We learned of Allen’s Film “In My Sleep” through his grass roots efforts and loved what he is doing. His ingenuity, persistence and the fact that he has a great film are helping him soar to new heights. Ted Rubin spent some time with Allen and what follows is incredible insight to the journey of an independent film.
Allen, I want to thank you for taking the time to chat with us about your recent film ‘In your Sleep’, and your company, Morningstar Pictures! Tell us about your project…
In My Sleep is a psychological thriller about a man who believes he may have murdered a good friend while sleepwalking. In My Sleep has won many festival awards and is now playing at Movies ATL at 3760 Princeton Lakes Pkway in Camp Creek Marketplace. Showtimes daily at 1:45, 4:10, 6:40 & 9:05pm. Visit http://www.InMySleep to watch the trailer.
This film is solely based on sleep disorders, Have you always had an interest in this topic? How did you get attached to it or what attracted you to it?
I had read many stories about people who had done all kinds of things while they were sleepwalking. A man in Canada drove to his in-laws’ house, killed one of them, punched out the other, drove home and was declared innocent in court because he was sleepwalking. I found sleepwalking cases dating as far back as the 1800s. The idea of someone doing something horrifying without any consciousness or memory of it was fascinating to me. As I did further research, I discovered that people with sleepwalking disorders can do just about anything while sleeping. I thought that most of us could relate to feeling like a part of our lives is out of control. I wanted to take that to the next level – what if you lost control of yourself while you were sleeping? That idea drew me to write the story. This was my debut as a feature film writer, director and producer.
Here at Blank Stage we work with a lot of very gifted screenwriters, can you speak to them and walk us through the script development process?
When I write a script, I try to write the first draft of the script as quickly as possible. For In My Sleep, I wrote the first draft in three weeks. My belief is that the real magic of screenwriting happens in the rewriting process. It took me five years to raise the financing for In My Sleep so that gave me plenty of time to develop the screenplay! In general, though, when I’m working on the rewrite of a screenplay, I find it helpful to not think about it for a month and come back to it fresh. There’s always the chance you can overwrite a story and take the freshness out of it. Even when the film is completed, you still get the chance to tweak dialog in the editing process. After we did test screenings for In My Sleep, I went back and added several lines of dialog to several scenes. I gave lines to a character when the camera was focused on another character in the scene. I’ve heard it say that art is never finished, it’s just abandoned. The same is true of screenwriting. Eventually, you just have to let it go.
I have also found it helpful to have a place where I can write regularly and feel inspired. For me, that place is Disneyland. I go to Disneyland once a week and write all day. I discovered that I’m incredibly productive there. I can usually pack three days worth of writing into a single day at Disneyland. When I get tired or stuck on a scene, I take a break and ride Space Mountain or the Indiana Jones ride. I’m inspired by Disneyland since it is all about creating rides out of stories. There’s something really fun about working on a scene while fireworks are going off. One such evening, a man said to me “that’s so cool.” I said “what?” He pointed to the fireworks overhead and said “oh, I thought you were controlling those.”
The performances in the film really stand out, what was the casting process like for you guys? Did you rehearse the film? How did you see the actors prepare for the roles?
I worked with an excellent casting director, Alyssa Weisberg, for In My Sleep. She won an Emmy for casting Lost and most recently cast Cloverfield and Star Trek. Her role as the casting director was to bring me the best possible actors to consider for each part. We brought in a lot of actors to read for each role. I had already cast Philip Winchester in the lead role so I built the cast around him. I wanted everyone to read with him so I could see how their chemistry worked together.
For the movie, I wanted the actors to build an emotional history for their characters so we performed the back stories for each character. I had the actors improv scenes that are referred to in the movie but never actually shown. I think that helped the cast build a history for their characters which I believe you can see in their interactions with each other. In one scene, Justin tells Marcus to say hello to his mom and apologize for whatever bad memories she has of him. We improved a dinner with Marcus’ mom that didn’t go well and that’s where his laugh in that moment comes from. I think this process brought an authenticity to their performances.
As an independent film company, we know you have to shoot fast and work with a tight budget on indie films, talk to us about this process. How many days did you shoot? What obstacles did you have to overcome? What were some of the crazy stories from the set?
