Continuing Education

As much as I like learning new things, it is also very frustrating to me, because when I am interested in something I want to know all there is to know and I want to know it RIGHT NOW. Never works that way, though.

I am well into the editing process now, though I only know the very basics. But as far as splicing the scenes together, I am getting the hang of that pretty quickly, and for the most part I really enjoy editing. Mostly because it doesn't involve scheduling a bunch of people whose schedules never match. I can roll out of bed and edit a scene or two in my pajamas, walk away from my computer whenever I am getting agitated and go right back to it whenever the mood strikes me. I have about 25 scenes edited so far (out of maybe 120), and ya know, I just keep on learning lessons along the way that will be oh-so-helpful if I ever put myself through the sweet, sweet hell of making a movie again. Which I am certain I will.

Such as, if ya gotta skimp somewhere (which you always gotta, unless you have an unlimited budget), skimp on the wide shots and NOT the coverage (singles/close-ups of individual actors). I did not know this. Wish I had. I kind of thought the opposite, that the whole, complete, wide shot was the most important piece of the puzzle, but it is really not. Watch any TV show or movie and dissect the scene and you will figure this out. You usually only see the wide shot for a few seconds at the very beginning, and then it is all coverage of the people speaking. Yet another lesson learned.

And a very, very, very important lesson -when the last second of the scene has ended, count to at least 3, if not 5, before yelling "cut". It helps enormously during the editing process.

And another thing, anyone who tells you, "Oh, you can do that in post," (a) usually isn't the person that would have to do that in post, (b) definitely isn't the person who will have to PAY for whatever-it-is being done in post, and (c) if they are the person who would be doing it in post, is just padding their paycheck. Your movie, ANY movie, will look better the LESS you have to do "in post". To see what I am talking about, rent a movie called (I think) "Duane Roane: First-Time Director". This stars Andy Dick (who normally, I hate). Having been through the process, every time he says, "We'll just do it in post," I about hit the floor laughing.

Lesson #381: Cutaways.
You can never have too many cutaways. You have, say, a scene where a guy is making breakfast for a woman who has spent the night. Say, this is the last scene you are shooting that day and you are behind schedule and don't want to go into overtime, and it is not a long scene so you do it, say, all in one take in a wide shot, maybe three times. When you go to edit that scene, say you see that in two of the three takes you can CLEARLY see the big fat light shining through the glass door to make it look like morning sunlight. So you are stuck with that one and only take that you can't see the big fat light in, which, say, wasn't even the best take that the actors did. But (a) you have no coverage and (b) you have no cutaways, that could have possibly covered the few seconds that you see the big fat light. The CORRECT answer would have been, instead of three takes of the wide shot, one take of the wide, and one coverage of each of the two actors, and a few extra minutes to film close-up cutaways of pouring a glass of juice, scrambling eggs in a pan, a fork moving eggs around on a plate, ANYTHING so you have something to cut to when an actor stutters for a split second or a BIG FAT LIGHT is in the shot.

Another thing that I don't think I have mentioned so far but have thought about/dealt with a LOT, between "Charm City" and "Juju" - make sure you have an Assistant Director. Now, I think that job title is extremely misleading, which is why I didn't have one on Charm City. An Assistant Director does not direct. If an Assistant Director (AD) starts directing, that person is overstepping his or her bounds. That is not their job. An AD keeps things moving, and if they are doing their job well, is often not very popular among the cast and crew. The AD's job is to make sure EVERYONE is where they are supposed to be when they are supposed to be there, if not 5 minutes ago. They are on the crew's asses to get the lights set up and camera ready, they are on props to have the set dressed, they are on the actors to be in makeup and wardrobe, and they are the one to "lock down" the set (i.e., to tell everyone to shut the hell up when the camera is about to roll).

I tried to do this all myself on Charm City, and it was extremely difficult. To this day I don't know if it was Michelle's idea or if her film crew took it upon themselves, but after the first 4 or 5 days, someone from the crew would pick up the slack and lock down the set, for which I was very grateful. I was so sick of hearing my own voice, and I am sure everyone else on the set felt the same way. As I am editing, I am especially aware of how stressed out I was at the time (which, thank goodness, I wasn't TOTALLY aware of in the middle of it all). It is apparent in my voice, and sometimes when the camera would catch me (Michelle likes to turn the camera on to the crew when we are running room tone), I looked so stressed, and to me, several years older than I am, and older than I look now when the weight of production is no longer on my shoulders.

Lesson, say it with me, learned.

