Concerto

Ourspacemovieblog recently sat down with filmmaker Filippo Conz to talk about his film Concerto. Concerto screened at the Sundance Film Festival, the Hamptons International Film Festival, Palm Spring Shorts Film Festival, Aspen Shortsfest (BAFTA/LA Award for Excellence) and the 8th International Video Festival at the Beijing Film Academy (Audience Award for Best Film).

Short synopsis for Concerto: After losing an important homicide case, Detective Ray Lorenz returns home to discover his wife sleeping with Phillip, her violin teacher. When Ray impulsively kidnaps Phillip, the two go on a journey full of surprising revelations and ultimately, redemption.

Writer: Jon Haller
Producer: Pelin Uzay
Director of Photography: Gregory Mitnick
Editor: Filippo Conz & John Ayala
Cast: David Zayas, Trevor Long, Thomas Ryan, Laura Bonarrigo
Total Running Time: 15 min
Capture Format: DVCpro HD


Directors Bio:

Filippo Conz was born and raised in Milan. He earned his MFA in Directing at Columbia University, where his thesis film Concerto received the Hollywood Foreign Press Association Award, the Caucus Foundation Production Grant and the National Board of Review Student Grant. He is currently developing two feature projects at Zbabam Productions.

Contact:
Zbabam Productions
filippo@zbabam.com
www.zbabam.com
917-621-7908

Michael Fishman for Ourspacemovieblog (MF): Concerto was a collaboration, the script was written by (fellow Columbia Film Program MFA) Jon Haller. Was Concerto your first collaboration with Jon?

FC: No, actually we started working together first in 2007 on the script for another short film called Tymbals, which is currently in post-production. We had some issues with production and money, so Tymbals was postponed to the following year. I wanted to shoot something, though, so we decided to go back to an idea we had about a violin player, which comes from an incident that happened to Gabriel García Márquez. In his biography, Márquez says that once he was caught by a small town sheriff while sleeping with his wife. The sheriff confronted Márquez and took him into the kitchen, but there he just offered him some tequila and engaged him in a casual conversation. Eventually, the sheriff let the young Márquez go. That was one of the most terrifying experiences Márquez said he had ever had. So that’s where the idea of the film comes from. We obviously elaborated on this idea and gradually discovered the characters and some key images of the story. The final scene/image, in particular, haunted us and guided us during the entire development of the script. We knew from the beginning that we wanted the film to end up that way, so we had to reverse engineer the story and the characters, in a way. That final image of those two guys coming together in such an unexpected way was so strong and humanly beautiful to us that we felt we had to find the story and the characters that generated it. Ingmar Bergman mentioned somewhere that sometimes he would start with just an image. Sometimes directors start with characters, sometimes they start with plot, and sometimes they start with images. For me it’s whatever excites me most. So if it is a particular image, I start working on the image to try and understand what comes before and after. I then work on the character and the plot, but the image must stay there. With Concerto, there were actually two seminal images: the beginning, when Ray, the detective (David Zayas), is alone in his kitchen listening to his wife making love to a stranger (the violin teacher played by Trevor Long) – a terrible feeling, of course – and then the final image of these two guys coming together and in some way praying for those girls (who had been murdered), when the violin teacher plays some music as a kind of requiem. So we started to put the script together. I felt the idea was really strong, because the story could be summed up in a sentence.

MF: So you really built the story from these images.

FC: It was kind of like sculpting, finessing, trimming, to get all the little characters’ beats right, the character arcs, the plot progression and pacing. We worked really hard and meticulously because there was a lot of backstory to expose but we didn’t want to let that weigh the story down... at the same time, you want to be truthful to your characters. Jon and I worked on it together: Jon would give me a draft about every week and I would give him feedback. We went on until we felt ready. A script is never perfect, you can keep working on it and working on it but at a certain point you have to say, ok, this is good enough. Then we got feedback from some people we trusted and got into a program at Columbia where the script would be cast by (established casting director) Todd Thaler. Todd asked me who would I suggest for the roles and I told him I really see this actor David Zayas as the detective, who I’d seen in some TV shows, Dexter, in particular (and who played small roles in The Interpreter, Michael Clayton and The Savages). It turned out that Todd knew David personally so he sent him the script and David said he wanted to do it. I knew that to cast an actor like that would make my life so much easier and the work much better. Then I had to cast the other role and it was actually David who suggested Trevor Long. They had worked together in a play for the LAByrinth Theater Company, of which they are both members, and they are friends. Once I met Trevor, I knew right away he was perfect for the role of the violin teacher. At that point, I called up a great DP I had worked with many times before (Gregory Mitnick) and when he said he was on board, it became just a matter of putting everything else together – for which producer Pelin Uzay did a wonderful job. I knew I wanted to shoot very simply, because the script is so down to earth. I wanted to let the actors hit their beats and not put too much of myself and the camera into the story. I tried to be as invisible as possible, and the limited budget certainly helped me in not getting too fancy.

