Rent-A-Pal

About the Film

Set in 1990, Rent-A-Pal tells a story of David (Brian Landis Folkins); a lonely, 40s-something bachelor who lives alone with his mother (Kathleen Brady). While Mom slowly wastes away from dementia, David must tend to her every need. But through his devotion to his mother, David has become isolated and detached. His only ray of hope is a subscription to Video Rendezvous - a dating service. David receives VHS tapes of women in his town who are looking for a partner. He’s yet to receive a match through the service but remains diligent, and regularly spends his mother’s social security checks to seek the perfect mate.

After one of his frequent visits to the Video Rendezvous studio, David discovers a strange VHS tape - Rent-A-Pal. Unlike the dating tapes, which offer potential love connections, Rent-A-Pal has a very specific purpose- giving lonely people a new best friend. The “interactive” tape, hosted by the charming and hypnotic Andy (Wil Wheaton), promises to give David someone to talk to, someone who will listen, and someone who will be there for him in his darkest days. But in his fragile state of vulnerability, the effect of the tape on David is more profound than he could have imagined. 

At first, chatting with Andy is awkward and uncomfortable. Although the premise of the video is sincere, David can’t ignore the fact that Andy is only pretending to listen to him. But after a painful rejection from Video Rendezvous, David commits to a friendship with Andy. Fueled by alcohol, loneliness, and his own staggering vulnerability, Rent-A-Pal quickly grabs a hold of David and leads him down a dark, more sinister path. Now, he must save himself from tumbling down the rabbit hole by standing up against the formidable Andy, and worst of all - himself.

Soundtrack AVAILABLE NOW

the Music

Writer/Director/Editor Jon Stevenson was kind enough to ask me to compose the soundtrack for the film and besides a few basic pointers here and there, he let me do whatever I wanted. The whole thing was a really incredible experience. Since I was also a producer on the project, we were able to get started on music really early in pre-production and continue working on it deep into the sound mix. All-in-all I spent a solid 8-10 months working on 40+ pieces of music needed. You can listen to the whole thing on this website or on any music streaming service, but I wanted to highlight a handful of tracks I really like below. Enjoy!

VFX

I was the VFX compositor on the film. Below is a reel of most of the shots I worked on in the film. I might make some more breakdowns of these individual shots eventually.

Mom’s Eye

While making the VFX reel above, I accidently made a little breakdown of the “Mom’s Eye” gag. So instead of including it in the reel, I made a separate breakdown. Fun Fact! One of my all-time favorite movie gags is this trick from Robert Rodriguez’s 10 Minute Film School. I did something similar on one of my first short films The Gatekeeper and am using it again here, just with the difficulty turned up a little. It’s kind of fun to use the same effective tools and tricks over and over again throughout the years like a trusty hammer.

Production Design

The brilliant and extremely talented Brandon Fryman was Rent-A-Pal’s Producer/Production Designer and together, we built these super fun props below. I would do the designing in Photoshop and he’d print it out and put it together to make it look like a real thing.

The Rent-A-Pal Tape

For the Rent-A-Pal tape, Jon and I both envisioned the exact same thing: Wil Wheaton, as Andy, leaning against the TV with a big pile of VHS tapes next to his elbow. We knew the “He talks to you, he listens to you…” blurb would be on the front with a Regis and Kathy Lee bit on the back (both were in the script). I immediately envisioned a cheesy logo with the “A” in a TV and the whole thing would be covered in price tag stickers of descending value. So this iconic tape cover came together quite quickly.

The biggest issue is we needed to film numerous scenes using The Tape and we hadn’t even met Wil Wheaton yet, let alone shot his scenes. So I made a “Dummy Tape” that we used on set. I took an old America’s Funniest Home Video promo photo of Bob Saget and photoshopped Wil’s face on it. Then on the back I put a bunch of random photos from Wil’s Instagram feed. Any shot of the Dummy Tape that made it into the locked edit, I went in and replaced the cover using VFX. You can see the before and after in the Rent-A-Pal VFX reel above.

We had a clear idea of what the tape was going to look like in our heads, but we still wanted to test out a number of different styles and see which one worked best. Was Andy scarier if Rent-A-Pal was written in cringey Comic Sans? Or stone cold blue Arial italic, like a forgotten sign in the back of a post office? These were fun things to discuss early in pre-production.

After we designed The Tape, we immediately fantasized about one day releasing Rent-A-Pal on VHS with this design as the actual box art. We didn’t even know if people still made VHS tapes or if people would be interested in owning our movie on VHS. Well, two and half years later, after the movie was finished and released, we got a call from Josh at Lunchmeat. Not only does he regularly put out awesome movies on VHS, but he wanted to put out our movie on VHS! “What do you think about releasing it not with the DVD/Blu-Ray cover, but with the cover we see in the movie?” He asked. It was all meant to be. Josh did an amazing job adjusting a few things here and there so everything could be released legally and he even designed and released a Video Rendezvous shirt that he sold in a separate package with the VHS. Shortly after pre-sale was over, The Tape had sold out it’s 100 available copies. Turns out people still make VHS’s and people were interested in owning our movie on VHS. Thanks again to Josh at Lunchmeat for putting this all together for us xoxo

Frank Brower, David’s father, was a big-time Jazz musician back in the day. Heck, he even played on Carson! I designed the cassette jacket used in the film. We use a couple of photos of “Frank” throughout the film and they’re all of Jon’s grandfather. Fun Fact! I didn’t put the Pretty People Records logo in there as an easter egg. This is how the Pretty People Records logo was designed! As I was designing this tape, I thought it would be funny to make an old school PPR logo and once it was done, I was like “Man, I’m keeping that!” So I did! Anyway, I think that’s kind of fun.

