Behind the Scenes with Tom Ackerman
during The Battle of Shaker Heights
by Bob Fisher

Erica Beeney bested some 7,200 writers with her script for The Battle of Shaker Heights in this year’s competition. The directors, Efram Potelle and Kyle Rankin, were selected out of thousands of applicants. The co-directors had previously collaborated on several independent projects in Maine, mainly 16mm and DV short films.

Project Greenlight provided a breakthrough opportunity for the co-directors. They had come to Los Angeles in search of their destiny. Potelle was editing digital effects at a post production house in Hollywood, and Rankin was employed as a landscaper in Los Angeles when they were chosen to co-direct The Battle of Shaker Heights.

“My agent said the only caveat was that I had to be willing to be photographed by the HBO documentary crew while we were shooting the film,” Ackerman recalls. “They were going to produce a 12-episode HBO series that would air weekly prior to the release of the film. The documentary crew met me at the door and wired me up for sound when I showed up for my first meeting with Chris, Efram and Kyle.”

Ackerman felt that Potelle and Rankin asked all the right questions and had all the right answers at their initial meeting. He liked the idea of working with talented and enthusiastic young directors on a film. In part, it satisfied his inclination to lend a helping hand to young filmmakers at the dawn of their careers.

“I had a strong feeling that they were people I could work with,” he says. “Each of them brought something a little different to the process. Efram is more visual. He seemed more interested in how you can express ideas and emotions with images. Kyle seemed more focused on the performances, which isn’t surprising since he was a principal actor in a couple of their projects. It was an interesting duality.”

Ackerman decided to accept the film when it was offered to him. One factor was that they were going to produce the film at practical locations in Los Angeles. His one proviso was that he wanted to review the HBO documentary from the previous year. Ackerman had heard that it was quite confrontational. He received a box of tapes, highlighting a couple of episodes that had a lot to do with cinematography.

“Frankly, it made my skin crawl a bit,” he says. “There were questions like, why did they wait until the light was almost gone to make that one magic hour shot? Why did they build this huge crane platform considerably offshore of Lake Michigan, only to cantilever the camera out and look straight down? You can make that shot in a garage. Of course the show paid a lot attention to the missteps and problems. Before I agreed to shoot The Battle of Shaker Heights, I was assured that there would be a more even-handed approach to this year’s series.”

The production was no walk in the park. The script was chosen and the directors were hired in January. Shooting was slated to begin in April and a release date set for cinema screens on August 15. Ackerman had three weeks of preproduction planning and a 22-day shooting schedule.

The Battle of Shaker Heights is essentially a coming of age story. Shia LaBeouf plays the film’s principal character Kelly Enswiler, a 16-year-old high school student who has endured several tough years in a dysfunctional family. The weak link is his father, Abe Enswiler, a former hard drug addict, played by William Sadler. He has been on the wagon and turned a corner in his life for a couple of years, but his son still harbors a great deal of resentment and rage. Kelly’s mother Eve Enswiler is an artist, and played by Kathleen Quinlan. She is more tuned in to her son’s psyche.

“Efram and Kyle were thirsty to drink in as much information as possible before we started shooting,” Ackerman says. “We created storyboards and shot lists during the first week of preproduction. During the second and third weeks, we scouted locations and walked the sets together. When you’ve got a budget as small as we had, there aren’t a lot of choices, because you’re not going to be building sets. The most important location was the house of Kelly’s friend Bart Bowland (played by Elden Henson). His dad is rich, so it had to be appropriate. We found a place in Pasadena with every attribute we wanted.”

Ackerman says that the co-directors made an important decision by bringing the right production designer onboard. Potelle, Rankin and the producers chose Lisa Sessions, who was moving into production design after having been a set decorator for several years. She had a meager budget, which Ackerman estimates at around $30,000.

“In scene after scene, she took what she had and made it work brilliantly,” he observes. “It’s a textbook example of how you can transform locations by adding a few simple elements. The directors envisioned a naturalistic look and feeling, and they weren’t looking to gratuitously push the envelope when it came to coverage and camera choreography. There were times when I could see them worrying about how much time it would take to lay a section of dolly track, because that might have been their experience with student crews. I’d tell them, ‘Guys, I know what you’re thinking, but don’t be afraid to use a crane or dolly. We’ll make it work, and you’ll be happy.’”

There were no makeup or costume tests, but Ackerman says that wasn’t a hindrance because there were no problematic actors. “I had worked with Amy Smart, who plays Tabby, on Rat Race, and knew she could take light from virtually any angle,” he says. “Shia has a very interesting face with wonderful eyes, and Kathleen is a beautiful woman. The father is probably in his late 40s or early 50s, so he has a few wrinkles, but he has fantastic, piercing blue eyes which reveal the intensity of his feelings.”

Despite the time and budget constraints, it was a given that The Battle of Shaker Heights would be produced in 35 mm film format. Ackerman says that Kodak, Panavision, FotoKem and other companies provided considerable support. He says that the camera guild and other locals have a low budget contract, which helped to make it feasible to produce the film in Los Angeles. He believes that was essential, because it took a skilled and talented crew to bring the film in on schedule without compromising.

