Foster’s Sunday Citizen
February 24, 2002
by Steve Craig
(Edited for misquotation and accuracy)
ELIOT, Maine – Jonathan Bradstreet’s art career is like the old jalopy he stores in a neighbor’s garage. both have been kick-started by a serendipitous stroke of good fortune. Given enough effort, both could also turn into speeding things of beauty.
Bradstreet, 25, thinks he’ll have his Model A – more rusted frame than finished product – molded into a gleaming hot rod and on the road by summer. When his career as a freelance illustrator will hit highway speed is tougher to predict. 0ne thing is certain. For such a young artist, Bradstreet has already worked in fast company.
The lifelong Eliot resident spent six weeks in the summer of 2000 working as the storyboard artist also known as the continuity sketch artist, for the critically acclaimed motion picture lN THE BEDROOM The film, directed by Todd Field, is vying for five oscars, including the most coveted Academy Awards of Best Picture, Best Actress (Sissy Spacek), Best Actor (Tom Wilkenson) and Best Supporting Actress (Marisa Tomei).
While the movie’s stars are busily preparing acceptance speeches, Bradstreet is working hard to cultivate some of the contacts he’s made in the film industry.
“Seeing the film, the actual finished product, has gotten me to be a lot more motivated,’’ he says. “Now I know that this is the time to hit it big.”
Currently Bradstreet is a graphic artists employed by Foster’s Daily Democrat who has had a sampling of his paintings published. Freelance painting, evocative of a 1950s style and often focused on old cars, Bradstreet’s other obvious passion, is something the Marshwood High School (1995) and Massachusetts College of Art (1999) graduate intends as life-long work. He recently started his own independent company, Jonathan Bradstreet Illustration and has posted a fledgling website (www.jonathanbradstreetillustration.com) that displays some of his work. Supplementing the freelance illustrations with consistent work in the film industry would be an ideal situation he’s hoping can become reality.
“lt’s incredible working on a movie. I Iove to travel. There are just too many perks to this job,” Bradstreet says with a youthful, wide-eyed grin. “You get to hang out with directors, actors, actresses, all of these creative people. In a way it’s Iike being back in art school. You get to hang out with artists all day, only now you get paid for it.” That Bradstreet ended up on the lN THE BEDROOM crew is a classic example of contacts melding with fate. Field wanted to work with established storyboard artist Ray Harvie, Bradstreet says. Harvie had a prior commitment. Field asked Harvie to find him a substitute.
As it turned out, Harvie is also a graduate of Massachusetts College of Art. He talked to a former professor, who suggested Bradstreet.
For six weeks of on-location shooting in Maine, Bradstreet was an integral part of the crew. Though he had no prior movie-making experience, Bradstreet worked directly with Field. In brief, Bradstreet and Field would visit a location. Field would determine how he wanted a shot positioned.
“We’d be the actors, running through the lines,” Bradstreet says. Photographs were taken as reference, which Bradstreet said helped him immensely because that is his typical approach when painting. Recognizing that it was vital to be sure to draw a depiction that flt the picture in Field’s mind, Bradstreet said he routinely tape-recorded the conversations. After getting the photographs developed at the local one-hour developing store, Field would choose the pictures he wanted and sequence them.
This part of the process usually took about four hours, Bradstreet says. Then the real work started. It was up to Bradstreet to sketch the location and camera perspective.
“Sometimes I was up until three… four in the morning the next day,” Bradstreet says. “The only way I kept myself going was knowing that I had to have it done. A deadline is a deadline. When your hand’s cramped and you’ve got one eye closed, it’s very nice to know the end is near.” It was the quantity, not the quality, which kept Bradstreet working well past midnight. The job was to make a rough sketch that gave direction, not to produce masterpieces. “You can’t be slow,” he says. “You get one or two shots at it, two at the most.”
Bradstreet’s minimalist sketches were used as a pictographic how-to guide, displaying the sequencing of action that Field intended to shoot, as well as the proposed camera angles and perspectives. The sketches were used by Field, the crew and the actors as a reference for how the day’s production scheàule would flow.
“I’d say (storyboard artist) was a pretty important job. I don’t want to boast about it, but without the boards it would have been harder for (Field) to put it together the way he envisioned it,” Bradstreet says.
Bradstreet says he and Field worked well together and for the first two weeks of his work stint, it was essentially a two-man operation. Then the actors came.
“I didn’t know quite what to think of the actors at first. You have some pre-conceived notions about these Hollywood stars. Are they going to want to talk to me?” he says.
Bradstreet says most of the cast and crew were surprised someone as young as Bradstreet would be the storyboard artist. “What I understand is that most storyboard artists work their way up through PA (production assistant) jobs.
Bradstreet is relatively young but he has what can best be described as an old soul. Maybe it was the preschool visits to hot rod shows with his uncle Jim Pelkey. Perhaps lt’s because he is part of the 13th consecutive generation of his mother’s family to live in Eliot, in a portion the old-timers call Eliot Neck. Maybe it has something to do with the small ancestral graveyard that borders his home.
Whatever the reason, Bradstreet is drawn to the old, be it the Model A that he found rusting in a farmer’s field, rhythm & blues music, classic art deco diners, or Norman Rockwell.
“The 1950s, there’s just a style about it. The signs, the architecture, the cars,” Bradstreet says. “It’s definitely reflected In my paintings. It was a style that was very concise. Nice, hard edges on everythlng and sort of looking into the future, too.”
Bradstreet has great respect for Rockwell, the greatest American illustrator. “He just captured the essence of America,” Bradstreet says. Bradstreet's America is still centered on New England and more directly toward his Maine heritage. On at least two occasions, Bradstreet’s local knowledge was put directly to use by the lN THE BEDROOM crew. “There was a scene that takes place at OId Orchard Beach, a pivotal scene. They were looking for a place that had a carnival feel and that was the one place I could think of” Bradstreet says. “I suggested that during a meeting one day and they actually decided to shoot there. It’s kind of nice to know that some place I suggested was actually used.”
Then there was the more personal memory, one that gives Bradstreet an all-time cocktail party boast: “I showed Sissy Spacek how to eat a lobster.”
His ability to do the job he was assigned to do is also evident in the finished product, though he and only a select few others would know it. Since the storyboard artist’s responsibility is to capture the director’s “vision” on a sheet of paper, there is precious little room for interpretative creativity on the part of the artist. Still, there was an opportunity on almost every location for Bradstreet to decide how his storyboard depiction would be framed. Did he use the full picture or zoom in? Choose a corner, the center or a blurred edge as the focal point? This was the relatively small area where Bradstreet had some creative input.
“When I saw the film, a lot of the shots had translated almost dead-on to the (storyboards),” Bradstreet says. “It was good to see that a lot of the boards were directly followed. And, some of them weren’t even used. There were different locations that l did the boards for that they didn’t use. Those ended up on the editing room floor, l guess.”
While working to make his next big break happen, Bradstreet will continue to work on both his career and the hot rod. “I’ll probably never be done but maybe, hopefully, it will be on the road by this summer,’’ says Bradstreet. He’s talking about the car but once again the conversation has professional parallels. If all goes according to plan, Bradstreet, too, may find himself on the road, off to the second in what he hopes will be a long line of filmmaking locations.