January Feature - 'Cosmic Cookies' by Ronan Furuta

I sat down this week with filmmaker Ronan Furuta to discuss his film ‘Cosmic Cookies’, a short film that combines a warm and cozy atmosphere with an eerie cosmic visitor. The film features Meave McGuinness as a soon-to-be space traveler who misses the UFO flight out of town after becoming preoccupied in the kitchen making cookies and tea.

My interview with Ronan went as follows:

Ty: “What kinds of films have inspired your filmmaking?”

Ronan: “I like films that let you in on a different perspective or a different way of seeing things. I think that could be a documentary that talks about something that I haven't really thought about, or it could be a narrative film that has a unique way of seeing the world. 
It could even be an action narrative film that shares something new - just any film that expands the ways of seeing the world.”

T: “How did your filmmaking journey begin? Do you have a background in film studies?”

R: “Well, I started filmmaking in 5th grade when my parents got me a book of in-camera special effects you could do. It was for tape based cameras where you would have a camera on a tripod, and you would pause, and then you'd have your actor move a little bit, and then you'd resume rolling, so it would look like they had teleported. So it was the little gimmicky tricks like that. I really enjoyed making movies with my friends, doing those kinds of silly things, and then slowly, the films got more and more complex. And in regards to my studies, I am currently in my senior year at Champlain College studying film.”

T: “Is your focus in school film production or film theory? Or something else?”

R: “My main focus is cinematography, but I think that there is a lot of theory that goes into that along with the production side of things. So I've been trying to learn as much as I can about both.”

T: “Speaking of cinematography, what kinds of planning went into the production of “Cosmic Cookies”? Did you rely on a storyboard or did you just work from an idea in your head?”

R: For better or for worse, I tend to be a little bit didactic with my planning. So, for this project, even though it's just a couple minutes short, I planned it for a couple months in advance - kind of working on the shot list and kind of planning out the shoot days to see what kinds of stuff we needed. I kind of previsualized it in my head and also planned out the shot list, worked on the script a lot. I didn't storyboard this one. because I was a little bit pressed for time, and my drawing's so bad that usually I need to work with someone else when I get a storyboard done. So I didn't storyboard this one, but I did a shot list, so when it came time to shoot, we were just kind of checking stuff off the list.”

T: “Did you find it difficult to work without dialogue or do you prefer working with films that do more visual storytelling opposed to relying on dialogue?”

R: “Well, I really like films that don't have a ton of dialogue. Though, I like films with a lot of dialogue as well… But, a film that I've been drawing a lot of inspiration from recently is a film called “Perfect Days”. 
It has dialogue in it, but it's mostly visual. And so I think for this project, it was mostly out of... 
Maybe it was out of laziness or of trying to stick with something that I was comfortable with. I didn't have a lot of dialogue in it. It was fun to try to do it with no dialogue because it's just this person by herself and I kind of wanted to lean into that mystery aspect of ‘what is she doing?’”

T: “I was wondering too about what some challenges were that you faced during your production, and if anything came up that made you have to change things up a little bit - what worked, what didn't work, what would you do differently?”

R: “I think because I spent so much time planning, the production went pretty smooth, all things considered. I did some pre-vis tests with the UFO visual effects, just shooting it in a parking lot, to make sure that I could do the VFX. It was difficult to do some of the compositing because I'm not really a compositor. I enjoy working in After Effects and other tools like it, but it's not really my main focus. Compositing around the trees was pretty difficult - if you pause on any of the frames, you can see that there's a lot of little mistakes, but, when you're just watching it in motion, hopefully most people don't pick up on it. I did have to replace all of the sky in both shots. In order to get the UFO to kind of sit more naturally in the scene. The sky was a lot brighter than the actor, which made it a little bit easier to key out, but I was shooting through a black satin filter, which kind of makes the image softer. I'd made notes to pull the filter for the VFX shots to make it easier to do the composites, but I forgot to pull it because we were moving pretty fast. So, I had this nice softness to the image, which I wanted, but it made keying out the leaves pretty difficult. There is definitely a lot of trial and error to get something passable.”

T: “What have been some resources that you have found helpful in your career as a filmmaker? Did the Media Factory make filmmaking more accessible to you?”

R: “Well, when I moved to Burlington, I was really excited to hear about the Media Factory. There are some community media organizations in Oakland, California, where I grew up, but there’s membership fees even though they are a community organization, so it's a little bit harder to get equipment out. Moving here was really nice, to be able to just start checking stuff out and doing tests. A couple of the first films I shot in Vermont utilized the Media Factory’s Black Magic cameras, as well as some lighting equipment. There's one film that I shot at Sustainability Academy in the Old North End about their sustainability education. They have this unique trout raising program where the 4th graders take care of trout, baby trout, and the whole schools involved with it. So, I made a documentary about that, and that documentary is actually in a festival run at the moment and will be available soon!”

T: “The last question I have for you is this: Do you have any advice for anyone who wants to make a short film but isn’t sure where to start?”

R: “I think just making a bunch of stuff, even if it's kind of bad and you're the only one that sees it, as long as it's fun to make then over time you kind of start learning some of the shorthands, or some of the tricks you start developing, your ability to do it a little bit better each time, and eventually you'll, you'll land on something that you're excited by. So I think you just kind of have to do it.”

T: “Before I let you go, is there anything you’d like to share/plug?”

R: "I don't know if this is too shameless of a plug, but I've been working on a director's viewfinder app so that you are able to simulate different sensor and lens combinations. Instead of lugging your big camera around on your location scouts, you can use your phone to say, ‘Oh, what would this look like on a black magic pocket 4K or whatever with a 35 millimeter lens?’ So you can location scout and you can take photos with it there. Then when you're on set as well, oftentimes if you're the DP, or you're the director, you need to communicate your idea of what you want the frame to look like to other people without having to waste the time of moving the camera into position, waiting for a lens while, waiting for all the extra stuff that happened in order to get the camera into the right position. Instead, you can just kind of test out different angles and stuff right on your phone. The app is called FrameUp and it’s free!” (only available on iOS devices currently)

I would like to thank Ronan for participating in the interview with me, and I hope you all are able to enjoy ‘Cosmic Cookies’! To see more of Ronan’s work, you can visit his website ronanfuruta.com. Stay tuned for more impressive films from Ronan, and stay tuned for another community creator interview next month!