3-13 (film)

3-13 is a 2008 short film by Dozerfleet Studios. It is a spin-off of the draft concept for The Mutt Mackley Show, and is the fourth item related to its pitch in Dozerfleet history as well as the third in which Mackley himself makes an appearance.

Just as its predecessor Kings in the Corner was made for FILM 118 class with Professor Jeff Hamlin in the spring of 2003 at Lansing Community College; this sequel was also a class assignment. It was made for TVPR 277 with Professor Clayton Rye in Summer 2008 at Ferris State University. The film was later issued a remake in 2020, and was released on YouTube and on the official blog for Dozerfleet on July 14th of 2021 - a little more than 13 years to the date of when the film was first made.

Original and 2020 remake
Citizens of an unspecified city are worried that Gambino Penguin is at large once again, given he's not in jail anymore after the events in Kings in the Corner. It is left open to interpretation if he's out on bail, is violating parole, or outright escaped from jail, as the film makes no effort to explain how he got free.

Knowing that Gambino has gotten (slightly) smarter since his last encounter with the law; Hooper and Smiley decide to set up a sting operation to catch him. They initiate this by hanging out in an area where they know he often does business. They decide to both kill time and provide a diversion for him by playing a card game. The game that Smiley and Hooper decide to play is "3-13." As Smiley is clearly gaining an advantage over Hooper by keeping his negative score low, Gambino spies on them from nearby.

Mutt Mackley, secretly a part of the sting operation, ambles into Gambino's vicinity and pretends to be suffering from a hangover. A very excited Gambino turns around to see a potential customer, and wastes no time trying to sell crack to Mackley. As Mackley pretends to not be able to make up his mind, Hooper and Smiley flee the premises. Gambino grows impatient, and demands that Mackley agree whether or not to buy the drugs.

Mackley pretends to agree to buy the drugs, but then Gambino is ambushed by Hooper, who tackles him to the ground. During the plot twist at the end, Gambino reveals that the drugs had a street value of $313.00, coincidentally a number corresponding with the card game's name. When Mackley asks Hooper how he'll get Gambino to the station without the aid of a police car, he claims he has a '52 pickup. This coincidentally is also the name of a practical joke involving cards, a fact which Mackley is beside himself upon realizing. He shouts his frustration before walking away from in disgust. The end credits roll.

Unreleased cuts
There were attempts both in April of 2009 and April of 2012 to remake 3-13. However, nothing from the 2012 version has been found to survive. The 2009 version was shot outdoors at Ferris State, and had to be called off due to weather and other daily concerns. This version made it to the scene where Mackley confronts Gambino in the alleyway; and to where Gambino and Smiley disperse. However, the 2009 version was unable to complete production to the point of Gambino's arrest. What has survived of it was set up to be released as a separate reel.

Class edit
Due to film damage, the original cut was unable to be submitted as a class assignment. Its would-be substitute, Penguin on Drugs, likewise failed to turn out well on 16mm film. As such, a new edit was made. In this version, Hooper challenges Smiley to a game of 3-13. The two enjoy a good long game, which somehow takes up an entire afternoon. We see the sun set before the game ends, and the story ends without a conflict. Gambino and Mackley never appear in this version, and the drug subplot is entirely removed.

Card game results
Main article: Hooper and Smiley's 3-13 results (2008 version)

In the 2008 version, Hooper and Smiley played until the 9's round before moving in to bust Gambino. Their good record keeping skills allowed them to resume their game later. The article link above is a round-by-round sequence of how Hooper and Smiley went out of the game and in what order. They play a variation where the jokers are used and are always wildcards that count for nothing - and can be used to negate other cards to make sets.

Retcons
While the original take has Smiley win by having a net score of 33 to Hooper's 81, the remake attempts were not as good at record keeping, nor the original game session reproducible. The class edit cuts off without a clear winner. The 2009 failed remake is unclear about who played what hand when. No 2012 results survived for comparison.

What is known of the 2020 / 2021 version is only that the ending is retconned so that Hooper won in the end. This was due to a bad hand late in the new game session attempt that ruined Smiley, even though he was dominating Hooper the entire game before that hand. This seems to undermine the message of Smiley becoming "a survivor," whereas the original was supposed to confirm it.

However, Smiley's "becoming a survivor" was ultimately decided to be irrelevant to winning the game. He got smarter about avoiding contact with Gambino, and survived that way. He also resumed after Hooper was done with his police business, indicating that the two were persistent about finishing what they started.