They had storyboards for a fair number of sequences and had shot lists for every scene. Ackerman got them going during the first week or so, and the co-directors took over after that. He began each day reviewing the shot lists with the first assistant director Dennis Benatar. Ackerman says they concentrated on getting the essential shots, and trying not to bite off more than they could chew because he knew if it wasn’t in the can at the end of that day, there would be no coming back. He considers the AD to be a key collaborator along with his gaffer, grips, camera operator, focus puller and the rest of the crew.

“I shared my take on what we needed to do to cover particular scenes with Dennis,” Ackerman says. “He was very receptive. Nothing is more frustrating than being ready with lighting and the camera at the perfect time of day, only to find out somebody is doing makeup or that the right prop isn’t there. Your relationship with the AD is crucial on every film, especially one like this.”

Ackerman says that one of the bonuses was that The Battle of Shaker Heights gave him an opportunity to move Steve Hiller, his long time focus puller, up to operator.
“Ben Affleck and Matt Damon and the Miramax people were very involved in nurturing the directors and writer, and they helped with the script and casting,” Ackerman says. “They came on the set a couple of times and couldn’t have been more supportive.”

Ackerman recommended composing in Academy aperture 1.85:1 aspect ratio, because he felt it was the correct aesthetic for the sets and story. He also wanted the flexibility of using Panavision Primo spherical lenses. His camera package was modest, including a Panaflex Platinum camera with an assortment of Primo primes and zooms, and occasionally an ARRI 435 for ramping, and a Panavision Lightweight camera for Steadicam shots.

His film palette consisted of a mix of Kodak Vision2 500T 5218 film and Kodak Vision 250D 5246 film. Ackerman used the new 5218 emulsion for almost all interiors and night scenes, and the 5246 film for daytime exteriors and interiors.

“With the 5218 negative, you can stop lighting sooner because you don’t have to worry about shadow details,” he says. “It’s a 500-speed film that sees deep into the shadows. It also has a tremendous response curve at the brighter end of the scale.”

The 5246 emulsion is rated for an exposure index of 250 when exposed in daylight. He says that the speed gave him an edge in leveraging practical light.

“The relationship with the lab was crucial,” Ackerman notes. “I got feedback from Mark Van Horn every day. I’d get the negative report and his impression of the dailies even before I saw them. Every now and then, he would put a roll of negative on the Hazeltine, so I got printer lights even though we weren’t making film dailies. He gave me a fix on densities, which I equated to what I saw on the Beta SP dailies. Mark has a good eye, and I knew he was watching out for us.”

The story takes place in a relatively condensed 15-day period of time. It begins in a park-like setting where a young deer is grazing. The deer is surrounded by ethereal looking banks of floating mist. Ackerman backlit the night scene. There are some figures running in slow motion. They are infantrymen dressed in World War II uniforms. Ackerman ramped from 64 frames per second to a normal 24. A mortar hits and the camera trucks and dollies through the trees, showing the audience the unfolding action from an intensely subjective perspective in a series of visual impressions.

There is a fierce firefight underway. A cell phone rings. That’s when the audience discovers that re-enactors are fighting the battle in contemporary times.

“This scene wouldn’t have had the oomph without strong back-light and smoke,” he says. “It almost romanticizes the feeling of the battle as compared to a gray, dark day.”

They filmed the battle scene at the Arboretum in Los Angeles.

“It’s not a contemporary version of Father Knows Best,” Ackerman relates. “Shia portrays a good student who is very bright and mature beyond his years, though he is also really quirky. He’s a World War II re-enactor, where he’s found his identity and a refuge from the realities of his life. There is humor and also poignant moments.”

“Kyle and Efram always knew where they wanted to go in terms of the mood and the heartbeat of each scene,” he observes. “They bounced ideas off one another, and usually came up with something a little different and better. They were remarkably clear, decisive and at ease with the co-directing process.”

There is a sequence where Shia meets his friend Bart Bowland’s sister in an art supply store. His sister, Tabby Bowland, is played by Amy Smart. It is the beginning of his romantic encounter with a 23-year-old college student.

“This very important scene is book ended with about a half page of dialogue that carries them from the store to her Range Rover parked outside,” Ackerman recalls. “As frequently happened on this film, we didn’t have time for proper coverage, so we had to get it all into one long dolly shot. The interior of the store looked really great with brushes, canvases and racks of paint that were inherently very colorful. The outside of the store was a bright cinder block wall with an interesting sign on top of the building. Lisa (Sessions) created about a dozen colored squares that she deployed horizontally in front of the building. There are pretty dramatic gradations in colors. She also used some very nicely sculpted potted trees, and spaced them so there was a geometric and colorful environment that went perfectly with the interior. It was exactly the right background for that shot. We had to block to avoid getting reflections on the car.”

Ackerman also describes a sequence where some of the re-enactors stage a mock raid, kind of a swat team drill, on a bully’s house. It happens in the middle of the night, so the lighting was very low-key. He strapped flashlights on the muzzles of the carbines carried by the reenactors and used their beams to penetrate the darkness.

