“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” -Oscar Wilde
One has to wonder what category Turning Point, the debut film of writer and director Ryan Moser, falls into, under the ‘life imitating art’ or ‘art imitating life’ debate. The answer is elusive in the same way that life itself is hard to comprehend in its entirety, and how art is a difficult concept to accurately define. On one hand Turning Point is a film that deigns to encapsulate what is ‘artful’ about life with all it’s simple complexities, making it appear as though the film is an imitation of the life of any young person who is let loose into the world for the first time. Yet, on the other hand, the film is an example of what it means to drive upon a dreary highway, struggling against the status quo of pursuing a livelihood we resent every day of our lives until our last breath; concepts not only taught to us in what we can observe in society every day, but a process of aging that has been depicted in all forms of art from mankind’s very beginning, a journey both historic in where we’ve come from, and prophetic in where we’re going.
The truth is that life imitates art about as often as art imitates life; the two are coiled so tightly among one another that, like the tangled knots of two ropes, the ends and beginnings of one cannot be easily discerned from the other. If somehow you did manage to pull one length of rope away from the other, you would end up with two lonely looking separate ropes, waiting patiently for you to put them to use again; to allow them to perform their innate function by tying them together once more.
There was a moment during Turning Point where the differences between life and art became blurred beyond recognition. Along the coast of the Pacific ocean, a small two-vehicle caravan filled with a small team of closely knit friends, with dreams and aspirations of finding themselves upon their journey, suddenly had their determination put to the test. One of the cars began to sputter in exasperation. The driver checked the dials anxiously, giving nervous glances into the rear-view mirrors; seeing not only the road upon which he has traveled from, but a partial reflection of himself, and his own uncertain eyes, as well. He looked ahead only to be sure he was safely upon the road he was traveling, but no further; for the destination he was heading toward was at that moment totally forgotten in order to weather this current storm.
He didn’t know with any certainty if he would make it to the end of the journey or not. He had no idea that the test would be met with resilience and, along with every other test that they would be faced with afterward, passed with flying colors. He had no way of knowing that the destination would finally be reached. That he and his friends would not only go the distance, but would come back from it once it was explored, returning home again safely and with gained wisdom.
Not only was this a moment within the film Turning Point, but it was also an event that occurred to the cast and the crew of Turning Point amid the principal photography of the film.
Life. Art. Who is imitating whom?
“The story of the screenplay started to come true in more ways than one while we had been filming,” says Ryan Moser, who not only wrote and directed the film, but oversaw the entire production from beginning to end. “On our trip up the coast, we started to get worried that Chase’s car was going to explode due to high oil pressure.”
Turning Point is the story of three young men beginning their life journey into the uncharted road-map of adulthood, as told by a handful of dedicated filmmakers who were on a journey of their own: to make their very first feature film.
Moser knew then what the making of his first feature film meant for him.
“This was definitely to become an experience of a lifetime.”
And not just for him alone. Throughout the entire production of Turning Point, the film became the experience of a lifetime for everyone who took part in its creation.
Turning Point explores how three young men begin the metamorphosis which turns a child into an adult. When will that path end, and where? Turning Point does not presume to answer, because it knows as well as we do that there is no ultimate ‘end’ to the ‘coming-of-age’ process; only an ongoing series of lessons that life will never hesitate to teach us, during all the days of our lives. More importantly than to show us the moment these boys become men, Turning Point shows us how that journey begins without us ever knowing it. The film allows us to see clearly who these boys were, so that we can guess for ourselves who they will someday become, long after the credits roll. Turning Point gives us the space and the time to remember our own youth, and to meditate upon the road that led us to where we are today.
The film follows the shared odyssey of James (Swen Temmel), Ricky (Tyler Vincent) and Cole (Ashton Bingham), three friends who come to the innocuous decision to set out upon their very first post-high school road trip on a mission for adventure, fun, and of course ‘ladies, ladies, ladies’. However, none of these pursuits come easily, or in their expected guises. Upon every stage of their journey, the mettle of their characters are tested by everything ranging from a dehydrated radiator in the middle of the desert, to one very enviable silver bullet not-so-secretly hidden inside a dresser drawer.
They encounter an eclectic string of lives along the way: some upon the road the boys are traveling, some found standing idly off to the curb; but every one of them is on a search for their livelihood. The trio make their way steadily to the doorstep of James’ old friend Matt (Blake Owens), and his captivating mother Victoria (Kesia Elwin), who gladly invite the boys to stay with them as long as they like.
