Credits:
Directed by FRICK & FRACK (Joe Laporte & David Liehn)
Edited by FRICK & FRACK (Joe Laporte & David Liehn)
Written by Dan Sorgen
DP – Evan Butka
Producer – Myke Scott
Production Designer – Resa Cole
Sound Design – Kevin Dippold
Wardrobe – Mark Katigbak
Makeup – Zdra Jaye
Edited by FRICK & FRACK (Joe Laporte & David Liehn)
Written by Dan Sorgen
DP – Evan Butka
Producer – Myke Scott
Production Designer – Resa Cole
Sound Design – Kevin Dippold
Wardrobe – Mark Katigbak
Makeup – Zdra Jaye
Cost:
$12,000.
And that was with A LOT of favors. Many crew members working for free, and Joe and I doing a fair amount of the post work on our own to save money.
Why this script/concept? How does it reflect your vision as a commercial director?
We chose the script because we were looking for a fun comedy spot to direct and add to our “reel.” We thought the spot would be visually humorous and have a good pay off at the end. It was also a spot we could shoot without financially breaking the bank but still get a lot of commercial value out of it. It was also a good fit for us as a directing team because we usually divvy up the onset duties between the two of us. While one of us was focusing on the kitchen and production design, the other one was figuring out camera placements and dealing with the actors.
Casting:
We did our casting virtually (due to Covid) and found all of our talent on LA Casting. We had specific written descriptions for each role. After the initial round of submissions, we narrowed it down to a few actors for each role. We then gave each actor further direction and more specifics as to their character and had them re-tape themselves. From this second round of interviews we were able to finalize our cast.
How did you search for/lock a location?
We were originally hoping to build a kitchen set on a stage, but that ended up being too costly for our budget. Then we turned our focus to finding a house with a suitable kitchen and performed our search on a couple of online sites. In the end I believe we found this house on Peerspace. We scouted 4-5 different locations with our DP and Production Designer - all with different styles of kitchens. We settled on this house in Long Beach due to a few different factors. It had a wide-open kitchen floorplan which we liked. This gave us a lot of room to move the camera around and achieve different angles to shoot from. The kitchen was also not too upscale which was age appropriate for the characters in the spot. We also needed a kitchen with light colored cabinets to help make the pasta sauce “splatter” really stand out and “pop” visually.
How did you select your DP, crew?
We have been working with the same DP for a while now. We have a good working relationship and value his input as far as camera position and lensing, etc. His camera and G&E crew move fast and efficiently while delivering great looking footage. Our sound designer, as well as our Make-up and Wardrobe stylist are collaborators we have used in the past and value their expertise. Our production designer was new to our team but someone whom we had met working on a different set. Her and her team were great to work with and we would be happy to work with them again in the future.
How did shooting go? Any challenges?
I think every shoot and every set has its fair share of challenges. Our biggest challenge on this day was that we shot two separate spots in and around the same location. This kitchen spot was our main spot. Most of the focus was on getting this one in the can before moving onto the next spot.
Our biggest challenge in this spot was making the kitchen disaster look realistic. We were very happy with the way the pasta sauce look when splattered on the cabinets. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, we realized that no amount of cleaning and scrubbing would get the red stains of the pasta sauce off the white cabinets. Let’s just say that was an expensive lesson to be learned…
Tell us about editing and finishing.
Editing sound design and coloring on this project in particular took longer than usual. We worked with a couple of different editors but ended up finishing the edit ourselves. We just couldn’t seem to get the comedic timing right when we outsourced the editing to someone else. Once we finally had the picture locked, we moved on to sound design. The biggest challenge there was just getting the sound levels correct between the splattering of the pasta sauce and the doorbell ringing, etc. We also had a few different music scores composed and ended up picking the one that is used in the final edit.
Finally, we moved onto coloring which was the final piece of the puzzle. We ended up using a new colorist this time around who we were referred to. In the end we were very pleased with the final version, but it took a lot of back-and-forth to get there. Our colorist did not speak good English, so I think a lot of our original notes were lost in translation. The trickiest part was getting the pasta sauce to look the correct shade of red when splattered on the white kitchen cabinets. But when he finally got it correct, we were very happy with the outcome.
In retrospect, is there anything you would have done differently?
I’m not sure that there’s anything in particular we would’ve done differently. I think it’s always helpful to have more time and be able to shoot more footage and have more coverage available in the editing room. I think we also may have been able to troubleshoot the pasta sauce stains left on the kitchen cabinets. I’m not sure what else we could have done to achieve that effect, but figuring out a workaround to avoiding buying new cabinets would have been a smart move.
