SBIFF Movie Spotlight: Time Warp

For many, high school can be a scary place, for others, it’s a place to mold young impressionable minds. It is a place where anything we do can affect the rest of our lives. For a group of 80 San Marcos High School alumni, theater meant the world.

Time Warp is much more than a walk down memory lane. It’s a movie about how the art of theater has positively impacted these students.

Upon learning that their high school theater teacher is retiring after 30 years, alumni from different creeds and ages, fly in from all over the country to come pay tribute to the beloved teacher.

In six days the former students must come together to produce one final show and make good on a 30-year-old joke.

Time Warp director Lael Wageneck took time to answer some of my questions about the experience he lived making this movie.

When did you realize this high school production was going to be the subject of your film?

When I heard that David Holmes was retiring after 30 years and that he was going to produce Rocky Horror as his retirement show, I knew the process of putting that show together would make for a great documentary.

I am a San Marcos High School theater alumnus and every year he would joke that the spring musical would be Rocky Horror. Of course, you could never produce a high school production of Rocky Horror, but as a student I thought that he was crazy enough to do it. When David confirmed he was going to make good on this 30 year old joke, and that alumni would be flying in from all over the country to produce the show in six days, it just felt right that the rehearsals and the production deserved to be documented.

It became apparent during filming that high school theater played a huge role in the lives of the cast and crew. That’s when I realized that the film was about the importance of theater arts education. Theater meant a lot to me, and where every actor’s performance was like a thank you note to David, this film was my thank you note.

Talk about the process you went through in making this film.

Rehearsals only lasted six days. Once or twice a day I headed to the theater and filmed for a couple hours. I waited until day three or four to conduct interviews because I wanted to get a sense of the cast and crew’s confidence in the middle of the process. It’s fitting that producing a play has it’s own narrative arc. The rehearsals are the set up. Dress rehearsals and performances are the climax, and then the cast party and tear down is the denouement.

I had faith that if I just captured as much as I could during the process, that the narrative arc would come naturally in the editing process. The only interviews I conducted after the show were of David and Sam Flynn, who was the stage manager. Sure enough, it is their reflections that tie up the end of the documentary.

I love the use of old yearbook photos, I am sure it wasn’t easy to find them all…or was it? Talk about some of the challenges you faced in making this movie.

The old theater and yearbook photos weren’t too difficult to acquire. Just a lot of taking photos and Photoshop. San Marcos High School Vice Principal Roxanna Stern is also a theater alumnus, and she helped me get a lot of the archival photos. The SMHS library has every yearbook in their library. I would shout out which year I needed, she would grab it for me, and I would snap the photo. Fortunately, the SMHS theater has photos of past productions on the walls so I grabbed photos from there. There were also boxes that Roxanna and I dug through.

The challenges I had were the types of challenges you have with all films. There were a lot of shots I got that were great but didn’t fit in with the story. There were interviews where someone said something good, but someone else said it better and in less time, so I had to make some cuts. It was actually very easy to film because everyone who was there wanted to be there, most of them were actors so they were eager to appear on camera, and the stage was well lit so the lighting was usually good.

I get the feeling in watching the film that the camaraderie among everyone was positive, happy and everyone just got along. What were some of the most memorable moments you had with this cast?

There was definitely a lot of love in that theater that week. One thing I heard a lot was that the experience was like a high school reunion, but it was better because everyone had been involved in the theater and had David Holmes as a teacher.

When I walked into the theater with my camera for the first time, David introduced me and everyone cheered. There was a lot of that silly dramatic energy going on. 75% of the cast and crew had never met me, but just an introduction to another theater alumnus who showed up to help was enough to get people clapping.

Most people did not know each other when the week started, but the bonds formed immediately and they were very strong.

It’s difficult to say what was memorable from that week. After filming and editing the documentary, all the scenes in the documentary are my favorite memories.

The vibe backstage is always fun. There was one night where David messed up a call-out line and I believe Brian Wankum who played Frank in Act Two told him from the stage that he was “too early.” Another funny memory I had was during the cast party. I spent nearly a week filming the cast while they were wearing lingerie, underwear, and fishnets, then I see them at the cast party wearing jeans and t-shirts with their makeup washed off. They looked more normal to me in their Rocky garb than they were in their everyday clothing.

I imagine cutting the film down to the length it is now couldn’t have been an easy task. Can you please talk about what was left in the cutting room floor and how you decided what you were going to include in your final cut?

It was a process of weaving various themes in with the arc of producing the play. The first cut was just an hour of interviews organized by theme or question with no b-roll. The next step was to reduce the themes I would focus on from around six to three or four. Then you’re cutting interviews that are redundant and leaving in the most efficient and effective responses. The next to last step is finding a way to present all of these great comments in a way that follows the narrative arc. Then the final step is to get it all in under 25 minutes.

Since I filmed almost 10 hours for a 25-minute documentary, 95% of what I shot ended up on the metaphorical cutting room floor. The best stuff that was left out was from David Holmes and Sam Flynn’s interviews. I interviewed them a week after the show finished, and I think that gave them more time to reflect on the success of the show and what it meant to them. Their two interviews were over a half-hour and all of it was wonderful, but you have to cut something.

There were a few minutes where I had a very personal conversation with David about faith and the role it played for him as a teacher. That part of the interview had a lot of weight to it, but it was awkward trying to shoehorn it into a film about high school alumni producing a musical about outer-space transvestites. I tried to fit it in, but it was incongruent with the other themes.

Why should people go see this film?

People should go see this film for the main reason people should go see a film; They should see it because they will enjoy it. The film says some things about the importance of theater in high school, but really people should see the film because it will put a smile on their face.

Is there anything else you’d like to add that wasn’t discussed?

Yes. Due to the success of the production of “The Rocky Horror Show” last year, many of the cast and crew of that show formed the San Marcos High School Alumni Foundation Theater Group. They are going to carry on the tradition started in 2014 by producing an alumni musical every summer. In June 2015 they will produce “Spamalot.” Visit http://www.smhsalumnitheater.org for more info. Proceeds from all shows will go to San Marcos High School.

Time Warp is set to screen on February 5 and 6th as part of a series of Santa Barbara documentary shorts at the Lobero Theater. For times CLICK HERE .