Ricky meets Lindsay (Melanie Manooki) at a beach, and the two depart on what at first is a casual friendship, but quickly turns to tender affection, all while Cole struggles against the choices that will lead him reluctantly to an uncertain future. That is, until Victoria teaches them that uncertainty is not a monopoly among the young, and that it is possible to search your entire life for who you are, or what you are meant to do in this life you’ve been given.
This realization sparks a sense of urgency in James, Ricky and Cole, and each one of them must acknowledge that life itself is the great equalizer among everyone who lives it; despite that they are only a very small part of a bigger picture, whatever direction they want their lives to go is limited only by their own determination to get them there.
The limits of their own determination.
Again, this is a phrase that could be applied with equal measure to the characters in the film as appropriately as it could be said of the filmmakers who crafted it.
Turning Point, as a project and as a film, is the result of years of dreaming, months of effort, weeks of cherished memories, and unfathomable hours of toil in order to turn the screenplay into a reality. It began as a snowball tossed downhill by Moser, and ended as a life-long goal fully realized not just for him, but for the many people whose lives it touched.
“I wrote Turning Point when I was 20 years old,” says Moser. “It took me five days to write that first draft. If I’ve learned anything from writing, it is that your first draft will inevitably be garbage. You might as well get it out of you in the most painless manner possible so you can get to the fun part sooner: rewrites!”
That rewriting process was an ongoing trial that would take Moser across the borders of four states (including Hawaii), last two trips to Thailand, result in the emptying of hundreds of ball-point ink pens, and continue up until the final day of principal photography; an arduous evolution that Moser estimates totaled more than 1,000 total hours of writing time.
Although Moser admits that writing is inherently a very lonely process, he never hesitated to turn to his friends in order to find valuable advice.
“Over the course of the next few years, I began having numerous friends read the screenplay to give me notes.”
Keaton Ziem, who participated in Turning Point’s production as a gaffer, hasn’t known a time when Moser wasn’t thinking about Turning Point.
“It may have been as far back as 2006 when I first heard about Turning Point,” says Ziem, “In fact, it may have been the first conversation I had with Ryan that was more than five words long. I gathered that he had spent the majority of his time travelling and writing a screenplay. When I first saw it, he carried it to me in a shoebox. The title page was so covered in blue ink notes that finding the title of the script was like searching for Waldo. Then came page one.”
“I had began coloring the pages of my hard copy of Turning Point blue with ink”, Moser recalls, “Writing and rewriting scenes. Taking notes and rearranging sections of the film. Rewriting dialogue over and over again.”
“Layers of blue, black and red ink,” says Ziem. “Then pencil. Then the actual word printed on the page could be read, if it hadn’t been crossed out and illegible. Alternate dialogue was written off to the side; words and phrases were taken away and replaced with a better word. And not five minutes after that shoebox was opened and the first pages were turned, Ryan’s questions began; ‘How can I make it better?’”
“Over time, I kept crafting and re-crafting the screenplay into something that would make for quality storytelling on screen,” says Moser. “I realized that the story had promise, and if I were to rework things, I might actually be capable of creating a quality story.”
Quality was the monicker of Turning Point’s production, beginning to end. At every stage of the game, at every bend in the road, quality was paramount.
“There was something invaluably encouraging about the process of reviewing Ryan’s work as a writer,” says Ziem. “It demonstrated that, until the words are filmed, they could always be rewritten; which meant that until the day when this script could be made, it could only be improved.”
The script of Turning Point endured a five year span of merciless rewrites and revisions before Moser took the first step toward pushing the screenplay toward it’s eventual production. That step was the decision that brought him to the one place he was sure to find the talent that is requisite for a film to be made.
“I arrived in Los Angeles around 10:00 PM on April 20, 2010 to celebrate my 25th birthday after I became steadfast on producing my first feature film. The only thing that was going to hold me back from actually making this film was myself.
“Matt Bailey (the film’s Director of Photography), myself and my friend Zeus, visiting from Holland, were eating dinner and I set my goal of producing Turning Point at the age of 25. They asked me when I thought it would be done and I wanted to set a realistic deadline, so I said April 15th of next year; five days before my next birthday, and also my Mom’s birthday, so it was a very memorable date. Almost a year later it was mind-blowing to think that I’d be hitting my exact personal deadline on the dot.”
