Film Courage: You talk about the screenwriting process? So Daved Wilkins had this idea yeah and you two
were bouncing ideas off of each other but how did the actual screenplay
process work out? Gavin Michael Booth, Writer/Director/Producer: Daved and I would try to get together in person as often as
possible I'm a stickler for outlining the story before you start writing
writing dialogue so a lot of it was just the painstaking and this this because we
have two sides of the story we have to make sure that there's something
interesting happening on both sides of the screen at the same time and you know
it's interesting because for an audience perspective they can see say for example
there's a moments not a big spoiler but like Scott lies and says that he stopped
drinking isn't gonna have anything else to drink so she feels relieved and the
things are going the right way but what the audience can see is that's not the
case so we're sort of always ahead of the game we want to sort of give it that
perspective but also finding ways where just the the synergy of if she's sitting
in the darkness or talking about a dark story then he's out on the balcony and
the light just ways to keep a story interesting that would translate
visually when you're never cutting and can't go back and cut anything because
real time that's that's it you know you're done you know we have no hidden
cuts there's there's nothing like that so a lot of it was just figuring out the
structure of how to do the story but also having a story where we're gonna
have one phone call for the entire time the dynamics of that the reveals of
informations the sort of like twists or shocks or turns just just pacing that I
was the agonizing part and then you know Daved and I both really enjoy writing
the dialogue and Daved I think some of the most beautiful dialogue he's written
to date out of anything I've read is in this script and you know a lot of that
was he he was always going to place God in the movie you know he's the actor in
the film as well so I think he was able to also cater writing that would suit
his skill set and and really help draw the best of his acting talents and the
character and then once we knew that Sarah Booth was going to play Beth I
also you know I had a great chance to work with her a handful of times I've
seen her on stage and one-act plays that are you know two hours on stage with no
scene breaks I just knew that we could also throw a lot of you
having dialogue at her that she'd be able to do it and yeah we try to meet as
much as possible we used the software writers duet to write the script writers
do what operates similar to Google Docs where if you have multiple people on it
even if we're not together we can see every change word by word just appears
in the document so I'm sitting looking at the screen and Daved's writing I can
see what's being changed as you know even if we're working remotely and then
what was neat was we were able to since it was Daved and Sarah and we're all
friends or or lives you know Sarah's my wife so we live together it's easy to
schedule a rehearsal and we would actually get together read through
portions of the script we were able to sort of like adapt based on hearing it
out loud and then leading up to the actual we were writing the film right
into the film production because there's also we always knew there'd be what we
call like an accordion effect where until we could actually rehearse it on
set and like okay well it says that Scott walks from the bar to his
apartment is that going to be seven minutes long is that gonna be 12 minutes
long is that three minutes long based on the locations we had we knew that we
probably have to add or remove dialogue to get it in the sort of timeframe that
we wanted to finish film to be so every day that we rehearse things we would
change things remove things and more and we were able to sort of film every
rehearsal and see how it so sort of a living breathing script right up until
even the first couple takes versus the last takes that there are changes to the
to the story and the characters that happen so a little different than
anything else we'd written but what what ended up being really neat was Sarah had
gone to Montreal to shoot a project Daved was in LA and I was in Windsor [Ontario, Canada]
prepping things for the movie and working on a couple music videos in
Ontario so we would do our rehearsals over the phone so then as actors we're
already doing what they were gonna have to do on screen and I was able to just
kind of listen to the phone call as the director of one of the writers and make
notes and say this is boring this doesn't work this this is this is
mumbling and confusing and not clear so sort of that that busyness benefit in
the script being able to sort of rehearse it the way it was going to be
performed and you shot the film in Canada he said shot the film my home
city and when Ontario Canada so anybody who's seen the
film or has a chance the bridge in the background it is not Brooklyn or New
York it is it is Detroit Michigan is the Ambassador Bridge that connects the
countries might you know we were we our goal with this film was to make it super
micro budget so that we wouldn't be out of pocket we also end up making
independent film like the landscapes changing there's no more blockbuster
there's barely a DVD and a home video market anymore so you have to make your
movies that don't have big stars in them you have to make them for a fraction of
the budget if you want to be successful in recruiting money at the end of the
day so having said all that shooting at home I knew you know the college we
worked at a deal with the college that we filmed in because in the script the
character of Beth is the night janitor at a college but we had this beautiful
College building that we had full access to every day to rehearse and lights and
prep and shoot the movie in and they baden essentially sponsored the movie
and even had some of their students come help on Senate and help behind the
scenes which was phenomenal the film score was recorded live in a single take
and that was done at the college's beautiful theater the Chrysler theater
in Windsor again they they helped us we we did that event as a student event
where high school students could come and watch the making of of a score and
learn about how film music is created so my home city is always not a lot of
filmmaking happens there so it's exciting we always try to involve the
students and the people we had restaurants little restaurants that
sponsored us and hotels that kind of steals really out-of-town cast and crew
so the limited funds we did have we could put on the screen and in the
production value and not don't worry about if we shot it in LA I think the
price would be quadrupled with the permits and and you know if I need to
close entire streets to walk from a bar to a part of going it just I don't think
it would have happened you know we had this high-rise it but it's just
everything worked out perfect said the bar we filmed in is my favorite bar back
home for move my friend Matt that owns the bar is also an actor so he plays the
bartender and the bar owner in the movie there was just so much sort of perfect
synergy to tissued it there can't imagine us having done it at one
point I toss her for about five and a half seconds I said what are we shot one
side in LA one side in Windsor and then we truly have this phone call that's
across you know even the border and in everybody said no that's too fast we
don't have maybe one day when we have the money we'll do something bigger
you