The basic idea for “The Fourth” came directly from one of these movies I had made in college. The initial version was shot on video in two days using non-actor friends and a crew that included myself and (sometimes) a sound guy. The script followed three hapless runners dedicated wholeheartedly to their four-by-one relay team despite the obvious handicap and, in turn, their glaring inevitable failure. It was a fast, fun movie to shoot, and regardless of its own technical shortcomings I got a good enough grade. But it always seemed to fall short of the emotional resonance that such a bizarre, and yet identifiable, premise could potentially yield. So, when Justin and I began to seriously discuss the possibility of our first legitimate Los Angeles short film, he was adamant about reviving—and revising—that particular story.
As is the case with most movies, namely independent ones, the scripting process was by far the least constrictive part. We had the freedom to completely deconstruct the original story, working out the weaker parts and strengthening our grasps on the themes we felt were the most universal—and, more importantly, it cost us nothing. We’d argue and agree our way through each scene, pitching changes and new ideas, and then Justin would disappear for days, typing sounds lightly tapping from behind his door, each time to emerge with a script more focused and emotionally conscious than the prior. We wrote with no regard for the difficulties that production would eventually bring, and without hesitation (and/or any clue whatsoever on how to actually secure such things) went on to script in giant high school stadiums, functioning hot tub stores, three identical adjacent houses, etc., etc. We were focused only on telling a good story and had no foresight as to the burdens we would eventually bring upon ourselves.
I admit, while working on my film school projects I took a considerable amount of pride in the number of crew roles I was able to accomplish simultaneously. A typical production would demand that I balance the task of directing, producing, DPing, editing, wardrobe, art direction, and all the respective subordinate roles (loading, gripping, negative cutting, oh my). Bur whether or not I knew it at the time, my ambitions were really just hindering the overall movie. I was spreading myself too thin, as they say, and the quality suffered significantly. “The Fourth,” therefore, was to be the first production where I would make a specific, concerted effort to focus primarily on directing. And this meant hiring a crew. As the script took shape we began to slowly look into the process of meeting and coercing people to help us out. We had heard from friends who’d been living in LA much longer than us that people are surprisingly willing to work for free and—having not yet even considered putting together a budget, and still unsure of how much money we were willing to spend overall—this immediately became our standard pay rate. These same friends also gave us a handful of names for potential random crewmembers. We knew none of them, of course, but desperate to break this movie out of the small, secluded world that is the scripting process we began cold-calling each and every one.
Sometimes, be it simple luck or something more cosmic, things just work out. I had dialed Damian Acevedo’s number one afternoon on my lunch break. Damian is a cinematographer. More specifically, Damian is a cinematographer who shoots—among many other things—music videos for bands like Gnarls Barkley and Dizzee Rascal. My brother and I had checked out his website a few days earlier at the recommendation of a friend, and were both in immediate agreement that we must, by any means possible, recruit this guy. The phone call was awkward, as expected—me, gushing over his past work and hoping to entice him with a rapid fire rant about the project’s stylized aesthetics; him, speaking slow and pointedly with questions about the project’s gaffer and shooting format (both which were met with an embarrassed silence). However, he didn’t seem too offended when, grimacing, I told him that we couldn’t afford to pay his typical rate—or any rate for that matter—and by the end of the conversation, although he hadn’t officially signed on yet, he did agree to read the script and meet us for lunch to discuss the project in more depth.