It wasn’t long before Moser began his search for the actors who would portray the roles he had spent so much time meticulously writing every nuance of dialogue for. After five years of time spent writing the characters of Turning Point, Moser knew exactly what he was looking for in the actors who would come to play the parts.
“I attended a festival in which a short film of mine, ‘Sky Train’, was playing. This was in the summer of 2009. I saw a short that Tyler Vincent was in and I thought he did a fantastic job. He ended up taking home the best actor award at the festival. I contacted him afterward and told him I was impressed in his work. I mentioned my project ‘Turning Point’ and he seemed interested.”
Vincent recalls, “Somehow I got Ryan’s attention and from that came a set of long e-mails, phone calls and research.”
“He was drawn toward the character of Ricky, which was the exact character I had in mind for him. He was on board and it wasn’t until one year later that Tyler and I formally met in person and had our first read through together.”
All the while Moser searched for the other talented actors to take the roles of James and Cole. Before long, they were found; embodied in the personalities of Swen Temmel and Ashton Bingham.
“I joined the project sometime around August of 2010, when Ryan decided that I would be playing the role of James.” Says Temmel, “It started with rehearsals and really finding out who our characters were. Ryan was fantastic in helping us with that process. It was also a time for Tyler, Ashton and I to form a real friendship together.”
Bingham remembers the atmosphere of production fondly, saying “The filming process gave me knowledge of not only the many aspects of filmmaking in the technical sense, but also in terms of the sheer magnitude of passion, perseverance, and tenacity that goes into making a film, thanks to Ryan.”
Perseverance. Tenacity. These words are not used to describe a production that was not without a fair share of trials and tribulations. However, it’s these hardships that add fuel to the fire for Moser and pushes him to greater creative heights.
“The emotional swings that come with directing a feature film would be unbearable to most, but my two strongest points as a filmmaker are my instincts and perseverance. I have a hard time taking ‘no’ for an answer. I have a very strong work ethic when I’m doing something that I love. It’s what happens when you truly care about something with all your heart; similar to when you’re in love with somebody.”
The cast included Temmel, Vincent and Bingham as James, Ricky and Cole; the core team that would propel the ripened story of Turning Point along the path of production. Meanwhile, the other roles were filled. The spontaneous Matt was to be performed by Blake Owens, and his beautiful and elegant mother Victoria by Kesia Elwin. Melanie Manooki was selected to play Lindsay, the girl of young Ricky’s dreams, alongside Jacqueline Su-yuo as Matt’s girlfriend Jan.
Moser likewise gathered behind him a crew of determined young filmmakers, ready for the opportunity to put their skills to use. Matt Bailey as the Director of Photography, Sean Marin as Sound Mixer and Assistant Camera along with Chase Winniford as the Boom Operator and Keaton S. Ziem as the Gaffer.
The film was ultimately produced by Moser, Bailey, Marin and Winniford. Four filmmakers all under the age of 30.
Principal photography of Turning Point began on Friday, September 24th, 2010.
For Manooki, the process of the film’s production resonated with the adventures the characters in the story were undertaking, “The Golden Gate Bridge, hippies, a waterfall, a cave, cars breaking down, freezing cold weather, a beautiful coastline, delicious s’mores; it was quite an adventure.”
Moser refers to making a movie as “The Beautiful Insanity”.
“While you’re in the war zone of production, you can’t wait to get home and retreat. But after a few days of R & R, you miss the battlefield and want to get back in it.
“Over the course of three days, one third of the film was shot. Almost all the San Diego scenes were completed. Two days of shooting desert locations. Two days for a San Francisco road trip. Three nights of filming night car driving (which included a reshoot). ‘Odd-and-end’ scenes were shot. A beach location was shot on three separate days due to scheduling and weather conflicts. A night parking lot scene that was shot in a single night. And I was not struck in the face with a lightning bolt.”
“San Diego was an interesting four days as I remember, or don’t remember,” says Temmel, “We worked some pretty long hours but I enjoyed every moment of it.”
Temmel added, “The desert shoot has been a highlight of my life. It was only two days, but it was so much fun. Then traveling up the coast to get to this secret waterfall that Ryan somehow found was beautiful. Then going even further up we hit San Francisco where we filmed our opening scene. Yes, we drove all the way to San Francisco to film a 15 second scene, but it was worth it.”
