The film Suspension poses the question of what would happen if man had the power to stop time. The story of the making of Suspension is as inspirational as this success of a low-budget independent film shot in only 29 days.

By: Deborah Buckner (Kansas City Correspondent - USA)

May 5^th 2008

The film Suspension poses the question of what would happen if man had the power to stop time.  One moment, Daniel (Scott Cordes) is driving with his wife beside him and his teen-aged son in the backseat playing with a video camera.  The next, Daniel awakens in a hospital with a doctor telling him his wife and son died in the car accident he survived.  The video camera is recovered from the accident scene.  As he reviews the tape, hearing the voices of his family for the last time, Daniel discovers a strange power in the camera:  When he presses the "Pause" button, the world around him stops:  People stop walking in mid-step, a kicked soccer ball freezes in the air, traffic stands still.  This strange new power combines with Daniel's obsession with Sarah (Annie Tedesco), the widow of the man who died in the other vehicle in the accident.  The combination proves to be thrilling and horrifying.  Suspension has had a year as amazing as the special effects it features. 

A ‘n E Vibe first learned of this exciting film at a "work-in-progress" screening at the Kansas International Film Festival in September 2007.  The film encountered a friendly audience, for it was shot in Kansas, features Kansas actors Scott Cordes and Annie Tedesco, and is the work of Kansas native co-directors Ethan Shaftel and Alec Joler. 

But this film has not received honor only in its "own country;"  Suspension won the "Spirit of Independents" Award for the Best Science Fiction Film at the 2007 Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, had a sold-out opening screening at the 2008 Sedona International Film Festival, had a screening at the 2008 Cinequest Film Festival, and had its international premiere in Belgium at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival and, just this weekend, screened at the London International Festival of Science Fiction and Fantastic Film.  Suspension will be released on DVD by Lightyear Video (a Warner Brothers label) on May 27; a special limited edition DVD signed by the cast and crew is also available at www.suspension-movie.com .  

The story of the making of Suspension is as inspirational as this success of a low-budget independent film shot in only 29 days.  Co-directors Shaftel and Joler are childhood friends whose first joint film venture was a class project on Armenia in the seventh grade.  They worked together in other junior high and high school media classes until Shaftel left high school early to attend the University of Southern California.  USC offered a special honors program allowing students to apply at the end of their sophomore year and begin to take college classes in what would have been the senior high school year.  "I never applied to any other school," Shaftel said.  His grandmother had received a Ph.D. from USC, and "I'd always known it really was the top." Once at USC, he entered its prestigious film program. 

USC's program included the honor of four senior projects being accepted in a semester, with four students being privileged to direct their films while the rest of the students also worked on the projects.  "I decided not to pursue one of the advanced projects," Shaftel recalled.  He had an opportunity to work on an independent film, with a dot-com company providing financing.  The project was to be based on a story that ultimately became the premise for Suspension.  Unfortunately, the "dot-com company went bust," as so many did in the 1990s.  Too late to get behind a senior project, he turned his attention instead to an interactive project, "basically a game."  What might have seemed a disappointing setback at the time, created an exciting opportunity.  After graduating in 2002, he worked for a start-up game company, "largely because of the work I had done instead of a senior film project."  The game company work led to "the seed money to start exploring the possibility of making a feature film."  Without that experience, "I never would have been working with so many of the people involved in the movie who are directly involved with the game company."   

Meanwhile, Joler attended art school in Oakland, California.  The two friends stayed in contact, and found another film project to work on together as Suspension came into being. 

In late 2004-early 2005, Shaftel and Aris Blevins, who also worked in the game company, began working on a film script.  Shaftel pulled some old stories out of a drawer, including the short script of the first version of Suspension.  The power to stop time is a theme of many of Shaftel's early stories.  "Stopping time is unique.  It's not like flying or x-ray vision.  Time is a constant in our whole world, affecting everything at once.  It is a power with far more implications."  Blevins raised the question of "who is the most interesting person to give that power to?" and the idea came of "people whose lives are leveled by a tragedy."  Daniel evolved as a character "who wanted to control one moment," but, finding the power to stop time, is unable to use it to change that one moment.

Blevins completed the screenplay within six months.  With Shaftel and Blevins as producers and Joler as co-director with Shaftel, plans began for shooting the film in Kansas.  The Kansas Film Commission helped with locations, finding an abandoned hospital in Topeka within twenty minutes of the crew making a request. The "State Film Commissions want to help," Joler said, and "young filmmakers should take advantage of that."   

They also needed a house to serve as the location of the home of the character Sarah. Joler's father and uncle are real estate appraisers and had just appraised a home they thought might fit the filmmakers' needs.  "We literally 'knocked on the door of the house that became Sarah's house," Shaftel recalled.  Her "response was very positive," Joler noted, and since the owner was going away for a week at the time filming would occur, she was not only flattered to have her home selected but enjoyed free house-sitting as well.  The other settings of this film are streets, businesses and stores that look like they might be found anywhere, and that was a goal of Joler's.  "I didn't want any landmarks," he said, "I wanted it to be Anytown, USA."

One-third of the film's crew came from Los Angeles, one-third came from Minnesota, and one-third was made of local people in Kansas.  A Kansas casting agency found all the actors, although Kansas native Tedesco was already living in Los Angeles at the time.   

Working together as co-directors, Shaftel and Joler wore "multiple hats," Shaftel said.  Joler worked closely with the camera team and served as co-cinematographer "I was behind the camera most of the time," Joler recalls. Shaftel worked more closely with the actors. On one occasion, Shaftel spent all day in rehearsals while Joler worked all day with a metal smith building the automobile crash scene.   

Both were actively involved in the special effects in Suspension, some of which were designed before shooting and some the product of editing and post-production additions.  The impact of the automobile crash was developed in pre-production.  "We went around various junkyards looking for two cars that had crash damage," Joler said.  A purse that spills its contents during the crash was created by lining it with wire.  They would string out various items, and Joler made a coin sculpture with super glue, creating the effect of freezing the appearance of coins spilling out on impact. Stringing items on fishing line created the appearance of something suspended in mid-air when time stopped.  "Knowing the effects affected the framing of the shot," Joler said.  Shaftel was responsible for the post-production and editing effects, working closely with the editors and crew members from the gaming company.  Sometimes, during filming, the actors had to react to something that was not there but would be added in post-production.  Shaftel would "remind the actors where those [objects] were at any given point" during the filming. 

Despite this division of duties, however, it was important to have "a single vision that everyone can trust" when it came to working with the cast and crew.  "Alec and I would have nightly sessions preparing for the next day," Shaftel said. "Ninety percent of the time, we were on the same page," Joler notes.  If differences of opinion arose, they would be solved in the meetings before the shooting, so there were never any arguments on set.   

Shaftel and Joler are working on writing together for future projects while each will be pursuing individual projects as well.  "This process has been a real learning experience," Shaftel reflects, "I'm still learning from it."  Their experience can be an education-and an inspiration--to all independent filmmakers.   

To read the A ‘n E Vibe review of Suspension click here