Over the last couple years I have had the pleasure of working with a group of San Diego filmmakers that are known as The Amalgamated Grommets. We have produced a few short films for various festivals and I have been amazed at the quality of work that comes out of this conglomeration of highly talented people. I am even more amazed that we keep putting ourselves through the process for nothing more than the joy of doing it. That’s right, we don’t get paid for it. In 2010 we turned out a short film titled “The Heiress Lethal” that not only won awards, but was also honored with the chance to be screened at the 2010 Cannes film festival in France. So this is the abridged  story behind the film.

Cast and crew of “The Heiress Lethal”

The 48 Hour Film Project

The film was made for the San Diego 48 Hour Film project. For those that don’t know, here’s the details of how it works. First you throw caution to the wind and agree to making a film in 48 hours. Next you stoke up the fires of courage and sign up. Then you get the rules…

Each team must complete a film of 5 to 7 minutes on 48 hours.

On Friday evening the tams met and you pull a film genre from a hat.

After every team has a genre you get the element that must be included in the film.

• Element 1 a prop. For this film, a chair
• Element 2: A character. For this film, Rita Hernandez a doctor
• Element 3: A line of dialogue, for this film. “I’m trying my best”

The Genre

When it came to pulling a genre we pulled Film Noir. At one point someone asked me if I thought that genre was an advantage or a disadvantage. To tell the truth I think it’s both. Why? Because it is such a recognizable look and feel. If you do it right people will love it, do it wrong and everyone will know that it was done wrong. So you better do it right.

The brainstorm

The teams approach to creating a story is fairly simple. A couple weeks prior to the project we submit short ideas for a concept within the genres that could be pulled. When I say short it’s a one to two paragraph treatment of a story idea. Now the we never have enough treatments to cover all the possible genres and every time we seem to draw a genre that has no treatment for it, this time was no different. The team was gathered together around a table and the ideas started to fly.

A film full of flatulence

At some point it was suggested that our female lead be the murderous wife of a bean company executive who suffered from an extreme case of flatulence. Yep, we were making a fart movie. Needless to say this did not sound like a great idea to me. Being one that has never been a fan of “bathroom humor” I was somewhat appalled by the fact that we were making a movie like this. Despite my repeated pleas that we had fallen to the lowest common denominator of comedy, we went forward with the concept… Boy was I ever wrong!

To be continued…