It’s a serendipitous process to make a film when the production so closely mirrors the events that are captured through the camera’s lens. A film about the discoveries shared between friends that are found while pursuing new experiences. The sensation of bliss at discovering something new not only about the world in which you live, but about yourself as well. Every single member of the cast and crew went through their own personal journey en route to making Turning Point. Sometimes, it was as simple as contributing their efforts and talents to a project that they have been specifically chosen by Moser to help create, and sometimes it was something even more elemental. Sometimes it was about being caught in the eddies and whirlpool of life, and marveling at where those gusts and breezes could potentially take you.
“I remember the night we were looking for a place to stay,” says Manooki, “We stopped by the side of the road and some of us came out to talk. It was freezing cold but when I looked up above us there shined the most beautiful sight of stars I’ve ever seen. I’d never seen so many stars in my life. It might not have been that big a deal for anyone else, but I’ve lived in Los Angeles all my life, where it’s very hard to see any stars at night. I’ve always had a secret fascination with stars and the universe. It was breath-taking.”
It’s real life, happening simultaneously and alongside filming an artistic representation of life.
For Moser, the two are one in the same. Beautiful Insanity.
“The best stories are based around relatable characters. To be entranced by a character that you can remain interested in while watching them simply brushing their teeth. I learned that I needed to have my characters drive the story forward, not force them to do something for the sake of driving the plot in a direction I wanted to take it.”
On Sunday March 6th, 2011, Moser had finished filming the characters he had created five and a half years before, by placing the actors into relatable, real-life scenarios that anyone may find themselves in on any given day, in order to lull his performers into a state of natural behavior, rather than forcing them to play ‘make believe’ in front of a camera.
Now Moser was faced with the task of connecting the dots, and forming the story out of the scenes he and his crew had collected.
“Filmmaking is a bit like a sandwich. Pre-Production, Production, and Post-Production. The first and last are the two most time consuming aspects, but they make up the bread of your sandwich. You can’t have a high quality sandwich without excellent bread. This is the formula for my film.”
Moser had continually been editing together the rough-cut for the film as principal photography was taking place.
“I enjoyed the editing process immensely. I’ve always been a huge fan of it. In my eyes, it’s where the true magic of cinema takes place, which happened in between shooting days. There were plenty of 15 hour days, there. I started polishing up the rough cut and I saw the potential in the hard work that was put forth.”
As Moser had gathered the production crew and the performers during filming, he then brought together a team of passionate individuals to bring to life the story that existed amid the hours of accumulated footage. For Sound Editing, Moser was introduced to Jason Rudd by a mutual friend Guido Ghedin, who was a member of the notorious band ‘Wang Bang’ in the film.
“I’m proud of having been able to connect Ryan to my good friend Jason from Phoenix; it’s fun to think how our absurd spaghetti-western network provided Ryan with the right person to deal with the sound of Turning Point”, says Ghedin.
“This was Jason’s first time doing sound for a film. He went to recording school and even he didn’t know the amount of work that goes into making a film sound like a film. He began working on the sound in December, and if there was anyone involved with this project that put in close to the amount of hours of work that I have it would be Jason, for which I am eternally grateful.”
Moser couldn’t have been happier with Rudd’s work.
“I’m really happy that Jason was in charge of the sound editing. The work he has done is amazing. For months Jason worked ruthlessly to make the project sound like a movie, and I was so happy to hear such rich and clean dialogue tracks.”
With the picture locked and the sound in place, Moser brought composer Jason Downer’s talents to the project.
“I’ve been writing music for years,” says Downer, “and I’ve been lucky that the film projects I’ve worked on have always required some style or technique I’d never used in a film before. When I was talking to Ryan about his vision for Turning Point’s score, I mentioned that I hoped we could be a little experimental in what went in.” In response to Moser’s reaction, “It wasn’t just a couple new techniques or styles. It was dozens. Ryan had a list of stuff I’d never heard of. A whole new vista of post rock and retro minimalist synth was opened up to me thanks to him.”
Downer admits that creating the score of the film was a wonderful challenge that allowed him to discover new things about music and scoring that he had previously taken for granted.
“I had started writing for this film in the formulaic industry mind-set I’d tried hard to master up to that point: the composer as a proxy for the audience, writing what the story makes you feel. Something happens on screen and a few seconds later, when it has started to sink in emotionally, the music should follow. The first experiment Ryan had for me was to throw that concept out. He told me to let the audience decide what to feel, to find the kind of sound you’d expect to be there in real life, and to be different but honest. The creative process felt so exciting and fresh. Each track seemed like an experiment that you had no idea what the outcome might be.”
Moser’s opinion of Downer’s work, “Jason got to put in his beautiful music. He made the film sound lovely.”
