Producer's Log

Producer’s Log!

About Me: Hi! I’m Bob Pondillo, writer/producer/director of “Would You Cry If I Died?” I’m grateful for your interest in Honey Bee Hill Films and my role in it.

While I enjoy and get much satisfaction in making short narrative movies, my first love (and full time job) is being a college Professor at Middle Tennessee State University near Nashville (www.mtsu.edu). There I’m Robert J. Pondillo, Ph.D., where I teach in the College of Mass Communication (www.mtsu.edu/~masscomm/) in the Department of Electronic Media Communication (www.mtsu.edu/~emc/). I’m also on faculty in the University Honors College (honors.web.mtsu.edu/) and in the Mass Communication Graduate Program (www.mtsu.edu/%7emcgrad/faculty.html).

For more than 30-years I was employed as a writer, producer, and on-air talent in both television and radio. I worked for some of the largest media groups on the planet including Paramount Pictures TV, Los Angles (www.paramount.com/television/), The Voice of America, Washington DC (www.voa.gov/index.cfm), and NBC radio, New York. If you’d care to hear a few of my “classic” radio air checks, point your browsers to <www.reelradio.com/haber/bobjames.html> There you’ll find a web page of my old work curated by my wonderful Canadian friend, Dan Haber. He’s thoughtfully preserved my past radio work from WGAR, Cleveland, WNBC, New York, and the nationally syndicated American Comedy Network, a firm I co-founded with Dale Reeves, David Lawrence, Mechele George, and Andy Goodman in the 1980s. The website itself –www.reelradio.com – is the brainchild of “Uncle Rick” Irwin and contains hundreds of air checks from the Top 40 era! Also click on <www.440.com/namesp2.html> for a complete rundown and timeline of all the radio and TV stations at which I’ve worked – and there were a bunch of ‘em!

If you’d like to read some of my more current academic work – I study postwar TV censorship – please check out the journal Television Quarterly, The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences online publication at <www.tvquarterly.net/index2.html> or just Google “Bob Pondillo.”

Notes on the movie—

The Story: The notion for this film was fleshed out more than 20-years ago at the Ohio City home of my friend and now Los Angeles-based syndicated talk show host David Lawrence (http://davidlawrenceshow.com/). It actually began as a short comedy sketch for the Emmy Award winning Cleveland Comedy Company television program, a show I produced for WEWS-TV, Cleveland, from 1979-81. I always knew there was potential in the sketch, but, for reasons I truly can’t recall (c’mon it was the late ‘70s!), it was cut from the show. I saved the idea and reworked it as a stage play about a dozen years later. Then, when I had the opportunity to work with Gemini Productions in 2005, I revised the idea, this time turning it into a short screenplay. For the purposes of TV sketch comedy the work had to be exaggerated and made a bit one-dimensional. For stage performance there was a little more time to explore character and motivation, but the actors were couch-bound and confined to a minimalist set. Without a doubt, the story’s most liberated form is the motion picture. In this movie version an audience can sense greater dramatic tension – and by adding movement, close-ups and music, an entire new level of emotional involvement is achieved.

The Music: Speaking of music, I must mention and commend the superb work of our composer Rolin Mains. We were so lucky to work with him! Music in “Would You Cry . . .” is the heartbeat of this movie, its essential engine of emotion.

Before Rolie wrote the main theme, we used temporary background music to provide pace and feel for the opening and closing camera work. We picked an old church hymn, “In the Bleak mid-Winter,” as a sort of an interim musical template. After the film was edited, we erased the hymn and added the music you now hear on the DVD and website. Rolie’s task was to conjure up an original theme that evoked sentiment and emotion, but would not compromise or overshadow the actors or story. The music couldn’t be too dark, too florid or too saccharine; it had to “be there” yet be unobtrusive. And I wanted it to be more then “under scoring;” I felt we needed a recognizable, humable theme. The music you hear in this film – the haunting and evocative “Peggy’s Waltz” – is the result. To me, this lingering musical work aches with poignancy. Rolie calls it a simple little lullaby. I call it inspired. Combine it with picture, story and action, and its power to emotionally move a viewer is undeniable. It’s a masterful job, Rolie. Thanks, man!

