CineSource | 9 August 2010

Although George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola came north with the express purpose of starting studios – and they certainly succeeded – in the end both Lucasfilm and American Zoetrope became one-man shops. The dream of a United Artists-like studio (Chaplin, Griffith, Pickford and Fairbanks, 1919) supporting multiple and new filmmakers came to naught, until now. Kerner Optical, famous for building beautiful models and then blowing them to smithereens, is reaching out to take the studio mantle.

Actually, Kerner was merely a front name for Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic, so it could operate in plain sight, on a side street in San Rafael, without the endless tourist buses. When Lucas moved his CGI team to the Presidio in San Francisco in 2006, he sold the division to a management buy-out to clean house and concentrate on what he does best, the “Star Wars” franchise.

As ILM, Kerner did special effects on all of Lucas’s films, starting with “THX 1138″ (1971), and on outside movies starting ten years later with “Dragonslayer” (1981). Since then, it has done almost 100 films, everything from Steven Spielberg’s “Indiana Jones” (1984) and “Jurassic Park” (1993) to “Back to the Future” (1985), Paul Schrader’s edgy masterpiece “Mishima” (1985), and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (1986). Post-buy-out, they’ve done the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series, a “Harry Potter,” and the last “Indiana Jones.” With its talent history, solid 3D rigs, and adaptable back lot, Kerner is well positioned to make smaller Hollywood North films, in the five to ten million dollar range, that punch far above their weight.

Kerner's CEO Eric Edmeades and new partner Dean Yurke discuss the latter's new cut of the teaser for Kerner's first self-generated outing, 'Golden.' Elise Crozier assists. Photo: CineSource

Not only is Edmeades an accomplished, even visionary, businessman who conquered the Internet in its early days, he has also followed his South African family’s long interest in conservation and wildlife. During the 2006 earthquake in Java, he jumped into philanthropy work, which he is continuing. In 1994, he published one of the first business e-zines, “Success Express Journal,” and made serious money with his ITR Group, specializing in handheld computers and wireless, which he sold in 2006. Living until recently in Turks and Caicos, islands off the coast of Cuba, he also does motivational speaking, adventure expeditions, and is an avid wildlife photographer.

For Kerner’s first self-generated picture, “Golden” – a thriller about six kids, a redwood forest, and a goldmine – Edmeades has joined with writer/director Dean Yurke, 41. A more unlikely – or conversely, mutually balancing – pair could not be found. While Edmeades is cool and professional, if casual, Yurke is bubbly and passionate and a self-admitted nerd artist-type. An Englishman, Yurke has been film-obsessed since age eight, when he saw “Star Wars” – not probably coincidentally. Yurke attended film school at Bournemouth University (just across the channel from Cherbourg, France), where he got an MA in Computer Animation and Visualization, making him a triple threat: writer, director, and Inferno-artist, the high-end 3D compositing software by Autodesk.

Yurke’s day job is at the actual Industrial Light and Magic, which now located in San Francisco’s Presidio. In fact, it was Yurke and his comrades-in-cinema who wrestled “Avatar” to the mat last year. ILM was brought in to help wrangle the final CGI after James Cameron’s New Zealand team, WETA Digital, got bogged down (score one for Hollywood North). Although special effects guys are often disparaged when it comes to narrative, Yurke has been making shorts and writing features for years now. One was greenlighted in LA a few years back but the light turned yellow. For “Golden,” that amber glow is a positive.

“The story of how the movie came to be is interesting,” Edmeades says, after showing me around and sitting down to relax in a non-descript meeting room. “It is something that Dean has been working on for a long time and brought to Kerner. Local filmmakers have an awareness that we are open [for business]. The recent ‘Pig Hunt’ [a positively reviewed 2008 thriller by James Isaac] just landed its US distribution. We ended up doing a bunch of work on it in exchange for equity. Dean came here with a similar question: ‘Hey, I want to make this film – stage, set construction – you guys want to partner?’

“I said to Dean, ‘Are you planning to shoot in 3D?’ He said, ‘No.’ ‘Why not?’ I said. He said what everyone else is saying right now: ‘Where do you get the rigs, it’s too expensive…’ We got into a discussion about Kerner’s 3D rigs, which we’ve been building for four years. Dean mentions he’s been working the last four months on ‘Avatar’ – that was done in 3D, right?”

