ABOUT: The Good Soldier is a WWII era nostalgia film with a Hitchcockian slant. A solitary soldier struggles for self-preservation as his situation appears more dire with each passing day. If only he can determine, “Who is the enemy?” he could save himself. But by then, it might be too late.This film deviates from digital cinema and opts for an old-school medium: Super 8 film, but applies new-school methods of editing and sound.Super 8 is often over-looked as antiquated, impractical, and difficult to use. Truth is, it is. And I like that. I also like that it produces a picture unparalleled in artistic expression to digital. It has a quality and history to it that is rich for storytelling. TECHNICAL NOTES: Shot on Super 8 film, Kodak Tri-X 7266 B/W Reversal film. Canon 814 XL-S camera. Digital audio captured on Edirol R-09 using shotgun mic (don't recall model). Developed and transferred at Yale Film and Video in Burbank, CA using Rank Cinetel process (frame by frame scanning). Transferred to hard drive and mini-DV tapes. Edited at home using Final Cut Pro. Additional audio work, voiceover and radio voice, performed at NewsOK studio. Foley sounds performed in garage (at home) using digital audio recorder (Edirol R-09). Sound sync performed on-the-fly using clapboard during production and then syncing in Final Cut. LOCATIONS: Primary location - Rocktown Climbing Gym (old grain silos), Oklahoma City, OK. Sutton Wilderness in Norman, Oklahoma. Residential home ("Dr.Joe's") in Norman, OK MAKING OF: [STORY - Coming Up With the Idea and Writing the Script] Shot in Summer 2009 in Oklahoma. The Good Soldier began as nothing more than an idea to make a film. I'd been shooting Super 8 film for some time and always wanted to take it a step beyond my short "moment-in-time" type of films. Super 8 was the format for me from the beginning. Essentially I had three fundamental places I was starting from: 1) I knew the format of the film (Super 8). 2) I knew the main location, or at least the general location. 3) I knew that I needed a story that I could realistically shoot and afford. With these things swirling in my mind I began the task of writing. The intention was to write something that would be 10-15 minutes in duration. Obviously I ended up beyond that - the final picture is closer to 27 minutes. Originally, I began with a completely different kind of story. The working title was "Engrained" and it was a modern day story about a graffiti artist and his buddy who visited this industrial site for a secret art project. I was struggling with the story from the very beginning, trying to force it along some path that I was hoping would become clearer to me at some point. It never did. One evening, mid-sentence, I stopped writing "Engrained" and started writing about this soldier with an unknown mission. From that point on, the story came fairly quickly, until just before the end. The end was tricky for me and I employed a do-or-die tactic that I hadn't tried before in my writing. I set a deadline for myself one evening: that I would write the end of the script on this particular night - no excuses, no delays, no putting it off or accepting that I couldn't think of something - I would write an ending. Period. In the past, if I'd never really forced myself in that manner. I recall at the beginning of that writing session, I had no clue what the ending was going to be or how I was going to tie this thing up. So how on earth could I go from no idea to a complete resolution? I didn't know but I started writing anyway. And then it just came to me: it needed to be circular. It needed to be a pattern, a repeat scenario. What better way to end a story than with new questions and the tease of so much more to the story? Still, the character of Miss June was originally weak - I wanted to use her more. When my wife read the story she brought up the same thing, that I needed Miss June to be more prominent. I agreed and re-wrote parts of the script to expand her character and include her more - this worked to the benefit of the end scene. [FALSE START - Figuring Stuff Out] During the course of writing I was already preparing and experimenting with locations, cameras, film stocks, and sound sync methods. My initial idea was to shoot the film at the top of the grain silos (about 10 stories - 100 ft - up a ladder) in this engine room area. I shot some test footage along with recording some sound but unfortunately (or maybe it was fortunately) none of it turned out. That was a bit discouraging because I'd basically wasted a bunch of film and a bunch of time in setting up these shots that didn't turn out at all. Not too mention that the live audio was crap as well. So here I was in what I thought was the perfect location for shooting the film and nothing was working. At that point I began to re-think my vision of the soldier's room. I also realized that I needed a location that was more convenient and easy to work in. Trekk

• published: 02 Jan 2012
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