Piecing together Broken Dreams
Independent features go practically unnoticed to a certain degree within the vast confines of Los Angeles. They make their small runs and fade off into the large rivers of the film world, but this is not the case with David Crabtree’s Broken Dreams. The story of friendship, addiction and courage is conveyed onscreen through the careful vision of this up and coming director.
Although Crabtree is a seasoned editor, he always retained an eye for directing. He recalls back to his college years where his experience in film quickly blossomed, starting with his award-winning short drama The Bedroom. “While I was attending Cal State Fullerton I directed a couple of short films. One of them (The Bedroom) won a couple of awards, winning the gold at WorldFest Houston. Actually my Director of Photography was Matthew Libatique, who’s gone on to do both Iron Man movies and all of Darren Aronofsky’s movies.”
You would figure that someone like him could easily make the leap over from short films to feature length ones, but instead he took a different and more practical path. “I knew I wanted to direct eventually. I felt that if I followed the career path going into editing I’d probably climb the ladder a lot quicker, being able to make a decent living and then one day make my move and start directing.” Once he made that commitment, everything fell into place for the editor as he latched onto one job after another. “I edited the Las Vegas pilot and I’ve done a few other pilots on other series including Psych. I’ve worked on mini series like Five Days of Midnight with Timothy Hunton and The Lost Room with Peter Krause. For the last four years I’ve been the supervising editor on Psych.”
Once the directing bug bit Crabtree again, he could not ignore it. During the off-time in between editing seasons of Psych, the writer and director started putting everything in motion to begin creating what we now know as Broken Dreams. Not only wanting to prove he’s got the chops to take on directing episodes of the USA television series but to further expand his career in the film industry, he went on the hunt for actors which landed him over at the Beverly Hills Playhouse.
“I had seen their performances many times on the stage, and I had actually worked with them on a couple of comedy shorts back in 2008,” says Crabtree in reference of the three main actors Eddie Navarro, Kelsey Ford and Jake Olson. Working with the three actors, Crabtree ended up eventually collaborating with them and writer Jeff Wallace who helped put together the entire script.
With an intense drama dealing with the struggles of changes and addiction, one needs a strong lead in order to help carry the film through. That is where actor Eddie Navarro comes in. “I had the pleasure of being in this class with him, and watching him put up scenes, one after another, whether it’s serious drama or comedy. …He’s fearless about putting up anything and taking chances. He makes really bold choices, he doesn’t make safe choices, he’s interesting to watch. He can be very subtle, he can be very big when he needs to be. He’s got such a range and just a resevoir of talent.”
The feature originally was not intended to be one, only meant to be within the length of a short film which quickly spawned into something bigger than they originally anticipated. Because of this, one scene with actress Nicole Gerth turned into more. “…Nicole Gerth who plays Julie is only in one scene. The thing is we walked away from that and I cut a bunch of stuff together and we realized out of that was that we had some real gold there with Nicole Gerth as Julie. Not only is Nicole a very unique, interesting and super talented actor, she really lights up the scene.”
Once the cast was assembled, principal photography quickly went into motion last year. With the span of a couple of months, filming was finished which paved the way to post production. One of the things that can make or break a film to a certain degree is the music, and that’s where up-and-comer Jay Vincent comes into the picture. “He had the best point of view, in terms of what I was looking for, and he took that and ran with it. I really wanted a guitar player composer, because I really wanted a guitar-driven score for this movie. He was a guitar player, and I guess he’s been offered scholarships to play guitar at several different universities and turned them all down because he knew he wanted to be a composer, so he went to USC’s composing school instead. So I liked that background a lot, and later he played several things for me and I realized that he can do guitar like heavy metal, do it like Santana, and do a lot of different sounds that were needed.”
With the couple of years that have breezed on by, you would think that the completion of the film would mean that it’s run is over, but that’s not the case. Broken Dreams is already making it’s festival run through the Buffalo Niagra Film Festival and Big Island Hawaii Film Festival. Not only that, Broken Dreams won two Accolade awards that include an Award of Merit and Award of Excellence to Nicole Gerth for her supporting role in the film.
“So, to be here right now, just starting our screenings and getting into film festivals and winning awards, this is great. This is exactly where we wanted to be right now. We want to have a great festival run, that’s always been the goal, and then we’ll see where we go from there. The fact that were in the midst of this is just a lot of fun.” Keep your eye out for the next season of Psych, where David Crabtree will not only be editing several episodes but directing some too.