“A little bit,” says Dean, warming to what appears to be a familiar Mutt-n-Jeff jousting.

“One thing led to another, and it became clear that ‘Golden’ shouldn’t be a little pet project that Dean came and shot here during a quiet spell. It should become a real production – a co-production. It is very much in keeping with my mission stepping in at Kerner. You are dealing with a company that has a 30-year history in film production without ever producing its own films. Now that it is independent of the Lucasfilm family, it makes sense to become content creators rather then just adding magic to other people’s content.”

“I recently had a guy visiting who was here back in the original ‘Empire’ days. He said George [Lucas] would say, ‘Look, when this ‘Star War’ thing is done, we are going to become an independent studio where you guys can bring your projects.’ In fairness, even though ‘Star Wars’ had done well, nobody knew how big it would be. What I have been told is, what we are now doing here sort of fits with his original vision.”

“I heard he built a couple of Victorians up on Sky Walker specifically as visiting filmmaker residences,” I comment.

“I am a big fan of that idea,” continues Edmeades, “I first heard of [such a thing] from Richard Branson. That was how he set up his first recording studio, he bought a big castle – ”

“The Manor,” Yurke interjects.

“Right. Bands would come and stay with Branson at The Manor and go down to the recording studio at night. I suspect that, longer term, there can be something like that here. One of the big challenges we have, in justifying filmmaking in Northern California, is the difficulty of competing with Michigan, Canada, Hawaii, what-have-you. Of course, we could give even more added value if we got support from the state [in competitive tax rebates].”

“Still, I think we are in the right place for achieving a studio,” Edmeades concludes, “if you consider how well ILM did here. This whole Bay Area was a real hub for commercial production for a long time.”

“There are so many talented artists in this area,” adds Yurke, “Because of ILM, Pixar, ImageMovers Digitial -”
“But when you have a bunch of independent players off doing their own thing,” Edmeades interjects. “They all compete for price and delivery times. They create a puppy mill version of animation and CGI work. What I would like to see is a more collaborative approach.”

Edmeades appears rather mellow for the quest he just proposed, moseying around in an oversized vest – perhaps because the studios can be chilly – his laid-back style masking an intense interest in his adopted industry. He started with nature photography but began writing scripts and has recently invested in visual research. In November 2009, Edmeades signed an agreement with the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, where he used to live, to establish a stereoscopic 3D research studio which will undertake film production, experiments in the medium and issue degrees.

The financing for “Golden” also came out of a trip to Vancouver, as it happens. The trip was part pleasure, to see the 2010 Winter Olympics in February, but also business: to check out Canada’s lucrative tax credits. Any large local operation is obliged to keep this in mind, if only to shave needed dollars of a budget and wrest a bid from a competitor.

Then someone heard Edmeades was from Kerner and invited him to appear on a 3D discussion panel. Afterwards, a guy in the audience approached him and started discussing a large period piece produced in China. “He said ‘We’d like to partner with you on this and this and this,’ a lot of very complicated stuff. So I said, ‘Why don’t we start dating before we get married. I have a film you could get involved in.’ They took one look at it and said, ‘Yeah, that makes sense.’”

“You know, I met Jim Holt a few months ago – he produced [George] Clooney’s last two pictures – quite a serious producer and a good guy. I asked, ‘How do you finance a film?’ He said, ‘Remember: No two films are financed the same way.’ I think you could extend that to: No two films are produced the same way. Every film requires some level of collaboration and co-production. How that ends up on paper and logistics is different in every case.”

“I can’t speak for other people. All I know is I’m excited about making it happen here. Aside from the talent we have here at Kerner, there is a large pool of talent in the Bay Area. I think that we – and the local, would-be film investors – would be foolish not to take advantage of it.”

In fact, Yurke’s skill set combined with Kerner’s history and 3D experience – not to mention Edmeades’s business acumen and his and Yurke’s metaphysical balance – plus a Chinese angel: why its a match made in heaven. Yurke, who has lived in LA, also enlisted the assistance of veteran producer Michael J. Zampino, who has studio work in LA and New York.

