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 Banner by Wes Vance |
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Bart Mastronardi is the perfect example of not having a lot to make an effective film. The high school teacher with an extensive theater background has worked as a cinematographer over the course of the past few years, working with indie favorites as Alan Rowe Kelly and Adam Barnick, with his students forming his crew out of a film club he started. Now, Bart has tapped all of his resources into his directorial feature, VINDICATION, a complex horror/thriller about how guilt can overcome you and take over your emotions. In addition, Bart has recently wrapped up shooting Alan Rowe Kelly's latest A FAR CRY FROM HOME as well as Stolis Hadjicharalambous' film CROSSED. After my set visit in May, I caught up with Bart and his crew again for an in depth discussion about VINDICATION, his crew, and why he has a fondness for the FRIDAY THE 13TH series.
COLONEL’S CRYPT: How are you doing Bart? BART MASTRONARDI: I’m good Scott, how are you? CC: I’m fine, I’d like to first thank you for inviting me onto the set of VINDICATION back in May. I had a great time. What is VINDICATION about? BM: VINDICATION is the story of a boy who’s trying to find himself. He attempts suicide and that obviously is unsuccessful, and his whole world shatters. His reality is no longer what it seems to be. He’s on the search of finding who he really is and it has dire consequences that come with. Thematically speaking, it’s the story of a young man trying to find his identity in the world. I just happened to set it with a horrific background which I think makes it a little more interesting cinematically speaking. Our lead actor is Keith Fraser who I’ve worked with numerous times so he was perfectly cast in this one. Keith Fraser is a leading actor. He is a director’s dream of an actor to work with because he steps up to the challenge of acting and is willing to push his abilities. You can look into his eyes and see Nicolas' pain. I feel bad for Nicolas' character because Keith takes the character there. Keith opens himself up to give Nicolas his emotions and soul. It is impressive just how dedicated Keith is to the film. He has been on board since day one and there is no other actor that can portray Nicolas but Keith Fraser. The way Scorsese works with DeNiro and DiCaprio is the way I want to continue working with Keith. It is a tough business but Keith has the looks but it’s the talent that will keep him going. CC: You’ve spent the better part of the past year shooting this film as writer, director, and cinematographer, and you’re also serving as producer, financing the film on your own. How difficult has it been over the course of the past year making this film? BM: The film itself is not difficult to make. I was able to assemble probably the best cast and crew I could’ve possibly gotten. They work 150 percent when they walk on the set. There’s nothing that I’ve ever asked that they said no to. They’ve been more than generous and more than eager to work on the film. It’s a great camaraderie to work with. In terms of financing the film, let’s face it; money doesn’t grow on trees so it’s not as easy to have access to. However, I do play it smart where whatever paychecks I get from my normal job, I save enough for VINDICATION. I also work as a cinematographer on the outside of being a teacher so I have an income coming in that way. Sometimes finding the financial resources can be problematic but it’s been really good to me for the past year because I’ve managed to micro manage my budget. Money has to go to feeding my cast and crew really good because they are going to be satisfied by the end of the day. Money has to also be put aside for certain makeup effects, certain lighting effects, and locations, all of that. You have to learn how to budget the film itself, and I’ve learned all of that by doing VINDICATION. CC: VINDICATION started out as a short film. Do you want to explain the short film and how it led to becoming a feature? BM: Sure. The short film VINDICATION is really more of a character, played again by Keith Fraser, who is a schizophrenic. In the short film he is haunted by the guilt of killing his partner who they’ve robbed this young girl and murdered her. All of a sudden, his guilt manifests into this being and what we wind up realizing is that this being wears the same mask Keith wore when he robbed this girl. It’s about when guilt manifests itself into reality which is the same theme as the feature but the characters are different here in that regard. CC: Who are some of the other actors involved with this project? BM: Other actors that I’ve worked with is Alan Rowe Kelly, the director of THE BLOOD SHED and A FAR CRY FROM HOME which I’ve worked on, he plays a great character named Urbane, who’s a blind seer. Zoë Daelman Chlanda, who’s a wonderful actress, she was also in I’LL BURY YOU TOMORROW and THE BLOOD SHED, plays Nicolas’ mother Cassandra. Jerry Murdock, who I’ve known for over ten years from theater, also from Alan’s THE BLOOD SHED and I’LL BURY YOU TOMORROW is Nicolas’ father. Those are the Alan Rowe Kelly people. Of my own cast, Keith Fraser is our lead. Richard Wenzel, he plays Derek, stepbrother to Nicolas. We have Michael Gingold, managing editor of FANGORIA Magazine, in our cast. Miguel Lopez, who’s doing a fantastic job playing this character