Who Is Mr. Tom (Behind The Scenes Questions: ANSWERED!)
Hey guys, after befriending THE FILMMAKER IRL and starting the official Who Is Mr. Tom fan group, the creator answered some of the behind the scenes questions my friends and I asked. (Answers were answered by Michael Laicini, aka THE FILMMAKER, aka the creator of Who Is Mr. Tom.Please give him your thanks 💖 Note: Mr. Tom’s actor’s name is David.)
1.) How did the casting for the series work? Friends? Interviews? How did everyone come together?
Casting was a mixed bag of things. Mainly we cast Mr. Tom from friends we’ve worked with previously on other short films prior. Maybe I’ll send you a link to them… I’ll ask David if he’s ok with that! The woman who played Helen, as well as Lisbeth were both actors from my previous short film called “beware pickpocket” – they are so good it was a no-brainer for me to ask them to be In Mr. Tom.
David and I have worked together on two short films previously. We love working together so much. We really understand each other creatively.
I created Mr. Tom specifically for David. It’s a perfect role for him, perfectly tailored to all of his best qualities as an actor – he is an amazing physical actor, he is absolutely hilarious and is so great at physical humour/slapstick. He also has incredible eyes – he doesn’t have to say anything and you can just look in his eyes and understand.
Since the FILMMAKER was somebody who was going to be in the entire series I decided it would be easier for me to play the filmmaker instead of casting another actor – because scheduling days to film/shoot can get difficult with to many people. I don’t particularly like acting though… if I can avoid it I will. I think I did ok as the filmmaker considering I really didn’t want to be in front of the camera.
We shot the web series with a very small crew over a period of a couple months. The first couple episodes we had a lot great equipment (lighting/camera) and a decently large crew (5-6 people) but for the remainder of the series (the episodes that takes place in that basement where Tom hides) we shot those entirely on an IPhone – just me and david alone with an IPhone. We improvised A LOT of what you see there – we would decide beforehand on some plot elements that this scene needs to hit but all of the dialogue / interactions were improvised and made up as we went along.
It was exciting for me to interact with “Mr. Tom” – a character who came from my imagination was now standing in front of me – beating me up, throwing things at me, pushing me around… very surreal.
I didn’t anticipate how difficult it would be to communicate with David when he had his make-up on. Throughout production we’d have these hilarious little interactions where David would try and tell me an idea he has – but he can’t speak because of the makeup – I was particularly bad at interoperating what David was trying to say and it led to many unintentionally funny exchanges.
2.) How long did it take to film the entire series?
3.) A few of us saw that the videos were uploaded out of order, so was it all prefilmed and if so, what made you decide to upload them like that?
I think the filming process took about 2 (maybe a little more) months total. We were shooting episodes almost on a weekly basis and posting them online – seeing the reactions to the episodes from our Facebook/Twitter accounts -- and then using those reactions to inform our ideas for more episodes. We knew we were only going to make so many episodes, we didn’t have an exact number in mind – but we knew that when we got to a certain point the where the story felt complete we would stop there.
if you go through our youtube, you’ll see another playlist called the “Mr. Tom diaries” – where you get to see a lot of unedited material of the FILMMAKER interacting with Tom. (the Tom Diaries videos might be on private now I’ll see if I can unlock them for you if so!)
The Mr. Tom diaries were born from us creating “Mr. Tom reaction videos” to people’s comments about him online. We started to realize that there was an opportunity for a lot character development / and to surprise people online with unexpectedly dramatic content – make people think twice about the kinds of comments they are making too – because ANYTHING can happen….
After the Mr. Tom diaries, we re-edited a lot of that content into a more easy to digest story – which is what you’ve been watching: Who Is Mr. Tom?
We created the web series mainly to test out the character, see if other people would fall in love with Mr. Tom in the same ways we have – and to try and tease/attract attention for us to possibly make a feature film of Mr. Tom one day. A goal we are still diligently working towards.
4.) How long did it take to do David's makeup? How many times before you got it right?
5.) How many times did you have to do his makeup for the series? The application looks pretty flawless.
I think it took about two hours for the application. David isn’t the biggest fan of that process, sometimes he’d nap while the make-up artist worked. Haha…
We actually did TWO versions of Mr. Tom before we were happy with the result. The first version you can see if you look really really carefully at the episode where Mr. Tom saves me from the monster in the chest – that version of his makeup resulted kind of a bulky looking jaw line that we didn’t like. It looks really different from the application you see later in the series – that’s partly why we distorted the image so much in this episode so that the continuity wouldn’t be off on how he looks.
