The Good, the Bad, and the Moronic

The Good: I am ecstatic to announce that Rebecca Clear Dean has signed on as the Production Manager for Charm City. Rebecca brings to the table a Theater Arts/Film degree from a university in New York known as Cornell. Heard of it? I think it is supposed to be a pretty decent school. Rebecca's decade of film production experience includes working with A & E on several documentaries, including biographies of Jack the Ripper and Richard Burton. Later she served as associate producer on Wall $treet Week With Louis Rukeyser at Maryland Public Television, which aired on PBS from 1970-2002.

I am also quite pleased to tell you that Ms. Jancy Lister will be the Catering Manager for the production. As if we needed another crazy redhead on the set! Between Jancy, Joyce Scott, and Michelle Farrell, all of their far-fetched (but true) Baltimore stories are going to make my little romantic comedy look like chump change.

More Good: I finished the tweaks, so we now have a shooting script. Which is fortunate, as we start rehearsals in 5 days and filming in three weeks!

Even More Good: I am meeting with several local artists on Monday who will be loaning their work to the production. More on that later...

The Bad: not much bad, really. Full steam ahead. The only Bad is really what people like Michelle, Sean, and Eric forgot to tell me about, and that is:

The Moronic: a.k.a., the Haters. These mostly come in the form of anonymous internet postings from people who live their little lives in front of a computer screen searching for things to belittle and begrudge. My filmmaker friends probably didn't mention them because I am sure they tuned them out long ago, which would be my advice to anyone as well. Funny enough, these people never follow up their remarkably insightful critique (***sarcasm alert***) with anything such as, "If you want to see something good, you can check out the project I am working on at www..."

No matter. This business is not for the thin-skinned, that is for sure. As an artist I know that I cannot grow and improve my work without constructive criticism. I welcome it from people whose opinions and work I respect. Collaboration is a big part of the process, and to me, a big part of the fun. But if you are someone who actually gets things done, there will always be jealous wannabes out there who will try to undermine you.

That doesn't mean it is always easy to hear the constructive criticism. But before I dismiss anyone's opinion, I ask myself two things: (1) Is this person talented and productive in their own right? and (2) Was their critique delivered with malicious intent and nothing more?

Table Read

What a great day. This afternoon, the entire ensemble got together for a "table read" of the script from start to finish. I probably should not have scheduled this the day before a holiday weekend, as the people who had to travel the furthest to be here got stuck in DC beltway traffic. But everyone made it.

To call this cast eclectic would be an understatement. Their range in age, ethnicity, and pure style blend together beautifully, and truly capture the diversity that, to me, personifies Baltimore.

Everyone jumped in with their ideas and suggestions to tweak the script. It is important to me that everyone have their say, and take ownership of their characters. The collaborative effort absolutely made the script stronger and funnier. And I think the actors appreciated being asked their opinions, and knowing that their voices were heard.

One of the things that surprised me when I started wedging my way into the microcosm that is filmmaking is how poorly actors are often treated, and how willing they still are to do things for cheap or free. To many directors and producers, actors fall pretty far down on the list of priorities, after gear, locations, and well below film crew. Of course, any of those things can make or break your film. But so can acting, of course! It doesn't make good business sense to treat them like cattle. Not to me, anyway. I don't want to be that director.

Today's reading brought it home to me, and I think to the cast as well, that this is really happening, we are really doing this. And not only that, but we are going to do it very well, and have a great time while working our asses off. We had a lot of laughs today, and the natural chemistry that surrounded the table let me know that the tough choices I have had to make so far were the right ones.

In a nutshell, I could not possibly be happier with the way things are going. Tomorrow I am driving to my secret retreat in the Poconos, to spend the holiday weekend alone (well, I'm taking my dogs with me), rewriting the script to incorporate the changes we made today, and to start plotting out the rehearsal and production schedules. But tonight, I am just going to enjoy the moment, the sweet satisfaction of a productive day, and I am going to sleep like a baby.

Toes Curled

I feel like I didn't get much done today, but I did really. It is just that there is always SO much more to do.

After much thought and review of the current set up of my apartment, I decided that it makes sense to move my makeshift movie-making office from my living room into my studio. I had been trying to avoid doing so because it is going to be a lot of work, and I need to ELIMINATE items from my plate, not add to it. But, it must be done. It doesn't make sense to set up the whole she-bang in my living room and then have to move it all when it comes time to film, as this room will serve as the set for at least one scene when we start filming seven weeks from now. Seven weeks from now?!?! Mm, was that a chest pain?