There was a night exterior shot of the mansion in Pasadena. Ackerman notes that the permit from the city required shutting down at 10 p.m.

“There is no way we could extend the shooting day, and we had exactly eight minutes to light a wide shot of the front of the house,” he says. “The plug was definitely going to be pulled. We panned a Mighty Mole over from lighting a previous shot and bounced another one off a four by eight Beadboard thrown down onto the driveway. I grabbed a 2K Nooklite from craft service and raked it across some greenery in the foreground. The shot was great except at the last second you can see the shadow of an electrician running out of the frame.”

Ackerman notes that not having all the bells and whistles created a sense of freedom rather than constraint. If he didn’t have money for a Musco he would float a balloon light instead. He lit big interior scenes with a China ball and one other lamp.

There is a big scene outside a church in Pasadena that takes place near the end of the film. Ackerman says that around 80 percent of that shot was lit night for day in order to complete a scene after the sun sank on the horizon.

“I think you have to be a student of natural light,” he says. “You have to decide where the sun is supposed to be in the sky and whether there would be any ambient bounce, such as sunbeams reflecting off the pavement or a wall that’s a different color. Our lighting had to be interactive. We were replicating soft sunlight bouncing off a church wall, which was made of sandstone brick. I warmed the light with an amber gel on an 18K HMI and did some modeling with a 12 by12 muslin.”

Most camera movement consisted of classic dolly shots with long lenses. Ackerman also had use of a Steadicam for several days, which he primarily utilized for walking and talking shots. In those situations, he sometimes used floating bounce cards and nets on the lamps with Matt Chubet operating the Steadicam.

The HBO crew was ubiquitous, but it generally managed to stay out of the way, Ackerman acknowledges. He only recalls two or three times when somebody got in the shot or was intrusive, but there were always multiple cameras around the cast and crew, and at one time he counted five microphone booms used by the documentary crew.

“Obviously we were under a lot of scrutiny,” says Ackerman, “and there is no such thing as ‘cinema verite.’ The minute you make a single cut in a roll of film, you’ve created a different point of view. When the shooting ratio is literally several hundred to one, you have enough material to restructure what happened and give it any spin you want. That being said, the making of a low-budget feature film in 22 days is a rich source of challenges and drama. It should give the PGL (Project Greenlight) audience a pretty good ride. The crew did a phenomenal job and I think they’re going to be seen in that light.

“In any film, the dialogue between the cinematographer and the director is never-ending. It’s an incredibly powerful link between people who are pursuing the same vision. You’re joined at the hip for months in a relationship that has one purpose: To serve the film. In Project Greenlight, that relationship was recorded in minute detail. I trust the editors and showrunners will show the process for what it was. It began well and it ended well. We’re all friends, and we accomplished some excellent work together.

“Working on a film like this is a great exercise,” Ackerman says. “It was a wonderful opportunity to practice the aesthetics of putting one or two lights in the right places. We chose locations based on how they would help tell the story, and how natural light would play at certain times of day. I’d ask myself, while we were scouting, what kind of light are we going have here in the afternoon? What kind of opportunity is it going to give me to work with a relatively small package so I didn’t have to build it all from scratch? I think my documentary experience helped immensely on this film.”

There are memorable father-son scenes. The last one is in the hospital where the father is recovering from a bout with a life-threatening illness. Shia goes to see him.

“We shot this scene very early in production, and despite Lisa’s wonderful dressing of the location, it was a very institutional, antiseptic place,” Ackerman recalls. “We only had the opportunity to do a couple of takes. I tried to create contrast without interfering with the credibility of the scene. The directors wanted to end the scene by pulling back from the room and dollying down the hallway. It was a really ugly hall with a low ceiling.”

Ackerman notes that the stage was set for that sequence by the way the father is depicted earlier in the story. He lives in a drab house in a grey world and is usually seen in gaunt shadows in neo-realistic light. The dad is under a cloud of suspicion. There’s a scene where he is hanging out across the street acting suspiciously with somebody who is sitting in a shiny new car. The audience and his son think that he’s doing a drug deal. It turns out he was talking to a realtor because their house is on the market.

Later in the story, the father comes across as essentially empathetic. There is one touching scene where he is at home preparing a pile of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to bring to a clinic for recovering drug addicts.

“I think one of the issues that the filmmakers and actors struggled with, and I also thought about, was whether we were forfeiting some sympathy for Shia’s character because he was ragging on his father so hard from day one. The audience never sees the father doing anything wrong, but the boy talks about it incessantly. It will be interesting to see how that dynamic plays out with the audience.”

In retrospect, Ackerman contends that the ambivalence the crew shared about Project Greenlight at the outset was largely gone at the finish. “The producers, the directors, and Miramax had gone out of their way to express gratitude for a job well done,” says Ackerman. “Everybody felt truly appreciated. They felt good about helping to make Efram and Kyle’s film a reality. Having to do more with less only brought people closer together.”