Ballast: DIY Distribution
“I took those jobs because I knew they’d put me one step closer to doing my own work,” he says. “I’d do a gig on a studio film that would last for 8 to 18 months. You’re flush with cash because they pay you a lot of money, so I’d get in my car and drive and write. It’s kind of a gypsy life, which really lends itself well to writing. Eventually I saved a lot from art directing, because I knew I was going to have to start stockpiling money to make a film, and self reliance is really the only way you can make it as an independent.”
After several stops and starts on projects that “never got greenlit,” Hammer decided to push his idea of self-reliance by writing something that he could pretty much make by himself. That project eventually became Ballast, inspired by one of his gypsy trips. “About ten years ago I stumbled upon the Delta for the first time in winter, and I had a very unexpected reaction to the place and the sense of sorrow I felt there. I immediately had a desire to communicate that feeling with as much accuracy as possible.”
In Production
Working against the grain of typical studio production methods, Hammer shot his movie with handheld 35mm cameras on location in the Mississippi Delta, with non-actors playing every part. “I’ve always responded to real human beings more than to movie stars, who bring the baggage of every other role they’ve played. I know it’s a difficult idea to sell in the United States, but I respond to non-actors more profoundly than anything else.”
To enhance the authenticity of the film, Hammer showed his cast only a page of the script at a time, talking them through the scenarios on location for several months of rehearsal as they worked up to the shoot. He then gave them the freedom to react as naturally as possible within the parameters of the scene.
“I was interested in obtaining the language of each individual, their idiom, their choice of words. So if the scenario wasn’t ringing true to somebody, they were free to say ‘I’d do something more like this.’ During rehearsal, scenes would just transform from the ones I wrote. I would record all of this with a video camera and keep it in Final Cut Pro. Each night after rehearsals I’d look at all the different options we’d explored. And I would choose one or two that we would then photograph in the next week, basically rewriting in real-time. It was actually all stored on my MacBook Pro.”
Post–production
After the shoot wrapped Hammer spent nearly two years cutting the movie in Final Cut, a choice driven chiefly by cost, but which delivered multiple benefits in post. Although Hammer had never edited a film before, he was able to work effectively in Final Cut with no formal training because it was so easy to use and so adaptable to his vision for the film. “Everything in this film is a hard cut; there are no dissolves,” he says. “I’m interested in the simplest of tools.”
Final Cut’s portability was essential given Hammer’s editorial M.O. “The fact that I could load it on my laptop and cut at coffee shops or travel, essentially be anywhere and keep cutting film, I can’t tell you how much power you have when you can do that.”
Hammer credits Cinema Tools with helping him self-manage the film’s round trip from film to digital and back. ”The fact that Cinema Tools works so well enabled me, one person, to originate from film, cut it for two years digitally, and then spit it all back as film. That was pretty amazing. There were no problems at all with the film lists; they were perfect.”
His decision to self-edit Ballast, says Hammer, was one of the key decisions he made: “In the end, I’m really pleased that I cut this film myself, because that’s where it took form. The project that exists today is a result of my editorial approach, which was enabled by Final Cut Pro.”
Now Playing
Adopting a DIY distribution strategy was not something Hammer ever expected to do. “I was blindly following this model that says if you make a great film and you play it at top-level festivals, you’re golden,” he says. “You sell it to a distributor and the world’s great. But I think the amount of creativity that goes into the making of the film itself has to be matched equally by the level of creativity applied to the distribution process.”
For Hammer, that included cutting his own trailer and posting it on apple.com/trailers (“people have just gone nuts for it”), booking beyond theatres into universities, museums, and film societies, and controlling DVD and cable sales. He says he will also consider the strategies of other self-distributing directors, which include creative use of websites, social networks, and Twitter campaigns to build grass-roots awareness.
Full-on exposure to the back end of independent filmmaking has not discouraged Hammer at all. In fact, he plans to do it all again after he has helped Ballast find its audience. “Ballast is just a dress rehearsal for the next thing,” he says. “We’re going to make a lot of mistakes, we already have. But if you don’t try, you can’t figure out how to really do it well. I’m happy to report that we’ve made a lot of mistakes and learned a lot of lessons.”