The Actors: The lead actors, Cara Francis and Tarkan Dospil, are two of my former students from MTSU, and they both do superb jobs playing Peggy and Denny respectively. I’m honored they chose to make “Would You Cry . . .” their first dramatic film effort. Cara is just as funny and off-beat as Peggy, the character she plays. Tark is quiet, focused and a lot less clueless than his character Denny. Both infuse their work with genuineness and believability. They were my first and only choices for these roles, and I think they truly astonish in this little movie. Be watching for these two! With a few breaks, Cara and Tark could light up the world with their talent!

The Gemini Production Group: I have always admired the technical and aesthetic brilliance of Matthew and Scott Pessoni, collectively known as the Gemini Production Group. These two young men were positively great when they were students at MTSU (where I first met them), and they have now taken their amazing gifts to the next level. Quality and detail is king at Gemini Productions and it shows, especially where it counts – up there on the screen! I’ve always wanted to work in a creative partnership with Matt and Scott and finally in late 2004, an opportunity presented itself. We met over dinner, discussed the script and ways to shoot it, and set a date – January 3, 2005. We were on set from 7 a.m. until 12:13 a.m. the next day. Missing sleep was worth it!

Special CGI Effects: I’m not a big believer in using CGI when “real” effects can be added mechanically on set. My fear is the audience will be drawn to the effect alone and miss the point trying to be made by using it in the first place! Well, we had a real problem with Denny and the toaster in this film. The muffin, supposedly caught, was to be burning in the opening kitchen scene. However, we could not get the smoke to come out of the toaster and ”read” for the camera. We tried putting a candle in the toaster (which Denny blew out just before we called “action!”) It didn’t work. We filled a pipe with tobacco and set it behind the toaster – and while curls of smoke drifted upward, the camera still “saw” nothing. So, I agreed the Pessoni’s could “fix it in post.” I had my doubts – but fix it they did! Matthew shot special green screen “smoke” one afternoon, and later his brother Scott used his technical wizardry to marry smoke and toaster to make a realistic composite shot. When we open on Denny, smoke appears to belch from the toaster and dissipate in enough time to not call attention to itself. Wow! You guys rock!

Why shoot black and white? Shooting in black and white wasn’t my first choice. I wanted the film to have a light, color washed look. I was looking to use the old photographs as a binding, complementary feature for both the appearance of the film and the narrative. You’ll note the opening shot after credits is on a photo of Peggy and Denny’s wedding picture, and the closing shot before credits is the same photo. I liked the elegance and symmetry of that, and I wanted to slowly turn their color wedding photo into sepia tone, making it look like the other wedding photos of long dead relatives we featured. I wanted to subtly suggest that Peggy and Denny, too, have now joined the ranks of all those who had gone before them. Mathew Pessoni, the production designer, while appreciating my artistic notions, nonetheless strongly suggested we shoot the entire thing in black and white, period. After all, shooting in color means different lighting techniques, plus more costly wardrobe and make-up considerations, and we were on a very tight budget and shooting schedule. Matt thought the same dramatic effect could be achieved (and money and time saved!) if we just went B&W. I was a bit hesitant at first, but clearly he was right. The movie’s real power comes from its austere visual look as it deals with stark human issues. Both the presentation and the narrative integrate quite nicely, too. I think we made the right decision.

The Set: The movie was shot at my Murfreesboro, TN home on January 3, 2005. We started at 7 a.m. and logged the last shot around 12:13 a.m. the next day. We shot in the kitchen, hallway, bedroom, and living room. The final couch scene was filmed a little before midnight – Matthew put a 5000-watt quartz movie light outside on the porch to simulate the sun. Many are amazed when I mention that. But the lighting combined with the fog effect really created a familiar and believable morning atmosphere. My wife tells me the simulated “fog” that was used in every scene, left a light powdery substance all over the house and furniture – a fact she was none too happy about! BTW, all the old photos used in the production are that of my maternal and paternal grandparents, my mom and dad, and my wife’s paternal great-grandparents, and her mom and dad. Edie, my sweet wife, did all the still photography of Peggy and Denny’s “wedding” about three days or so before principle filming. Also of interest: We tried to keep old photos of some kind in as many shots as we could in the movie – if you look close you’ll almost always see a corner of a frame or blurred pictures in the background. Why? In an effort to tie memory, the passage of time, and a sense of life’s fleeting temporality throughout the film. I know, it’s a subtle thing…but it works for me!

