Photo via Indigo Moon Film Festival
Lonesome - Tony K Hall
Tony K Hall is a first-time film director based in Milwaukee. As a man with a love for film, Hall has worked as a production assistant and assistant director for various short films and YouTube videos. He has written as well as directed an unreleased short film, and routinely writes film reviews that he privately shares via forums with his friends and family.
Lonesome, a romantic narrative that combines the genres of art-house, indie-film and classic cinema. It marks the first feature-length film for the director, winning the Best Independent Film award with the National Independent Film Festival-NIFA Awards in Appleton and being awarded Best Feature Film for July 2021 at Around International Film Festival in Berlin, Germany to be shown in December 2021. With the COVID-19 pandemic nearly derailing the project, Lonesome has been in the making for quite some time, being filmed over the course of 26 months from October 2018 to December 2020.
I talked with Hall about his upcoming film, the artistry of independent filmmakers, and his hopes for the future.
Let’s dive right in—what inspired you to create this film? What is Lonesome about?
Lonesome is about each person’s individual search to find that one person that completes them that they can fall in love with. I wanted to tell a story that everyone can relate to; and trying to find the ‘one’ or your ideal partner is a search that everyone goes through. I also wanted to focus on just how lonely single life can be, especially if you are obsessed with that search for ‘the one.’
I enjoyed reading the tagline of the film: “A Girl, a Guy, and the Beach.” Is there any symbolism in this story? Any deeper meanings? Any cinematic elements you utilized to showcase a “love found, love lost” sort of tale? I feel like love stories always station themselves as sublime tragedies in the cinematic world. What is your take on romantic narratives and the ways they should be tailored, and depicted, for the screen?
The tagline “A Girl, A Guy, and the Beach” is actually a French New Wave Reference to the famous Jean Luc Godard quote “all you need for a movie is a girl and a gun.” So, the tagline is actually a reference to filmmaking itself—that sometimes all you need is a girl, a guy, and a beach and you can create an intricate story around those simple things.
In regards to cinematic elements and how to tailor a romance for the screen—I have always felt that romances do not need to be either sublime tragedies or uplifting cheerful endings—that true romance always falls somewhere in between. I wanted to focus on the small details of discovering common ground, and experiencing new things as a couple that will bring a couple closer together. It’s the everyday small things that we encounter that shape our romantic spirit. Lonesome focuses on this daily grind to make our ideal relationship something that is achievable.
Are there any personal experiences that inspired this film?
The personal experiences are more related to my observations of my hometown, Milwaukee. I feel Milwaukee has an unrecognized romantic spirit that I wanted to bring out. The city sometimes is given the nickname ‘Small-waukee’ and a lot of couples that get together are really simple ‘guy/girl next door’ type of stories. People meet through happenstance and find that just the common denominator of living in the same neighborhood, or on the same block, or frequenting the same establishments has much more to do with ‘hitting it off’ with someone than most people would acknowledge.
Each neighborhood, or even each hangout has its own personality, and so if you are on a search for that special someone you will find more in common with people at the places you enjoy the most. In addition, oftentimes, meeting someone in happenstance you will come to find that you actually know several people in common, even if you weren’t introduced by someone you know, and it is truly a small world.
What are some of the challenges of being an independent filmmaker? Has the pandemic in any way affected your creating process(es)?
There are many different ways to make an independent film, and many different ways to financially structure your project. This was a passion project in the strictest sense that I knew that the only way it was going to be completed was through straight will and fortitude. I was so blessed that the cast and crew agreed to go unpaid. But that also meant there was going to be relatively little scheduling structure as everyone involved would have to give priority to their own livelihoods before agreeing to a day of filming for Lonesome. In the beginning of the process, I was constantly questioned whether I really wanted to move forward using this model because sometimes it doesn’t work out.
Looking back, getting the budget to pay everyone upfront for a set month of scheduled filming would have cut down on how long the process took. When the pandemic hit, we were not finished with filming. Luckily, the Screen Actors Guild came out with a handbook on how to safely accomplish filming and we mimicked that protocol. However, the pandemic did affect that some scenes had to be cut, and some had to be modified/re-written just for us to get to a completed project. It is a small miracle that Lonesome was completed.
I see that Lonesome had been in the making for some time. How long did it take for you to complete this film? Were there any particular challenges you came across while filming it?
We started filming in October of 2018, and we had 16 separate days of filming from October 2018 to December 2020. So, 16 total days of filming over 26 months. The biggest challenge was scheduling when people would be available. The story itself takes place only over the course of a few months, so there was a concern that characters might not look the same over time, but we were luckily able to wrap before this became an issue.
Post-production was also challenging. It took quite some time as there was a lot of audio that needed to be re-dubbed which required renting out a sound studio. Much of Lonesome was shot outdoors and much of the original dialogue needed to be re-dubbed. Also, the majority of the movie is in B&W but there are some scenes that have color added in isolation that required there to be numerous editors to the different types of editing that were required; as well as some visual effects added. We finally had a version that was ready to be submitted to festivals in July 2021. In total it took 2 years 10 months to complete Lonesome (but there was a long delay due to COVID).
Let’s talk about the core of Lonesome. If you could describe the film in a nutshell—-whether it be with a word, a phrase, or an emotion—how would you describe it? What does Lonesome mean to you?
Cute. The people who have seen Lonesome have called it one of the cutest films they have ever seen.
Lonesome is an ode to classic cinema, French new wave cinema, and silent films. What in particular drew you to these film styles? What genres do you usually focus on?