MF: You don’t have a lot of wide shots. The camera is often very close, whether in the house or the woods, which increases the intensity and claustrophobia of the characters. You’re really into the physical space of the characters, something Bergman, who you mentioned before, often does.

FC: It comes from the script. I mean, I build my shooting list from what I intuitively see while reading the script or thinking about it and from what I analytically think are the most important character and plot elements to highlight. From working on the script up to the final editing sessions, there is always an analytical aspect and also an intuitive aspect; some of the best decisions are made in a split seconds, but some others after a laborious thought process as well.

MF: So you knew and felt you had to have the camera be close.

FC: Yes, I wanted the camera to be close, I suppose. It wasn’t really a conscious choice, I didn’t think ‘I want the camera to be close’, I just did what I felt and thought was right to tell the story beat by beat. I’m thinking about it right now because we are discussing it but I can’t really imagine many wide shots for this story… you know, some rules that apply for a feature film are no longer true for a short. I discovered this especially when we edited. At some point, when the cut was 16 minutes long, it wasn’t really working and we started taking out some scenes. We had a scene where Ray (the detective) punches the violinist and we decided to remove that.

MF: When did that take place?

FC: When they get out of the car in the woods.

MF: It’s interesting that you took that out because that would have changed the dynamic between them.

FC: Yes, it was a big release of tension. But the way the script was, a punch would have been the death of suspense. You want to postpone the answer to the question you have planted as much as possible.

MF: And it would have made the detective less sympathetic.

FC: Yes, that too, certainly.

MF: Any other scenes that were left on the cutting floor?

FC: There was a scene right after the liquor store scene, which was so well-acted, I was really fond of it. It took place in the car and the detective kept asking the violin teacher if he was a swimmer. “Are you a swimmer? Do you like to swim? What strokes do you prefer?” The violin teacher didn’t want to answer and the detective was like “Answer the fucking question!” The thing was that Trevor was getting really scared of David, and I was, too, sometimes! He can really be scary, he is an intense actor. He has a lot of emotional energy that he is able to focus and channel into his performance. I guess I loved that scene so much because they were both so natural.

MF: Speaking of the liquor store scene, it seems to me that Ray (the detective) is a reformed alcoholic but here he is buying a bottle of whiskey. That seemed like a nice way to add some backstory in a subtle and quick way.

FC: In the first draft, we had him stopping at a diner, getting into a conversation with someone. People who read that draft suggested we cut it, so Jon came up with this way to get some backstory in and I really liked it, because of its subtlety. Another thing we cut out was part of the “confession” scene, as we called it. Originally, as they are walking up the hill in the woods, Ray confesses that he couldn’t have kids and some other personal details, but we cut that out. It’s the kind of thing that could have stayed if we were making a feature. It was very moving but it just didn’t belong in a short.

MF: That’s interesting because I did wonder a bit why the murders affected him so deeply. As a detective he must deal with death all the time, so why did the death of these two girls affect him so deeply? It’s true he let the killer slip through his hands but he seems to be taking the murders personally. So him not being able to have kids might have added more resonance.

FC: These are things that had to be cut for various reasons to make the film work as a short. Even the ending, we changed it quite a bit to make it almost silent. The violin teacher says he’s sorry and then just decides on his own to play the song the detective had asked him about earlier. Originally, we had a long dialogue between them. It was about why Ray, the detective, brought him to the woods. It just didn’t work. I had a chance to screen an early version of the film for director Milos Forman (Professor Emeritus, Columbia University Film Program), thanks to the Columbia University Film Program. I went to see Mr. Forman and I watched it with him. He said it was very good but when I asked if there was anything that didn’t work, he said the end, which was the extended ending at the time. He told me that it was a little melodramatic, and then discussed how in film big moments are usually better earned through very small actions. He suggested to cut out some of the back and forth, so we ended up that with the scene having just one line and the rest is all action, with the violin teacher playing. He says “I’m Sorry” and then plays the music, as a sort of gift for the detective, as a way to confirm he was really sorry and understood the detective sorrow, and why he brought him there. Not because he planned to have him playing the Bruch Violin Concerto there but because that tragedy was so shocking for him that he was inevitably pulled back there, especially after experiencing something so trivial like his wife having sex with her violin teacher. He just felt the urge to bring that treacherous violinist in front of something extremely tragic and serious that have just happened to him. I guess that was the best response the detective gave to the situation he faced at the beginning of the film. The violinist was intelligent enough to understand and follow up with a gesture of excuse, redemption and grace. That’s it. Before it was a full page of dialogue. Now it’s so much better and incisive.

