Lucky Jack Penny was written, produced, and edited in 3 months. My focus was on improving camera movement, lighting, and sound. The sound is much better than on FEBRIS but was still the hardest part by far.
During filming I tried to capture the feeling of 80s movies I watched with my mom and dad like Big Trouble in Little China (1986). I wouldn’t say I hit the nail on the head but in missing my intended target, I found a different style that felt right for the film. And that style rested heavily on Joseph Malan’s shoulders.
He was the perfect lead for this film. Joseph came up with several of his own lines and made very inspired decisions with his performance. He didn’t know it but he pushed me to be a much better director than I was at the time. I would have to trust my intuition on what I wanted exactly as it was in the script and what I wanted to let him make up. The ideology I held onto was; keep whatever is best. If we were filming a comedic scene and he said something funnier than what I wrote, we kept it. But if what I wrote made more sense for the scene, we’d go back to that.
I learned that my vision of the film didn’t need to be sacrificed. On FEBRIS I would frequently cave if somebody said that a line made more sense if it was different than what I wrote or that blocking could be more realistic. Seeing it on screen when the movie was finished left me with regret. I decided I would have more of a spine on Lucky Jack Penny. What sometimes feels more realistic on location doesn’t always translate to the screen. The style of the film depended solely on me and my vision. I didn’t take the time to storyboard and wouldn’t always explain how I envisioned the edit so the actors sometimes would question what I was doing. Most of the time I would stop and explain how it would turn out in the final film, but sometimes I had to ask my actors to trust me and follow my direction. I wouldn’t cave to their questions, but let my vision guide the project.
The biggest obstacle on this one was definitely scheduling. I had two actors unavailable for the final showdown and needed to find a way to shoot the scene twice between two weekends with different actor availability each time. The best decision I made for that was shooting with one camera for both shoots so that I could edit in my head while I filmed instead of splitting my attention between two cameras.
I only had three months from the beginning of filming to when I moved from Washington to Utah. There was a finite deadline to the film and to combat that, I would meet with the actors and schedule out when we would film. There were times where we had to reschedule and that upped the stress of the project. But all of the actors were very committed. They’re the reason that the film got made.
The final scene between Jack Penny and Officer Rickie Jean was intended to be between Jack and the waitress, Caroline. The actress for Caroline was completely unavailable due to unforeseen circumstances. So I rewrote the scene the night before we shot it. Rylie Linford who plays Rickie Jean had only an forty five minutes between classes and needed to eat in that time too. We pulled it off in only a half hour which is the shortest shoot I’ve ever had.
Overall the production of Lucky Jack Penny taught me that I am more capable than I thought. My ideas are worth defending. Collaboration is key to an enjoyable film set and will produce the best ideas. A committed and quality team is irreplaceable. The production quality of this film was a flying leap ahead of FEBRIS but it’s obvious I still have more to learn. Audio quality is my main concern and will be the major focus of my next films.
