Christians in Cinema

Mark Freiburger graduated from the North Carolina School of the Arts in 2005, and has been a busy man since then. In the summer of 2007, he finished a four-year journey to create and direct his first feature length film Dog Days of Summer, just released on DVD from Anchor Bay Entertainment.

Fellow students at the film school helped rewrite the script, which was filmed using mostly teenagers and college students, which presented a unique set of challenges. Upon completion of his film, Mark met producer/director Gary Wheeler who brought him into a couple of projects based on books by author Robert Whitlow. I caught up with Mark as he was headed into Robert’s office to work on his latest project.

We thought it would be interesting to do sort of a dark modern-day allegory on the Garden of Eden.

Let’s start by talking about the film. You’ve been working on it for a long time, haven’t you?

Mark:    I wrote the first draft of the script when I was 19 and attending North Carolina School of the Arts. I wasn’t happy with it, so I brought in Travis Beacham and Christopher Waild to help. Chris is now a writer for the TV show NCIS, and Travis wrote the new Warner Brothers’ remake of Clash of the Titans that’s in production now.

They were in the screenwriting school at the time, and I tried to pick the most talented kids in the school at the time. When I asked them to rewrite the script for me, they came up with something completely new and fresh.

In retrospect, now that I know the business, I would have done it all completely differently. Instead of just writing something that I thought would be interesting to make, I would have looked at the market first and studied it before making any decisions on what I would be writing.

Film school doesn’t prep you for the business end, and don’t even really get you that well prepped as far as the writing and directing goes.

We thought it would be interesting to do sort of a dark modern-day allegory on the Garden of Eden. We had all these different characters set in this one town and that was the one idea that clicked. The townspeople’s secrets get exposed so it’s not a happy ending, which is kind of the nature of the Garden of Eden story anyway. So we thought it was cool, and we should run with that.

It was a huge learning experience, much more so than my four years of film school ever were.

Speaking of film school, there are people on both sides. Some would say you have to go to film school, others would say there’s no need. In retrospect, would you still go through film school?

Mark:    Yes, I would have. And the main reason is that I never could have made Dog Days without it. Film school doesn’t prep you for the business end, and doesn’t even really get you that well prepped as far as the writing and directing goes. But film schools are brilliant when it comes to actually teaching you how to physically make one that looks good and looks professional.

From that perspective, I was able to fool everybody that worked on the film. Everyone was still students on the crew. They were 18, 19, and on up, all making the film for basically nothing. So we were able to pull off the technical aspects of the film for practically no cost, which helped a lot.

You do learn all those skills in film school, and if you love the history of film, which I do, and you eat up every film that you can get your hands on, then it’s a great place as well. But if you’re looking to learn the business of film and the writing of films, then don’t go to film school.

It definitely has its useful purposes in some areas, but in my opinion, not the business area. And I feel like that’s a general feeling, and I’m not the only one who would say that. Other film school graduates would agree.

You made a great point about producing a professional-looking film, which is a tremendous challenge on a small budget.

Mark:    There are a lot of people with interesting stories to tell, but they don’t know the first thing about actually making a film, and when they are done, they’re horrendous to sit through. Sometimes the story can get you through, and sometimes it can’t. I think if you can get a good balance on those, it can be a beautiful thing. But definitely film school is not the be-all, end-all.

That’s the reality of most colleges and universities. You get out and think “No way am I ready for the real world!”

Mark:    That’s true. I wouldn’t say that we thought we were ready going in to make this film, but I would say our expectations were higher than they should have been. But you should always shoot for the moon anyway. It’s the kind of business where vision is everything, and if you don’t have a great vision, then what’s the point?

I think Will [Patton] is a brilliant character actor, and a brilliant Southern actor as well.

Has your vision for yourself and your career changed any since completing this film?

Mark:    I’ve been full-time on this film for about four years, and the amount of work and effort is immense. I know every film won’t be four years in the making, because obviously it takes more time to get that first one going because you’re figuring out what went wrong along the way.

Nonetheless, every film may take at least a year or two. I think one thing God has taught me is that I just need to make sure that whatever I set out to make, especially as a director, should be something that I can fall in love with and stick with.

I think before I made the film, I would have been much more willing to direct almost anything that came my way, but I don’t have that attitude any more. I think that making a film has made me very selective about what I want to do.

How did you cast Will Patton in the film?

Mark:    I met Gary Hawkins, who had directed him in another film. It was a really interesting documentary called The Rough South of Larry Brown, about a Southern writer.

I made a short film in college with some friends that got into the Tribeca Film Festival. One night at the film festival we were at one of those after-parties and Will Patton was there. He doesn’t show up at publicized events or anything, so the fact that he was there was kind of miraculous. He saw on some of our badges that we were from North Carolina School of the Arts and told us he went there for one year in 1970. He asked what we were doing, and told us if any of us ever did a feature, to send the script to this director to pass along to him.

 

He loved the part and was willing to do the film even though we had next to nothing to make it. He rolled with the punches. We didn’t have directors’ chairs or trailers or anything, so he just camped out with us. It was a lot of fun.

Another hurdle for first-time filmmakers, beyond financing and cast and all the rest, is distribution. How did you connect with Anchor Bay?

Mark:    When we finished it, the initial reaction in the first round of screenings was sort of unanimous across the board, no matter who we showed it to. The bigger studios said it was a really interesting film and they liked the style. But they said it is too different and won’t fit into a box.

These big distributors have these machines where they can easily say a film is like another one (already out on the market), or it’s for families, or it’s a great Christmas movie. They couldn’t find any specific box to put Dog Days in, and said it wasn’t worth their time to try to figure out what that box would be. They did say if we had something that was more commercial, whether a script or another film, they wanted us to bring it to them.

