The premier screening of the 107-minute film “Perception” will take place at the Academy of Music in Northampton on Saturday, Oct. 13, at 8 p.m.
The Academy of Music in NorthamptonNORTHAMPTON—Patrick "Wade" Wofford of Northampton says falling in love had a big influence in his desire to be a filmmaker: Falling in love with literature in eighth grade and the “expert/other-worldly nature of telling a story,” falling in love with drama in 11th grade and beginning to act during his senior year in high school and falling in love with still photography, which combined with his other loves made him realize the art of being a writer/director “was as simple as combining the telling of a story in words with the telling of a story with images.”
Well, the idea is simple, “but the logistics of independent filming is inherently complicated,” he said.
And he knows. After a decade of film school and professional production work in Los Angeles and New York City and trying to generate interest in one of his scripts, Wofford decided to produce his first film with his own funds in 2006.
A half dozen years and $30,000 later, the premier screening of his 107-minute “Perception” will take place at the Academy of Music in Northampton on Saturday, Oct. 13, at 8 p.m.
Wofford, a 10th-grade English teacher at New Leadership Charter School in Springfield, wrote and directed the film.
It revolves around three unlikely lives that collide in a New York City winter: Clarissa, a homeless photographer; Ralph, a real estate executive struggling to honestly break into the business; and Tobias, a perpetual student who can’t seem to keep a job. Using three separate narratives, “Perception” explores the breach of experience between these three individuals through miscommunication and mistaken intention.
“The idea for a script based on the breach of human perception had always fascinated me,” Wofford said. “I had this theory in my twenties that there were three primary ‘modes’ of perception: aesthetic, social, intellectual. I decided the story would be best split into three distinct pieces with each character representing one of the modes. The characters immediately revealed themselves: an artist—the aesthetic mode, a businessman—the social, and a student/thinker the intellectual. Conflict was immediately birthed, as history dictates that the artist is at odds with the businessman, and the thinker is at odds with the entire world.”
Most of the film takes place during winter when equipment rentals and crew would be less expensive.
“In order to afford the project, I had to hold down a full-time job during the shoot, so out of necessity needed to shoot most of the film on nights and weekends,” Wofford said. He used this to his advantage, deciding that the story would span winter's transition into spring; the change of seasons is real and an actual character in the film.
His experience as a gaffer and light designer taught him that indoor shoots require complex light setups, and lighting can stretch out a budget-less production. So he set much of the action of the film outdoors.
But who spends a lot of time outdoors in New York City in the winter? “The answer was a simple one, and the principle character was decided to lead a homeless life, which enriched the story further and added great complexity to the artist's struggle,” Wofford explained.
Even more of the characters' personalities and lifestyles within the story were born from similar logistical/budgetary necessity. Acquiring locations within New York City on a shoestring budget is no simple task. "A friend manages this restaurant on Chelsea Piers," Wofford reasoned, "so there's a key location. And another friend's parents own this great apartment overlooking Central Park, so there's another location." Tobias became the struggling thinker waiting tables for a living, and Ralph found a home overlooking Central Park--one that suited a successful real estate salesman.
There are 72 people in the cast, eight in the crew; a total of 141 are affiliated with the production. All but three worked for a deferred pay contract meaning that if the film acquires distribution and sells, they get paid.
“Our goal is to get picked up by a DVD or theatrical distributor and be brought to the world,” Wofford said.
Wofford moved to Northampton in 2007, immediately after principle photography had wrapped. He spent the next four years working as a teacher and editing the film on weekends.
By the time he reached the marketing stage, he had only enough cash to submit the film to a dozen film festivals for consideration, and it won awards at two: The Royal Reel Award in Filmmaking at Canada International Film Festival in Vancouver and Best Dramatic Feature at the DIY Film Fest in Hollywood.
“’Perception’ was a really, really great story, and we did an amazing job telling it,” Wofford said.
Wofford spent five years in Los Angeles, working professionally in the film industry as a gaffer, scenic carpenter/fabricator, and teleprompter and in the art department. He has worked in Atlanta, Hollywood and New York doing set design, light design and direction for theatrical productions for 15 years.
“Theatre and film are very similar in many ways, and while my love of cinema was born out of theatre, I still have a deep love for it,” he said.
As a child growing up in Georgia he loved the magic of cinema; his brother Wesley Wofford (now a professional makeup artist) watched horror films frame-for-frame to figure out "how they did it,” which drew Wofford’s attention to the technical making of the films.
Asked what goes into making an independent film like “Perception,” Wofford offered four components:
1) A willingness to lose a lot of sleep for a very long period of time.
2) Either a divorce or the coolest spouse ever, to support you through the long process and deal with your mood swings as you wage the battle. (He got married about a year before film production began, so yes, his wife is cool.)
3) An acceptance of the fact that you will spend every spare dollar gambling the biggest game of your life, (a gamble he said was well worth it because it was such an accomplishment and did receive film festival honors) and
4) A network of generous people willing to help you out along the way in the most unexpected of ways like a former colleague who let him use her New Jersey home for filming and even cooked a pasta meal for the cast and crew.
Wofford is in pre-production now on his second feature film, "The Answer," a camping drama which is shooting in July-August 2013 in western Massachusetts and southern Vermont.
General admission tickets for the “Perception” premier are $7.50 and available at the Academy of Music Box Office Tuesdays through Fridays from 3-6 p.m., by calling (413) 584-9032 ext. 105 or online at www.academyofmusictheatre.tix.com.
For more information about the film, go to www.perceptionthefilm.com.