'For Lovers Only': Michael and Mark Polish's No-Budget Digital Dream Project

Brothers Michael and Mark Polish first gained notoriety in 1999 on the indie circuit when they played conjoined twins in the very odd feature Twin Falls Idaho. The two also collaborated on the script, and Michael directed. Since then, the two have resisted the temptation to go more mainstream. Instead, they continue to work within small budgets so they can retain their unique sensibility in films like Jackpot and Northfork. Even their biggest endeavor—The Astronaut Farmer with Billy Bob Thornton—is a deliberately paced story of a simple farmer with plans to launch a space exploration mission from his barn. Not exactly a Hollywood franchise in the making.

for lovers only (clip) from Polish Brothers on Vimeo.

Their latest film, the black-and-white nouvelle vague-style romance For Lovers Only, is by far the lowest-budget, lowest-tech project the brothers have created since they were making short films on their own as teenagers. Because it cost nothing (they insist they didn't spend a dime beyond the cost of hotels, meals and transportation), the reported hundreds of thousands of dollars it's brought in from its download-only distribution that started last July has made it an unqualified financial success.

The idea to do this sort of retro '60s art film in Paris goes back to a script Mark had written before Twin Falls Idaho. Mark would play a photographer who runs into an ex-girlfriend in Paris; the two would drop their responsibilities and rekindle their love on a carefree trip through France. They'd considered shooting it on their Bauer Super 8 camera and then later on an ARRI S in 16mm. There were practical reasons making the prospect of either approach difficult, and it was similarly difficult, even for the Polish brothers, to imagine how such a film might find an audience.

for lovers only... from Polish Brothers on Vimeo.

But in 2009 there was the relatively tiny, inconspicuous Canon EOS 5D Mk II camera, which gave them the cinematic depth of field characteristics they responded to.

	Michael Polish (with camera) and Mark Polish

Another benefit: Using the 5D, a single person could shoot a scene on a busy street while looking like a tourist.

At the same time, streaming and downloading content was really taking off, and with it the option of bypassing the traditional film distribution model. Online, films were finding an audience of people willing to pay a buck or two to watch. "Before we really knew how it would all work," Michael recalls, "we thought, 'This could be one of the first movies made especially for the iPad.' We'd make a movie people could watch in bed or on a plane."

After some initial testing of the 5D Mk II, Michael decided he was comfortable shooting and directing. They didn't want the camera outfitted with a bunch of accessories that would make it unwieldy and attract the attention of authorities while they were under cover as tourists grabbing snapshots. The camera had a Zeiss prime lens (almost always a 50mm) and often a stack of ND filters so Mark could open up and get the shallow depth of field they wanted.

	Stana Katic and Michael Polish

The production team—consisting of the brothers, co-star Stana Katic (Castle) and a hair/makeup person—spent the 12-day shoot going from Paris to St. Tropez to Normandy and throughout the French countryside, following the two lovers on their adventures.

Mark handheld the camera; where possible, a second 5D Mk II would be set on a tripod, unattended, to act as a B-camera. The cameras captured audio to be used as a guide track, and the real audio track was recorded on a Zoom H4n with wireless lavs or a shotgun mic and subsequently synced to the guide track using Singular Software PluralEyes.

Mark made use of no artificial light throughout the shoot. "I didn't even have a bounce card," he notes. "The only time I brought any light to a scene at all was for a scene where Mark and Stana are making out in a club. I put my iPhone into flashlight mode to get a little light on them."

"People don't realize that Europe is built for natural light," adds Michael. "You go to museums and cafes and hotels, and many of those places were built to not have electric light. You go in the street and the light is always amazing because buildings are all a certain height. Sunsets give the city a lot of drama. It's not like some cities. In Manhattan, it can be hard to find light on the street, but Paris is always luminous."

Given the production's stealth approach to shooting, the filmmakers had to show up, work quickly and hope they got the shot. Mark and Katic got very familiar with the script so they could hit the ground running and adapt to change as the environment dictated. Then they would show up at a location and enact their scene as many times as possible as Michael moved around them with his camera.

"We were at the Church of San Michel," Michael recalls, "and it feels like they're alone, but there were hundreds of people there. We would start going through with a tour group and then break off and start shooting. They went through the scene as many times as they could while I kept rolling continuously for 15 minutes.

"One thing I wanted to do as the cinematographer was bring to it the kind of coverage you would have in a regular movie—your masters, mediums, over-the-shoulders, close-ups, chokers—so we would have something we could cut. We still brought a traditional sense of making films to the 5D world," Michael continues.

The brothers were used to the traditional road for indies: a long period on the festival circuit, an attempt to find an audience in the U.S. and finally some international play. But things were very different with For Lovers Only. When the brothers put their film on Apple iTunes, word spread quickly through social media.

"We were surprised how global the movie became so quickly," Mark says. "Soon after we put in on the internet, it was being seen in India, Germany, Austria—all over the world—at the same time it hit the American market. And independent film lovers everywhere became a big, global group and supported it. You used to build a small niche in the U.S. and then take your film from one country to the next to build a global audience. Now you click a button and everybody has access to it all over the world."