With a script, financing and direction, Tempo Productions` all-Chicago motion picture can begin to take shape. People with the necessary skills all work locally in a city that has fast become a film capital. Here are some of the professionals who would work on our movie.
Prop master
William Dambra is the king of objects. Rings, watches, pens, briefcases, telephones, canes, umbrellas and guns-especially guns-fill his prop boxes and the shelves of his 10-ton truck.
His late father, Joseph Dambra, provided props for Chicago-made commercials. Billy (as coworkers call him) is an electrician who grew up in Addison, Ill., and got into film 10 years ago as a gaffer, or lighting installer, on commercials. Six years later, when he noticed that film productions brought their own prop departments into Illinois, Dambra decided he could help fill a gap in the local movie industry. He began acquiring things.
Dambra has become a human pack rat and a professional armorer licensed to handle automatic weapons. ”Three years ago I did a pilot for a series called `Lady Blue,` and I was renting a lot of the weapons,” he recalled. ”Now I own 400 guns, which I keep at my warehouse in Franklin Park. I have enough to start a small war-and win. I supplied all the guns for the `Crime Story`
series and some for `The Untouchables.”`
Dambra haunts junk shops and flea markets. ”I just accumulate,” he said. ”Just on my truck alone, I must have $20,000 worth of props.”
The ”Crime Story” TV series kept Dambra busy for several months, even after the locale shifted from Chicago to Las Vegas. Because the series is set in 1963, Dambra spent a lot of his spare time poring over old Sears catalogues to ensure authenticity.
Dambra`s dedication became apparent to moviemakers as he assisted Hollywood prop masters on ”Risky Business,” ”Sixteen Candles” and
”Through Naked Eyes.” Now he has a partner, Sherwin Tarnoff, and an assistant, Barbara Schuppert.
”I developed my own business from the film industry,” Dambra said.
”It`s called Weapons, Chicago Style. People from out of town can come in and say, `Hey, this company can do the job. We don`t have to bring in anybody from Los Angeles anymore.` It helps me, and it helps the city, too.”
Costume supervisor
Carolyn Schraut Barczak stared intently at the man with the gun. He wore a rumpled gray jacket and battered pants, but in a moment his wardrobe would look even worse. The director said ”action,” and the man with the gun pointed it at the hero. Before the gunman could fire a shot, the hero lashed out with a machete and neatly chopped off the hand with the pistol in it. Blood spurted from an empty sleeve as the gunman, cursing and howling, dropped to his knees.
”Cut.”
Barczak waited while Gina Panno, who keeps track of wardrobes on the set, approached the gunman. The director had ordered another take, and Panno brushed off the man`s jacket and pants to make sure they looked the same as they had before the encounter with the machete.
People from props and special effects pumped more red liquid into the tubes running beneath the man`s sleeve and reattached the plastic hand that held the gun. Panno waved to Barczak, indicating that the actor wouldn`t need a change of clothes.
For a moment, Barczak-costume supervisor for the Warner Bros. picture
”Above the Law”-could relax. Barczak had driven to the location from her home in Palatine that morning with a van full of clothes. To keep up with the wear and tear inflicted by an action picture, she often must launder and repair costumes during her off hours.
Although Barczak had served as a costumer in local theater and film for 21 years, ”Above the Law” was her first opportunity to dress an entire cast for a big motion picture. Before that, she had assisted in wardrobe for ”Dr. Detroit,” ”Wildcats,” ”Lady Blue,” ”Jack and Mike” and ”Adventures in Babysitting.”
The show-business thread goes back a long way in Barczak`s family. Her grandparents all worked backstage in Chicago theater. Her father, Russell, is an electrician at Arie Crown Theater, and her mother, Mary, supervises the Arie Crown wardrobe department. Carolyn took art courses at Chicago Vocational High School and the Art Institute before following them into the field. Her teenage son and daughter plan careers in the industry, too.
During ”Above the Law,” Barczak functioned as a costume designer. On a contemporary picture, the head of wardrobe needs a checkbook and size charts more than a sketchbook and sewing machine.
”I buy the clothes,” she said. ”I make sure no one has the same type of outfit on, the same colors. I put all the outfits together for each scene, each day, each change.”
Barczak has learned to keep a lot of spare clothing on hand. ”Today,”
she said, ”they brought in someone new and told me, `We want you to put this guy in an outfit, and we have to have it doubled or tripled for stunts.` If they damage one outfit in a scene, I have to be able to give him an identical one.”
