We constantly talk about how improving technology is helping cinema become more efficient, but few examples are as stellar as Randy Moores Escape From Tomorrow. We talked to the director about how a new camera gave him the idea for his guerrilla-style thriller.
The benefits of the Canon 5D are well-known and well-documented in indie film circles by now - a cheap, easy-to-use camera that is portable and looks great in a variety of lighting conditions. Yet while this obvious point has been well hammered home, weve yet to see too much about a different aspect of this DSLR addressed: its discreet nature.
Happily, thats all about to change, in the form of Randy Moores guerrilla-cinema bomb, Escape From Tomorrow. Shot surreptitiously at Disneyland (that is to say, without Disneys permission) using a 5D, the film would have been impossible to make even ten years ago - but due to the fact that the 5D looks like a still camera, Moores subterfuge was possible.
In the end, his risky gambit has paid off: Escape From Tomorrow premiered at Sundance 2013 and is about to be released by PDA, the distribution arm of Cinetic Media. A fairy tale gone terribly, terribly wrong, the film utilizes a Lynchian register of visual nightmare to depict the dark side of Disneyworlds potent iconography. The black, black comedy follows a family of four on vacation, specifically focusing on the father (Roy Abramsohn), who is fired - while on vacation! - in the films opening scene; as he keeps this unfortunate news from his family so that they can enjoy their last day at the theme park, his vacation only gets more and more deranged, starting with his lurid obsession with two teenage French girls and getting increasingly more bizarre from there. In the end, witches, mad scientists, and "cat flu" all play a role. I had the chance to speak with Moore by phone about his transgressive debut feature.
"Im sure the cameras eventually wont even look like cameras anymore - youll be able to do it all on your phone."
Tribeca: How did you go about achieving the level of artistic freedom you desired in such a tense, unusual shooting situation?
Randy Moore: I never expected the movie to play at Sundance, first of all. It was a black and white movie, I was hoping it would have a run at small festivals and then it would be me going around and showing it myself to people and asking for donations. So I felt really free to explore and have fun with it. To be artistic and do it the way I wanted to do it. I wasnt thinking about the market or awards. I never thought Sundance was even a possibility because they have a lot of corporate sponsors, and I thought it would be too risky for them to program. So I just chose to stay true to what I wanted to do.
We went on about nine dry runs at the park, where we would walk through the whole movie.
Tribeca: What about your choices during the shoot itself - I mean, you must have been quite stressed about avoiding security. How did you juggle those anxieties with the anxieties of making a good film, which are always there on a film set?
Randy Moore: I just had to plan as much as I could. Every shot was planned. We had shotlists that were really detailed - at one point the shotlist was longer than the script! We walked through it so many times, without the cast. So we knew exactly where we would put the camera, where everyone would be. So it was just a matter of bringing in the actors. By the time it got to that point, had it not been for all that planning, we would have been screwed. I would have liked to have more time to spend on the shots and with the actors, but due to the nature of the film, we were limited in terms of the number of takes. We went on about nine dry runs at the park, where we would walk through the whole movie.
Tribeca: What does that force you to do, artistically, when you have to plan things out so thoroughly in advance, as opposed to being able to be improvisational on set?
Randy Moore: Well in those situations, in my mind, I was improvising those shots, its just that I improvised them and then we wrote them down and rehearsed them over and over again, and then brought the actors in - because we could go to the actual setting. Its not like I was just dealing with a storyboard artist or a set designer, I was really in the world, I just didnt have the actors with me on that day.
We were driving around downtown Anaheim in case we had some kind of unmarked Disney car following us. It was like a bad spy movie.
Tribeca: Were there ever any close calls during the shoot?
Randy Moore: The good thing is that lots and lots of people have cameras, so we didnt look terribly out of place there. There was one close call where we had a scene of the actors entering through the turnstiles at the park, and we had to get it from multiple angles so they had to do it three times. By the third time, a security guard looked over and said, excuse me, why have you entered the park three times in the last ten minutes? And our lead actor said, oh, I forgot my sunscreen. And the guard said, are you a celebrity? And Roy said no, why are you asking? And the guard replied, you know, you have paparazzi following you right now. And Roy said, we dont know who those people are, so that made the guards a little suspicious, and they said, somethings wrong here, can you come with us? And the guards took the whole family over to the fire house on Main Street, but at that point both of the child actors said they had to go to the bathroom. So the guards said, take your kids to the bathroom, then meet us back here. Anyway, they went to the bathroom, took their sound equipment off, and then when they came back out a parade was going by. So we had a PA walk past them and tell them to go to the parking lot and get in the production van, and the actors made their way out with the parade providing cover, and t
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We constantly talk about how improving technology is helping cinema become more efficient, but few examples are as stellar as Randy Moores Escape From Tomorrow. We talked to the director about how a new camera gave him the idea for his guerrilla-style thriller. 
