We’ve been fans of Dave Green since the beginning. His first short film, Meltdown, was a finalist in our Great Film Competition way way back in 2009 and set the tone for his style of dark yet playful humor driven by strong characters. Unhappy with his film festival prospects, he put his short films up online where he honed his voice, found new connections, and worked toward larger and larger projects which eventually led him to take over Michael Bay’s spot directing this summer’s TMNT 2.
How do you go from creating funny online short films to directing one of the biggest blockbuster movies of the year? Dave shares his story below.
The New Filmmaker Series takes a look at the new wave of filmmakers who are using technology to disrupt all aspects of filmmaking today.
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What happened between the moment you released your shorts, Meltdown and Ham Sandwich, and the release of your first studio feature, Earth to Echo.
After I graduated from UC Berkeley, I was working as an assistant to a producer for a few years. It was a great experience, but at the end of it, I was excited to get back to making short films again. So I made Meltdown and Ham Sandwich during that period. Two sandwich-based movies for some reason.
Encroaching ice from a malfunctioning refrigerator is threatening the welfare of all the inhabitants, and its time for the fearful fruit, dairy and leftovers to hunker down and stategize!
To make money, I was doing little editing gigs and teaching people how to use Final Cut Pro, and spending the majority of my time doing oddball shorts and music videos and online commercials. If I was doing a project for hire, the budgets were usually so low that the clients let me control the creative—so it gave me and my team a lot of freedom to be weird. I would post all of these projects online, and eventually a producer at Disney named Andrew Panay ended up seeing all of these and called me in for a meeting.
We ended up talked about my love of Amblin movies for about an hour and a half. And it was from that first conversation where we hatched the first seeds of Earth to Echo. I brought in Henry Gayden, who wrote a few of my shorts and was a frequent collaborator of mine, and we came up with a pitch for the movie in the span of a few weeks. To accompany the pitch, I shot a quick teaser for the movie in my friend’s backyard. It was a “tone sample” to give an idea of how the movie would be shot, assembled, and gave a feeling of how the performances would feel.
With the pitch and the video, the studio greenlit Echo, and we were completely shocked when they did.
Now you’ve just finished directing TMNT 2. What’s it like going from small internet shorts to directing a big blockbuster?
It’s a giant undertaking and you get to work with a huge team on a giant scale. Every day is a surprise really.
As I got the chance to work with bigger crews, I really found that film crews are living, breathing organisms made up of hundreds—sometimes thousands of experienced craftspeople. Maintaining a positive energy amongst that giant mass of people is very important to me. So being a manager and a coach is just as important as anything else.
I was really surprised with the MoCap experience [motion capture]. There was a learning curve at first, but once you get how it works, lining up shots in a full 3D environment is like playing with toys. It’s a total blast. We literally used Ninja Turtle action figures and shot them with my iPhone. For a while there was a cut of the movie where the Turtles were represented by MoCap actors, previs, and action figures.
Was there a moment when you felt you’d made it?
I had been touring my short Meltdown around festivals, which was a lot of fun. But it wasn’t until I released that short on Vimeo, and it got staff picked, that I felt a real overflow of feedback. When they Staff Pick something, the news of that is syndicated to other blogs, and it was really cool to see the overflow of good vibes coming in from all over the internet. On the days when you have a video starting to go viral, it’s really hard to do anything besides stay chained to your computer or phone all day and watch responses come in—it’s just super fun. That release crystallized the importance of web distribution to me, and made festivals feel like the old model.
You submitted to our first film contest and were an early fan of putting your work online. Putting yourself back into those shoes 5 years ago, what were you hoping to do or become?
Since I was about 8 years old, I’ve wanted to make movies. When I was making short films in high school, I always showed them to a room full of people and got instant feedback. I’d watch the audience and see which parts got laughs and which didn’t. It kind of simulated a movie theatre experience, and getting this in-person feedback became one of my favorite parts of filmmaking.
Putting my shorts on Vimeo and getting them on Short of the Week was a chance to interact with other filmmakers again and get a similar kind of feedback (although not in person). The signal to noise ratio on Vimeo is much different than it is on YouTube. You’re getting comments from passionate filmmakers across the globe who care about the form. I remember Reggie Watts “liked” one of my Vimeo videos… and that moment was the highlight of my entire career.
What advice would you share with a young filmmaker today who’s looking to break into the industry but clueless on how best to do it?
I always hesitate to give advice like this because there are so many different ways to break in, and my path felt as crazy and random as any other.
But I tried to shoot constantly. I shot stuff with my friends, and it was a lot of fun to not have any adult supervision (creatively) so I tried to just have fun with my shorts and music videos. I experimented and got weird. I posted the work I was proud of online. Agencies and management offices are watching Vimeo and Short of the Week all the time looking for new talent, and I got super lucky with a cool agent finding my stuff. But during that time, I always tried to keep focused on the project in front of me, or the one after that, without freaking out too much about if a project was going to break through. Getting to make and craft something—concepting, shooting, and editing—is the fun part after all.
I’ve found that making new work constantly—without looking back—is really the only way to stay sane.
What online tools do you turn to for help and inspiration?
I usually look at Tumblr and Ffffound for inspiration. If I’m looking for something really specific, like an aerial view of a culdesac at twilight, I’d go to Flickr for that. There’s a cinematography blog called evanerichards.com that helps me communicate lighting ideas to crew that I’ve found handy.
Drawing on my iPad is one of my favorite ways to invent, iterate, and come up with new ideas. I’ve been storyboarding in an app called Adobe Draw for a long time. The tactile experience of drawing forces me keep making scenes, shots, and sight gags better and better. It’s a great way to figure out what I want in a private space.
On set, I love using the Artemis app, which lets you see any lens size with surprising accuracy. People like to look tough carrying around the actual glass on a viewfinder on set, but I find that contraption bulky and silly. It’s good for photo-ops, but it takes too long to change a lens—and you can’t save what you’ve lined up.
Sometimes before actors show up in the morning, I’ll run through a rough blocking of a scene with whoever’s around before call, and shoot and cut a rough of it on my phone with an app called Spark, which I totally love.
What are you working on now?
I’m hunting for the next thing, and developing a couple of things that I’m super excited about. I’ve also been working on a fun little side project about food that I can’t wait to share.
Andrew S Allen
