A Hollywood film crew typically employs scores of professionals handling such such tasks as directing, lighting, makeup, costumes, communications, set construction, continuity, and crowd control. Even a small-scale production of a 30-second commercial might involve dozens of people. But there is an alternative exemplified by Chilean-born Claudinho Andres, a self-described one-man-band moviemaker. As he explains in the interview (below), Andres was the entire  cast and crew in the production of his prize-winning experimental short “Beat the City.”  Here’s the trailer.

MMM: Could you tell us about your training as a filmmaker?

Andres:  It began when I  visited an obscure internet site and found some interesting lessons about directing  by a Columbian film teacher.  My  background in other disciplines— literature, music and theatre—helped me understand filmmaking elements including music, text, acting, and dance. The readings taught me filmmaking vocabulary. A year later I briefly studied film criticism and documentary filmmaking in Chile. I then started a project called RTV Channel. a YouTube kind of project with a faith-based profile.

MMM: That project was on your own?

Andres: Yes, I was studying film by myself. I read  tons of articles, watched as many tutorials as possible, and took online courses. I started making videos with a Sony Cyber-Shot camera, but a student from Film School told me about the Canon 7D and from that point on I knew about the DSLR revolution. And that led me to  gurus like Phillips Bloom, Vincent Laforet and Shane Hurblut— the DSLR Trinity.

MMM: Can you talk about being a one-man-band filmmaker?

Andres: I started making videos with close to no knowledge and had to learn almost every position in a film crew. My development at this point wasn’t influenced so much by particular filmmakers but rather by specific works. For example, while I was spending a few months taking a music video workshop, an assignment let me to Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy The Silence” music video directed by Anton Corbjin. I like Corbjin’s work, but it was the video that really made a difference. Of course there are some filmmakers who do stand out for me, such as Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu and Martin Scorsese.

MMM: Let’s turn to the making of  “Beat the City.”

Andres: I was living in New York taking a New York Film Academy (NYFA) course. I liked a classmate’s  drama about  a character with a sick state of mind. That motivated me to do something similar but set to music video with a strong  beat.

MMM: Why do you categorize your movie as experimental?

Andres:  One of the genre options for the assignment was “experimental.”  I saw my opportunity there! It was the perfect alibi to dispense my crew and shoot alone. Going further, I decided to shoot using my iPhone 6S, which definitely was an experiment for me. Plus there was the use of symbolic narrative to involve the audience in the character’s feeling tense, trapped, and even sick.

MMM: Were any advantages in shooting with the phone?

Andres: Many! Freedom and anonymity to shoot in difficult circumstances like subway, galleries, Time Square, and the World Trade Center Memorial. People on the street don’t behave as you’d like when they see you shooting a film.

MMM: Any disadvantages in using the phone?

Andres: There’s the horrible performance of slow-mo in low light. I’m an “available lights filmmaker” so  I needed to be creative to overcome this limitation.

MMM: Did you use any gear during the shoot?

Andres: When you watch the film, you see low and high angles of myself, different framings all achieved with no tripod. My “fluid head tripod” was a box from a french press coffee maker. I made a cut on one side and put my phone in it, tilting whenever the situation asked for. I confess that I was so excited about the experience that I ended up forgetting things like that I had FiLMiC  Pro installed and the 4K capabilities of the iPhone 6S Plus.

MMM: What about the challenges of your playing the main character?

Andres: Though I come from a family of actors and I acted some little plays in Chile on stage and TV, I wouldn’t describe me as an actor. I took the risk for the same reason of making that short with my iPhone and no crew. I wanted to keep in control and I confess that I felt the pressure of time too.

MMM: How did you handle the framing when you’re not behind the camera?

Andres: I knew what I wanted to achieve with that scenes where the character shows up on screen, but there were a lot of test on framing and a sort of “tempest” of improvisation and performance. Many times I was about to fire myself! There is a moment where the character floats, after that scene where the Bible flies up. I made a lot of shots until I could achieve the effect.  I did the magic in post to make the guy fly.

MMM: Could you  say something about the music?

Andres:  I spent two days trying to find music that would match the concept of the film. I picked through the entire royalty free music library of NYFA during an editing class and couldn’t find what I needed so I went to Audio Network and after an extensive search finally found “Death Blade,” which I used under a  license for academic projects.

MMM: What about the editing?

Andreas: I had a music video editing concept in mind, cutting to a beat.  I needed a track where I could make a montage against that beat. The music had to fit technically, but at the same time had to show the tone, pace and curve I needed. One idea was to show sequences of people working on the streets at the rhythm of the music, trying to speak about the automatization of lives merged in the day- to-day routine of a big city, as well as the sickness of the main character through the “cut to the beat” method. Of course, during the process of editing I found ideas suggested by the music itself.

MMM: Do you have any advice for novice filmmakers?

Andres: Start shooting something right now before Steven Soderbergh steals all the credits!

# # #

To learn more about “Beat the City”  visit  www.beatthecityfilm.com. The full film can be seen at https://vimeo.com/180868115; insert the password EXPERIMENTAL2016 .

“Beat the City” was chosen as a Mobile Movie of the Week  by the editors of MobileMovieMaking Magazine.