Anatomy Of An Indie – Discovering Your Movie

SYNOPSIS FOR “MARRIED YOUNG”

David and Talya got married young. They have an 18 month old and another on the way. But life isn’t the way David expected it: they live in a trailer park (true, it’s a luxury trailer park), David uses his artistic ability to create soul defeating corporate websites and to make matters worse, they haven’t had sex for weeks because Talya isn’t in the mood. Life would be challenging enough without it, but in the spirit of South Park, David has a 2-D animated alter-ego, a comic character he created years ago. This “Party Animal” tells David that he is too young to act this way, he should be banging chicks and having fun. Party Animal reminds David of his artistic talent and his life dreams and also how much fun it would be to get stoned and bang the hot neighbor.

Married Young is a poignant comedy about marriage, pregnancy and growing up.”

Meet Party Animal

Discovering Your Movie

Every director walks into production thinking (assuming) that he understands the script and the story. But really, making a movie is a process of discovery – specifically discovering what is this movie really about?  Discovering Your Movie for the first time.

Shooting “Married Young”

I was initially drawn to Married Young because of the animated character. We have seen movies about marriage, but we haven’t really ever seen a movie where we heard and actually met the inner voice of the lead. The animated character separated this movie from other low budget indies and I thought it could be a really dynamic marketing element for the movie.

Director Daniel Kaufman and team reviewing video clips while making “Married Young.”

But the movie we shot did not evolve into a movie that I wanted to see or a movie that I wanted to make. And being as far out on a limb as I was, that realization was a deep, painful moment of panic.

Setting Up The Tracks For A Dolly Shot For “Married Young”

Initially, the animated character was David’s doppelganger – an animated version of David. We had planned to make the character’s voice the same as the lead actor but we found that listening to the same voice for a whole movie got tiresome. But the voice wasn’t the problem. The problem was the character:

1.       The character had a big presence in the beginning and end, but goes away for a long time
2.        The audience didn’t understand who the character was or how to understand him
3.       The audience didn’t like the character
4.       Since the character looked like David, the audience stopped liking our lead actor
5.       The animated character was not crucial to the structure or plot of the story

These are real issues we will need to deal with.

Stay tuned for the next installment of the Behind the Scenes Story of Making “Married Young” …

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