By Katy Savage, Standard Staff
Ujon Tokarski had 33 minutes. The first assistant director needed to have a cabin wall that weighed about 1,400 pounds up in that time.
Tokarski only had one shot to make it work.
Tokarski put his hands in prayer across his chest.
Then he used a pulley system attached to a tree to lift the heavy lumber. The wall was so heavy the weight of it made the tree sway.
About 20 people stood and watched Tokarski. It was silent except for the leaves rustling in the wind and the creaking of the wood being squeezed into place.
Two cameras zoomed in.
Then the director yelled cut. And they all breathed a sigh of relief.
Another scene of the upcoming movie, “Major Arcana,” was done. The movie follows a man named Dink, who returns to the town he grew up in and builds a log cabin in the woods to prove himself. The majority of the film’s scenes are centered on this cabin being built at Fable Farm in Barnard.
The cabin in this movie wasn’t just another set piece and the main actor, Ujon Tokarski, wasn’t actually an actor.
Tokarski makes his living in carpentry. The 20-by-10-foot cabin at Fable Farm will be used for farm worker housing and it needed to be sturdy — an added twist to the filming and production schedule.
“Usually you would (build) in reverse and it would be very easy,” Director Josh Melrod said. “I wanted it to be really real.”
Melrod lives in Barnard and works as a film editor. “Major Arcana” is the first feature film Melrod’s written and directed himself. He spent two-and-a-half years writing the script when the idea for the low-budget film came to him as he was driving through Vermont.
“I’ve wanted to make a movie of my own for a long time,” Melrod said.
But he wanted it to authentic. It’s so authentic the actor is essentially building his own set.
“I definitely thought from the beginning that I wanted the main character to be somebody who could really go out in the woods and chop down trees and drag them through the woods and make a cabin — somebody who, if push came to shove, could actually do all these things,” Melrod said.
“It’s definitely something none of us have done before,” said Producer Sarah Brennan Kolb.
The wall erection scene was the biggest challenge yet. It’s not uncommon for timber frame walls to bind when they’re being lifted into place. But there was no time for anything to go wrong with the wall. They had a production schedule to stick to.
Nicolas Moussallem, from Essex, New York, is building the cabin behind-the-scenes while Tokarski builds on camera.
Moussallem has built other structures at Fable Farm before and he was picked for his experience with timber framing.
After Tokarski lifted the wall in place, Moussallem had five days to erect the other side of the wall, put in the rafters and build the entire frame before Tokarski returned to put final touches on the cabin for his part on camera.
“We have to just boogie tomorrow,” Moussallem said.
The crew of about 20 is shooting 12 hours a day until early September. They have filmed scenes in Pomfret, White River Junction, Woodstock but most of the film is at Fable Farm in Barnard.
“Vermont is so beautiful that it’s made up for the lack of cell phone service,” said Kolb. Most of the cast and crew come from Texas or New York.
There have been minor hiccups to working in the woods at Fable Farm.
“We do have to think about power, we have to constantly run a generator to power lights,” said cameraman Ramsey Findell, from New York City.
On the second day of filming it rained and the primary camera had an issue. On this day, there was a cable problem.
“I have to be a Boy Scout and bring two cameras,” Findell said.
With authenticity, the director has needed to make compromises.
Fable Farm’s Joe LaDouceur designed the cabin. He needed it to be resistant enough for housing while Melrod needed it to look good on camera.
Where the builder wanted plywood on the ground to keep rodents out, Melrod wanted a finished floor.
The cabin is also being built at a different location from where Melrod originally wanted because of the logistics of construction.
The film is scheduled to be released as early as spring 2017.
Despite the challenges, Melrod’s gotten what he’s wanted so far.
This article first appeared in the September 1, 2016 edition of the Vermont Standard.