Prepping a scene in the Office of Navy Intelligence, Cryptanalysis Department.  (l-r) Co-director Stephanie Argy, Bryan Larkin (as Commander Robert Eldridge Dean), David Ross Paterson (as Admiral McAdams) and co-director Alec Boehm. In the background is Digital Media Assistant David Grenz. Photo by An Tran

ARRI is well-known for offering the best gear to big-budget Hollywood movies, but we also provide a variety of options for filmmakers with much smaller pocket books. Written and directed by Stephanie Argy and Alec Boehm, The Red Machine was shot in and around Los Angeles. With Boehm behind the camera, the filmmaking duo strived for high production values despite a low budget. ARRI came into play in the form of a versatile lighting kit, helping to illuminate the stylized look of the production. Here, Argy and Boehm tell us about the experience of shooting The Red Machine.

Conventional wisdom regarding low-budget movies is that one should never even consider doing a period piece. But when we set out to co-direct our first feature, The Red Machine, we ignored all that advice and decided to make a caper adventure set in Washington DC of 1935, with flashbacks to Tokyo of 1928.

The Red Machine is the story of a professional thief who is forced to help a Navy spy steal a machine that the Japanese military is using to transmit its secret messages.  Years ago, in a used bookstore in New Orleans, we’d come across a book that mentioned in passing how the Navy used to do these kinds of clandestine operations, and we thought that a heist like that would make a great basis for a movie. But the idea sat waiting, until we did a 10-minute film called Gandhi at the Bat.

Based on a New Yorker short story by Chet Williamson, Gandhi at the Bat is a mock newsreel set in Yankee Stadium in 1933, about the little-known (and totally fictional) incident when Mohandas K. Gandhi pinch hit for the New York Yankees.  Making the short did several things for us. First of all, it showed us that doing a period movie was not necessarily as difficult or expensive as people make it out to be – it’s largely a matter of finding the right costumes and the right faces (and a baseball stadium, but that’s another story). Second, we did a lot of matte paintings and other visual effects work to turn the minor league ballpark where we shot into Yankee Stadium of 1933, and that taught us a how to add background details to help sell the world. Third, and most important, doing Gandhi at the Bat introduced us to the two actors who star in The Red Machine, Lee Perkins, who plays the Navy spy, and Donal Thoms-Cappello, who plays the thief.

Gandhi at the Bat was as close to a real newsreel as we could make it in terms of its style, but while we entertained the idea of doing The Red Machine as an exact recreation of a 1930s-era movie, we decided that doing so would be too gimmicky and distancing for this particular feature. To help give the movie a distinctive look, we made a very stylized choice with the color palette. Whenever we’re in the world of the Navy, the set dressing and costumes are gray, blue, black or white, with hard light and shadows. The thieves’ world is browns and greens, with softer, more indirect lighting.

As we developed the look of the movie, we were also very influenced by the Library of Congress collection of Works Project Administration (WPA) photographs. During the 1930s, the federal government enacted numerous programs to employ people. One of those, the WPA, sent photographers around the country to document the lives of ordinary people.  The most widely seen of these photographs are black-and-white, but there were also several thousand color photographs, which can be viewed on the Library of Congress website. Those images proved to be an important reference for every aspect of the design, enabling us to draw our look from history, rather from other movies.

Very early on, we began collaborating with Gaffer Brian “Fletch” Fletcher, who even watched our rehearsals with the actors, studying what they would be doing so that he could devise ways to enhance the performances through the lighting. Fletch says that having so much pre-production time was unusual for him. “Generally I get the script two days before we start, I pick up the lighting package the day before, then we start shooting.”

Preparation was one thing that didn’t cost anything extra, and we did a lot of experiments to get ready for the movie. For example, we did a series of tests with cameras we were considering, and based on those tests, we decided to use the Panasonic AG-HVX200.

Despite our low budget, we were able to attract a wonderful crew, which made it a real joy to go to work every day. Especially key to the movie’s success were Production Designer Mel Horan, who found a way to recreate the 1930s using little more than construction paper and a few pieces of string, Fletch, who never stopped trying to figure out a better way to do things, and Key Grip Jay Aebi, who simply never stopped.

We shot all of The Red Machine in practical locations, many of which were quite small, with little room for lights and other equipment. For that reason, we found that our principal lighting tool was an ARRI lighting kit consisting of a 1K, a 650W and two 300W lights. The two 300s were able to get into very tight areas without taking up much space. The 650 provided a great rim light and was also an important element of our Navy world, where we used it mostly for hard, frontal light. The 1K with a small Chimera created a nice soft light that supplemented our natural lighting, particularly in the thief’s world. We also had a few very specialized lighting set-ups. For example, one sequence, in which our thief and spy break in and dismantle the code machine, was lit entirely by the actors’ flashlights, which were specially retrofitted with MR-16 bulbs.

		The outcome of the setup: (l-r) Navy spy Lt. F. Ellis Coburn (Lee Perkins), Japanese Naval attaché Ichiro Shimada (Eddie Lee) and thief Eddie Doyle (Donal Thoms-Cappello), have tea in Shimada's apartment. Photo by Kameran Kashani
The lighting setup to simulate back-scatter light from exterior windows. Photo by Kameran Kashani

Our overall goal was to maintain the period feeling with the lighting and not have it look like a modern movie. Fletch was especially proud that we used a Kino Flo only once on the movie – and even then we used it in an unconventional way, as an overhead softbox illuminating a diplomatic conference taking place in Japan.

Before Fletch began working in film, he spent years as a theatrical lighting designer, which came in very handy for our flashbacks to Japan. We decided to restrict brightly saturated colors – particularly red – to our flashbacks, so that there would be an almost visceral shock when those sequences appear on screen. Fletch proved to be absolutely fearless about bringing in highly saturated colors, including reds, yellows, pinks and greens.

We also tried to use natural lighting as much as we could. This dovetailed nicely with our decision never to have days longer than 12 hours: when the sun went down, we had to stop shooting. Rather than having long days, we instead had a relatively long shoot -- breaking another common rule of indie production. Many independent shoots are 15-18 days or less, but Producer Ken Cortland, Production Manager Jason Miller and First Assistant Director John Clarkson found a way for us to have a 27-day schedule – not luxurious by any stretch, particularly for so ambitious a movie – but enough that we could allow ourselves a little more time to explore.

		Lt. Robert Eldridge Dean (Bryan Larkin) in a hospital bed, in a flashback to Tokyo, 1928. Photo by Kameran Kashani
The gelled ARRI 650 lights the officer as he recuperates in the hospital. Photo by Kameran Kashani

When we look at our footage, and at the sheer number of locations and characters and costumes and props, it seems almost impossible that we could have pulled off something like this – and yet there it is. While it would certainly have been simpler to make a movie with just a few characters, set in one location in the present, this was the movie that we felt compelled to make – and it was amazing to see what a dedicated, ingenious crew could pull off.

Co-Directors Stephanie Argy and Alec Boehm