Once a month I’m going to talk about a specific production,
what it was like to film it, and what was involved in making it happen. This month I’m going to talk about Twisted Tales: Cinderella.
Twisted Tales is a
collection of short films with a common theme – taking a fairytale and giving
it some sort of twist. I asked if
anyone else wanted to contribute a script to the project and amazingly
wonderful Kate Weber sent me Cinderella.
There are a few twists in this script. First, Cinderella is not a servant, she likes working hard
on the family farm and her step-brothers aren’t wicked, they’re just not too
handsome and not too bright.
Cinderella has no interest in going to the ball or in marrying a
prince. The only reason she goes
is to drive her brothers their in the carriage and hope that they’ll get
married off to the Princess. Also
the Fairy Godmother, is a Godfather who ends up their by mistake after reading
the address wrong on his assignment. 
But the biggest twist is that there’s no Prince Charming,
instead it’s Princess Charlotte.
She doesn’t like the ball, so she runs away and finds Cinderella reading
a book of fairy tales in the garden as she waits for her brothers. They start talking and Charlotte begs
Cinderella to take her away from the ball for a while because it’s so dull and
she doesn’t want to go back.
Cinderella takes her home and they talk some more. By the end Charlotte declares her love
for Cinderella who returns it and they get married and live happily ever after
on a royal farm. It a funny,
sweet, and wonderful twist and I really loved the script. 
I schedule filming for Cinderella in the late spring of
2010. The script called for a
palace gardens and the interior of a farm house – both vaguely period. I had worked for the Kansas City
Renaissance Festival the previous fall so I knew people who worked there and
received permission to film, giving carte blanche as to the specific locations. Everyone was totally awesome in letting
me film there and my only regret is that I filmed just one movie in such a
wonderful place.
This was the first movie I had produced and filmed outside
of Illinois, and although I had contacts that made it easy to find a location,
I had a bit more trouble finding actors. You wouldn’t think it would be so hard
at a Renaissance Festival, but it was.
I’m used to having a regular group of people to cast from, and I didn’t
know a lot of people in Kansas City. Most of the people I knew either didn’t
want to be on film or simply didn’t have the time.
I knew I wanted my friend Antatia Powers to play
Cinderella. When I asked her to
play the part she was skeptical.
She couldn’t really see herself playing the traditional dreamy-eyed
romantic version, but once she read the script she was completely on
board. My assistant director
was Zan Powers, Tash’s mother and my best friend in KC, who only agreed to
appear on camera as one of the not-so-wicked stepbrothers because they were
only seen from the back. I stepped in to play the other one since it was only
one shot and long distance (if you haven’t figured it out yet I don’t really
like to be in front of the camera either). 
But I needed someone to play Princess Charlotte. I asked the few people I knew who might
be willing, but none of them could do it.
So I turned to craigslist where I had seen posts asking for actors for
no-pay short films before. I made
a recruitment poster with the shooting date and details, and tried hard to
stress in the ad that this was purely for fun, and although the movie would go
on the internet, it was a no-budget film with no tech gear, make up rooms, or
microphones, or lights. It was
just for fun. I long ago gave up
trying to be the next Steven Spielberg, and now only shot films for the fun of
filming and to have something fun to edit. I was really nervous that I would end up getting an actress
who had high expectations and would be disgusted at the lack of pretty much
everything on set and the extremely unprofessional way we film – i.e. no one
really memorizes their lines, there’s maybe one crew person besides me, the
shooting is fast-paced bur fun, and the set is over all pretty laid back. I didn’t want an actress to show up and
hate the whole thing (I had that happen once, it was a bit of a shock and very
humbling). 
I had about five replies and in looking over the headshots
and resume’s they sent (yikes! too professional already!) I gravitated to one
named Bri Arnold. She was my first
pick and I sent her an email letting her know the exact nature of the
barebones, low-key shoot. She
replied that it sounded fun and she wasn’t expecting it to be a big break or
anything, just something fun to do.
So I asked her to play the part and she agreed. YAY! Bri was absolutely wonderful to work
with and she and Tash got along great and had good chemistry on screen. I was incredibly lucky to get to work
with these fantastic people. 
Now that the actors were cast, the location was all set up,
and the shoot was scheduled, I turned my attention to what I considered to be
one of the most important aspects of any production – the costumes. This was my first time filming a movie
where I had no access to costumes; neither my mother’s huge stock nor my own
stash were available because they were both several hundred miles away in
Illinois. I didn’t have enough money to rent costumes even from KCRF (the dry
cleaning alone for a true Renaissance costume is probably more then my entire
budget). Luckily Tash was able to
provide her own costume, and outfitting the brothers wasn’t too hard (although
Zan ended up borrowing a jacket from Roger since I didn’t tell her ahead of
time to bring something for it. Sorry Zan, my bad). With about fifty bucks set aside for the budget which had to
include buying lunch for the actors and some gas money for transportation, I
set about trying to procure the rest of the costumes. I still needed the fluffy ball gown, the godfather’s
costume, and the Princess’s gown. 
I find two pre-owned prom dresses on eBay for a really good
price, and one of them served as the typical fluffy Cinderella ball gown needed
for one shot in the first scene.
The other was a pink chiffon dress I used as a base to build Princess
Charlotte’s dress. Now, anyone who
knows me knows how much I love costumes.
What they may not know is that I am very judgmental when it comes to the
big beautiful gown made for Cinderella by her fairy godmother – I mean, come
on, it’s a magic dress that takes your breathe away and any Cindy gown that
leaves me breathing kind of annoys me.
