Directed by Matt Holman
His perspective on the experience:
I find that when I write, often I need an initial push. If you looked on my phone right now, you would see pages full of ideas that I doubt I will ever follow up on.
So when I wanted to write a short back in early 2015, I reached out to my friend and collaborator, R Jay Molina, to get some help. He gave me a title and a tagline. The title was “Vagabond” and the tagline was “A lost young man finds something unexpected”.
At that time in my life, I was lost. I had graduated college, taken a job in tv, gave up on that and was currently working retail. I connected with that idea. I wrote the first draft in a few days. It was around 15 pages long. There were more characters besides just Vance and the Asphalt Jester and the structure was far more conventional. What I really enjoyed writing during that was some of the weird visual sequences, most of which appear in the final cut.
I sent the first draft to R Jay and he sent it back to me. He told me to cut it down to 5 pages. 5 pages?! I was relatively happy with that first draft and did not want to have to shorten it that dramatically. But I decided to give it a shot.
Visual sequence with an unseen father in a mansion? Cut.
Vance’s brother? Cut.
I realized that what I couldn’t do was cut out enough to get it down to 5 pages. So I decided to rewrite Vagabond.
I put on the album “Through The Deep Dark Valley” by The Oh Hellos.
I booted up my Mac and opened up Final Draft.
It was time to write.
What came out of it was unlike anything that I had written up to that point. Vagabond became an abstract film in which the viewer has far more to decide. There were strong visual sequences, but the story was way more impressionistic. Most importantly, I had gotten everything I wanted to say in the film into 5 pages.
So I sent the new draft to R Jay. We did a few minor tweaks and then he asked the important question: Do you want to direct it?
I said yes.
Pre-Production:
The hunt for locations started. We had 4 locations: a rural, a house with a large dining room, a suburban neighborhood and a forest.
There was no hunt needed for the suburban neighborhood. A few minutes away from me is Selwood Drive, a massive McMansion-style neighborhood. Most importantly, what it had was the bike path. The bike path was made to connect the neighborhood with the ones next to it. I used to ride down it when I was younger to get to friends’ houses. However, no one took care to maintain it so it was overgrown and dark. Perfect for what we needed in the scene where the Jester tells Vance where he was born and where he died.
The forest was the easiest. I went to a few of the public parks in the area and found a perfect spot right off of a walking path at Stumpy Lake Park. It was shadowed and ominous, exactly what was needed for that scene.
The house was harder. Eric Pace came through on that one. His aunt had a house in Hampton that fit exactly what we needed. It had a beautiful dining room table and more than enough space for what we needed.
Some time passed before we actually started to make Vagabond. During this time, I worked on a few other productions in a crew capacity. One of these was for the 48 Hour Film Festival in late 2015. It was on this production I met Philip Martin, an extremely talented actor and also a coworker at my retail job. In our short film “Wait For It”, he stole the scenes, even without speaking. When the wheels started to turn on Vagabond in early 2016, I knew I wanted him for the Jester. Phil had the perfect pairing of menace and whimsy that I envisioned when I wrote the character. Vance was another story. There was no one that I currently knew that would capture his conflict and disorientation from being thrust into a world that he did not understand.
In late 2015, I started taking improv comedy classes and performing at the Push Comedy Theater out in Norfolk, VA. The world of talented actors that I knew blew up. I met Garrett Barnes there. Besides being one of the funniest people I knew, Garrett had something that reminded me of Vance. He had never acted before, but I cornered him outside of the theater one night and asked him to audition. He said yes.
Our original shooting dates would have meant that Phil was not available so we decided to hold auditions for both Vance and the Asphalt Jester. Our friend, Glenn Semones, had a space at Stormseeker Studios that he let us hold the audition at. We had some talented actors come in, including Garrett and Phil. Everyone knew that they were the actors we needed to bring these characters to life. So we decided to push back the shooting dates to June in order to get them both.
The road was the hardest. I must’ve driven all over Hampton Roads, looking for a road that both looked like what I envisioned and we would be able to shoot on safely. I could find roads that fit one of those requirements but not both. I was complaining about it to another local filmmaker, Jason Sonvico, when he mentioned a road that he would walk down. It was super peaceful, surrounded by empty land and not full of cars. I decided to check it out. This road was exactly as advertised. It would end up being the location for the opening and closing scene of Vagabond.
