Film Courage: How long did it take you to write BROKEN CEILING [ Adam's feature film]? Adam Davis, Writer/Director: It took me about a month to
write the first draft. Then I would say another month and a half of rewrites
to really get it to a filmable spot and where would you write it at at home
in my office on my computer so knowing you had the day job and so now you knew
what time you could work on it did you have specific times you would yeah it
was pretty much when I get in the zone of writing I need to do it like every
day so I I found myself coming home having dinner talking with my wife then
going to write and then going to bed waking up going to work doing that same
thing again until the thing was completed and there were points where I
would do it in the morning as well as the night I would wake up in the morning
cuz my head was just like burning like I've got to get this stuff out there so
I wake up right go to work come home heat right
go to bed did it cetera do you finish most everything that you start yeah I do
because to not finish something really bothers me it's tough seeing like you
know half written scripts like I don't actually have any like non written
scripts like they're all written not to say that they're all great you know or
that they don't need rewrites because a lot of them you but but I need to at
least have that full like 90 hundred pages or whatever done and like projects
like I I definitely won't start something that I can't finish because I
need not only like to check it off my mental list but to sort of follow
through and to follow through not for anybody you know like I'm not doing this
for anybody but for myself that's the most important thing like when I set a
goal or a date I'm gonna do it you know and what's interesting is that I find
that people are kind of shocked by that my crew on my latest short that I shot
in February called losing sight I had a very quick timeframe on it it's like
we're gonna shoot it one day here's what I need to have the
edit done here's one this isn't done like I have a couple of months I have to
get it done you know then they're like well what for and like I mean festivals
probably but like you know I just need to get it done and that was the time
that I had allotted myself and you know I remember a few of them being just sort
of like shocked when it came in like oh it's done because I guess they're used
to people maybe taking their time with projects or just abandoning them or not
finishing them and I just that's unthinkable to me because like people
are putting their time and energy into something and I want to be able to go
ahead and have it out there you know for them and for me especially like it's got
to get done you know no matter what when you wrote broken ceiling did you know
would be one location yeah I wrote it with one location in mind because I knew
that I would only have like four days to shoot it because that's all I can budget
for you know again very small budget so I liked the fact that you know having
you in one location meant that we could really just crank through a feature and
get it all done but also to you know just yeah I don't know where I was going
with that one oh that's okay it was four thousand that
you spent on production no more than oh the budget was more than four thousand
four was the days that we spent shooting it okay yeah yeah so it was done over
two weekends so again working during the week shooting over the weekend working
during the week shooting over the weekend those were those were some
harried like you know a couple weekends in a row but yeah it was great and and
for the one location I knew that to be able to shoot 90 pages in four days I
had to be very strategic with it so the one the biggest and most important thing
that I decided to do was to shoot with natural lighting because it was set in
an office space and I wanted that very oppressive florescent look and
originally I designed it that it was just gonna be like almost like Wes
Anderson II in terms of like long takes and a lot of like monologues and and
it's very much than people have attributed it to feeling more like a
stage play than anything which is kind of how it was written but but yeah like
doing all natural lighting and rehearsing the actors for two straight
weeks ahead of time because letting everybody know we have
four days we're not gonna get a lot of takes you know some will get a couple of
them but like let's get everything out through a rehearsal and so we did that
and everybody was on board for that in game and that's really how we were able
to accomplish it like everybody came in on the first day knowing what they had
to do we didn't have to on the day sort of experiment and try and fail like we
had done all that like we knew where we needed to be we knew where we were going
and there was a lot of dialogue a hell of a lot of dialogue and a couple like
long monologues you know he was very much I had to treat it more like a
theater exercise in terms of you know the prep than anything and I think you'd
said it's something that I read it might have been for film courage or in your
video diary that the power dynamics changed and so the way you shot it
change did you also write that into the script or was that something that during
those four days you came up with but that happened post writing of the script
or through the storyboarding phase that is something that I really had to do
because when you're limited on time you have to know exactly what you're gonna
shoot so I storyboarded the heck out of that and then as always happens you know
when you get on set suddenly you have to throw that out right and the director of
photography Jessa was Jessica was great because I had you know that that thought
in mind of like all right I'll do this long takes Wes Anderson II thing and
she's like you know what I think we can get more cover
I think we can do more with this and I was like great let's do that so it was
sort of an on-the-fly like let's get these shots let's let's do this let's do
that so a lot of it sort of straight a little bit from the storyboards and was
improvisational in the moment and the fact that we can move so fast because we
didn't have to deal with like movie lights and everything allowed everybody
to sort of like get going so it was very creatively energizing and
improvisational this is a great time so when you finished your first draft who
did you give it to to see like not only is is the story good but am i writing
from the appropriate voice for this protagonist sure oh I gave it to to a
few people I gave it to of course like my writing partner will for his notes my
wife read it she had a couple of friends you know who she knows who she had them
read and and it was really through you know her friends that let me go like
okay like it is authentic like they are telling me oh this reads I feel that I
understand that so it was really sort of casting it a little bit wider than I
would like I'm not gonna have my wife's friends read every script that doesn't
you know man but but for that it was important to
make sure that like that litmus test that initial test was was like okay like
I'm on the right track it is getting there it is truthful like all right good
I'm feeling you know on solid ground and is it you said heavy on dialogue yeah so
you're writing these different dialogue scenes are you when you're driving to
work are you like thinking of this dialogue like I said people attend this
time you're definitely looking at the car in front of you but but you're like
no she would say this and I think he would you know like is that what you're
coming up with a lot of this rich dialogue you know some of it but I found
a lot of it was coming out as I was writing I did a lot of outlining
beforehand and I did a lot of character work beforehand so the characters just
started to exist in my brain you know in reality and so when I was
writing things like things would come out of Angela's mouth or Ken's mouth
that I'm like only God like wow that's good but I can't take credit for that
you know like that's the characters and maybe this sounds crazy but uh but it's
like those characters really came to life and we're saying these things and I
was you know sort of sometimes a nod at what they were saying and I look back
now and I'm like yeah I couldn't written like how did I myself write that it was
the characters you know they came to life and they sort of made that you know
happen
you