Dreams: the one thing everyone has experienced when their heads hit the pillow as they try to catch some ZZZs at night. This “thing” has been depicted in various ways, whether in its horrific, pleasant, surreal or realistic forms. UCLA alumni Jeremy Alter and Anton Pardoe have recently followed their own dreams by producing their first self-proclaimed “dreamscape” film, “The Perfect Sleep,” which will be shown on Tuesday at UCLA.
Pardoe originally wrote the script for “The Perfect Sleep” more than four years ago with help from his long-time college friend, Alter. Both had been in the moviemaking business since college and had still yet to make their first feature film.
“Jeremy and I were both frustrated because we had been playing the game with agents and producers,” Pardoe said. “So we got to talking and I said that we just got to make something down and dirty and go about it that way and make a genre film.”
With a list of cheaper places to shoot from Alter, Pardoe set to writing a genre film and, in his own words, “kind of screwed up.”
“All these strange influences came about,” Pardoe said. “I had done a noir script that was sort of conventional-set but also I had just (finished) reading Dostoevsky’s book “˜The Idiot’ and that had a big impact on me.”
Combined with other influences such as 1960s movies by the Japanese director Seijun Suzuki, Pardoe simply began blending the elements together and soon the project took on a life of its own. “Somewhere along the line, “˜The Perfect Sleep’ emerged,” he said.
The film follows the story of a man who returns to a dark city he said he would never return to in order to save a woman he loves, placing himself in serious danger.
“I would describe the film as a dreamscape: a dark dreamscape,” Pardoe said. “It is filled with all these Russian influences and martial arts fights and is not meant to be tendered to our reality.”
According to Pardoe, this is what makes it darker and more like a “classic noir.”
He said that the initial script only took about a week to write, but over the course of the next four years (from initial scriptwriting until final production), it changed greatly. One aspect that changed significantly was the voice-over, which both Pardoe and Alter had always thought would be good for a low-budget film. However, Pardoe said, little did he and Alter know how much they would end up relying on voice-over.
“We really experimented with voice-over in a way that hasn’t been done in a long time,” said Alter, who directed the film. “I would say that the character doesn’t say much on screen but you get the benefit of his thoughts through voice-over, which I think plays well because the two can be in conflict with one another ““ what he is saying and what he is thinking or what he is doing and what he is thinking. They don’t necessarily have to exactly be in sync.”
The duo ran into problems while on their four-year trek of producing the movie, most of which they attribute to the film’s limited funds.
“One of the biggest challenges was being able to continue to move forward,” said Alter, who had been working in the film industry since his days as a UCLA student. “Over the years, I have managed to make relationships with a lot of professionals who had been doing this for longer than I have been alive. The challenge was getting professionals to come and work for a fraction of their normal rate.”
The pair also did not skimp on anything during the filmmaking process, making their jobs all the more strenuous.
“We sort of took all the rules you probably should (follow) for low-budget (film) and lit them on fire and tossed them away. … We had extensive makeup, timeless period-wardrobe, cars, stunts, crane shots,” Alter said. “We made it as difficult for ourselves as we could. That is just sort of our nature. We always just sort of shoot for the moon and do what we can to get it.”
According to Alter, this ambitious movie was also difficult to film because it was shot mostly at night.
“We would have to shoot starting at 6 or 7
o’ clock at night until 6 a.m.,” Alter said. “We had an ambitious script and a limited amount of nights to shoot it in.”
Both Alter and Pardoe were thankful the film was a truly collaborative effort.
“I really didn’t have to direct (Pardoe) very much,” Alter said. “There were times where I could walk up to him and say one thing, and with the madness of the rest of the shoot, I was lucky that he didn’t need direction. So I was able to focus on the 10 million other things that were going on while directing the film.”
Pardoe also narrated the film in addition to playing the role of the main character.
“We like to joke sometimes that I probably got some of the least direction on the film because we had an understanding built over a number of years and know where we want to go even before we get into it,” Pardoe said.
“What it comes down to is comfort ability between the two of us,” Alter said. “In a scene where literally every second of the day is precious time never to be captured again, having comfort ability between Anton and I is great.”