An out of luck working class guy enters a therapy group where characters with different intentions try to repair his moral. John Babsson, a middle class average Joe seeks help after finding out his wife is cheating on him and his daughter is dating an older man. In the therapy group, John encounters Claire the sex addict and Mike the misogynist who give him a new perspective in life.

 

 

-    Luca Grella- John                                    

-    Bill Chichino- Jet                                    

-    Bill Appel- Mike                                    

-    Jena Girouard- Claire                              

-    Niko Avallanet- Kasim                          

-     Frank Dapuzzo- Professor Barkley  

 

 

 

 

 

 -     Director of photography- Tchad Brown

 -     Editor- Jessica Stokey

 -     Music- Hotshot’s Boy

 -     Assistant Camera- Sandor Temlock

       -     Assistant Director- Camila Botero

 -     Key Grip- Dan Maas

 -     Gaffer and Sound Mixer- Victor Avila

 -     Grip and Boom Operator- Jerome Pikwane

 -     Production Assistants- Jonathan Russo and Mecky Creus

    

 

 

     Bar Barons is a 23 minute comedy short which was shot on 35mm. It was completed in the spring of 2003 over a three day schedule with a crew of 10 in New York. Bar Barons was sort of a last minute film since the original project called "The Mason dilemma" was scrapped due to lack of a final location. The same actors were used and another female character was added. The whole film was shot inside a classroom which was acquired the day before with a three day permit. The travel wasn't that hard since everyone lived in the neighborhood. The school gave out the 35mm Panavision equipment as part of the curriculum and the producer was told to keep the equipment in a bonded garage. A truck was rented, the equipment was loaded and the A/C was picked and we were ready to go.

 

Now the pain problem from the beginning was the size of the script and the lack of money. We had a 30 page script and $5000 to do it with. Now for those who understand film $5000-35mm-30 page script doesn’t go well together just because you’ll run out of film. When the budget was separated we only had enough money to buy 5200 feet of 35mm film. That’s somewhat over an hour of raw footage to shoot. And when you do the calculations, 30 page script equals around a thirty minute film. So what it came down to, are we going to have enough film to shoot all the scenes. The script was set in one location and it involves a lot of talking so that wasn’t good. Because if it was just a script based on shots rather than dialogue, it could be calculated and prepared for. But since we didn’t have that option the director decided to design the script in an improve kind of way where the actors must know their lines, but at the same time if they mess up they can recover. There were quite a few rehearsals before the shoot and on the day of the shoot the director told all the actors that they had only one take to do this due to the lack of film and it was agreed on. There was no going back. All the main master shots were shot on a 1:1 ration and the rest of the small shots were done in a continues manner; Where the camera kept on rolling while the actors say their lines from different parts of the script just to fit everything in. Now this isn’t a new breakthrough event in film, but for a first time filmmaker with not that much experience, a long script, no money and crew and actors looking at him like he was nuts; there’s some pressure lets just say.

 

When we got to the location at first it seemed kind of relaxed since we were shooting in one place, but than the D.P. informed us that the windows inside the classroom were pretty large and we didn’t have enough black cloth to cover it up. We did what we could with what we had, but there were still a lot of gaps in the window. Because of the light coming in it was difficult to set up lights because they wouldn’t match later on in editing. The producers ran to the store to find some kind of dark material that could be used. Later they cam back with some kind of gardening tarp which was very useful.

 

By the second day things were going fine. The first day shots were completed minus one, but it wouldn’t be that hard to catch up with one small scene. When day two came around, a big problem came into the spotlight. One of our 2k lights burst and we were just setting up for a full wide classroom shot. We looked at each other like everything was over and that we should pack up and leave but we couldn’t. We knew that we weren’t able to get another light so we improvised. The D.P. came up with the idea of cheating the classroom shot. Meaning to compress the area of the classroom and squish everyone together. So we made it happen.

 

 

We cleaned up as fast as we could because our time was running out and we left. A few days after, the producers went back to the school where they were informed that they didn’t clean the room well enough and that a few things were broken. They were told if they didn’t make things right, they would be black listed in every school in New York so they wouldn’t be able to ever use any school location anymore. The producers went back to the classroom and apologized to the teacher whose classroom they messed up. The teacher wasn’t that forgiving, but peace was made and that’s important.

 

 

-    Lower East Side Film Festival- New York

-    Forest Theatre Short Film Festival- Oregon

-    Crossroads Film Festival- Mississippi

-    Los Angeles International Short Film Festival- Los Angeles

-    Edgeworks Short Film Festival- Texas

-    Fiery Film Festival- New Mexico- Finalist

-    Pilse East Film and Art Festival- Chicago

-    Burekup Film Festival- Australia

-    TRACE TV Short Film Festival- Paris, France

-    IGF Film Group Screening- New York