“Golden” concerns a group of twenty-somethings, one of whom falls into and becomes trapped in an abandoned mine. It was inspired by a radio report Yurke heard about how every year people fall down one of the 42,000 abandoned mines in California and Nevada. The perfect conceit for a thriller, he thought. He started channeling his university-days’ interest in thrillers like “Near Dark” [K. Bigelow, 1987, one of this author's favorites], “The Last Wave” and “The Shining.”

“There are a million scary movies out there,” Edmeades said. “What was neat about ‘Golden’ was the moral questions getting asked.”

“Rather then an external monster,” Yurke continued, “it’s an internal one. You always have the forest or the serial killer or whatever as the bad guy. But here it is the greed of the kids that is killing them.” Yurke wrote the first draft in one month in 2006 but spent three years polishing it. He has also workshopped it with actors and did a rewrite based on that.

“It’s pretty tight,” Edmeades says, “We get a lot of scripts here, and I have written a few myself. I have the ten-to-twenty page test: If I am not interested enough after ten to read twenty, then I don’t. If I’m not interested after twenty to finish – I don’t. With Dean’s, I had a very peculiar reaction. I was reading through in a single sitting, and I got to about 80%, and I didn’t want to carry on.”

“So you don’t know about the alien invasion at the end?” teases Yurke.

“And that porn bit?” parries Edmeades. “I never had that happen before. I felt it is building in a way where I want to savor it.”

In fact, Edmeades had been looking for a project that could be done locally even before Yurke showed up. “When I saw ‘Avatar,’” he says, ” I thought, ‘You don’t need a CG forest, we have a real forest. You don’t need blue [screen for special effects] you have got green, the real.”

“Being from England and coming to California,” jumps in Yurke, “You go up on Mount Tam and you see these incredible redwood trees. It’s like – this is a billion dollar set!”

Of course, innovation and reinvention are obligatory in a recession, and things have been hard these years. Some bleak rumors have emerged from Kerner.
“Yeah, it has been a little tough,” notes Edmeades. But, as a seasoned entrepreneur, he is accustomed to rising to the challenge. “The pending SAG strike [June 2009] pushed back so many projects, it killed off our whole inter-season. That’s a big deal to us. So we have had some challenges. That’s business, you know. In a sense, that is Darwinism; survival of the fittest.”

“Golden” is scheduled to start shooting around the end of the year. Other than a few shots up in the Sierras, it will be produced entirely in Marin. Rose Duignan [Kerner's lauded general manager] location scouted “The Ewok Adventure” (1984), so she knows all the area’s best locations. It is set entirely in a redwood forest and an underground mine, meaning about 50% can be shot right on Kerner’s lot. Although they are not announcing the cast yet, they have filled most of the parts. There are only six actors, two of whom are local.

This is Yurke’s freshman feature but, like SF director Jon Bowden (see archives: cinesourcemagazine.com), he had a project that got very close five years ago when he was in Los Angeles. That served as graduate school but it went into development hell. “After that, I try to avoid studio people,” Yurke says.

The upside was he ended up taking acting lessons – probably a good idea for any of us trying to present a coherent narrative to the public – but even more crucial for directors, and double for high-energy folks like Yurke. “Being a visual artist, I was always frightened of working with actors,” he says, until he studied with Judith Weston. “She’s brilliant. She has a book called ‘Directing Actors’ [1999] and does workshops and classes. She has this course where you go down to LA and, as a director, you become an actor. You learn the acting techniques of Meisner, Strasberg and Stanislavski. You actually put on a performance!”
“Being an actor, it is terrifying – you are standing up there – but [Weston] said: ‘That is how your actors feel all the time.’” That experience gave Yurke an intimate connection to how an actor works. He also came to understand the actor’s relationship to structure and improv.

“When I do my first draft, I write very quickly, to get it out, to not be trapped by grammar and structure. When working with an actor, you give them the freedom to work in the moment, to be creative, to get to the emotion.”

