"Using Improv as a Screenwriting Tool" by Justin Fielding posted on masteringfilm.com

Mastering Film invited me to discuss takeaways from our use of scriptprov in creating Inventory, to help other filmmakers cultivate serendipitous creativity in their projects.

Please share the article with your friends and colleagues in filmmaking and improv!

Kevin Hammer on "Inventory's" underscore

With endless smarts and talent, a great sense of humor, and a collegial personality, Kevin Hammer has been a prized collaborator in more than 20 projects with Castparty Productions. And Inventory simply couldn't have been made without his innumerable contributions.

On this project, he was a core part of the story-development team, sometime cinematographer/cameraman, sound recordist, sound editor, video co-editor, title-sequence animator, colorist, and lead FX artist. As is often the case in Castparty films, he also played a major role—and countless instruments, both real and virtual—in the musical scoring.

Inventory features a song-score comprised mostly of relatively unknown powerpop classics. But there was still a need for original music, including two original tunes we recorded under the name "The Bad Pixels" and many instrumental cues.

Here, Kevin talks about the development of the original underscore:

When we started putting together the ideas for Inventory, it became obvious that it would need a lot of music. As somebody who majored in film scoring in college, this brought a smile to my face.

While in the midst of juggling writing, producing, directing, and general ringmastering duties—not to mention a cameo role—Justin somehow found the time to put on his songwriter's cap and came up with the opening song for the film, simply titled "Theme from Inventory."

He passed on to me a recording of himself singing the song while playing piano. It was a charming little tune. I was charged with the task of arranging it to have the charisma of the "Cheers" theme and the pep of the "Friends" theme, which stylistically would prove to fit in well with the powerpop genre we chose for the song score.

After some trial and error, we came up with a final recording that we were happy with. I got to play one-man pop band in my basement studio, and Justin performed the lead vocals with Dennis Hurley, in character as Percy, joining in on backing vocals.

Once the edit of the movie started to take shape and the song score was assembled, we found that there were still several scenes that felt as if they wanted music, but where a vocal song would likely fight the dialogue.

Justin and I are both fans of orchestral film scores. As the resident go-to composer/arranger for Castparty Productions, I started trying to think of how best to add a traditional score to a powerpop song score.

In order to tie things together, we decided to incorporate some part of the theme song into almost every orchestral cue. Sometimes it was a direct string arrangement of the pop tune. Sometimes it was a bouncy re-imagining of the song. And sometimes the melodies and harmonies were woven so subtly into the arrangement that its presence isn't even noticed until it's pointed out.

It became a game to see how far these melodies could be bent and reshaped into drastically different moods and textures. Justin's a big fan of Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye. This approach favorably reminded him of the way John Williams's theme to that film is performed every which way, all throughout the film.

I'm hoping that even if it's not something that is consciously noticed, it will subconsciously add to the overall coherence and enjoyment of Inventory.

Kevin Hammer's recollections of the origins of "Inventory"

Kevin Hammer has been a part of almost every Castparty Productions film to date, usually wearing more hats than Dr. Seuss's Bartholomew Cubbins—virtually every crew capacity and a few memorable cameo roles to boot.

He and Dennis Hurley were the first Castparty regulars I approached with the idea of doing a feature-length slacker comedy about a store inventory.

Kevin's often teased me about my penchant for giving movies the most obvious titles imaginable. And from day one, this one was always called Inventory.

Kevin shares these recollections of the project's formative days:

It was early 2009. We'd just screened our first feature-length film The Observer and we were trying to figure out what to do next. After the seriousness of The Observer we decided it'd be a refreshing change of pace to do a comedy next. So we started kicking around some ideas and finally decided on doing a romantic comedy about a guy who fakes his own death to see what his wife would do without him. We'd outlined most of the story and cast the lead roles and were looking forward to going into production for it. Then, we discovered that an episode of "American Dad" had pretty much the exact same plot. So, we started looking for another idea. For a while we were tossing around ideas for a horror movie, but deep down we really wanted to make a comedy.

One morning while having breakfast at a local diner, Justin told me about the idea he had for doing a movie about a store inventory. It played well on a lot of our strengths as filmmakers. We'd be able to combine improvised, re-improvised, and scripted material. And having most of the movie take place in a store would limit the number of locations we'd have to secure. At first we had no idea of what kind of store the inventory should take place in. All we knew was that it had to have a lot of products to count, and had to be the type of place that wouldn't generally be associated with having fun. The employees had to be bored enough to be easily distracted.

When we were ready to start looking for a location, we just drove down the highway stopping at various retail shops pitching the idea of shooting a movie there. Eventually we found Mattress Warehouse #1 and met Dave Thompson. But that's a story for another post.