“The Making of . . . “ featurette: While we were filming “Would You Cry . . .” I made sure a Cannon GL2 digital camera was nosing around to document the arrival, set up, and behind the scenes intrigue. I’m not much of a cameraperson—I wish I had more interest in technical gear—which explains why so much of the featurette (seen only on the DVD) looks like home video. But we were going for that look, really—the contrast is helpful! You can see the professional sheen the actual movie has compared to the rough, real-time “TV look” of the documentary. Many of us took turns shooting, actually—you can only blame my shaky work up to a point! Tark Dospil (Denny), Matthew and Scott Pessoni, PA Olivia Lovell, and our key grip and “fog man” Scott Jackson are also guilty of being “camera operators.” By the end of the day we had more than four hours of exposed documentary video!

While the actual movie edit was going on, I was shot-sheeting and pulling together a coherent narrative for “The Making of . . .” featurette. I knew I didn’t want to turn it into a Ken Burns-type documentary—it had to move much faster than that—and I was sure I didn’t want a narrator. I wanted it to have a real voyeuristic quality, as if the audience just peaked in every few hours to see how the production was going. So, I decided to make the visual narrative very linear…start at the beginning and just go through the day until the last shot of the film. I sketched out a plan and brought all the pieces to another one of my MTSU students, Bart Camarata, for the absolutely critical job of editing. The star of this documentary is really Bart—he’s an amazing “can do” kind of guy! Knowing what and how much video to use is essential in telling this kind of docu-story—and Bart understood that. He knew exactly what I was after in terms of look and pace, and he delivered it in spades! Bart and I had three long edit sessions— about five hours a piece—and a shorter “tweaking” session. The featurette was turning out great and Bart always had excellent suggestions, but he felt there was something missing. He sensed we needed some thread to tie all these disparate scenes together. That’s when I hit on the idea of adding time cues. You’ll notice we occasionally super what time it was when a given scene was being documented—the crew arrived at 7 a.m., the kitchen scene began at 9:15, that sort of thing. I think this technique gives the viewer a real sense of temporal passage—like watching a flower open in time lapse. Anyway, Bart was central to making this little doc come alive and really gave it the humor and playfulness it has. When you watch “The Making of . . .” you’re meeting Bart…and his funny, warm, enthusiastic personality! He’s a wonderful director and storyteller in his own right, and one hell of an editor. Thanks Bart-man! “You da bomb, dawg!” See it’s that kind of lingo that keeps me popular with the young people. Fo shizzle.

Origin of “Honey Bee Hill Films”

To those who have written asking where we got the name, “Honey Bee Hill
Films,” here’s the spiffy on that: Edie (my wife) and I own 30-acres of the
prettiest rolling farmland in the Midwest. Our property sits in rural dairy
country in a little town called Black Earth, WI. It’s topped with active
beehives, hence the name “Honey Bee Hill,” and it’s where Edie and I plan to
retire. Our hill is a stunning, peaceful spot surrounded by thick cool woods,
open prairies and magnificent vistas of the lush Central Wisconsin valley
below.

It is this special place that inspired the name of our group, Honey Bee Hill
Films.

In the 1989 Oscar nominated movie "Field of Dreams," Shoeless-Joe Jackson (Ray
Liotta), as he emerges from a mystical cornfield, asks Ray Kinsella (Kevin
Costner), “Is this heaven?” Costner replies, “No, it’s Iowa.” Well, Honey
Bee Hill may not be heaven . . . but you can sure see it from there!

Bob Pondillo

Writer/producer/director/drone

Honey Bee Hill Films