Cast

 * R. Dakin Co. 1982 Dog Hand Puppet as Mutt Mackley
 * Ty &reg; Beanie Babies Waddle &trade; as Gambino Penguin
 * Cloud Nine Toys Basketball Plush as Detective Hooper
 * Toucan toy of unknown make / model as Smiley Toucan

Shooting the 2008 version
The film was shot on 16mm Kodak 7266 Tri-X reversal film with an ISO of 200. This was inserted under subdued light conditions into a Bolex camera around 3:35 AM EDT on Friday, June 7th, 2008. The following afternoon, filming commenced. Studio lights were employed in addition to sunlight, and electrical tape from Wal-Mart was used to block off the camera's lid to to prevent any excess light spill. Characters were lined up on the floor of South Bond Room 332 at Ferris State near where the Dozerfleet founder usually kept his dirty clothes hamper and garbage can. The lighting kit box and nearby dresser served as two building sides needed to create an alleyway.

Aside from a lack of anything to represent a road, carpeting served as both a concrete road and concrete sidewalk. The card game happening "across the street" from Gambino was merely Hooper and Smiley being placed by the room's bed and TV stand. After filming, the film reel was slipped into its box case in a dark closet and shipped off to be developed elsewhere.

Shooting the 2009 version
After Dozerfleet Studios' Fujifilm FinePix 2650 camera died in 2006 after shooting the Flying Flamingo Casino Coverage, it was replaced with a Nikon Coolpix P60. This is the camera that would be used for shooting what was able to be shot of the 3-13 remake in 2009, as well as the 2012 attempt. However, the P60 didn't last long after this. After the P60's demise, it was replaced with a Canon PowerShot ELPH 135.

Shooting the 2020 version
No longer at Ferris State, neither South Bond nor any area around Big Rapids was employed any further for setting for the story. Instead, the pole barn of the house on Mt. Hope Hwy. in Grand Ledge where Dozerfleet was stationed in 2020 became the new official setting for 3-13. The Canon PowerShot ELPH 135 mentioned above was used for shooting this new version, and it was shot in a single day on April 8th of 2020. However, it was unable to complete editing until July of 2021, due to Dozerfleet Labs getting its blog set up from April until October of 2020. Afterward, Dozerfleet relocated from Michigan to Florida. This move set everything else back also, resulting in 3-13 taking as long as it did to be completed.

Editing in 2008
3-13 took a long time to return developed. This is because Ferris State's TV program switched from UPS to Federal Express as its main mail carrier. Clayton, the instructor, was uncertain at first how to handle this problem. The film did arrive back, but not until summer sessions of that class were almost over. The movie made its deadline, but with significant deviations from its original script. The final class edit was cut and spliced with added footage of a sunset from another reel not made by Dozerfleet. After results came back and very little of the 16mm film was usable, salvaged parts were spliced with the hijacked sunset reel. This hybrid was then transcribed to miniDV tape using a film projector and an HD video camera.

In April of 2009, another attempt at remaking 3-13 was pursued, but eventually called off when weather and other conditions on that shooting day didn't allow for the entire film to be captured properly. Pursuit of work for Ciem 2 furthermore became a diversion from completing this version, though footage of an almost-complete version did survive.

In May of 2010, further pursuits of a remake were put on hold, deeming the film too much trouble to bother with. This didn't stop a brief failed 2012 attempt. In 2019, however, interest was rekindled in the project; and a 2020 remake was finally commissioned.

Editing in 2021
In 2020, after being shot, the film was put into an Adobe Premiere Elements 2020 timeline. However, it remained mostly untouched for over a year, due to the changes happening at Dozerfleet Labs plus the need to prepare for a relocation to Florida. Problems plagued this film regularly, including issues with sound effects in its audio. Most of these were either resolved or minimized. An attempt was made to make a 4K version; but that version was abandoned when it began skipping too many frames. The final release, while it has issues with the film crank sound effect periodically cutting out, was released in 1080p as an MP4 file.

2008 effects
Given the low-tech nature of this film, there are very few special effects. Angles at which characters were viewed, combined with their brief on-screen times and dramatic close-ups, were designed to give impression of them being involved in tense discourse. The audience was to infer an intimate connection to characters at given moments that they are onscreen. The only true puppet, Mackley, was controlled mostly by hand motions. This was accomplished through an assistant while the Dozerfleet founder ran camera operations.

Lighting was intentionally set up to convey a noir setting. Several cutaways to quote cards were used, with a dry erase board employed for card effects. Stop motion animation was to be employed for all scenes involving cards, scorecard development, or Gambino's drug bag. The characters remained stationary in their positions while their accessories simply appeared "magically" in front of them. Gambino's dramatic pause at the prospect of Mackley as a customer was created using a hamper and a studio light aimed in just the right direction to each other to produce an extreme low angle that allowed the viewer to look up at Gambino.