Michel Rodriguez, Nicolas’ friend. Henry Boriello is acting and doing makeup effects. Christopher Otis is playing this obscure character called the Timekeeper. I had to step into the role of Dante at the last minute because an actor bowed out. I also play a character called Konscious. That was very interesting, I like Konscious. If you look at it, it’s almost Nicolas’ conscience itself. It’s spelled like its pronunciation. CC: You were the cinematographer on THE BLOOD SHED and I’LL BURY YOU TOMORROW, directed by Alan. Now you’re directing him in your own film. How was the difference between being directed by Alan and now directing him yourself? BM: First and foremost, both Alan and I have a mutual respect for each other’s craft. When I’m a cinematographer, I’m there as a cinematographer and not as a director. I will offer my suggestion and he’s so gracious to take them. He does such a great job with all of us. I know my job as a DP is to light the sets, get the best camera angles to enhance the story a lot. By doing that, it makes it a much more creative atmosphere for all of us. When Alan is on my set as an actor, again there’s that mutual respect. There’s no ego involved so I’ll take any suggestions in case something’s not going in the direction that my vision is. Alan is the same way in taking those ideas and going with it. In this sort of industry, you want to have that respect with each other. You know your limitations. You don’t want to set boundaries. You want to be able to say “OK, this is my job. This is your job.” If I see something a little bit different, Alan is the type that allows that to happen. It makes the job and the project that much more fun to work on. You know that you’re not being worked on with ego driven personalities. CC: Being that you’ve been working on VINDICATION for over a year, has there been any situation in terms of the blood and gore factor that have made people uncomfortable on set? The birth sequence with Cassandra comes to mind in one scene. BM: Well, the film is bloody and there is gore, but I’m not overdoing it. It really does come secondary to the story. We’ve never been grossed out by it or uncomfortable with it. We’ve actually had more fun with it than anything else. Does it become more uncomfortable later? When you’ve had it on for twelve hours it becomes very sticky and it stinks after a while. It is a makeup effect so you’ll eventually have to clean it up. I’m not so fond of working with some of the makeup effects because it is very messy and the take is over you have to clean it up and go do another take if you need it. On an independent film, you know you only have one to three takes to get it right. You really have to plan your shot out and if you mess it up, you have to spend fifteen to twenty minutes to clean it up before you shoot it again. On an independent film, you want to be able to have creative freedom but at the same time control the factors that are with that. Probably the most uncomfortable scene didn’t have any effects at all. It was a full nude scene from our lead actor and it was a bit uncomfortable because we had never gone that far with our actors before, but Keith was a complete professional and I couldn’t have asked for a better actor. I will work with that kid until the day I die. The last thing I want to do is exploit an actor in a titillating way. That’s not my job as a director or filmmaker. Other filmmakers do that and I totally understand that but I disagree how they do that. For my film, I did not want to exploit him. He’s a friend of mine, I’ve known him since he was a young kid, and he’s grown to be a young, mature adult as an actor. The last thing I wanted to do to him was exploit him. To deal with the sense of nudity, it’s a lot of talking and a lot of “why are we doing nudity here.” You wind up coming to realize that Nicolas’ character is raw once he takes the clothes off and you see the scars he has put on himself. You see how lonely and vulnerable the character is and there’s this sense of empathy that goes with him. The nudity leads to the suicide scene which shows more vulnerability. I don’t want to go too much into it because I don’t want to reveal too much of the plot, but the nudity is shown in a very tasteful, artistic way. You do see shots of various areas on his body. There’s no penis shots which is good (laughs). You are filming there and you’re like “I don’t wanna get any of that.” It’s tasteful like in WITNESS where Harrison Ford sees Kelly McGillis’ character, who’s an Amish woman, topless, and to see an Amish woman nude there’s a scene, and for the first time we see there’s a purpose for the nudity. That was how we approached it for Nicolas’ character. I had explained to Keith about it and he clearly understood and he said we could go this far. He is such a trooper and did it very well. The crew was nervous though (laughs). CC: What kind of crew did you establish for this and how is it working with them? BM: I go everywhere with my crew. I’ve worked with VIDAL SASSOON, Bravo TV, and with Alan Rowe Kelly. They’re always with me. Henry Boriello is always on makeup or usually my key grip. Dominic Sivilli is also a key grip. Stolis Hadjicharalambous is my assistant, always there helping. We have a lot of fun when we’re on set. They know that my job requires a lot of hands on help. It’s a lot of work so you want to assemble a crew that understands why they’re there. If