March 28, 2024

An American Producer. Making a British Film. In Venice. Part Two.

Gondolas! Freakin’ gondolas!

I’m back from Venice and Part Two of ‘The Girl and the Gondola’ shoot – the pick-ups. Needless to say it wasn’t really that different than it was in October last year, but there are certainly more things to talk about….

You might have read my article about the making of this short from a producer’s perspective – if not, I’d say read it first:
https://flaneur.me.uk/03/an-american-producer-making-a-british-film-in-venice/

…and then tackle this part….

SO! What happened this time? Well, one thing is for sure. That mercenary lot who are the gondoliers are certainly hard bargainers. I guess they know that they have a unique service to offer, one that people can only access in Venice, and only for what price they charge. So they know they have you over a barrel. They can do with you what they like. Its a bit frustrating. Actually its infuriating!

We needed to shoot some pick-ups so I contacted the gondolier we used the last time we traveled over to Venezia. And he said we’d just talk when we got there. And I said ‘Ok but know that we need the same gondolas we had the last time. Otherwise we’ll have big problems’. He said, ‘Ok but we’ll talk when you get here’.
Again. I made sure he knew what we were going to be talking about when we got there. ‘We’, he wrote, ‘will talk when you get here’.

So what a surprise when we arrived that we met, talked, and he hadn’t a thing in place or really much of an inclination of an idea what I was talking about. We need the same gondolas. Gondolas, at least, that are VERY similar to the ones that we used the last time.

It was here that I started to look at gondolas very carefully as we walked along the canals. Yep, as they drifted by, I saw that some had red seats, some black, some blue. Some have gold trim on top of the seats. Some don’t. Some have coats of arms embedded in their decor. Some don’t. Others have golden dragons on the edges of the boat, on both sides. Most do in fact – but some….don’t. And there are about 300 other little nuances of difference in each gondola that you would not notice unless were looking for continuity problems as we were. Oh my God.

Anyway, we wound up searching for our old gondolas to no avail – and had to pretty much shoot material that we had shot already – and loved – but now have to dump, because it wouldn’t cut together and it’d be full of continuity errors. Move over Spider Man sort of territory….

In the end we got gondolas we could use. It cost a bundle and it made us super-frustrated for a few hours, but we wrapped on time and did what we needed to do.
Maybe I could find a picture of the bloody things to post on this site – I will see if I can.

One thing that was really different this time around was the fact that we didn’t have a 20 man crew this time, and we didn’t have so many cast either. Just four cast members in total over the two days we shot with cast, and five crew. Just myself as producer, Abbe Robinson as director and the DoP Canny Richardson went over this time. And this time I had to double as sound recordist with borrowed equipment. Yep, now it was me, frustrating myself with delays and battery changes and ‘wait a minute, I hear an engine/boat/plane/screaming kid’ issues. Now I know a bit better what that’s like!

I really liked working with a smaller crew. It gave us the opportunity to better understand what each other wanted, sped things up and made it easier to control. Less people to get lost, touch things up and delay the process, even if it means having to deal without certain aspects of production. Like any interiors at all – because then we would have needed lighting, production design and other services.

A shoot that was supposed to really be a five day October shoot for £10,000 blossomed to a total of eight days and nearly £15,000. Yipe! But hey we think its going to be worth it. The light was doing some pretty awesome things this time around in Venice. The evenings were getting beautiful – great sunsets, majestic clouds and skies. The buildings actually glow in that light, reflecting off the water in gorgeous shades of red and yellow. Its really lovely. And we caught a lot of it.

Abbe really wanted to dedicate the last day to GVs – general views – of Venice. We walked about six or seven miles that day – just shooting views from bridges, getting gondolas on the Grand Canal and elsewhere, night views, and shots of nice buildings and things. Many of these things we wanted to get from a moving boat. Not a gondola but a normal boat – lots of Venetians have them – and we booked one for that day for 2pm. We were excited to get back on the boat and shoot some nice stuff from there.

But as some of us half-predicted, the man with the boat whose name I shall not mention as it pits us into angry fits, didn’t show up. He called an Italian assistant of ours, the excellent Luca, to say that he couldn’t make it. When did he call? About
1:45pm. When was he supposed to meet us? 2pm. That was really, really shit. And the last time back in October when we relied upon him, he kept the production waiting for about three hours – because he was sleeping.

No I don’t know why we booked him again. Maybe because he was friendly with some of our crew and he did try and make it up to us a bit last time by hanging around much later than he said he would. But this time we had to think on our feet and rapidly come up with ways to simulate movement on a boat. Tell you what. A boom pole doubling as a monopod, shooting on a slower speed and steady feet could almost do that. We’ll see if it does. We, luckily, got plenty of material from the gondola itself the day before, in case he’d be comatose again, so this wasn’t the biggest disaster it could have been.

Funny though – we didn’t once shoot the square at San Marco or the Rialto Bridge, really – we have not included the big touristy things in the film. Its the real Venice we are wanting to show. The smaller canals. Where the Venetians live and do their thing each day.

Hopefully this film is going to be doing that. And will bring it to you, the audience.

Keep an eye out for ‘The Girl and the Gondola’ in Italian soon – we aim to be finished with the film in June or July. Or so. It depends when we decide to. Hmm. I sound sorta Venetian…..uh oh. I’ve been there too long!

– Rob Speranza is a Producer working out of Sheffield. His films include Inbred (Line Producer), Entity (Producer) and short film ‘Mother, Mine’ (Producer).

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