Behind the Attic Door – Episode 4 – A Tale of Two Friends from The Attic Door on Vimeo.

You can follow along with Alex’s design journey by visiting his six part series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Part 6,

We worked, and worked, and worked.

The future was unwritten and I was afraid of failing, of forgetting some detail, and of being revealed as an amateur. My alarm clock became obsolete by the second day. I was consistently waking up before 5AM each morning, and I would sit outside in the pre-dawn hours and pour over the script, shooting schedule, budget, props list, and construction blueprints to make sure I had everything accounted for. No stone could be left unturned.

The Art Department was working hard on the assignments I had given them, and they deserve a lot of credit for the final product. Filmmaking is a collaboration and there is no way I could have done all of this on my own. As they worked together on gathering props and set decorations, and Josh worked in the warehouse all day, everyday, I drove to every corner of southern Utah possible, making sure that we were always three steps ahead of production.

It gets worse before it gets better.

The worst was when we were two days from shooting. I was pacing some arbitrary parking lot in Kanab, on the phone with a wallpaper company that had screwed up our order for the upstairs hallways set. There were some many things to do, and then this headache surfaces. The conversation finished, and I was stressed and frantic. My phone rings for the hundredth time, and for the first time that day it was someone who wasn’t connected to the film; my wife. She told me what she had done that day, how life in Orlando was, and how much she missed me. With tears in my eyes I told her I would give anything to be with her at that moment. I wanted to disappear from the film project and go back to my comfortable stomping ground. I wanted to be safe. She reassured me that all the work was not in vain, that I needed to keep working hard, and that she loved…and that was enough.

It got better the first day of shooting. I showed up on set as a ball of nerves. I knew every scene we were shooting that day, and the entire Art Department was with me. Danny arrived and asked to see all the props. We showed him. He then asked to see the decorated set. We showed him. Then he asked if we were prepared to shoot extra scenes if time allowed. We were. Then he said “good work” and walked away. That was it. All the stress, insecurity and frantic preparation ultimately led up to us being ready for every possible scenario. And a wave of calm and reassurance washed over me.

The race was not done. The Art Department still had five weeks of non-stop work, without any days off, but I was no longer stressed or insecure. The first day of shooting proved that we were on top of it. All we had to do was keep up the pace we had already set.

Documentary filmmakers Chris Walker and Roman Safiullin have created seven episodes about a group of young filmmakers, on the verge of realizing their childhood dreams, who must journey to the desolate American West in order to realize their vision.

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Behind the Attic Door – Episode 1 – A New Frontier from The Attic Door on Vimeo.

Part 5,

I remember a very long two days of driving from Orlando to Utah. This road trip was enjoyed by Bryce, the Line Producer, and myself, in an absurdly overpacked SUV. We split the driving duties, which I admit, Bryce drove more than I, and I read a book that I had purchased at a Good Will thrift store for 99 cents titled, Into The Wild. I am not trying to illustrate some underlying cosmic connection between my approaching adventure and this book, but the random timing of my reading, and the adventurous wanderlust of the book’s subject, coincided in such a way to make our filming in the Western desert mountains almost divine. I was nervous and thankful.

We arrived about a month before shooting and settled into our new home at the Parry Lodge. The rest of the Art Department arrived the following day and we immediately started having meetings and preparing for the unexpected, or at least, the unexperienced. Lack of communication will sink even the grandest of ships, so I had decided early on to have Art Department meetings everyday, and we collectively discussed what needed to get done, and who would be assigned what tasks.

Joshua Zeigler, the Construction Coordinator, showed up from Salt Lake City and the both of us got along immediately, which was good since we both were living in the same room for a month. While the rest of the Art Department was busy with their tasks, Josh and I delved into all the sets that needed to be built for the film. We poured over all the sketches, drafts and blueprints I had and started making a list of all the supplies we would need. This was the transition from concepts on notepads to thousands of dollars of lumber and tools. We became regulars at the local hardware store, and though the projects we were starting to undertake were massive, Josh always had a professional coolness, sense of humor and a realist’s point of view that instilled calmness. I was especially glad of this because Josh was literally going to be the only person building 95% of all our sets!

Feature filmmaking is an interesting creature. At first everyone is excited to make movies and willing to work long days with little recognition. However, what happens when you enter week two of an eight week process, with no day off in sight? What happens when you are just at the beginning of an enormous project and you’ve never felt so overwhelmed and alone in your life?

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Erica Harrell
Producer

One of the most challenging, yet intriguing aspects of producing A Monster in the Attic is communicating with crew despite their physical distance. Though the film will be shot in Utah, our crew is spread out across the country.

