It’s classic, the coming-of-age story, though in the case of the short film Somos las bolas we more closely note the circumstances, considering that is that director Andrew Edmark has just recently walked out of that tenuous stage himself. Commenting with patience and a willingness to poke fun at the seriousness with which the teenage years are often taken, 19-year-old Edmark crafts this first effort with ambition and spirit, if not at all times technical ease. A glimpse at the life of one confused, quiet teen as he attempts to reach out to a saucy love interest and his ping-pong playing comrades, Somos las bolas both parodies and whole-heartedly embraces all it is to “grow up”. “You’ve got these kids who are pretty much dealing with adult issues: sex, love, losing, winning. But, they are still kids, so it’s like, “Does this even matter?” Edmark asks. “Teenage years do matter as far as personality shaping. You’re influenced by what you do and how you do it in high school, but usually social things like this, in the grand scheme of things, shouldn’t impact your future.”

Funny then that Edmark himself should so early on actively set out to achieve his own ideal of the future. With $40 donations scrounged up for food and equipment borrowed on his good merit, Edmark, in line with so many independent filmmakers, made Somos las bolas on little else but sheer tenacity. As he puts it: “The coolest thing about indie filmmaking these days is that the more you can get without paying, the more you appreciate it, the harder you work and the more creative you can be.”

With the short film now out on DVD, Edmark here talks about adapting stories for screen, why he’s not so hip on On the Lot and his penchant for erring on the side of curiosity.

SM: Philip J. Reed is a friend of yours, and the short film comes out of a story that he originally wrote. When you began the scripting process, what were the challenges of going from the page to the screen?

AE: When we first had the idea to do it, we made it clear that I didn’t want to adapt the story word-for-word. He made it clear that this was my own; he wanted me to take his story, write a script from what I felt about it, change whatever I wanted, add whatever I wanted, emphasize other things that were mere sentences in the story. So, we made that clear right off the bat.

Phil didn’t help at all with the script. I showed him drafts, but he didn’t offer any critique or input…It took me about a month to get a treatment. Then, once he saw the treatment and said, “This is a good direction,” I felt confident to write the script. I wrote the script in a couple of weeks, and while I was doing that, I went around finding actors and writing around the actors.

SM: How did you go about casting?

AE: In high school, I had a lot of drama friends and did a lot of plays, so I had literally ten people at my feet, ready to act for me…I didn’t really do auditions. I’ve done auditions before, and I didn’t feel like working with people I didn’t know on my first movie. So, I just went to my friends, saying, “Would you be interested in playing this role? I have this role for you.”

SM: What particularly about (James Bleecker, Jr., who plays the lead role) were you drawn to?

AE:…Jimmy fits this character perfectly. His real personality—he’s not shy, and he knows how to talk to people. But, he can get real serious about certain relationships. He’s always been really into girls, trying to get them, but he never really was successful. So, it was like, “I’ve got the perfect role for you, Jimmy. You can play a loser again.”

SM: You shot on a Canon XL2, and I wanted to know a little about the choices with cinematography that you made. Even in the first shot, our world is turned around…How did you approach that?

AE: I like breaking the rules of composition. [In that first shot], (the main character’s) upside down, in the top center. That was a shot I had seen pretty much the first day I read the story. I hadn’t even thought about making a movie of it, but whenever I read something, my brain makes it into a movie…The reason I supplanted it in between pretty much every scene was because people don’t know what it is. “Oh, he’s just lying there thinking, narrating,” Then you get to the final scene, and you realize, “Hey, he’s lying there because this happened to him.”

SM: The other section I wanted to talk about in terms of it being experimental both thematically and with regards to cinematography is the car scene between (actors James Bleecker, Jr. and Abby Van Gerpen.) We’ve got the mix of these extreme close-ups of the eye and the narration of his character wanting to be with her.

AE: That was controversial scene too. My friend Harry, who pretty much acted as producer when he could, was like, “Well, in the story, (the narrator and Beth) don’t kiss, and nothing happens. But, I think we should change that. I think they should kiss.” Then the thing was that Abby, who played Beth, was dating (Brandt Curtis), who played Andy, and when he read the script, he was like, “Wait a minute. I don’t want Jimmy to kiss Abby. I’m not comfortable with that.”

I finally wrote out the kiss and put it back how I wanted it. It’s like, “Okay, this guy, this narrator wants her so bad. He sits here and stares at her. He has the perfect chance to make his move, and he doesn’t.” I think that’s better than having them actually kiss because that’s what people expect.

What I wanted to do in the scene by fixating on their eyes was to really punch in the effect that: he’s staring at her, she’s staring at him, they’re locked in this moment, he stops time to do this—because that’s what he would do if he was actually making this movie. I just wanted to get that effect that even though they’re in this moment,—it’s almost uncomfortable because you’ve got these long takes on their eyes, and he’s just talking about, “What am I going to do? How is this going to feel?”— it’s like, “Okay, just do it already.” I just wanted to drive that in.

