professor, I wrote two musicals, “Magic Shoes” and “Seeker.” (A music major wrote down my melodies and arranged the accompaniment.) Boy did I show that nun when I won third place in the Missouri College Theater Fest for my musical, "Seeker."  I went on to get my MFA in Dramatic Writing from Brandeis University.

Since then, my passion has shifted to screenwriting. My professional career hasn't exactly taken off partially because I choose only to work on love projects instead of big budget, high concept scripts. But my screenplay, "Walking with Grace" was workshopped at the Frederick Douglas Creative Writing workshop in NY and received a staged reading by Damesrocket theater company in Tucson. I shopped it around Hollywood a bit, got nice comments from some producers, but they said that no one would ever buy a script about old people. (Of course, a few years later, "The Notebook" came out followed by "Away with Her" and "Savages." Oh, well.) At least I had the satisfaction of seeing it performed before it went into the shoe-box under my bed. 

I finally decided that if I wanted to see my work on the big screen, I would have to do it myself. Encouraged by my husband, I produced my short comedy called, "The Bath-a-holic" about a family conducting an intervention on their mother who is addicted to baths and showers. Despite some embarrassing technical problems (in a couple of shots there is too much light reflected on the mother's wet face) it was well received at the premiere and the screening at the Arizona International Film Festival. People laughed in all the right places! 

Meanwhile, I continued to write my love projects. I spent about a year helping my mom by critiquing several drafts of her children's chapter book based on her true story of being reunited with her mother, called, "Model T Biscuits." This story was so full of love that it inspired me to work with my mother on a short script adaptation that eventually won first place in two screenplay competitions. At the time, we were so excited that we started scouting locations in the little Arizona town of Wilcox. I even directed a scene from it at the Pasternak Directing workshop. (A workshop I organized as president of the Tucson filmmakers group AIVF.) Then I pitched the script to some production companies but the consensus was that they could do nothing with a short script. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to expand it without losing the endearing simplicity of the story. So I set it aside. Perhaps I was too close to it,  but I couldn't figure it out for years. Lately, I've been getting the itch to produce this cherished family story.