In addition to Jason Downer’s musical input, the film also features the musical talents of Moser himself, Moser’s younger brother, Jason Moser, sound editor Jason Rudd, as well as the music of Andrew Pollitt’s one-man band, Madison County.
The stages of creating Turning Point were nearing completion, the final steps fast approaching. Nearly all of Moser’s adult life has been focused upon the completion of this film which he single-handedly willed to the finish line. Once the editing, the sound and the music began to coalesce in mutual harmony, the realization that the film would at last be a thing that he could call ‘completed’ was sinking in.
“You have a dream. You begin creating the dream. Then the dream kind of creates itself. You begin editing and you’re unsure if your dream will work. You edit some more and then, magically, the film begins creating itself and takes on a new life. It had been a wild, wild ride. When I came toward the final line of completion, in a strange way I was a bit sad. Even more bizarrely, I felt a little scared,” says Moser.
His sentiments were shared by everyone who took part in the film; from everyone whose participation ranged between minute and tremendous, all the cast and crew couldn’t believe that a finished product was within reach. Across the board, for everyone who participated, their reactions to their involvement testify to the themes the film explores; that the combination of friendship and vision can combine to create a magical bond between those who dare to partake in the journey.
“There’s a unique transformation on the road,” reflects Winniford on the entire production of Turning Point, “When your existence changes for a moment and there’s more freedom in your car than in all the world. Between the points of A and B, there’s a bond that can’t be broken, where individuals mold into one and there’s a shock treatment of the soul. You remember what it’s like to be at liberty with your thoughts and not with the worries of the world. The road means freedom and innocence, you’re either running away from or running towards something. It allows us to be more human, to shed our obligations and test our boundaries. Those precious moments we’re allowed our insanity and to be at ease with the worry of not knowing what to do in life. In these moments our souls emerge. They don’t have to hide away, buried by obligations and society’s curses. To witness others simply being human, and that it was an experience. I’ll forever enjoy the vacation from reality and the memories made while filming Turning Point.”
Says Temmel, “It was the greatest experience of my life so far. I grew so much. Not only as an actor, but as a person as well.”
Manooki adds, “They’re my friends, not just the cast and crew. It was a learning experience, and it will always be a part of me. We all still keep in contact, much like the family seen in the film, and I doubt we will ever really lose touch, so in reality the movie may be done, but it’s never truly going to be the end.”
“It’s the value of friendship, of hard work and dedication that is necessary to give the world a product of quality. The amazing power that well coordinated teamwork can give to every project, used in the business of magic, the industry of entertainment,” says Ghedin.
“Ryan has done a great job putting together his project, which has now become our project. I hope the desire to tell this story will lead to telling many more” says Marin.
Then, one day, Moser was able to say “I have now officially completed my goal of finishing my first feature film at the age of 25, the same as Orson Welles.”
“I’ve pushed all my actors and every other member of the crew close to their breaking points in order to get their work to the level that it needed to be. Everybody involved with this project is relatively young and inexperienced, so it has been a great learning experience for all of us. No matter how uncomfortable it can be to push people to their breaking points, I feel proud that I got the very best out of my team. I’m sure I’ve driven almost every person involved with this film, myself included, to insanity at some point during this project. But if it were not for that push, the film would not have ended up with the quality that is present in the final version.”
Note; ‘to’ the breaking point. Not past it.
It is important to mention that the film is called ‘Turning Point’, rather than ‘Breaking Point’. A lesser filmmaker might have thought that an interesting road trip movie would explore not the point at which the characters in the film make a ‘turning’, but rather, where the characters become ‘broken’. But as an audience, we have already seen that movie; it’s been done to death. Still, all the reoccurring staples of mainstream films: sex, violence and action, continually and inaccurately trump other more virtuous truisms, such as faith, friendship and sincerity, all of which are qualities that Moser has made his tools since day one of Turning Point’s long ago impetus, buried some six years now in the past. We lovers of film know where the breaking point of the human spirit lies, we know the tragedy the hero of a film must tread when the filmmakers push them to it. But we lovers of film also know that just before the breaking point, there exists a place where the hero can find redemption; a place where the hero can find solace in their past, and peace in pursuing a future for themselves. Before the breaking point, there is an opportunity for the hero, and for us, to heal what hurts, to learn from mistakes, and allow those lessons to inform their decisions long after the credits have rolled.
Before the breaking point, there exists a Turning Point.
