The Camera Must Roll

The Berkshire Film Industry is Busier Than Ever

By Hannah Van Sickle

LIFE IN A DAY 2020 Rick Sands documents Doree Ndooki and Taylor Sloanaker making finishing touches on a mural in Great Barrington. PHOTO BY DIANE PEARLMAN

›› When the Community Film Fund launched on February 13, Diane Pearlman hardly saw the date on the calendar as auspicious. To celebrate, she gathered a dozen local filmmakers for drinks at Hotel on North in Pittsfield, where the vastly talented group began forming a community almost instantly. Exactly one month later, business as usual screeched to a halt as the reality of a global pandemic descended upon the verdant Berkshire hills. In the ensuing six months, the local film community has adapted and forged ahead—with safety and ingenuity leading the way—to make an abundance of lemonade out of the pandemic’s lemons. In this region with a rich history of filmmaking, that craft is being honed now, perhaps more than ever.

“There’s this really great collaborative spirit here,” says Pearlman, who sits at the helm of the Berkshire Film and Media Collaborative. Integral to her organization’s work is the new $25,000 matching fund to help smaller nonprofits make impactful videos for their branding, marketing, and fundraising efforts, which, for the moment, stand in lieu of live, in-person events and galas. Financial support of this initiative is far-reaching—the first donation came from Martin Scorsese in honor of the collaborative’s board member and colleague Kent Jones of Pittsfield—and the rewards are being reaped much closer to home.

North Adams-based director and cinematographer Joe Aidonidis spent five hours in August producing a video for the Pittsfield- based Rites of Passage and Empowerment (ROPE), led by Shirley Edgerton. Filming took place on the First Street Common, which is suddenly de rigueur—as are masks, disinfecting stations, minimal crew, and boom microphones (instead of those attached to one’s lapel) that allow for distance.

Aidonidis cites an uptick in business since the pandemic hit, one that comes with inherent challenges. “We’ve had to be very selective,” he says, adding that spending extra time on set with fewer people has been the biggest shift—one his largely nonprofit clients agree with.

“Oddly enough, teleprompter material has become really popular,” Aidonidis adds of a newly streamlined procedure: an executive director arrives on set, stands on a masking tape “X,” delivers their message, and departs, having only come into contact with a single cameraperson.

The call for virtual galas has created work for filmmakers like Ben Hillman of Great Barrington, who says an increase in production is a result of live events being canceled. “I expect this will continue for some time,” he says, after producing virtual galas for Fairview Hospital and Community Access to the Arts, as well as creating the historical montage for the Mahaiwe’s online event. Pearlman remains open as to the genesis of this shift.

Berkshire Film & Media Collaborative crew with ROPE mentor Jean Clarke-Mitchell. PHOTO BY DIANE PEARLMAN

“I’m not sure if it’s because of COVID, or if organizations are realizing how important video is in communicating with constituents, donors and getting their message out,” Pearlman explains. Calls to the collaborative have increased markedly over the past year, and nonprofits have been eager to apply for matching funds to increase the quality of their productions.

Films with talent, like the low-budget feature I’m Not Him, remain in production as well with a spring 2021 anticipated release. Producer Ellyn Vander Wyden (who was the line producer on Karen Allen’s film, A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud), went so far as to take a COVID certificate course to gain knowledge of the virus as well as on-set protocols. She and her team wrapped a 15-day shoot at the start of August, spending three weeks at the Red Lion Inn while filming in locales from the Congregational Church and courthouse in Lee to Fairview Hospital in Great Barrington—making her one of the first pioneers out there to do it. Vander Wyden says dealing with unions to facilitate protocols is the most taxing part of the job; the rest is just “pivoting to the times and figuring out how to do things.” Medics linger close by, lunch arrives in individual brown bags, everyone is masked save for the actors, and testing happens weekly.

While in many ways the cost of filmmaking has gone up, Pearlman is finding that the very small productions can still happen—restrictions and all.

“A lot of new partnerships have come up and allowed for some of our organizations to think about working more closely together,” she says. Jim Frangione of the Great Barrington Public Theater postponed his entire 2020 season and instead placed an open call for submissions from playwrights within a 50-mile radius of Great Barrington. The caveat? Frangione sought scripts with a focus on the natural environment of the Berkshires to facilitate filming outdoors. And so, six scripts will be developed into short films—solo pieces between five to seven minutes in length—in lieu of performing for a live audience.

“People had tremendous imaginations,” Frangione says.

The pandemic did not stop Pearlman from taking to the streets of Great Barrington on July 25, in response to Ridley Scott’s call for video footage from around the world. She and her crew captured video footage of Dorree Ndooki’s mural honoring recent victims of police violence, on display outside Rubiner’s Cheesemongers & Grocers, with hopes their submission will be woven into Life in a Day 2020, a documentary based on user-generated footage to create a portrait of the world in a single day. The film, a sequel to Scott’s 2010 YouTube feature, Life in a Day, will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and on YouTube in 2021. In a region that can feel isolated in the best of circumstances, the pandemic has pushed every- one to the edges of comfort, a fact Pearlman appreciates.

“Most of our filmmakers live here and want to give back,” she says. “I’m not surprised, just grateful, that they will film all over the world and then want to return and help here, in the Berkshires.”