That was another thing we had to shoot later…So, if you look at the shot of Jimmy, you can tell that his hair is actually a lot longer in that shot. That’s a little cool thing to notice.

SM: Now, you’d sent a package out to On the Lot.

AE: When I heard about it, I had two weeks to put something together and submit it before the deadline. The movie wasn’t quite finished; I’d just gotten the soundtrack; I hadn’t even color-corrected yet. I put this montage together of scenes, sent it in and got pretty good feedback.

The thing with On the Lot is that they treated everyone so poorly—the way they handled notifications and how the site worked. We’re giving them content to put on the show. The filmmakers, who are the ones responsible for the show even working—we are treated like we owe them something, and they don’t owe us anything. There are even groups out there now that have started because people were so angry about how On the Lot treated these hopeful filmmakers.

Now, the show, you watch it, and you’ve got all these people, who yeah, they’re interesting personalities, but I personally don’t think that what they make is the best. They’re talented people, but out of 10,000 people, they come up with these 12 filmmakers that make mediocre films? I’m hearing they’ve had to cut back the show and times…so, I guess it’s a blessing in disguise that I didn’t go anywhere with that show.

SM: Why is it that you want to be a filmmaker?

AE: Since I was four or five—I’m of the generation where you have VHS, TV and now DVD—movies were always readily available to me, and my dad always liked watching them. I just grew up in movieland.

I can’t pinpoint exactly when I decided to be a filmmaker, but I think right around Lord of the Rings was when I was really fascinated with how films are made. Peter Jackson comes with Lord of the Rings, shoots 11 months, makes three films. The way he created a new way of filmmaking, I got drawn into that. After that, I was like, “This is what I want to do with my life.” Since then, I’ve scraped together money to get cameras, scoured Web sites about how to do things, from there I’ve made contacts and done everything I could to make a film.

At this point I don’t see myself doing anything else. When I was a kid, I’d say, “I want to be a doctor. I want to be an astronaut,”—all the typical things. Now that I look at it, I wouldn’t be happy doing anything other than film or photography.

I feel like I can tell some great stories, just do some cool things with film, just entertain. I hope to entertain people.

SM: The entertainment value of the short is one that depends on the intimate. Do you think you’ll always be drawn to telling those intimate stories?

AE: I enjoy watching blockbuster films and simple fluff, light plots, but I think a movie is much more worth watching if you can put yourself in a character’s shoes. Even if you don’t relate to them, at least you know exactly how they are feeling. You get much more out of a movie if you are feeling the same emotions. I like to make things like that, where even if you don’t know how someone feels, even if you don’t know how someone would react to this, you at least see how someone does it and emulate their feelings.

With how I do some of the camerawork, some of the dialogue, I like creating a whole umbrella, where you can stand under it for all of 90-minutes and feel like you saw what’s at home.

I’m not opposed to doing action films, horror films, having fun, but there will always be a need to create depth in film. You go to a movie number one: to be entertained, but if you can take something else away—a feeling, an emotion or even a lesson—it’s that much more worth it.

SM: The story, beyond being intimate, is also one of uncertainty. What is it that you were drawn to about leaving the film on that note?

AE: It’s almost cyclic. If you look at it, this sort of thing could have happened to the narrator four or five times. It’s the whole point about (the friends) getting a game, the person loses at it and then they get a new game. So, (the film) is almost saying, “What if this has happened before?” and this is just Step 10 in his life of going around in circles. At the end of the story, you play with the fact that, “Oh, maybe he’s learned something. He’s got this whole monologue at the end.” But, you’ve got the character Bob who turns and says, “It’s only a game.” You’re kind of left to think about what that means. Is the narrator’s life a game, and once you get to a bad spot, you start over again?

I like to leave the viewer with, “What happens to the narrator?” In the story, nothing but bad happens to him, but if you’re the hopeful type, maybe you say, “This is the last straw. Maybe he turns his life around.” Or, is this going to happen to him again and again and again until he’s forty and living on his own?...You could create eight different tangents of this guy’s life.

It’s so important, but he’s in high school. He’s just a kid. This could be meaningless in a couple of years, or this whole movie could show the point in his life where he becomes a hermit, he doesn’t do anything with his life or he could kill himself. I don’t know…I wouldn’t do that always with a movie. I like to wrap-up endings sometimes, but with this in particular, it creates conversation; it creates curiosity.

That was a big theme—was curiosity too. I’d do things in the beginning, like, “Well, why is he doing that? What does he mean by this? Why is he talking like this?” If you create curiosity, (the audience) will want to watch it to the end, just to see what happens. If the ending doesn’t quite tell you things, it makes you think about it.

I like movies where I watch it, and the next day, I’ll think about it again. Then the next day I’ll think about it again, then I want to watch it, and I’ll keep thinking about it. The movies that stay with you are the best I think.

For more information visit www.somoslasbolas.aedmark.com

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