MF: So you just cut out that dialogue.

FC: Yes, but it was good to have the actors play that dialogue because it was kind of a guideline for them, a sort of emotional map of what we wanted for the ending. If we had just that one line in the script, it would have been hard to create the right emotional beat, but since the actors went through it, even though we didn’t use it, it helped to create the right emotion, it made that “I’m sorry” so much more valuable and vulnerable. It was not that the dialogue was bad; on the contrary, it served a purpose: to bring the actors and me where we needed to be. They say you write the film three times: when you write the script, when you direct the film, and when you edit. So sometimes you have material on the written page that you know you’re not going to use but you need to have it there, for the actors, for you, and for anybody else involved. But many times you don’t even know it, so you just shoot and look at what the footage tells you afterwards.

MF: Regarding the ending, I found the final, overhead shot of the trees to be very powerful. I thought it took that scene to another level emotionally. Was that in the original script?

FC: Yes, it was. I usually name every scene with a metaphor: for example, I called the scene on the hill the “Confession” scene and I called the last scene the “Requiem” scene. Usually for a requiem, you have somebody playing music on the organ and someone is praying over the deceased’s body and you are inside a temple or church. And such places usually have lines in the architecture that create a certain space and atmosphere that make you look upward. I tried to create the same effect of being inside a religious temple, with sounds of nature, birds, and the lines of the trees that are, in some way, the vertical lines of a temple: they guide and pull your gaze up, pointing at something higher than ourselves. So, while writing the script, we called that last shot the “Temple” shot.

MF: How long was the shoot?

FC: Five days. We only worked 9-5 because David was in a play at the Public Theater, so we were limited to that schedule, but it went really well. Everything went very smoothly. I only shoot 4 or 5:1, I only do about 4 or 5 takes, and the actors were really good so we really had very few problems. It was probably the best shoot I was ever on.

MF: Did you rehearse a lot?

FC: No, I only had rehearsal with them one day and then we did some rehearsals on set, very quickly. They were so good, we only had to talk and rehearse five or ten minutes before every scene, and them boom, shoot it. Many days we were done by 4:00.

MF: So story-wise, what do you see happening now? To the affair? Is that over?

FC: The sequel. (laughs) Actually, with the actors we were speculating what happens before and after the story starts, and what we worked out is that the violin teacher had been planning on ending the affair that day; it was going to be their last time together because he just got an offer from an orchestra in another town, finally, so he’s going to move, which made Trevor’s part much more dramatic. Trevor is such a great actor to work with. He is always troubled about getting all the details right and is constantly searching, whereas David is more assured and just listens to your input if you have any. On set we achieved a great balance. To me it was like working with my two big brothers: a younger one (Trevor) and an older one (David). The fact is they are two wonderful actors and I feel blessed to had the chance of working with them. I learned a lot from them. We still keep in touch, we want to make more films together.

MF: Meanwhile the detective wife is still in the bedroom wondering what happened to him.

FC: She’ll probably never know. Jon and I have talked about writing a multi-narrative feature with these characters, so who knows, we may see them again. There were a lot of scenes that we had to imagine just to write this short script that we couldn’t possibly film, like when the detective went to interview the guy who turned out to be the killer, or every night when the detective would come home and hear that song his wife was learning (which the violin teacher plays for him in the woods). We thought a lot about Mystic River, for example.

MF: That last shot we discussed reminded me of Clint Eastwood and how often he’ll hold the final shot while the credits role, as in Gran Torino, he just holds that shot while the closing credits roll. Particularly in a theater I think it gives the audience time to take the film in. I think your closing shot, although brief, works in a similar fashion to give the viewer a moment to take the film in as a whole, perhaps to consider that both of these men, who have come together and made some kind of peace, have guilt: the violin teacher just had sex with the detective’s wife, the detective had let a killer slip through his fingers.

FC: Yes, it makes you think about the story.

MF: More so than if the film just cut to black and the credits started rolling. It allows for a transition –

FC: Back to real life. I think in this way the closing image can take the viewer back into reality in a smooth way, not so abruptly as if you just cut to black.

MF: I think if you had ended with the shot of Ray it would have still been satisfying but it wouldn’t have had the spiritual feeling you get from seeing the tops of the trees.

FC: I think that shot pertains to the why of the story: why are we telling this story, what’s it all about? What am I supposed to think about it? In this film, we deal with two strong themes, Eros (love) and Thanatos (death). In the beginning you have Eros offscreen, and at the end you have Thanatos offscreen. This is why the closing shot is so important.

MF: Thank you for your time.

FC: My pleasure.

For more information about Concerto, visit the website: www.zbabam.com or the facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/#/group.php?v=info&ref=ts&gid=38645478438