I gotta roll now. Have to finish learning my lines for two scenes I have to do in Steve Yeager's acting class tomorrow. Plus Eric is showing up soon to set some things up to film at my place over the weekend. I used to have so much FREE time in my life before I got into all this. What the hell was I thinking?!? But, I kid... I've never been busier. But I've never been happier. I am finally doing what I believe I was really, truly cut out for, though just 2 or 3 years ago I could never have imagined doing this. It is a pretty awesome feeling.

Choices Made

If you think I was being a little bit of a baby the other day about the criticism of Charm City that I stumbled upon, I wouldn't necessarily disagree with you. I looked at it again, and it wasn't all that terrible, and had some truth to it. The larger part of my problem was not what was said but who said it, and the forum in which they said it. I won't waste any more time thinking about it, it is not that big a deal. It just caught me at a vulnerable moment so I may have overreacted a little bit.

You do have to have a thick skin in this business, as this stuff happens all the time. I try to be supportive of other filmmakers I have come to know, even if whatever they are creating is not really my thing. I learn a lot more (and accumulate more allies) by keeping an open mind than by ripping everyone else's work apart. I believe that there is no one that I cannot learn something from, though sometimes it is learning what NOT to do. But those lessons are equally if not more important than learning HOW to do things.

I know I made a lot of rookie mistakes on Charm City and I am fine with that. I would like to believe that 98.5%... okay, maybe 94.5%... of the cast and crew who worked on the film would willingly work with me again. And that's the other thing about this business, at least in Baltimore. You're going to end up working with people you are not crazy about if you do more than one or two projects, so the fewer lines you draw and enemies you make, the better. There might be cast or crew from Charm City that I would not hire again. But I will not always be in the driver's seat, there will be other productions (knock on wood!) like Juju that I freelance on and am not in charge of hiring or casting, and may find myself working side by side with someone not of my choice.

Anyway... I just finished three days of pick-up shots for Charm City. I think one more day and I will have everything I need. I need to get three of the actors together that day, and that has been tough, but we will get it done. They have been very cooperative and I am grateful for that. We really took our time with the scenes we shot this week and they look great.

Michelle wasn't available yesterday but my two lead actors were, so Eric filled in as DP for me so we could knock some stuff out. After we wrapped last night, Eric and I looked at a LOT of the footage from the 2 weeks of principle photography. I am really happy with it, all of the elements are there. The acting is great, the cinematography is sharp, and I have to say we had some stellar locations that combined make the film look even better than I had hoped for. I was initially worried about so much of the footage being shot in the interiors of bars, but now I think it will be fine, as it will be broken up with a lot of other stuff, and it is a well-balanced mix. We had three bars but they each have a different look and feel to them; five homes/apartments, which were even more distinctive - two very luxurious mansions, a warehouse apartment, a "masculine", straight-forward house, for lack of better description, and a more feminine, artsy house; our outdoor scenes (for which the weather was perfect) were very Baltimore - Federal Hill Park, Mount Vernon Square, and the War Memorial across from City Hall; also my friend Steve's house served as our Courthouse interior (and Steve as our Justice of the Peace), and Charles Lawrence's gallery in Fells Point doubled as Moxie Gallery. Those interiors were so rich and colorful, I can't wait to start editing those scenes. I am probably forgetting a few locations, but those were the main ones and I believe a good mix. We also have a few car scenes of conversations in moving cars.

What I am missing a lot of is single coverage, or close-ups of one person at a time. It is an ensemble cast and in some of the scenes there were sometimes EIGHT people coming and going from the same conversation. I'd still be filming if we did the wide shot and then shot singles of EVERYONE. So I had to make a lot of choices along the way of where I had to skimp on coverage to stay on schedule and under budget. These pick-up days have been nice because they were scenes that were important to get a lot of coverage and we took our time because we only shot about 2 pages a day. We averaged SEVEN pages a day during principle photography, and there were a couple days in there we did ten or eleven! But again, I think I have a balanced mix of scenes where I do and do not have coverage. And I myself LIKE scenes that show more than one person during the conversation. I think they help the actors to stay in character if they know the camera is on them. It is easy to let performance slip if you know it is someone else's close-up and you are not in the shot, plus it is easier, I think, for the actor not to OVER-do it if they are in a scene with someone else. Sometimes if they know it is their close-up, they ham it up a bit too much. And especially for a "talkie" with loads of dialogue about personal relationships, I like to see the body language of the person who is not speaking in the scene. I think in important moments that is just as important as focusing on the person who is talking.

So I can live with all of that. I find myself saying that a lot, now that I am in post. It's a good thing, because if I couldn't live with it, I still wouldn't have much choice in the matter. It is in the can and I only have a little bit of money leftover for post-production.

Well, I have to go finish putting together the schedule for Juju's pick-up days so I better get rolling. One more week of that to get through, then I can really concentrate on editing Charm City. Can't wait to really dig in.