LIGHTS, CAMERA, DIRECT!
IPO’s Improv Daniel Gamburg Puts the Actors Behind the Camera

In the San Francisco-shot DV feature IPO, actor David Babich has one of those definitive movie moments, the kind of memorable scene that often ends up adorning a film’s poster. With his Internet startup job in jeopardy and recently rejected by his girlfriend, a drunken Babich prowls the downtown streets caught up in the middle of a New Year’s celebration. Stumbling across a homeless woman (MiMi Alain), Babich’s character (formerly homeless himself) tries to reach out to the distraught woman by giving her his shoes. When even she rejects him, he strips down to his underwear and begins a cathartic run into the night.

Coming where it does in IPO, the scene is an exultant moment for both the character and the audience. But what’s extraordinary is that this perfectly sustained note comes not so much from the film’s director, Daniel Gamburg, but largely from improvisational work initiated by Babich and Alain. Babich knew that at that point in the story his character, Joe, had reached a critical juncture. During filming, Babich met up with Alain at the restaurant where the two of them were working. “MiMi—she’s an actor as well—and I came up with the idea for the transformation of this character,” says Babich. “We basically developed the idea of the scene, ran it by Daniel, and he was like ‘Absolutely, let’s try it.’”

In many ways, IPO’s riches-to-rags dot-com saga may be the ultimate collaboration between actor and director. Taking a cue from Lars von Trier’s Dogme 95 manifesto, in which the Danish director advocated using only handheld cameras, natural lighting, and real settings, Gamburg upped the aesthetic ante by entirely tossing out the script. With just a bare bones plot, Gamburg and another cameraman, Robin McLeod, shot the completely improvised IPO in a little over twenty days for around $30,000 dollars. “I told myself I would do it on digital video. I didn’t need a million dollars,” says Gamburg. “I can give actors complete freedom and space, [and] still create that raw sense of spontaneity.”

Rehearsals went on for six months with the cast fleshing out characterizations, running through possible scenarios, and even taking turns at the camera. “It empowered them to try different things, to explore their own point of view, and ultimately to express themselves by seeing and controlling their own work,” says Gamburg. “The actors started to understand what it’s like for me to capture an event and how they can effect the outcome.” For IPO’s actual shoot, Gamburg rented a large warehouse space in the Mission and completely refitted as if it were to be a working startup company. To capture every line of dialogue from the dozen or so performers, each actor was individually miked with wireless sound as they ran through takes that sometimes went as long as forty-five minutes.

Throughout, Gamburg and McLeod swirled around this unplanned action, recording everything as if it were a documentary. The director never thought twice about the choices he’d made. “That’s the biggest dilemma I have watching Hollywood films. I see a script, I can see the words, I know where it’s going to go,” he says. “It doesn’t matter what I do with the camera when it comes to the person in front of it. The camera is literally just a recording device. In the end, it’s just a machine.”

Gamburg, who seems to do everything to extremes, realized a need to understand the acting process while attending film production classes at San Francisco State University in the early ’90s. “In film school, they teach you about film theory, genre, aesthetics, and history. But they don’t teach you the actual working relationship between what’s happening in front of the camera and how to record that reality,” says Gamburg. He made a pact with himself to give up any further ambitions about filmmaking until he learned to direct actors.

When a slot opened up at acting coach Philip Bennett’s TheaterLab, Gamburg filled the directorial void and formed the BareWitness ensemble. Together, Gamburg and the actors honed their craft by producing a dozen short films, some of which screened on the festival circuit, at local venues, and online (barewitness.com). (Gamburg has run the school since Bennett retired in 2002; theaterfilmlab.com) Owing to this experience, Gamburg and the actors had the confidence to embark on IPO, their first feature.

It’s not surprising that an enormous challenge awaited Gamburg in the editing room. The vérité style of shooting each improvised scene in its entirety left the filmmaker with eighty hours of footage. After a year alone with the material, the first cut of IPO ran somewhere in the neighborhood of seven hours. He eventually whittled it down to a three-hour cut that McLeod and many of the BareWitness actors loved. By the time IPO had secured a slot in last year’s Slamdance competition, the film clocked in at 110 minutes.

Gamburg pulls no punches about what his IPO experience garnered him in terms of financial gain. “The problem with this process is that it’s not a very commercial way to work. I could probably never do this again. My next film will have to be more conventional.” Though he is developing three projects with BareWitness—each to be directed by other members of the ensemble—he does have plans to direct a feature outside the group. He won’t say much about it except that the script involves an actor’s harrowing encounter with the Russian mob. After facing IPO’s challenging obstacles, Gamburg certainly knows a little more about what an actor goes through to prepare for a role. “It was an exciting time of discovery for all of us. We had no idea where it was going to go. The great thing about this collaboration is that the technology gave people a voice, people who normally don’t get a voice. What more can a director ask for?”

Daniel Gamburg's improvised film, IPO – a wryly intelligent, extremely well-acted portrait of the city during the dot-com era – is an accordingly apt SFIC festival offering.

 

Enlightened Pictures presents its full-length video set in San Francisco during the hottest days of Internet start ups. The personalities, in a fast-paced improvised sequence, tell their unique stories and common themes with tender attention to the subtlety and brutality of relationships. It's about making babies and money. It's about energy and lots of it. The full-dimensioned spray of relationships quickly reveals who is with whom.