they want to be a cinematographer, it’s good that they work on sets with other cinematographers, and then when they’re ready to go off on their own, you send them on their way. Case in point is with Stolis. Stolis up to now has proven that he simply loves editing. He understands the grammar of splicing two images together. I have known him since he was thirteen and he has been editing since he was fourteen. He has edited my films, his own work, other filmmakers work and he is so eager to want to work most of the time for hardly any pay, but that is changing as he has taken on more editing jobs, so he is very dedicated. I love working with people who are so passionate about what they do. The real test came when Stolis edited the short film of VINDICATION at the age of seventeen, that was great because he understood what I was looking for it the tone and images of the movie. I gave him the job because he understands and appreciates all movies and this is what he wants in life, so I figure I let him learn. Editing is easy for us because we’d throw ideas around and the film would just spring to life. He doesn’t just sit there to point and click the mouse. He is not a slave to a director. He really appreciates the value of a cut. That is important in movies, knowing when to cut. Since then Stolis has gone on to cut all my work and my reel, too. I joke with him I call him Thelma, after the great Thelma Schoonmaker, who collaborates with Martin Scorsese on all of his films. Stolis is the only editor for me on VINDICATION or any other work I do. Stolis has gone places in this business most twenty years olds are just starting to learn in film school. He is a true artist in the field of editing. CC: Let’s talk about your theater background. How did that prepare you in becoming a filmmaker? BM: I started when I was about 17 years old. I became an actor for a while. I started off in Community Theater which led to Off-Broadway stuff. I continued studying but I realized that acting wasn’t my forte. I loved being a director or producer or light the set, so I would fall back from acting and wound up doing more and more crew jobs. The theater was perhaps the best training ground I’ve ever gotten as a person who studies their craft. Movies has always been my passion since I was a kid, but filmmaking but it wasn’t accessible when I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, so I opted for the theater. In the theater, I learned acting, producing, directing, and lighting. It’s the primal source of where it all starts from. That’s what led me to making movies, and it helped me in how to break a script down, how to talk and work with actors, how to light, and asking questions. It’s also OK to make mistakes as long as you understand why you’re making those mistakes later on. The theater did teach me all of this. No school taught me that. School tries to fashion you to become what they want you to become because they don’t know any other way, but the theater says “this is how you are supposed to do it; it’s your way, what you believe and go for it.” That’s what the theater gave to me. I worked for the Spotlight Theater in Queens, a community theater, and they really gave me my start with training. CC: I know you have a certain fondness for the FRIDAY THE 13TH series as we have discussed in the past. What is it about this franchise that appeals so much to you? BM: I remember growing up as a kid, I didn’t watch them until 1984 when THE FINAL CHAPTER came out. I remember watching the commercials on television and being petrified of this character. I don’t know what is appealing about it because the stories are simplistic, but I think that’s a draw for me, because it is simplistic and the situation that these characters are in the wrong place at the wrong time. The character Jason Voorhees never really asked to be what he grew up to be and there’s a sense of empathy I feel for him. He’s that child that was never able to grow up because everything was taken away from him. He never understood as to why so his whole idea of life is bent on anger and rage. He’s a very repressed character. Most people would say it’s the great, gory effects on why they love the franchise. I always liked the actors; I thought the actors were very good in the films. I always enjoyed looking at the brand new faces coming into it. It was very gimmicky; the 3D one is just awesome. The first four are great because they are so visceral and raw. THE FINAL CHAPTER was the first one I saw in the theater. My father took me to see that. I remember it was Saturday the 14th, because it had opened the day before, Friday April 13th. The line was around the corner and I sat there petrified. My hands were glued to my face but I loved every minute of it. By the time it was done, I wanted to see it again. When it came out on VHS, I watched it over and over again. The series is great. The first four are great, JASON LIVES is wonderfully written by Tom McLoughlin. FREDDY VS. JASON was fun too. I loved them all, I think it’s such an interesting character, and I think Kane Hodder was the best Jason. CC: Other than CROSSED, what else is on the horizon for you? BM: I just got done doing a documentary for Bravo TV Network and Behindthechair.com called UNLOCKING THE HOPE, that’s a documentary with Vidal Sassoon, who’s helping raise money to build homes in New Orleans. I shot all the New York footage. I got to meet some