I don't think I'm a natural screenwriter as I have always collaborated with a writer on any given film I've made. Mostly to fill in the holes of the overall structure and story pace I figured out. For Start to Finish, it was all me in the initial concept but realistically it was my sound designer who really was the co-writer of this piece. I'll get to him later.
For the initial written script, it was really a blueprint written for the Cinematographer I worked with. She was someone who was making some noise in the Toronto Indy world as she just moved here from Chicago. She attended one of the reading series events I used to run at the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT), and at the bar most people attended afterwards I pitched her my idea. I told her my idea, and how long I needed her for (a day and a half) and wondered if she wanted to shoot in 8mm for perhaps the only and last time in her life. She was intrigued by the idea and shooting on this stock, and asked me for a script.
The script at that time was all in my head. That's almost as useless as having a glass hammer. So when I got home I worked out an outline for the story. What are the general stages of life?
- Birth
- Childhood - playing, school, parents
- Teen years - trying to figure yourself out. Intro to sexual feelings
- Losing your virginity
- Work. Career. Employment
- Love. Marriage
- Kids. Parenthood
- Reflection. Regrets. Happiness
- Death
So I wrote all those feelings down in separate scenes. 9 stages that I wanted to tell in 20 second segments to make a 3 minute film. Any longer than that and I knew it wouldn't work.
The next step was figuring out how to tell those stages and feelings in images. My entire concept was to never show a person in any shot and let the images and sound design tell the story. In the initial script I wrote a general summary of the images I wanted to use to tell the story for each segment. The two tricky segments were the virginity and reflection stages. How was I going to show those?
I kind of BSd in the script detailing flowers, a bed etc.... for the virginity segment, and an old home, office, family room etc... for the reflection stage. But I didn't like those ideas at all but added them in the script so I could move forward and hoped that I could figure out a better way or my collaborators would help me with it. And luckily that happened. I was actually looking for a comedy moment/break in the film with the virginity section to ease the viewing experience and not make it too wanky. Plus, I thought it would be ironic which are always my favorite moments in films as it usually leads to an honest and true emotion. But I still had no idea how to pull that off.
So I sent the script off to the Cinematographer and she emailed me right away that she was in. I already had the camera and film stock lined up from the LIFT job I worked at, so now all I needed were locations. That and a sound designer and editor so when the film was shot I didn't have it sitting on a shelf forever.
The picture editor was easy to find as I had someone I wanted to work with right from the start. We met at his office and he was in right away. His editing station sat near a window that looked out to a funeral home across the street in the High Park area in Toronto, and I knew that was a great sign.
The sound designer was a little tougher. This is 2005 and back then most sound designers didn't have their own system at home. And whenever you needed to work on your sound when making your movie, you had to rent it at a post-production house for lots and lots of money. I was trying to make this film for under $300, so that wasn't going to work. After a couple of weeks of searching, I found a guy in Los Angeles who had all the right tools and experience and was definitely interested. He's was the key find for the film and we had a great working relationship. The amazing this is that I've still to this day never met him in person. It was the start of many relationships I've had with collaborators: The online file-sharing, text, email, phone call, work relationship.
So I had my script and my team. Now I needed was the locations. But I had some ideas and some locations just landed on my feet without really trying. When you get breaks like that you know you're on the right path!
- Matthew Toffolo
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