Small-budget director ready for the big screen
Resident shoots second film at locations around Milltown
BY MARLENE CANTY
Staff Writer

Actor Stephen Gallo (l-r), director Dave O'Halloran and actor Brian O'Halloran discuss a scene while filming outside the Milltown police station.

MILLTOWN - "The Ivory Pawn" and "Still-Life" sound like a couple of graphic designs or neo-classic paintings. You picture white chess pieces winking at you, or waxed fruit in limbo, poised and ready to be "theoretically" devoured.

In reality, they are the names of two film shorts by David O'Halloran Jr., a film student at The College of New Jersey in Ewing who recently earned an internship at the Cannes Film Festival, where his first film short went on view in May.

His second film short, which he completed last week, may well put his native Milltown on the map as a film town.

O'Halloran, 21, said he picked filmmaking as a second choice after entering the school as a business major in 2002.

"After one month, I knew I had made a mistake and approached my counselor to get out," O'Halloran said.

He changed his major to communications, looking for something more creative, closer to the arts. He considered graphic design briefly but chose film instead because graphic designers are told what to do.

"I wanted something where the ideas came from me," O'Halloran said in an interview last week.

Those ideas have been coming fast and furious in the form of the plot lines of his first two movie shorts.

"The Ivory Pawn," which originally began as a class project, is a story of introspection about a man's two inner selves playing chess with each other. The dark side of the film is that his survival hangs in the balance.

The film was so good it helped to win him the 21/2-week internship at the festival via the American Pavilion Program, which screened the film on demand in their "Short Corner" category.

The film is about five minutes in length.

"Still Life," a working title for the second film, which he made entirely in Milltown and completed shooting last week, is a story about two detectives, a rookie and a veteran who become reluctant partners after the veteran's former partner has been killed.

"It's about the bond they form while investigating a series of murders." O'Halloran said.

He shot the film in three days for an amazing $700 budget, cutting his costs by using local talent in the form of friends and family. His brother, Dan, 19, a cinematographer, produced the film and did much of the lighting and camera work.

His cousin, Brian O'Halloran, 20, co-wrote the script and played one of the starring roles. Another cousin, Chris Abraham, had a smaller role, and Chris' mom, Jodi, donated use of her car. And of course David's mom and dad, Debra and David, were on hand as extras and to lend moral support as well as the use of their home as one of the shooting sets.

"We kept it tight, borrowed equipment from our respective schools and shot on video because it's cheaper and easier to edit," O'Halloran said.

The first step in the process was an application to the Milltown Mayor Gloria Bradford and the Borough Council months in advance for permission "to shoot around town and at the mall."

"As soon as they had their meeting, they got back to me and they were very positive and extremely cooperative," O'Halloran said, noting that Police Chief Raymond Geipel put officers in charge of helping him get what he needed to shoot.

"They got me very accurate props and one or two police officers were actually in the film in minor roles and wearing their own uniforms," O'Halloran said.

Another of his important venues, Country Corner Cafe, allowed him to shoot there for free.

"We were there almost four hours one afternoon, and the owners the Condora family were spectacular and so supportive," he said.

Editing the piece will take one or two months, and O'Halloran is hoping the finished product, a film about 15 minutes in length, will garner enough interest to win him funding to make a longer version.

With two projects under his belt, he is elated over the whole prospect of being a director and the creative journey it has put him on. He gives some of the credit for that enthusiasm to Terry Byrne, his professor of TV and film in the communications department and admittedly his guru.

"He's been a real role model and a sage," O'Halloran said, recounting important decisions on his first project that Byrne's advice helped to influence and ideas it helped to solidify.

An even more obvious source of that enthusiasm was the unique and choice opportunity he had to meet, up close and personal, some of his favorite directors as a result of the Cannes internship.

Said O'Halloran: "The internship involved us setting up and manning the sound for interviews with directors like Richard Linkletter ["Dazed and Confused"], Gus Van Sant ["Good Will Hunting" and "My Own Private Idaho"], William Friedkin ["The Exorcist" and "The French Connection"] and Bret Ratner [some of the "X Men" and "Rush Hour" movies]."

Citing Woody Allen, Quentin Tarantino, Wong Kar-Wai and Wes Anderson as his favorite directors - and films like "Matchpoint," "Pulp Fiction," "In the Mood for Love," "Rushmore" and "2046" as some of his favorite films - O'Halloran said he feels certain directors and films have had the ability to help him learn and grow as a director.

He had just seen "The French Connection" before embarking on the script for "Still Life."

"There was such realism in every frame ... I was definitely inspired by the film and how it was made," he said.

O'Halloran laughs when asked about his own process, the technical details of how his film was made.

"In the beginning of the day we would do more retakes, and as the day wore on and people got to know one another and got more relaxed, we wouldn't need as many," he said.

According to O'Halloran, two of the three days they worked about seven hours, but on the third day they got more of a taste of what professional filmmaking entails when working almost 12 hours straight.

"I may have gotten tired that day," O'Halloran said with the tiniest hint of pride in his already impressive accomplishments. "I don't remember. I was so enthralled I didn't even notice."