Frank and Lucille’s Photo

David looks longingly at a photo of Frank and Lucille, his Dad and Mom. That’s what the script called for. But Kathleen Brady, the actress who played Lucille never met Jon’s grandfather who we were using in the photos for Frank. So with the power of Photoshop, I took an old photo of Grandpa, an old photo of Kathy and BAM! You got yourself a an old photo of Frank and Lucille for David to look at whenever he’s dusting the picture frames. How that photo later became a photo of David and Andy is for you to decide!

Skate Land

Skate City didn’t want us to use their real name so we needed to print and make a bunch of Skate Land branding and put it through out the roller rink. The goal was to keep it very similar to the original Skate City logo so when we had to replace it in VFX shots, it wouldn’t be too challenging since they were so similar.

This shot below is featured in in the VFX reel but I wanted to show it here also because it’s my favorite before and after. As you can see, quite a bit of work went into this shot. First off, Aaron and his boom mic were removed. Then that light on the far right was removed. Then I meticulously cut out the Skate City logo, replaced it with an empty wall, and then put our Skate Land logo in there and made it look like a real sign. It was all worth the work and I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out.

Video Rendezvous

This silly little animation was HUGELY important to the film. It’s essentially the first thing you see in the movie and sets the tone as well as the period of Rent-A-Pal. Jon and I watched over 100 production logos from the 1970s, 80s, and 90s (we found an incredibly helpful YouTube playlist) picked a few key things we wanted to recreate, and went from there. The 3D heart and animation were created in C4D but I only used techniques that were available at that time. This meant rendering it at 30fps, 480p, with harsh anti-aliasing and no soft shadows. I took that into After Effects and composited the final animation. Besides the intentional chyron error, we didn’t “beat up” this footage at all. We took the clean export from After Effects, ran it through the process of putting it on a VHS tape, played it on the VCR and voila, that’s what you see in the movie. Just like it would’ve been in real life! The day we shot this when it first played on the TV as our crew was setting up the shot, our Key Grip, Rob Davis, came over and hugged me and shook my hand. He was very impressed by how authentic our fake dating service video felt in real life and thanked us for not doing some cheap, post-production effect.

VIDEO RENDEZVOUS WORKBOOK

Every time David watches a new dating video, he fills out a little notebook to help the Video Rendezvous team narrow his search. Like all of these other props, you barely even see it onscreen, but it was a blast to think about all of the little details as we made these.

VIdeo Rendezvous Tapes

David’s been a Video Rendezvous subscriber for a while and with a few trips to the store in the film, we needed to make a lot of Video Rendezvous tapes. We knew these props would never get a real closeup in the film, so some of the images repeat and the back covers are all the same. But the colors and tape labels were all intricately crafted so when they were printed in mass, they still looked individually handmade. Seeing these fill the shelves of the Video Rendezvous store after Brandon Fryman did his magic was a cool moment.

Video Rendezvous Posters

To cover the walls of our fancy Video Rendezvous store, we needed some posters! Rent-A-Pal takes place in 1990 and there is no way a place like this updates their instore advertising yearly, so I made two sets of posters from two time periods, one set from the early 80s and one from the late-80s. That way we could pick which we liked better while filming. I think we got these printed at Costco and used the frames from my own personal poster collection. One of these still hangs on my wall. The others were sold on Pretty People Pictures Store with COA’s. Keep an eye on our Store and Instagram page. We might sell more of these props down the road!

My hands!

Union rules stipulate how long an actor can be on set. To make best use of Brian Landis Fokins time, we shot numerous close ups of David’s hands using my hands. I thought it would be really funny/stupid to go through the movie and make “show reel” of my “hand acting.” So I did exactly that. This is why I make movies, folks. Enjoy!

In addition to Rent-A-Pal, Jon and I also made Making Rent-A-Pal. An exhaustive behind-the-scenes look at the making of the movie. The DVD/Blu-Ray contains an hour-long version of Making Rent-A-Pal and you can watch the entire 20-episode, 7-hour-long web series on YouTube. Jon and I each edited 10 episodes, he did selects for everything and I did all of the music. I made 30+ “stock music” tracks for the show and everything. Capturing the production of our movies on video is very important to me and this is our most extensive and exhaustive effort yet. I couldn’t be more proud of how it turned out. So go check out the DVD/Blu-Ray and keep an eye out for the extended series in the future!