“Once you’ve been through the process of becoming an actor, she lets you workshop with real actors – direct SAG actors. That is the whole thing about filmmaking – it’s very collaborative. That is why it is so important to be working with the right people, people you get on with. You need to be comfortable with them in the room. If you are not comfortable, you are not free enough to be emotional, to make mistakes. The successes you cut into the movie, but you need that permissive environment so you can be free to make mistakes. Not so much experimental – because you’ve got certain rules – but freeing [the actors] to be emotional, where they can break down. The whole process can be destructive for an actor, so you have to create an environment where they feel safe to be vulnerable.”

Another advantage Yurke has is his ability to single-handedly produce a very pro teaser. “I made the opening scene as ‘proof of concept,’” he explains. “I shot a teaser for potential investors and have also been shooting test scenes to establish the 3D pipeline for the teaser – now that we are shooting in 3D. I had to go back into those scenes and stereo-ize: it’s a hard thing to stereo-ize in post.” His next assignment-to-self: storyboard rest of “Golden.”

“I like storyboarding [see illo p27]. It is part of the writing process. You re-block it. Then you give it to the actors and they come up with something else. Storyboarding frees you up to experiment on the set. You say, ‘I know what I need and I kind of got that but this would look really good, so let’s try it.’”
Yurke shot the teaser on the Cataract Trail, above Fairfax then made some of it day-for-night in Inferno. He also added rain and spinning leaves, while deleting hikers in the background, and it looks great. The trailer features only his principal, an Asian American actress who runs through the forest, first innocently, then not so. He shot with a crane, tracking her in a big circle. When she falls into the mine, it is all CGI in the teaser, but in the actual film, it will done in traditional Kerner fashion: with practical sets and effects.

“I gotta tell you,” Edmeades says, “3D creates the opportunity for a proper return to Hollywood North. There is a window right now. You think back to 1983-84, when the first video stores started opening up. I remember because I used to live near a video arcade and one of the first ever Blockbuster-type places. You’d go in and it was like – empty shelf space everywhere. The reason was it was a new business and the indie movement hadn’t kicked in. That created a demand for indie product.”

“Now we’ve gone through the maturation of that and are into the digital downloading age. Raising money to produce films has become difficult – everybody knows the challenges there. What’s happening is that 3D movies have proven to be economically viable. They make money. But more than that, there is something we have that ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth,’ ‘Avatar’ and ‘Up’ didn’t have: a secondary 3D market. There are 3D TV’s. 3D broadcasting is becoming a present-day reality. That means there will be an ongoing market to acquire 3D content that will cause a demand.”

“I think we’re in a place right now, if we move quickly and Northern California moves quickly, we can really establish ourselves in that world. A movie like ‘Golden’ will send up a flag. ‘Hey, this can be done in Northern California – the expertise is there.’ That should attract more opportunities. You’ve got this two-to-four year window – could be longer, we don’t know what impact free broadcast will have. During that window there’s gonna be this requirement for content. We want to show that Northern California is here to fill that requirement.”

“Remember, I’m not from the business, so this is an external observation. But if somebody produces a $200,000 indie movie and, let’s say, it does really well, that doesn’t say, ‘Hey, the Bay Area can make great movies.’ It says that these guys were lucky. Making a movie of the scale of ‘Golden,’ even though we’re doing it inexpensively, this is a proper production. I think the success of ‘Golden’ will advertise Northern California’s film capabilities much more so than your traditional six-figure indie film.”

“Right now, you can go off and shoot in other places, and get tax credits, and so on. But you really have to weigh the costs of relocating people or training people or using new people. Here you walk in and have this packaged region that knows how to make movies.”

“I think that what Kerner has been to a degree – but can really become – is a creative campus for local filmmakers. We’ve got the stages and we’ve got the expertise, in everything from set construction to 3D and special effects to just managing stages and shooting environments. So there’s this campus that’s available. And let’s be clear, it wasn’t available before. It not only wasn’t available, it was a secret. Now, here it is! I think that could play a big role in getting the Hollywood North thing back on track.”

“‘Golden’ will showcase Northern California scenery, talent pool, 3D capabilities and something unique; the production of high quality 3D content on a budget. That’s going to be the key thing. It’s going be like, do you want to spend 100 million dollars and make a huge Hollywood 3D movie? Go to LA. Do you want to make a reasonably budgeted 3D movie? Come to Northern California. That’s what we’re hoping to see with ‘Golden’ and that’s what I think we will see.”