We shot the movie in 23 days with one day dedicated to all our underwater scenes. There were many underwater scenes and everyone told me we would not be able to shoot them in a single day. With our time and budget constraints we didn’t have a choice so we just went for it and it worked.
For underwater scenes, we could only shoot for as long as the actors could hold their breath. One of our actors was twelve years old and I felt bad telling him to go under water, act out the scene and stay there as long as he could! He did a great job. Shooting underwater was a little strange because we had lights in the water and in the back of my mind I thought “are we going to electrocute someone with all these lights and wires?” Fortunately, everyone knew what they were doing. We had safety divers and a great stunt coordinator so the whole day ended up working out great.
There were also several scenes in a pool and when we started shooting those scenes we discovered that the pool heater was broken. Our actors have very little body fat so that did not help them in this circumstance. In one scene, they look like they’re having fun racing in the pool but they were really freezing. We’d rush them hot chocolate between the takes. Before we shot more in the pool, we found a giant steam machine and hired people to come out and pump steam into the pool to raise the temperature. It took all day but eventually the water temperature was warm enough to film.
When I first met the person who became our visual effects producer, I told him there were no visual effects in our movie, they all happened in camera. After I showed him the film and told him my dream list of what I wanted to be in the movie, he told me how we could do it on our limited budget. We ended up having about 73 visual effects shots in the film and most of them are seamless, which means the audience doesn’t realize they are there. It was very paradigm-shifting when I realized what we could do with visual effects. During the flashback scenes, they “de-aged” the mother in the movie so she looked fifteen years younger. I have only seen this done for big studio films so I was thankful we could find a way to do that for our movie. I also had them change the color of shirts our actors were wearing so I could make a scene seem like it took place over multiple days. There are a lot of behind-the-scenes videos you can see on our You Tube channel if you’d like to see more of the process of making the movie - http://www.youtube.com/morningstarpictures
Allen, we see you are really using a lot of great grass root marketing tactics to promote, brand and attract audiences to your film. Can you tell us what you have learned along the way going through this process? What key advice can you speak to others on this?
It is a challenge to bring an independent movie to theaters around the country so we knew we needed to build grass roots support to make it possible. After we opened In My Sleep in Los Angeles and New York City, positive word-of-mouth started to spread about our movie and people signed up to receive updates through our website. Those people have been helpful in being the core team behind getting the word out about the movie. In My Sleep is a great movie to see with an audience so people tend to recommend it to their friends once they experience it. I think it’s important to start as early as possible to build up an audience and awareness for your film. Studios do it years in advance so why can’t independent films? It’s important to keep giving people new information about your film to get them excited about it. I have appreciated the enthusiastic response we’ve gotten to In My Sleep.
So how can people learn more about your film?
Our website is http://www.InMySleep.com where you can see our music video, behind-the-scenes videos and much more. Netflix will carry our movie when it comes out on DVD if enough people request it. People can do that at http://www.NetflixInMySleep.com. You can also request that In My Sleep plays at a movie theater near you at http://www.InMySleep.com/request.php.
We notice you let people request your film to their town, I think this is just brilliant. Tell us who thought of this and how this works, and how it is working for you guys?
Since there are over 3,000 movie theaters in the U.S. and we do not have the budget to be able to book our movie in theaters and promote it the way a studio can, I wanted a way for people to request In My Sleep for their particular theater. When we get enough interest, we work to bring the movie to that requested theater. It has worked well because when people request In My Sleep, they also become our contact for that city. The bigger challenge has been partnering with theaters. Most theaters are owned by large theater chains that are only interested in working with studios. So, we have to do more investigating to find a theater that will take an indie film and be supportive of our approach. It has been working well so far but we continue to get the word out so people will visit our website and request the movie for their city.
What is Morning Star Pictures? What other projects do you have lined up?
Morning Star Pictures is my production company which is based in Santa Monica, California. We are currently developing several screenplays and working on raising financing for my next movie, Man Versus Life. I also have created five board games and have a board game company, Morning Star Games. One of my games, You’re Pulling My Leg! appears prominently in the movie. You can check those out at http://www.MorningStarGames.com.
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