Mackley was moved along while walking by a string and some dental floss. In the scenes where his mouth moves, however, his lower body is deliberately off camera to allow a puppeteer to operate. The same puppeteer simply threw Hooper at Gambino toward the end, with the intent being for an edit to be done so that the impact immediately jumped to Gambino's reaction - without the necessary reveal that Hooper doesn't have the strength to hold on.

Color-coded quote cards for Mackley, Hooper , Smiley , and Gambino notwithstanding; 3-13 is a black-and-white film. As such, the police car light effect used in Mutt Mackley and Gambino Penguin's "Somewhere I Belong" would not have worked for this film. Instead, a joke was made about how Hooper owns a " '52 pickup" (referencing the practical joke.) Gambino's coke bag was actually a piece of plastic wrap with powdered sugar inside of it.

2020 effects
In 2020, most of the noir drama effects were re-created using filters in Premiere Elements. Absence of a proper studio light to create the Gambino shocked effect in 2008, plus access to more audio files, meant that an air horn sound effect by Mike Koenig and an angular shot on a workbench replaced this original effect. Instead of walking onto the scene using dental floss, Mackley in this version was controlled for his walking sequence using fishing line. In the 2009 version, he was controlled by having the top of his head cropped out of camera view, and being handheld by the top of his head. However, this take also reveals the puppeteer's shadow onscreen. The 2020 fishing line method was able to avert this issue.

Distribution
On July 13th of 2021, an MP4 file was submitted to Dozerfleet's YouTube channel. A blog page embedding it was soon modified to reflect this change, leaving a slot open for one more pending film project: an ad for Purge-Flare: Stickin' It to Pencil. Release of this file was hailed as a major victory, as there has been desire to release 3-13 again ever since the failed 2008 and 2009 versions. The following morning, the 2009 blooper reel was uploaded to YouTube, helping to partially explain to viewers why there was such a long delay in getting a YouTube-friendly version of 3-13 to be available.

Reception
The class edit was fairly warmly received; by the instructor in particular. The project itself earned a B for a grade, guaranteeing a similarly positive class grade. Reviews and ratings are pending on the 2021 version.

Music
The official song originally chosen for this film's soundtrack was "Greasy Feet," off the similarly-named album by the jazz band New Soul Underground. One of the members of this band, Travis Carlton, was fittingly enough a relative of the very Larry Carlton whose song "Fingerprints" originally featured in Kings in the Corner. The idea to use said song was derived from a need to keep a thematic consistency in the world of Mutt Mackley-based cinema. The crime noir dramedy nature of these shorts owes itself to jazz music with no lyrics and plenty of bass playing. Therefore, it seemed natural to find another Carlton who could pull off almost as much a successful and appropriate tune as the last one.

However, the final version was unable to secure the rights to use "Greasy Feet." Initially, a track called "Sonos" was discovered in 2020. But notes on its licensing were lost. Searches for the song proved fruitless, and Shazam noted that "Sonos" bore similarity in structure to the M9 song "New Times." As such, the track was substituted at the last minute with Kevin MacLeod's "Deadly Roulette."

Trivia

 * 3-13 is the first Dozerfleet Studios video to be first captured to 16mm film and then converted to video later, as opposed to going straight to miniDV tape or some other direct video format.


 * Gambino gets increasingly more intelligent in his criminal career with each successive escape from jail. But early on, he's not very smart.  He refers to the drugs he tries to sell to Mackley as "smack," a common street name for heroin.  However, it is very clear that the bag at the bottom of his feet is a coke bag.


 * Unlike Kings in the Corner, which was supposed to feature Mackley but left him out, this film makes sure to give Mutt Mackley himself a proper role.


 * 3-13 has been attempted about five times throughout its development life, making it one of the most "cursed" productions in Dozerfleet history.


 * Due to some frame skip issues, it is only available in 1080p-downward. Otherwise, it would've been the first 4K production in Dozerfleet history.


 * The film, titled 3-13, features a game of 3-13, with "drugs" that are supposedly worth "$313.00," and it was released on YouTube a month more than 13 years after it was first proposed as a project, as a sequel to Kings in the Corner, which was released in 2003.
 * So the film from '03 got a sequel with "3" in its title, that took 13 years to properly remake.
 * It finished processing a few minutes late of its intended goal upload finalization, which was 8:13 PM EDT on Tuesday, July 13th of 2021.
 * Unlike standard 3-13, the version played by Hooper and Smiley keeps jokers in the deck, in a film full of jokes and jokers.
 * Since only Hooper and Smiley are playing, only one card deck is necessary. Had there been any more players, two card decks would have been required.
 * The remake was shot in April of 2020, about 21 years after the original pitch for The Mutt Mackley Show and released a few months more than 22 years later.
 * In Stationery Voyagers, when 86 indicates idealism and 64 realism, 22 represents shortcoming. So the film is the result of the greater TV show premise falling short.