Blitzing the Movie Making Business
by Doree Shafrir
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scene from Winning Caroline 
Movie buffs familiar with Dogme95, the avant-garde collective whose films range from Dogville to Italian for Beginners, know that all Dogme films are constricted by a set of rules: No sets or soundstages. Shooting may only be done with hand-held cameras. And no music soundtrack, unless it occurs “naturally.”
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The filmmakers of Blitzfilme have rules too. For one, any movie they make must be a spoof of a genre: film noir, comedy, horror, or other. But perhaps the most important rule is that all movie making—story, script, filming, editing—may only commence at the start of winter break. Everyone in Blitzfilme has to be back on campus by the first day of spring-semester classes.
The brainchild of junior Josh Gorin and his high school friends from Pittsburgh, Michael Mitnick (at Harvard) and Tyler Mossman (at Penn State), Blitzfilme has already made two movies. The latest, Winning Caroline, won Best Undergraduate Comedy at the Ivy Film Festival in April—no small feat, considering the 30-plus films at the festival were themselves selected from over 200 submissions.
The 24-minute Winning Caroline tells the story of Peter, a hapless student who falls for a classmate. He enlists the help of friends to get the girl, and a series of hilarious hijinks ensue, including a choreographed musical number that features a cast member in a gorilla suit. (Peter’s friend had snooped through the girl’s things and found she liked musicals. Hence, “I'm Bananas for You,” an elaborate song-and-dance serenade performed for her in a Pittsburgh park.)
“We bought the gorilla suit for Shadow of a Lie,” Blitzfilme’s first production, explains Gorin. “We wanted to use it again because it cost $50”—besides equipment, one of the biggest expenses. It’s this combination of ingenuity and humor that are the hallmarks of Winning Caroline. After all, when you’re blitz-producing a film from start to finish in just three weeks and on a shoestring, a certain practical ingenuity is needed.
As Gorin recalls the hectic production schedule, which he coordinated and recorded in his production notebook, it’s clear he’s passionate about film. “I flew in [to Pittsburgh] on December 19, and we started working on December 20. First, we worked out what kind of movie we wanted to make. We had four pre-production days, four script days, and seven days of shooting.”
The Blitzfilmers worked almost around the clock creating and planning and dealing with the unexpected. Shooting called for some inventiveness. One scene, in a Giant supermarket, required the cast and crew to film between one and two o’clock in the morning—the only time the store would allow them inside. “We couldn’t get them to turn off the music,” Gorin recalls, “so we had to put the audio in later.”
Near the end of the film, following the musical number, the script called for a police SUV to pull up to the park. Yes, it’s a real police car, says Gorin. “We had to convince the police chief that it was a serious enough movie that it was worth his time to lend us the car—but that it wasn’t serious enough that he’d have to consult city council about lending us the car.”
Still, not everything could be finessed. The lead actress had wisdom teeth pulled halfway through filming. “Her face looks puffy in the entire second half of the movie,” he points out.
The film was edited on an iMac at his mom’s kitchen counter. “I was half an hour late to the premiere,” he says, “because we were still editing.” About 50 friends, family members, and high-school teachers waited for the movie’s arrival at Pittsburgh’s John Heinz Center. So far the DVD has sold about 100 copies at $8 apiece, which helps the threesome recoup some of the costs.
Gorin is a Cinema Studies major. He came to Penn to study Digital Media Design in the engineering school but switched to the College when he realized film was his passion—and the new major was created.
Blitzfilme’s first movie, Shadow of a Lie, was conceived and shot over winter break of his sophomore year. Shortly after production wrapped up on that project, Gorin (with Neil Chatterjee, EAS’01, and friends) put together and entered another film in a national contest sponsored by Activision. The video-game company had asked for three-minute ninja films to promote its latest product. Their action picture, The Ninja Movie, won the contest, which was judged by director John Woo. With his share of the $15,000 prize, Gorin bought the equipment on which Winning Caroline was shot.
The budding filmmaker’s love of movies, from the creative to the technical, isn’t just a hobby. He’d like to direct feature films, though he admits, “that’s like saying I want to be in the NBA.” A more realistic goal, he believes, is to be a director of photography or cinematography.
As Gorin approaches senior year, hoping to find an internship in L.A. for the summer, he’s looking forward to his final Blitzfilme production next winter. Though the rules say he can’t start on it until winter break, Gorin insists that “we’re definitely using the gorilla suit again.”
Doree Shafrir, C’99, is the arts and entertainment editor at the Philadelphia Weekly.