“Making Detective Max Bannion a child was an idea that came to us late in the writing process, probably because we were all delirious.”
Every year, LakeFrontRow talks to the filmmakers behind some of our favorite entries from Madison’s 48 Hour Film Project, which challenges teams to write, shoot and cut a short film in the span of one weekend.
I’ve called this year’s 48 Hour Film Project the year of the kid actor yet with only a handful of teams actually employing siblings and children in their projects, that may have been an overstatement. I blame Dial D for Dick. The noir comedy, from Trevor Triggs and Dan Phillips, gave their Madison audience a hilarious mismatch between detectives Rebecca Novak (Jeri Casper) and Max Bannion, the latter played by the pint-sized Max Casper. While post-production issues pushed back the project and ultimately disqualified the team from awards competition, Dial D for Dick rose above cheap sympathy and cute factors for a mashup of personalities that’s hilariously uncommented on throughout the dadaist mystery.
Both graduates from Madison Media Institute, Triggs and Phillips have their roots in the local arts community. Phillips has been making movies since his days as a neighborhood teenager and later worked with Triggs on his launch of Wisconscene, a multimedia project highlighting Wisconsin-based musicians, in 2012. In the last of our 48 Hour Film interviews, they talked with me over email about directing child actors and disqualifying themselves:
Was Dial D for Dick your first 48 Hour Film Project together?
Trevor: I think this is the third one we’ve worked on together? We were only cogs in someone else’s machine for those, so this year we decided that if we were going to do it, we’d produce it ourselves, and then whatever came out the other end was solely ours, regardless of how well it turned out. All in all, I think we’re pretty happy with Dial D For Dick, even if it isn’t perfect.
Dan: As Trevor said, after two previous 48Hr attempts, we were hungry to walk away with some glory. We had such high expectations for ourselves and our team, and we had confidence that this year we would win some awards. That’s what we set out to do, and I still think if Trevor and I had just not wasted those five cumulative hours on something as lame as sleep, we would have kicked some ass.
Let’s address the elephant in the room here: Where the heck did Max Casper come from?
Trevor: We knew going in that neither of us is particularly funny, so if we wanted jokes, we needed another person to write them. Even though comedy is only one of a plethora of genres available, we were concerned enough that we might end up with it and be screwed, so we brought in my friend and band mate, Jeri Casper, because she is goddamn hilarious. Besides, regardless of genre, a good film can always use a few good jokes.
Jeri had spoken to her 5-year-old son Max and he was on deck to appear in a brief role if our script ended up calling for a child. But seriously, we had no intention of doing a film starring a child. Making Detective Max Bannion a child was an idea that came to us late in the writing process, probably because we were all delirious. We decided not to address his age and just treat the character as an adult, and aside from two lines during the car scene, we didn’t. I think it worked out hilariously well.
Dan: I will add that originally we were talking about a child character that cussed like a sailor, but replaced all his bad words with kid friendly substitutes. Then in the end we were going to have him drop a “F***ing cunt” for comedic contrast and see what happened. I’m not sure how well we would have gotten away with that one.
Trevor: Also, the character isn’t named Max because the actor was named Max. Aside from the three characters in the short infomercial in the middle (one of which featured the required element), all of the character names are references to either 1940s pulp detective movies or Alfred Hitchcock films. The two sharing a name was a happy coincidence, but it sure made directing him easier.
The expectation always seems to be that directing kids is such a challenge, in part because their attention spans tend to be so short. What was it like working with Max?
Trevor: I’ll let Dan answer this one, but I will say that Max was just a champ about the whole thing. I’m still a little shocked at how well he did. Most of the shots only needed three or four takes, like he was a professional. I’ll also note that, a couple of days later, Jeri told me that Max has been asking her when he gets to come back to my house, because I guess he thinks all that happens here is making movies and he wants to do another one.
Dan: I actually heard several times that weekend that I was doing a great job directing Max. It took me by surprise because he was quite easy to work with. Occasionally his attention would wander, but then we started using pictures of monsters he drew to stick on things we needed him to look at, and it held his attention better than just “Look over here.” When we needed him to look disturbed, I asked him if he liked onions, and when he said no I made him focus on a picture of an onion on a menu that was lying around. This sounds like basic psychology, just getting into his head on his level, but let’s not take anything away from him regarding his talent. Two or three weeks before he even started kindergarten he was reading his lines to me out loud, off my script. He was easily one of the most gifted, maybe one of the most enjoyable actors I’ve worked with in years, and it will be interesting to see if he holds an interest in it.
Someone mentioned after the screening that the first cut was unwatchable. What problems did you have?
Trevor: Everything was going amazingly well for the first 43 hours, and then we had a total disaster. One of our main priorities was to make sure we had great audio. We’ve seen enough 48 Hour films to know that a lot of groups don’t even think about their audio, and we just thought it would be a way to stand out. So we brought in Bill [Drafall], an audio guy we’ve both worked with for years including on every episode of Wisconscene but one. He brought Mike [Braeckevelt], a classmate of his at MMI who definitely has his shit together. But best laid plans, mice, men, etc, and there we were five hours from the deadline, and none of the audio would sync up. We do know what happened, so we can be sure not to repeat it in the future, but we didn’t have time to fix it right then. The greatest thing about our team, was that as soon as the problem was identified, nobody got mad or anything. All four of us went straight into damage control. We fixed what could get fixed, and rendered the film. It finished rendering 20 minutes before it was due. We didn’t preview it at all, we just popped it onto a flash drive and sent Dan speeding into the night to deliver the damn thing on time. As soon as he left, though, the three of us went to watch it and it was immediately obvious that, in our scramble to get the dialogue synced, we had not taken the time to properly mix the music. It was so overpowering for the first two minutes of the film that the dialogue couldn’t be heard at all. Dan did end up handing it in on time, but once he heard the audio for himself, he knew we couldn’t allow this to be screened. No one would know what was going on, and the music might blow everyone’s ears out.
Dan: It was probably one of the most heartbreaking experiences I’ve had in a long time. Everybody worked so hard at getting their piece of the puzzle just right. Everything was coming together so well and it gave us all this amazing high to see our work falling into place. Suddenly it was as if the universe pointed an ugly, infected talon directly at us and took a huge shit on our timeline. Individual clips were no longer where they should have been and were not how I had cut them. Audio was disappearing off the timeline altogether. A host of plagues descended upon Trevor’s computer, and in the end none of us wanted to be represented by the file on that flash drive to the people of Madison — or any other people of any indigenous tribe on the face of this Earth.
Trevor: So we got a hold of the 48 Hour staff and asked if we could voluntarily disqualify ourselves so as to screen a better cut. They fortunately agreed. We fixed the audio and, since we had extra time, made a couple of other slight modifications, and sent it back in. All in all, I spent about three hours total on the new audio mix and a few video tweaks. Theoretically, the four of us working together could have done all of that in an extra 30 minutes or so.
Dan: In the end, as the bell tolled oh, 49 hours, the film still fell short of what we had envisioned. However, and this I promise, Duckworks Media Forge and Phillips Brothers Films will be back, and you will be amazed.
Trevor: The audio still isn’t great, but it is watchable. We have plans to fix the audio and release a “remastered” edition on YouTube, just so we can all have something nice for our reels and to show our families and such, but we didn’t see any reason to rush it. All in all though, we’re all very proud of what we’ve done here and, Cthulhu willing, we’ll do better next year.