When the first day [of filming] rolled around, I was so incredibly thankful.

At the same time, we started getting all kinds of offers from smaller distributors. For two years straight, from the summer of 2006 to the summer of 2008, I had a stream of offers I wasn’t that interested in. During that time we also had an offer from a studio’s DVD division. But that offer wasn’t great. So I held out and held out.

 

Suzette Shafer, who’s a great friend to us, was the biggest catalyst for all of that, from getting the film to Anchor Bay to getting us into retail stores. She’s an amazing salesperson and really championed the film from the beginning. I owe a lot to her.

I’ve been very surprised at what they’ve been able to do so far, even on the very minimal marketing and advertising budget they have. So hopefully people will go out and buy enough DVDs that we can repay our investors and everybody will go home happy.

Earlier you mentioned that you had great days and really bad days. Can you describe one of your great days for us?

Mark:    One of the best days was probably the first day of the shoot. It’s because you work so hard to try to get to the top, where you make the film. It’s like climbing the Alps. You think it’s never going to come, and there are so many times where productions collapse weeks or days before shooting is supposed to start.

I wrote a letter to myself three nights before the start of the shoot. Anything and everything that could go wrong was going wrong, and I remember saying that I just didn’t see how this could happen. I couldn’t see how we were going to get to production on the film.When the first day rolled around, I was so incredibly thankful. It was a really smooth day. The rest of the film was a nightmare to shoot. We had to shut down for a few days production a few weeks into it. We needed to regroup, then get back together and finish it.

That ties back into when you hire a crew of teenagers and college students. You know those are the kinds of things you’re going to run into. The production isn’t always going to go smoothly. When you’re working with professional actors and a young crew, sometimes that’s a bit of a clash because the pros aren’t used to productions running at that rate. It’s a challenge for everyone.

Another great day was when we did our final sound mix at Deluxe in Toronto. Getting there and seeing the first playback of all of the music and effects with the film was great. I got to finally see this creation that had been in my head and heart for a couple of years. I think that other than having kids, that must be the second greatest thing in the world.

It’s like birthing a child. I had a similar feeling when we premiered the film, and I imagine it will be a similar feeling the day I finally see it on a DVD shelf, even though that’s a bit more anticlimactic.

On this level, you’re doing so much work, especially before you get to the distribution phase. Once you’re through fixing issues with post, it’s nice to hand it off to a distributor. Someone else is working on it, doing artwork, calling stores to place orders, etc. It’s nice to see a team effort on it again.

It’s a surprisingly lonely journey at this level. I’ve put officially more than four years of work into it. It’s sort of my child. The crew is only around for about 30 days, and the cast for 20. The rest of the time is a lot of one-on-one sessions with others or by yourself. It’s not a very glamorous thing at all.

You mentioned the next story. Can you give us an idea what it’s about?

Mark:    There are actually two. One that I’m a co-writing is The Trial, based on a Robert Whitlow book. The script is very good, and I worked with Robert and Gary Wheeler on it. They did a lot of different things with it than they did with The List, and everybody feels like they really stepped up their game for this next film. It was fun being a part of that.

It’s a surprisingly lonely journey at this level. I’ve put officially more than four years of work into it.

I’m currently writing another adaptation from Robert’s book called Jimmy. I’ll be directing that one. That one is going to have a more upbeat ending than the novel has. It’s going to be a beautiful little story. Gary and Robert were saying they think it will be a homerun in the Christian market. It’s about a mentally challenged boy who interacts with angels. He calls them “watchers.” They’re never actually referred to as angels, but we believe them to be angels.

I’m in Charlotte here for a few weeks working on those. We don’t have any kind of production dates set for those yet. In the meantime I’m also writing some spec stories on my own. I just have to take it a day at a time, but keep multiple irons in the fire.

Can you talk a little bit about connecting with Gary and Robert, and being selected to direct “Jimmy?“

Mark:    I met Gary when I was in post-production on Dog Days of Summer. He ended up hiring my editor Jonathan Olive to edit The List. Gary came out to LA for some work on The List, and that’s when I met him. We spent a few days together and got along really well. We realized we like a lot of the same films, that we’re both very into American films from the late 60s and early 70s.

During that time he read a script I had written on spec with a friend. It was a kind of Southern gothic piece, and he really liked it. So he suggested I come on board when they got ready to write their next project, so I did. I’ve been working with him and the Whitlows since.

Then he asked me to read Jimmy and to tell them what I thought about it. I read it and just fell in love with it. There were some interesting similarities to Dog Days. I didn’t feel intimidated by the material by any means and felt like it was something that I could really do as a director. I felt comfortable that I could knock it out of the park. I really enjoyed the novel; I cried at the end of it and told Robert I really wanted it to be my second film, and they agreed. So that’s what I’m working on now.

I don’t understand why people are so hard against each other.

Some of the criticism of Dog Days hasn’t been very kind.

Mark:    Yeah. My favorite comments were from someone who said I must be some Hollywood liberal who hates southerners and Christians. I’ve talked with other friends who’ve made films in both the secular and Christian markets, and the most harsh and vicious comments come from Christians and Christian sites.

I don’t understand why people are so hard against each other. It’s made some of my friends say they don’t want to make Christian films any more. Something has to change there, but it probably never well.

Some people are going in to see the film expecting it to be a Christian film, and reviewing it through that lens. But it’s not a “Christian film,” it’s done from a Christian worldview. Our goal was to make something that’s a dark allegory about a dark part of the Bible. And it’s a loose allegory at that.

The writers who wrote the film don’t have any interest in writing films for the Christian market, so they thought the post comparing it to Stephen King and Flannery O’Connor as a bad thing was hilarious.