The crew had been assembled during this time as well.
R Jay would be the cinematographer, Sam Winters was our on-set audio, Jaren Hawkins was our assistant director, Eric Pace was our grip. Other friends filled out the rest of our crew.
It was time to shoot Vagabond.
Production:
We planned for a weekend shoot, hoping to get everything we needed to shoot done in 2 days. Most of that weekend is a blur to be honest. There are some moments that stick in my head though so I’ll talk about those.
R Jay stayed the weekend with me at my parent’s house and we had fun.
In the scene where Vance and the Jester are sitting across from each other at the table and the Jester flings the staff at Vance, I’m the one swinging the staff full force at Garrett’s face. It was very cathartic.
Eric Pace spent most of that scene under the table because it was the only way we could get the audio.
I ruined a tablecloth that I stole from my parents with fake blood because of that scene.
The scene where the Jester materializes out of the woods was an improvised shot that was not in the movie at all.
The money that the Jester burns at the end was printed onto sticker paper which no one realized until we tried to burn it and it would not light on fire.
The shot of the Jester stepping over Vance’s sleeping form was not part of the script either. We realized to make that shot work, Garrett would have to lie impossibly still, but somehow he did it.
The post credit tease of the Jester popping into frame was an improvised shot as well.
We had all of our shots done by the end of the weekend, driving between our multiple locations.
Post-Production:
It was time to go into post production. R Jay would also be editing the film. My directing strategy is to surround myself with people who are competent and talented creatives and then trust what they will come up with.
Vagabond was no different.
The visuals came through quickly with an almost final cut within a few weeks. Where we got tripped up was with the audio, most of which was not audible. We had a lot of exterior shots and this severely affected the quality of the dialogue. R Jay reassured me that he knew someone who could help, Will Rigby.
I don’t know what that man did, but the audio sounded amazing. If I ever meet you, Will, I owe you a beer.
While R Jay was pulling the film together in the editing room, I was looking for someone to score. Just like in casting, I had someone in mind: my friend and collaborator, Austin Radford. Austin had helped on the crew of Vagabond and was also a fellow comedian at the Push Comedy Theater. More importantly, he was a talented musician, having played in many bands. He put together a demo that contained the initial theme that you hear right at the beginning of the film. However, he did not want to fully score it until we had a final cut of the film.
Audio was good. Video was good. We had a composer lined up. Austin took a few weeks to pull together the score. The first time I heard the score with the film, I knew that there was something special there. One of my favorite moments in the whole film is when we come back to Vance unconscious on the road. What Austin did there is reversed Vance’s original theme from the top of the film and once the camera lands on Vance, the original theme returns. I got chills the first time I heard it.
The film was finished.
Vagabond was released via Youtube in January 2017.
I remember the pride I felt, watching something that I had written and directed on my television with my parents. It was a good feeling.
SCREENINGS:
Vagabond has only screened in one film festival, the Proteus Festival back in 2019. Besides being the first time I’ve ever seen a short film of mine in an actual theater, it was also the first time I had seen it since its initial release in 2017.
I wrote a bit about it after it had finished:
“It's weird. I wrote it and directed it but watching the film with an audience (albeit a small one) is entirely different. I became hyper-tuned to the audience reaction instead of the film and the shortcomings of the film became hyper-apparent. Tonight, I heard laughs. Laughs where there shouldn't have been any. That stung a bit. But then the laughs vanished. They were replaced with silence. I don't know how to interpret that silence but I saw it as unsettled and confused. I thought I understood it. Now, I'm not sure if I do. And I wrote the damn thing. While Vagabond is not perfect, I'm proud of it.”
TAKEAWAYS:
I haven’t directed much since then. I directed a short film for a 48 Hour Film Festival a few years later. I remember when we were getting the crew together that there were two things I stressed: good audio and lining up locations ahead of time. I definitely learned that from Vagabond.
It definitely influenced how I write short films as well. Vagabond was one of the first short films where I really relied on external feedback. I had other people reading it and helping me with it. To this day, I reach out to a small group of trusted creatives when I need feedback on something I have written.
When I think back to Vagabond, I remember the fun that I had working on it. I still laugh whenever I see the picture of Eric peeking up from under the table. I can feel the chill on the back of my neck the first time I saw the final cut. It reminds me that as much fun as creating is, the people that you surround yourself with matter even more.
-MH
Watch the short film here.