wonderful, top hair designers doing that. It was interesting because it wasn’t a reality show; it was a documentary so I am in charge of that. That’s special as a bit of a director on that. They were wonderful people to work with. It was also outside the norm of the narrative world, I am extending my craft into helping people build their homes and hopefully get their life back on track. I’m also working on EVELYN STANDING with Adam Barnick. From what I understand, he’s working on the script and we shot a trailer for him about a year ago. It’s about a thirty second spot, I always keep it on my DP reel. It was a lot of fun. Adam’s great, I don’t get a chance to talk to him a lot now, but I e-mail him at times just to say hi. He always comes out and he’s very helpful. He loves the business and he loves film. He’s also that serious type of filmmaker which you’d never know from his sense of humor. CC: Where do you see the horror genre headed within the next few years? BM: I think it’s going to be really great or really bad. It depends on the filmmakers, where the stories come from and where you want to take it. So many people are so bent on having it so technical that they forget that the most important thing you need for an effective horror film is the story. We’ve all seen what happened to the slasher films of the 1980s. They added more dead teenagers into the act and they made more effects but then they started losing the story. It always starts with the story in the narrative film, and without it you have nothing. You go back to your great Greek tragedies and even MACBETH, the stories are fantastic. We still reading them centuries later. You’ve gotta back to the classics and say what makes them so timeless. Anybody can sit down and make a movie. How well and how creative you are with it, how much passion you put into it is going to determine how good the project will be. You don’t rush and make a movie because you’re going to see that on the screen. You want to be able to take your time with it as long as you’re able to have the budget to go with it. You don’t even need the money for it, it costs nothing to write. VINDICATION cost me nothing to write it, aside from two dollars for paper and I typed it up. It all begins with the story and I know for me it’s the most important thing. You have to find your characters. It took me a while to find the characters. I finally found Nicolas, I finally found Michel’s character. It was very interesting, I even found Alan Rowe Kelly’s character Urbane. It’s almost like method acting. You have to research it and find out why these characters do all these things. I come from the method background so I have that idea. When I write, I write that way. When I direct, I direct that way. I don’t push it to the point where people are annoyed by it, but it’s something in the back of my head that tells me OK and where do I have to go with it. I think if you take the craft seriously, giving it your all and studying it to enhance it and utilize the knowledge you have, Sir Francis Bacon said it best when the best proof is experience. If you do that, you’re going to have that great experience. If not and you’re going to give it a crappy job, then let it sit on the rest of the DVD shelves at Blockbuster Video. Like I said, anybody can make a movie, but you want your movie to stand the test of time. You have a responsibility as a filmmaker to really step up to the plate and make interesting stories. Those interesting stories will turn with great actors and great cinematography. You have to put it all together because it’s a collaborative effort. You can’t go in with an ego. It’s not all yours. It’s your editor’s, it’s your cinematographer’s, and it’s your actor’s. Then it becomes the public’s. CC: What advice do you have for aspiring filmmakers? BM: First get ride of any egos you have. That destroys your work. Look at the world around you and really see it, find what is interesting, or frightening, about it, then pick up the equipment and begin capturing those images by filming them. Truly study your craft by learning from the masters, the classics, the work that has changed our world, especially knowing your equipment and getting yourself out there in the world and do it. Whether it is directing, cinematography, producing, or even editing just go out there and do it with pure intention. Value your time so take action then you'll see what happens in your life. The choice is always up to the individual, so persevere with it. You have nothing to lose only to gain. Sit around you gain weight, but take action you define who you are. Good Luck! CC: What do you hope audiences get out of VINDICATION? BM: There’s so many things that you want an audience to come out with your film. I guess the one thing I want them to come out of this film is that they enjoy it and say it’s really good. Will a hundred percent enjoy it? No, I’m sure I’ll get my critics that dislike it but I want them to enjoy it. Another thing I want them to walk away with is that what I did with my cast and crew was that we added another sense of camaraderie that shows in the film and we took our time and effort into it. You walk away knowing it was a low budget film but we captured the essence of a truly good independent horror film. CC: Thanks for your time Bart. BM: Thank you for everything Scott and good luck with everything.
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