We didn’t have a lot of money for this project, so we couldn’t always afford a make-up artist every time we needed Mr. Tom on camera. We came up with a lot of clever ways to save money….
*I learnt how to make the prosthesis myself and would just bring it with me to set.
*David learnt how to apply the make-up himself. He got pretty good/fast at it!
*Some episodes we just covered Tom’s face with a scarf, or a mask (which makes sense for the character because he doesn’t like to be seen) which saved us from having to apply makeup / or make the prosthesis.
That meant that we’d only have to pay a make-up artist for episodes/shots where we need Mr. Tom was going to be in close-up and it had to look good. Otherwise we could get away with it not being perfect (or on at all!).
6.) What are the people/creature's who are tall and in the black robes called/what their purpose is? Any information about those would be fantastic.
This is a question for another time…. But I will say that the look of those “creatures” was meant to mirror that SYMBOL you see throughout the series. Remember that symbol that appeared on the filmmaker’s garage when he was cleaning his bloody car? When the three figures align (like you see on the hill-side after the filmmaker interviews peter maddelena) there is a power in creating that symbol – a ritual. Sort of like how Christians/Catholics will do the “sign of the cross” when praying – this is a similar thing.
7.) How challenging was it running all of Mr. Tom's media all at the same time? (Youtube, twitter, facebook page, etc.)
VERY challenging. We only originally set out to make 3 episodes when this started. Starting with Helen O’Mear’s interview, and then Peter Maddelena’s interview, then the attack scene at the church where Mr. Tom rescues the filmmaker. The response to these episodes was so great that we decided we had to keep going…. At its peak, we were receiving a lot of comments in reaction to the Mr. Tom videos via Facebook. We were trying to post weekly episodes to keep the fanbase active/excited/engaged. Which meant we’d only have a couple days to plan/shoot/edit the next episode and try to have it up before the week was over.
It was an intense time! A lot of time spent between David and I brainstorming / improvising and shooting and moving very very quickly. It was a lot of fun.
8.) In certain scenes like the Dock Cam, the thrift store, the hospital, the town scene for when The Filmmaker found Tom again, how did you get permission to film at all these locations and how challenging was it?
I am SO happy you asked this question!!
because the answer is … we didn’t have permission.
I cannot publically endorse this type of behavior, so I don’t encourage people to just do whatever they want when it comes to obtaining or not obtaining permission to shoot things in public spaces – sometime’s it is necessary for the safety of the actors and crew and public.
Sometimes though… it’s not.
We asked ourselves – are we putting anybody in danger by doing this? (aside from ourselves) Are we willing to risk the consequences of “stealing these shots”…? We were. And we did what we had to do to get some exciting material inexpensively.
We didn’t ask for permission to shoot at the hospital, in the mall, on the dock, in the thrift store, or the subway. We figured – we had such a small crew and (aside from the mall scene) probably wouldn’t attract very much attention from unwanted people (security ect…) and we’d just set-up, shoot quickly and leave quickly.
That meant we had to be very sneaky and crafty.
For example – in the thrift store scene. David and I walked into the store like regular customers, david had his hospital scrubs on underneath his pants and jacket. We walked to the back of the store and found a spot to steal the shot. I reazlied while I was in the store that I needed to get really high up for the shot to look like a security camera… so I went to the toy section and found this very long stick (that had a lion’s head on the end of it, it was basically like an old fashioned toy where a kid would stick the stick between their legs and run around pretending to riding a lion) – I taped my I-Phone to the lions head. Got into position. Signaled David to strip down to his hospital scrubs. Turned on the camera –said action – and David just did what he did. He took some clothes off a rack and ran down the aisle. Nobody said anything to us – we just got a couple strange looks. The clothes that David stole we purchased and used as Mr. Tom’s wardrobe for his homeless scenes…. lol
The DOCK scene – was another situation where we said --- let’s just do it. So we found a waterfront. Picked our location. Got into position and David – was brave enough to strip down and jump into the water. Again, nobody asked us any questions… we got away with it.
We did that a lot. It’s kind of necessary as independent filmmakers to be brave enough to do these things on occasion – because otherwise you will find yourself constantly blocked by people who say NO. We don’t like letting other people tell us whether our art is “possible or not.” In our experience we’ve found, if you constantly stand around and wait for other people to give you permission to do things… you aren’t going to get a lot done. When it comes to some things, don’t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness…. Haha.
The mall scene was the only scene that made me really really nervous to shoot without permission. I was really afraid that people might freak out and we’d get into big trouble trespassing. Turns out that people did get really freaked out, which made for great content, and eventually security did come and we got kicked out – strangely it felt more invigorating than like we were in trouble.