What I wanted for the traditional fairy-made dress for Cinderella in the
first scene I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get since the amount of fluff
required in my head could only be found in my mother’s costume storage and
would not fit in any kind of suitcase that I could take on a train (my method
of transport from KC to CU). So I did my best with the peach chiffon dress with
silver embroidery and added a few touches it to and it worked okay. 
For Princess Charlotte’s dress, though, I wanted a ball gown
that was truly fit for a princess.
Nothing I dreamed up was anything I could afford to buy or rent – I had
to build it using whatever cheap resources I could find. I purchased the base from eBay, then
went to Goodwill where I found the trench coat and hat for the godfather, and a
beautiful burgundy taffeta dress that would work with the pink chiffon. I went for mock-18th century
and used the pink dress as an underskirt, and the burgundy dress for the
sleeves, bodice, and main skirt. I
cut away the front part to reveal the pink skirt then stitched the two
together. I made a stomacher out
of some pink and gold fabric I had that I beaded and embroidered. I trimmed the dress in gold ribbon and
added a long trailing sort of cape thing (which ended being too long and got
snagged on stuff, probably shouldn’t have added that). It wasn’t the best color combo, but I
think it turned out really well. 
However I made it with no pattern and only a dress size from
Bri. I’m sure she could have
supplied her measurements but I don’t know how to use that in making a dress
(I’m not a seamstress, I’m a costume finder-and-put-togetherer). So it basically fit, but it was a bit
loose I think (which is why I had a ribbon tie on it) but the sleeves were bad
put together with the bodice and kept falling down. They weren’t meant to be off the shoulder but apparently no
one told them that.
In the end we just
used the off the shoulder look as a flirtation thing. *sigh* I really need to
be better prepared.
The last thing I needed costume wise was the Shoes. Now, in every version of Cinderella the
shoes are an important plot device, so they gotta look very nice. Not that they
were important in this script, but they were mentioned as being royal footwear
that was uncomfortable. How could
any costumer designer turn away from a chance to design the equivalent of
Cinderella’s slippers. Now there’s
a mention of glass shoes earlier but since Charlotte’s shoes were going to be a
prop I wanted them to be spectacular.
I found a pair of beautifully beaded shoes, but I couldn’t find a dress
to coordinate with their color, so in the end I covered them with the left over
materials from making the gown and beaded them, covering the inside with
sparkling gold fabric. I wouldn’t
say they’re spectacularly beautiful or anything, though I am rather fond of
them, but I will go on record as saying they are the single most uncomfortable shoes
anyone has ever had to wear on my set.
They’re horrible. I felt so
bad that someone actually had to wear those torture devices, so I tried to not
have Bri wear them any longer then was necessary. 
Wednesday, May 12 arrived and everything was set to go. I checked the weather forecast (as I
sometimes do), and discovered it was supposed to rain in the afternoon, so I
shot the outdoor scenes first. I
picked up Bri and headed out to the festival grounds where we would meet up
with Tash and Zan. On the ride
over I realized just how fun and cool Bri was and I was glad to have her on
board. We arrived at the location
and the actresses changed into costume while Zan and I went over the
script. After make-up and
hair-styling (which they did themselves, except for Bri’s hairstyle) we headed
out to the Queen’s Gardens site to shoot scenes 2-4. 
I had some camera troubles, and realized I forgot to tell
Zan to bring something for the stepbrother costume, so we were a little
delayed. It took a lot longer to
shoot those scenes then it should have, but at least we had fun. Watching Tash and Bri joke around while
shooting seemed like they had known each other forever instead of having just
met and I was thrilled to have added fabulous new members to the SFF crew. 
In my experience the morning scenes always take longer then
you expect and I don’t tend to hit my stride until after lunch. So after filming the scenes we ordered
sandwiches (or Zan went to get them, I forget), and had a relaxed lunch
break. It had just started to
drizzle when we broke for lunch so we waited while a light rain storm passed,
then headed out to the place where we would film the indoor farm house
scenes.
We had one major hiccup in terms of casting that day – I
hadn’t been able to find anyone to play the Fairy Godfather (or godmother, but
I really wanted a godfather). I
had asked several people at the office if they could spare a half hour to do a
quick role, and finally one of them – the supremely wonderful Roger Clements –
agreed. He met us there, donned a
hat and coat, and said his lines and was wonderful. I’m still extremely grateful too him for a lot of things,
including this. 
Filming scene 1 wasn’t too difficult, though it did involve
a magical quick-change which is never as quick or easy as it sounds. We moved on to scenes 5 and 6 where
Cinderella and Charlotte get to know each other and fall in love. There were some funny bloopers
including doors and costume trains that were too long and got stuck on a bench.
However, the weather by this point
had really started going down hill and it was pouring. For more information about the weather
and how the day ended, check out the Survivor’s Club post The Muddy Road Home.
It was a busy day that ended in a muddy mess but it was a
lot of fun. By the end of the
shoot it felt like we had known each other for months or years instead having
just met that day (in Bri’s case).
It was a genuine pleasure to work with these talented ladies (and
gentleman) and though we talked of shooting more films I never made it happen. I always thought I’d have time to do it
later, but it didn’t work out that way.
Maybe someday I’ll get to film with them again. Thanks for everything Bri, Tash, and
Zan (and Roger)!
Unfortunately the camera I filmed it on was a Mini-DV that I
only owned for a little while because it SUCKED! This is the only film I shot with that camera and I really
wish I had used Hamlet the Digital8 instead. The only way I could lighten the very dark inside scenes required
me to make the movie in sepia tone instead of color. Still, it looked great!
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