The excerpt below is from an interesting article by Jan Willms, “Three Longfellow-Nokomis residents have filmmaking role in 35th Annual Minneapolis-St Paul International Film Festival,” Longfellow Nokomis Messenger, describing the recent activities of filmmaker and Carleton alum Eric Tretbar, who has also taught filmmaking at Carleton.
Eric Tretbar is the assistant director for the feature narrative, “A Stray,” directed by Musa Syeed. The film is about a young Muslim refugee in Minneapolis who crosses paths with a stray dog. Tretbar said his home served as one of the locations. “The first rule of film is never shoot in your own location,” he said, “but, of course, this is the first rule you have to break.”
Tretbar has worked on seven films and directed four. He said the director and assistant director (AD) have a very professional relationship. “For people who have not been on a film set before, they might mistake the assistant director for the director,” he acknowledged. “The AD is the one who says ‘Quiet on the set’ and ‘Places’ and ‘Quiet, please’ and ‘Roll sound’ or “Roll camera.’”
“The AD’s first job is to run the set, take care of all the scheduling of shooting days and maintain safety on the set,” said Tretbar. “He or she also needs to keep track of time.”
Tretbar explained that every minute on the clock for actors is money to the producer. He said the AD has to look out for the needs of the producer with the budget but also has to meet the artistic needs and vision of the director. “The AD protects the director from the day to day details and creates a bubble around him or her, so the director can be creative instead of talking to the cop who says, ‘you have to get off the sidewalk. Where’s your permit?’”
An AD is always checking his or her watch, whispering in the director’s ear that there are only ten more minutes at a certain location. The director would like to shoot all day at the same location and must be reminded to move on,” he said. For “A Stray,” Tretbar said he was the local guy who knew all the locations.
“Musa did a lot of research and was here for a number of months and roamed around the city, finding places he wanted to shoot. But I could suggest additional places; I knew someone who had an alley or backyard or coffee shop we could shoot in.”
He said the nice thing about shooting in Minneapolis is the people are pretty friendly and interested in the production; in LA or New York, there are so many movies being shot, people are sick of them. “Here it’s kind of a novelty,” Tretbar said.
For this film, Barkhad Abdirahman was selected as the lead. He and some of his friends had roles in the movie “Captain Phillips.”
“That was a Tom Hanks movie, about as big as a movie can get, with a crew of 300 people,” Tretbar said. “Any actor on a film that size is living in the Magic Kingdom. Our crew is more like a rock and roll band traveling around in a van getting in each other’s hair all the time.”
He said “A Stray” had two vans, one for the camera equipment and the other for people. But the fewer vehicles, the faster the crew could move, according to Tretbar.
The film was shot in about two weeks. The crew worked on its days off finding new locations or picking up any shots that weren’t completed the first time around.
Tretbar said a big change in the film industry has come about because of the Internet and the kind of cameras used to make a movie. “When I began, there was only one business in Minneapolis where you could get a film camera, and you had to have a crew working with you that knew how to use this camera,” he stated. “Today, you go to Amazon.com, and you buy a camera for one or two thousand dollars, and you make a movie.”
“The dream of true democratization of cinema is here,” Tretbar continued. “That was the battle cry of 1968. Now it is in the hands of everybody.” However, Tretbar said there is a downside to this.
“Festivals like South by Southwest or Sundance used to have 600 or 700 films submitted for 150 spots. Now they have 20,000 films submitted every year for 150 spots.”
Tretbar said his friends who work at the festivals had hoped that as the total number of films increases, so too would the number of good or better films. “But in fact, the total number of good films has remained fairly consistent,” he said.
Because of so many films being made today, Tretbar said it is a buyer’s market, and distribution is challenging. Actually making the film is easier.
“I still have the romantic hope that we can make Minneapolis a cinema center, a thriving and creative place,” Tretbar said. He acknowledged that Austin, TX, is the strongest rival right now that has succeeded in some of the things Minneapolis is trying to do.
“We are told that what we need is a hit, and we would like that, too. I’m optimistic because there are a lot of fine people working here, and it’s a great place to live.”