Actors, comedians, filmmakers and childhood friends Mike Akel and Chris Mass had two comedic short films under their belts when they decided to take a temporary break from filmmaking. During their hiatus, they both ended up becoming teachers. Akel was in his third year of teaching film and television and Mass was in his first teaching geography when they were inspired to return to filmmaking. Casting around for subject matter, they drew from their own lives and decided to make a mockumentary about high school teachers. The result is Chalk, a humorous portrait of the frustrating, funny and occasionally hopeful moments that teachers face.

Akel and Mass began working on Chalk in 2003, meeting in the early mornings before classes to develop ideas for the project. They spent eight months developing characters and outlining the script, though they left most of the dialogue to the actors to improvise. “We write scenes with emotional objectives and minor notes on blocking,” says Akel. “Then we shoot the movie and sculpt it as we go.”

Inspiration
Having previously worked in the “mock doc” style epitomized by Christopher Guest’s films (such as This Is Spinal Tap and Best in Show) and popularized on television by The Office, Akel and Mass wanted Chalk to recall the cinema vérité style of Fred Wiseman and the Maysles brothers. “I’ve never really seen the world of teaching as I know it on screen. I’ve seen shows with gritty gang violence and I’ve seen that glossy stylized look, but what I was seeing in my classes was not the same. Fred Wiseman’s film High School [1968] was great because it was so subtle. We were really inspired by that.”

Mass, who co-stars in the film as self-conscious Mr. Stroope, explains that he and Akel wanted the four leads to be trained actors. To enhance the cinema vérité quality of the film, the supporting roles and student roles were played by non-professional actors. “There are certain people who just kind of ‘pop’ and have a certain characteristic about them. We handpicked certain students toward the end of the school year, and the kids we got were amazing. They just didn’t always show up for filming,” says Akel.

Hall Pass
Chalk was shot in June over the course of 18 days at the school where Akel worked. Production was nearly derailed when the film’s original cinematographer had to pull out of the project three days before production was set begin. Calling around, they got a recommendation to contact Steven Schaefer, a 21-year-old graduate of the Full Sail Film School who was working as a camera department intern on A Scanner Darkly, which was shooting at the time in Austin, Texas.

“When I met with Mike and Chris, they asked me how much my day rate was—I didn’t know what to say because I didn’t even have a day rate. I was convinced I wasn’t going to get it, but they called me a few hours later and told me they wanted me to be their DP. I was shooting on set 48 hours later,” says Schaefer.

“I had a basic synopsis of the film—I knew it was a mockumentary about teachers—but I had not seen a script. I didn’t know characters’ names. I didn’t even know what we were going to be shooting when I walked onto the set that first day. I went into the project nearly blind, because we just didn’t have time,” Schaefer continues.

Tag Team
Approximately half of Chalk was shot with two-camera coverage. Schaefer operated the A-camera, a Panasonic AG-DVX100A, while Bob Perkins, who also edited the film, served as the B-camera operator and shot on a Panasonic DVX100. “For the most part it was Bob and me, and we worked well together. There were times when I’d send Bob out to shoot B-roll or to shoot some scenes by himself. I couldn’t have asked for a better operator,” says Schaefer.

Throughout the film, Schaefer had very little time to plan. “There were a couple of scenes where I came up with some storyboards and blocking the night before, but that’s about it. Mike and Chris are really brilliant in that they know what they want. They also gave me complete and utter creative control over my department,” says Schaefer. But Schaefer generally decided everything on a day-to-day basis. He would spend an hour before shooting planning angles and blocking out camera moves.

The first day on set, Schaefer and his gaffer, Cesar Rodriguez, did an overview of their equipment. Of the package Schaefer had requested (10-12 lights and a variety of grip equipment), he got two tungsten 1K units and a few C-stands. After scratching their heads for a few minutes, Schaefer and Rodriguez came up with the idea of building homemade soft boxes.

They built two units, a small box and a big box, both of which were designed in the same manner. The big box was made of half-inch particle board, lined with tinfoil, covered with diffusion and fixed with nine 75-watt household lightbulbs, with the bulbs spaced far enough apart so they wouldn’t get too hot. The small box contained four 75-watt bulbs.

The low-fi, mockumentary aesthetic combined with the film’s gentle humor has earned it many fans. After it screened at the 2006 Los Angeles Film Festival, Akel and Moss were mingling at the film’s premiere party at The Standard when they saw Morgan Spurlock, director of Super Size Me, who happened to be at the hotel for an unrelated meeting. They asked a mutual friend to introduce them and pressed a DVD of the film into Spurlock’s hand. A few months later he called them to talk about distributing the film. Chalk premiered this month as the first theatrical release from the “Morgan Spurlock Presents” label.