Since Danny Daneau, Alex Eastwood (production designer) and Bryce Hudson (unit production manager) all live in Central Florida and I live in Los Angeles with Eric Ernst (writer) and Scott Uhlfelder (director of photography), we take full advantage of communication technology in this digital age. As dedicated Mac users, Danny and I often use the video conferencing feature found on Apple’s iChat program, that allows us to communicate face to face in real time. Since there is a 3 hour time difference, we’re often communication either really early on the West coast, or really late on the East.

This challenge will only increase once we move to Utah for production, as we will then be spread across three different time zones. Though Kanab is a seven-hour drive from Los Angeles and two days from Florida, communication is made easy through advancements in technology.

Hello everyone. It has been a very long time since my last post and I am excited to get back into explaining the inner workings of being the Production Designer on A Monster in the Attic!! Here we go…

Part 4, I think.

So I returned from Utah feeling accomplished and overwhelmed. Many of our locations were found, but we also had decided to build the exterior house, which meant I needed to befriend some architects and construction coordinators.

Back in Orlando I started meeting with my Art Department to discuss gathering props, set dressing, and preparing for the adventure of filming in Utah. I was also sketching ideas for the farmhouse and beginning to meet with architects who would be able to draw up the blueprints.

Some of the most intense parts of preproduction were the continual meetings I had with Phil Peters. As I mentioned before, he is one of the most integral reasons why my participation in this film was such a success. With that being stated, I also want to point out that every single time that Phil would graciously take time to meet with me I would leave those sessions either depressed from how much work I still had to do, exhausted from how much information he would unload on me, or hysterical from the amount of pressure he put on me to succeed. In hindsight it was exactly what I needed, but it also was the beginning of many anxious and sleepless nights.

The days were counting down and I was making the last preparations before the non-stop two day drive from Orlando to Kanab. Besides gathering a large portion of the Art Department in Orlando, I had to hire certain job positions from outside the state. Two incredibly important roles on any Art Dept. are the Construction Coordinator (the person who is going to build all the sets), and the Scenic Artist (the person who will take those sets and add all the important details). The two guys I found for this job were pretty amazing to say the least, but that story is for another posting…

It was the night before I left for Utah. I had been working half a year to get to this point, and I was excitedly nervous. It was the calm before the storm and I remember laying with my wife on the couch and beginning to realize that this film was actually happening. No more conceptualizing, researching, sketching, meeting, or anticipating. We had gathered enough tinder; now it was time to start a fire.

The Utah desert in February can be a mighty cold place, especially if you are a Florida conditioned person. Underdressed and overly ambitious, Danny, Erica, Eric, Bryce and I were standing in southern Utah deciding on where the story of A Monster in the Attic was going to be told.

Part 3

For all the complexities that this film has, its heart is a story that is based on minimalism. It is a story of two children surviving under bleak circumstances, having to live each day in bare preparation for the next, and doing all of this framed in the ever important third character of this film; the geography of southern Utah.

With our limited budget for scouting, the five of us had one weekend to decide where the entire story of this film was going to take place. While we were out there we exhausted all the resources we had in trying to find all the locations that were described in the script. This included all the interiors that take place in the children’s house, an abandoned farmhouse in the middle of the red rock desert, and all the exterior locations surrounding.

The Kane County Office of Tourism and Film Commission was wonderful in providing us with ample information of the surrounding area. Southern Utah is a gorgeous place and once we drove around and explored this backdrop we were quickly checking exterior locations off of our list. The next great treasure we came across was a place in Kanab called the Heritage House. It is a historical house in the town whose architecture and lifestyle has been preserved since the turn of the century. We were amazed. It was absolutely perfect for all of our interior shots. It almost seemed that the script was written with this place in mind, however, this was the first time any one of us had ever seen it. We knew we had found all of our interiors, but the outside architecture, coupled with the fact that it was located in downtown Kanab, was not going to help us with our exterior house scenes.

With time and energy running out we desperately tried to find this abandoned farmhouse. Our last day was spent in two cars driving to the most remote of locations, and ultimately, spent in vain, for we could not find the right house for our film. Though we had accomplished so much on this trip, we still didn’t have one of the most crucial elements of this film; the three story house exterior.

With my spirits low, I was preparing my bags to go back to Florida when we all starting discussing the possibility of actually building the exterior house facade we needed for the film. This new option would allow us to be able to pick our most ideal location and then build our house there. It was also less money then having to relocate our entire crew mid-shoot to a further away exterior destination. The more we entertained this idea the more it seemed like the right answer, and the more excited we became.

I felt accomplished walking onto my overnight flight back to Florida, and only when I laid my head down to sleep did I really ask, “how do I build a three story, late 1800’s farmhouse?!”

View Entire Photo Gallery of our Trip

[tags]Scout, Scouting, Location Scouting, Production Design, Kane County, Heritage House, Paria, Flickr[/tags]