Script supervisors
When asked to describe the initial step they take when hired for a film, many professionals will say, ”First, I break down the script.” They go through the pages, marking sections that will engage their specialties, such as locations, lights or costumes.
Druanne and Mary Carlson break down the script into the tiniest pieces of all. They must keep track of it precisely through the entire production.
As North Shore teenagers, Druanne, now 25, and Mary, 27, learned the business from their parents, industrial-film directors Don and Dru Carlson. Their brothers, Don and Robb, are assistant camera operators.
Long before the production faces a camera, the Carlsons sit down with their scripts and time every scene, imagining, for example, how long it might take a thug to beat up a hero or a ghost to whoosh across a bedroom. They recite all the speaking parts and time those.
During the filming itself, they scrutinize all the action and dialogue to make sure it fits together, because scenes frequently are filmed out of sequence. For example, one morning the crew might work on a ”master shot,”
showing the entire scope of a particular sequence. Hours, or days, later, the director will shoot closeups for the same scene. The script supervisor sees to it that action and dialogue match the earlier shot precisely.
Mary has supervised scripts for ”The Killing Floor,” ”Date Night,”
”Big Shots” and ”Light of Day.” Druanne earned major credits for the first time last year with the ”Jack and Mike” television series and ”Open Admissions,” a CBS Movie of the Week.
At one time, Mary thought she might break with family tradition, so in 1979, she started taking pre-med courses at San Diego State University. ”But right after `The Blues Brothers` filmed here, my mother called me and said,
`Get home. There`s so much film work starting in Chicago. Let`s go!”`
Both Carlsons said they want to direct someday, and their current line of work gives them an infinitely detailed understanding of the complexities involved.
”With script, it`s just nonstop concentration,” Mary explained. ”If somebody picks up a shovel in one scene, the shovel has to be there five scenes later. And we might shoot that fifth scene on the first day of production.”
Set decorator
Not long ago, a stylish apartment magically appeared inside a warehouse at 2500 W. Roosevelt Rd.
About 100 yards away from the apartment, which, in reality, was a set built for MGM`s ”Poltergeist III,” Linda Sutton commanded a space that resembled a department store loading dock. From her cluttered desk, Sutton surveyed shelves full of lamps, paintings and framed photographs. Her four helpers, scrambling to prepare another ”Poltergeist” scene, squeezed themselves between dense stacks of tables and chairs.
For the last eight years, Sutton has been converting empty stretches of warehouses, dormant factories, etc., into ”rooms.”
Sutton, who majored in art and drama at the University of Hawaii, broke into films here in 1979 as a production assistant, a ”gofer.” A year later she began assisting set decorators for the ”Chicago Story” TV series. By the sixth episode, Sutton headed the department.
After that she created sets for ”Lady Blue,” ”Listen to Your Heart,”
”Nothing in Common” and the ”Crime Story” series. Her job, in essence, is to produce authentic interior designs for make-believe people.
”I go out and find all the pictures for the walls, the furniture, carpeting, blinds, knickknacks, magazines, ashtrays, pillows,” she said. ”I select them so that the rooms will coincide with the director`s vision of the characters in the film and the production designer`s overall design.”
Usually she buys the goods for her sets because the long-term rental would exceed the purchase price. The clutter surrounding her desk belonged to MGM; later the studio would auction it off, sell it to crew members at half price or keep it for future use.
”The hardest part in decorating is giving life and reality to the set,” Sutton said. ”It`s not the furniture so much as it is the little oddball things people collect that tell us so much about them. A lot of actors and actresses have told me that my sets have helped them understand their characters.
”In preproduction (the planning sessions held weeks before shooting begins), we discuss the personalities of the characters, what their income would be, their backgrounds, their likes and dislikes-regardless of whether any of that information is mentioned in the script.”
Working with a crew of 10 at the beginning and paring it down to four after all the artifacts were in place, Sutton decorated 40 sets for
”Poltergeist III,” the story of an upper-middle-class family besieged by a ghost.
Sutton has come to know the characters well. They adore art but are definitely limited by budget. They are warm people, but their environment must look slightly cool. ”We wanted an icy kind of edge to the look of the whole show,” Sutton disclosed. ”Eventually the whole home gets covered with ice. That`s the poltergeist taking over.”
After the movie wrapped, Sutton planned to resume decorating an Old Town house she has been renovating. ”It will take me a long time,” she said,
”because I hate to shop.”
Tuesday: Recruiting the actors.
