Plowshare Films

Up next, Counterfeit plays the LA Shorts Fest:

Friday, July 22 at 1pm at the Laemmle Sunset 5 Hollywood
Showtimes

Then the Martha’s Vineyard African-American Film Festival and the San Francisco Black Film Festival.

After playing the San Diego Black Film Festival and the Columbia University Festival last month, we’re an official selection of the Brooklyn International Film Festival. Screenings are Saturday, June 4 and Monday, Jun 6. See you there!

Counterfeit at the Brooklyn Film Festival.

Check out some photos from the shooting of Counterfeit here:

Set photos

So a few weeks ago we spent a day grabbing pick-ups for the film. One of the things we needed was more footage of the actual counterfeit trade on Canal St. We thought about just bring a camera down during rush hour, but surprisingly, people involved in illegal trade are somewhat skittish about being filmed. We’d already seen one brawl and were not about to start another. But we needed the footage. Enter the Counterfeit surveillance van:

We spent the day driving around Canal in this suped up Zipcar with our incredibly talented and surprisingly durable Director of Photography, Paul Niccolls, in the back. We could literally drive up six feet from deals going down, people would look directly in the window and just keep going. It was nerve-racking. But we got some great footage. Here are some samples:

From our producer, Jason Wood:

A friend of mine was telling me a story the other day about a mutual acquaintance of ours who had done a terrible job producing a film. She had made a series of amateurish and catastrophic choices that had brought the project in over budget, behind schedule, and had led the crew to near mutiny. This story was related in a colorful, exciting way, intended to amuse– the key grip was going to kill someone while the AD had a nervous breakdown and sat crying in the corner!– but I couldn’t laugh. I think producing a film is like walking through a minefield, and anyone who missteps and accidentally blows themselves up should be, if not admired, then at least mourned.

In the days and weeks and months leading up to production on Counterfeit I scrupulously went over the details of the shoot. We were shooting almost all exteriors, mostly on Canal Street (a chaotic area, to put it mildly), and there were a lot of variables. Aside from the thousands of tourists clogging the sidewalks all day, there is an armada of vehicles continuously honking and beeping their way across town, creating a stagnant, noisy cloud of carbon monoxide in which an army of street vendors of every nationality known to man sells every knickknack, souvenir, food item, and counterfeit good imaginable. This was, simply put, the world that our movie needed to take place in. But capturing chaos without succumbing to it isn’t easy.

Producing is kind of like whack-a-mole, except the game is a little more expensive and the stakes are a little higher. In the end, I know that a mole is going to pop up that I don’t see or that I forget to whack. I just don’t know where it is, or when it’s going to appear. And truth be told, that’s what really causes me anxiety about producing: I know that I’m probably going to screw something up, I just won’t know what it is, or how significant it is, until it rears it’s ugly head and points at me laughing.

On our first day of shooting a fight broke out. A fight that started with two people– as most fights do– and then seemed to expand. The expanded group wasn’t fighting per se, but they were pissed off and milled about our shooting location yelling at us. The exact details of how it all started are a little hazy (the details of everything happening on Canal Street are a little hazy) but suffice it to say that although we really did nothing to start it, it likely was a reaction to our presence there. After realizing that we were teetering on the brink of disaster, I did what I think is the only sensible thing to do in such a situation: I grabbed the cast, crew, and equipment and got the hell out of there. If making a movie is like waging war, then a good producer should know when it’s time to retreat.

Amusing footnote to this story: the police, who were less than thrilled by the subject matter of our production to begin with, stood by watching as the fight broke out, assuming that it was part of our movie. At some point they realized that it wasn’t staged (perhaps after seeing the panic on my face) and moved in.

Overall the shoot went well. And by that I mean that the crew was outstanding and the days weren’t too long and the things I screwed up were fixable and the footage looks great and the director is happy. And most importantly, I think we have a really good film on our hands. Which, in the end, is the one thing everyone wants.

We wrote a few weeks ago about the yuppie who stormed through the middle of our set (view the post here). Well, going through the dailies this week, I realized that we actually have the moment captured on film—well, not exactly the moment itself, but Chris and Hisham’s priceless reaction:

counterfeit_blooper1

Come to see our award-winning short, which earned an Oscar submission for 2011. The story takes place during the civil war in Bosnia. It follows Marko, who decides to plow his land at the disputed border on the day a peace agreement is announced.

Showtime 1: 3:00 pm | Sunday June 6 | indieScreen
Showtime 2: 7:00 pm | Monday June 7 | Brooklyn Heights Cinema

Brooklyn Film Festival website

Here are a few grabs from the footage we shot. Enjoy!

After 7 days of shooting, 1 fistfight, police racial profiling, drunken pedestrians, homeless speedwalkers, belligerent commuters, and 2 hours of gorgeous footage, we have finished shooting Counterfeit.

Thank you to everyone who made it possible. And check back tomorrow when we’ll post a few stills from the film. Now I’m going to bed!

Today is the last day of shooting. Expect a flurry of posts in the next few days as we make our way through stills and footage and post stories from the shoot. But one from earlier this week:

Making Counterfeit has been a glimpse into the very best and very worst of New York, the city I love. On Thursday, the extremes of my hometown were reduced down to two people. The worst of New York—shooting a back alley, a public city street that serves as a loading dock for a number of buildings on Broadway. We had permits to shoot there and did not prevent trucks from coming in and making necessary deliveries. What we didn’t know was that one of the buildings has, in recent months, decided to use it as a parking lot. This guy comes flying around the corner, ignores our PAs asking him to slow down, gets out moves our traffic cones and proceeds to yell at our producer, Jason Wood, who is asking him kindly to park across the street. Apparently this guy has decided that it is his God-given right as a New Yorker to park illegally in this alley and no one is going to tell him different.

The best of New York—shooting a very difficult scene on Canal St. at rush hour. Utter chaos: people, hordes of traffic, people looking into the camera. We find a brief moment when everything comes together and we can grab a shot. Just at that moment up pulls a garbage truck, making it impossible to record audio over its idling engine. We can’t shoot, we’re about to loose the light as the sun set; we’re in danger of not getting the scene. Then I look over to the truck; one of the guys in the truck peeks out the window, sees the film crew and reaches across the cab to turn off the idling engine. He waves.

Only in New York would a sanitation worker know that his engine was keeping us from filming, know that it was important to someone, and make the effort to help. Whoever you were: thank you, brother!