I have always felt that in order for a film to be successful, it needs to mold several genres together in a way that hasn’t quite been done before in order for it to have that stand-out uniqueness to it. I originally envisioned Lonesome to be a short silent film when I first started writing the script. But as the writing went along, I found that it would be fun to make a movie that starts as a silent, but then progressively gets more talkative—in a way to be an ode to the films that came out right at the beginning of the sound era, and at the end of the silent era.
Next, I was using Jean Luc Godard’s film Breathless (1960) as a model, particularly in the ways in which it was shot in black and white, how it was shot on the streets with a handheld camera, with all natural lighting and location shooting. So once the film style became apparent, it was as if we were shooting a new wave film that is an homage to silent film, early talkies, and classic cinema.
What drew me to want to do a silent is how animated the acting can be, and how the photography has to take over to make the story captivating. It was this concept of high art that drew me to these film styles.
The Eau Claire International Film Festival describes the film as an “old fashioned love story shot in the streets of Milwaukee,” one that pays “homage to classic films,” including that of silent cinema. Woody Allen’s Manhattan is also mentioned as a source of inspiration. Expand on that for me—what elements from the silent era did you employ for this film? Were there any other cinematic eras, elements, or influences that you drew from? What aspects, if any, from Allen’s work did adopt for this particular feature?
In regards to elements from the silent era, several times we employed experimenting with the frame rates (but very subtly) to give the action a quick silent film style result. There are also a lot of scenes that required physical acting that you would see in silent films; and so the story in several scenes is being moved forward by the actors’ physical activity in their acting.
In regards to Manhattan, the opening sequence of Lonesome has many grand city shots that were captured by drone to emphasize the setting of a big city with a small town and classical feel. The opening sequence was influenced heavily by Manhattan as we were trying to make Milwaukee itself stand out as one of the main “characters” of the film.
You mention that many first-time directors harbor the dream of “trying to make the next ‘no budget’ feature that [will] become a cult hit,” and that the creation of Lonesome was rooted in that wave of spirit. Talk to me about what went down behind the camera. What were your creative processes like during production? What were some of the benefits and setbacks of bringing your ideas to life?
A lot of the creative process was dealing with the fact that we were just showing up in public and turning the camera on and getting right into the action. I wanted to shoot this way, and with a handheld camera to give the film an authenticity that you don’t get on controlled sets. I kept an extremely detailed shot list to ensure that we would be getting exactly what we needed due to being in an uncontrolled environment.
The other people involved on this project that had more experience in filmmaking were rightly questioning this method because many times when you aren’t on a controlled set, footage can become unusable due to many different factors. For example, people interfering with a scene. Due to those potential setbacks, we just needed to be sure to have a very clear plan and a very detailed shot list. The benefit is that we were able to achieve an authenticity that we never could have, had we been on a closed set.
Tell me a little more about the artistic trajectory of the film and how you worked on merging several filming styles together on camera.
There are a lot of little neat artistic details sprinkled throughout Lonesome. Playing with frame rates and time duration was one thing I had envisioned would give the film a classic feel and a silent film style feel. Next, there are two major scenes in which we experiment with the film technique known as ‘step-printing’. This was enacted to give the character an isolation effect compared to the world whizzing by around him, so that the audience is focused on the character’s emotion and isolation from the world around him. Step-printing is similar to a time lapse, but actually something quite different.
I had the lead actor act in slo-mo, I had the camera film in slo-mo but when putting the footage into post, the time was sped up so it looks like the actor is acting in regular time. This creates a really cool isolation effect that adds to the dramatic feel of the scenes.
Next, we also implemented what we ended up nicknaming on set as the SPQs or Super Quick Pan. There are two scenes that are solely dialogue driven that I felt needed to be spruced up because these scenes happen at a lull in the action. I advised the cinematographer to motion the camera like a painter employing a swift paint brush as it moved from one character to the other. It gives an added artistic touch to what could have been observed to be just a typical dialogue scene.
When and where a film is set is usually very important to how it is played out and interpreted by its audiences. Is there a reason why you set your film in Milwaukee? How does the city of Milwaukee change the meaning of the film? What does this specific location give to the film? What does it take away? In your eyes, would the story be somewhat different if it was shot and placed elsewhere? What in particular about the city of Milwaukee did you want to highlight through this film?
Lonesome is really supposed to be a kitchen sink, everyday type of story. So, it doesn’t necessarily have to take place in Milwaukee. However, I still wanted Milwaukee to look like the city that I know it to be—one that has an unnoticed romanticism about it. Every city is unique and so if Lonesome was set somewhere else you could technically have the same plot and the same emotions but you wouldn’t get the coolness and big city/small town dichotomy that we were able to achieve in this film.
Are there any other projects that you are currently working on?
There are several other projects that I have coming up in the hopper that I wish I could give more attention to, so I am only loosely giving them attention when I can. They include adapting a novel about an eco-terrorist planning an attack on a corporation; a feature script about young adults experiencing the aftermath of a hurricane; and a feature script about a young romance occurring in the final days of the video store era. I also want to be available for other creative friends that need my help on their projects. At this time, I can’t get too specific.
What message do you want to get across with your work, if any?
That I have the promise and talent to be a great director and auteur as well as an excellent script writer.
Lastly, what surprises you the most about your work?
That Lonesome for the most part turned out to be how I originally envisioned it.
Lonesome will make its online premiere with the Indigo Moon Film Festival in Fayetteville, NC, held Oct. 9-15. Screenings for Lonesome can be viewed in person or streamed virtually.
Tickets and more information can be found here:
watch.eventive.org/imff2021/play/6137bc05ff47f60070b27015