My horoscope today (Gemini, which should surprise no one)said that if it uses electricity, it would be problematic for me today. That indeed was the case, as my stupid computer seized up everytime I tried to get online until after 3pm. What my horoscope also should have said was that if it walks on two legs and works at Home Depot in it would completely ignore me.

Once I make a decision I am a person of action. So, must transform studio into office, must hit Home Depot! I went in there knowing EXACTLY what I wanted and it still took me an hour and a half to get out of there. I spoke with at least eight different people who worked there, and the only one who knew what they were doing, was pleasant, AND gave a damn about helping me was the SECOND guy I dealt with in the paint department. I think they should change their motto from, "You can do it. We can help," to, "You can do it. Good luck with that."

But, I did get a nice area rug that was originally $370 for $160, so my patience paid off. Crammed that huge thing in the back of my Mustang, packed the trunk with a gallon of primer and four gallons of paint, rollers, tape, etc., and headed home.

The rug is now in the staircase, the paint is still in the trunk. It will be a few days before it can get anywhere near the walls of my studio. First I have to figure out where the hell I am going to put all my artwork, supplies, and framing.

My subconscious is sorting that out for me and I'll start tackling that Sunday. My friend Caren will help me with the painting, she loves that stuff. I want to have it done by Wednesday night. A tall order, but with Caren's help, completely do-able. She is like the Tasmanian Devil, except cuter and more productive. Put a brush in her hand and by the time you turn around, the room (and a good portion of Caren)has two layers of paint.

Sean is supposed to help me next week, to go to the Apple store and choose equipment for my editing suite. So I want a nice, fresh office to put my new toys in.

Tomorrow I am going to Eric's to continue my tutorial on building a website. I need to launch that no later than the end of the month. I am going to become technically proficient (at something other than writing really long blog entries) if it kills me!

Today I also popped off a few important emails, including confirming a day-long do with Michelle on Tuesday. We are going to go over the entire script and probably visit a few locations, start blocking things out schedule-wise.

Between yesterday and today, I watched the nearly five hours of tapes of the callbacks. Some decisions have become clearer, but there are still some choices that leave me on the fence. I have found a brilliant group of actors and it is going to be difficult to turn some of them down. Everyone of them seems so enthusiastic about the project, I wish I had parts for all of them.

After taking a second pass at breaking down the script into production days, it became clear to me that it is going to take a minimum of twelve days to shoot this thing, not the ten days I was hoping to cram it into. That alone pretty much eats up my "contingency" budget. But not to worry. Another credit card is on its way to me in the mail as I write this!

After Eric's tomorrow, I am taking my little cousins and future movie stars, Joey and Sean, to the Orioles game. I was on the phone with Eric last night and he asked when I was totally diving into pre-production. I have been plugging away at it, obviously, but this weekend I think will be my last social hurrah for the next two months. In the last two weeks I have seen a lot of friends, due to my birthday and other excuses to gather. But it is time to get down to business, hard-core. I'm standing on the edge of that wobbly plank, gripping the edge tightly with my toes while I gather the nerve to bounce higher and higher before taking the plunge. Here goes nothin'...

All Grown Up (or at least on my way)

Hurray! I did not have to set my alarm clock today. That was nice. And I had a great night's sleep, so I think I am back to normal (relatively speaking).

Quite a weekend. 5:30pm Friday I showed up on set for a short indie called, "The Mystery Date," written and directed by Arlette Thomas-Fletcher, who is also the President of the Women in Film & Video Maryland Chapter. I was recommended to Arlette by Michelle Farrell of Absolute Independent Productions as an AD (Assistant Director). I'm not sure if that was actually my title. I'm not even sure if I'm getting screen credit, I never asked. I probably will. But it doesn't matter. I got what I was looking for from the experience, and that is what is important to me.

Every book I have read and every person I have met in the business has told me the same thing - work on as many sets as you can to gain experience for doing your own work. I couldn't agree more, the experience is invaluable. When it is not your set, when you are not the Big Cheese, you really get a great perspective on the whole process from the inside out. As an AD (or whatever I was) I was pretty much smack in the middle of everything. I took my orders from Arlette directly, I helped to keep the actors and the PAs (Production Assistants) wherever they needed to be and doing whatever they needed to be doing. On this particular production, however, I think my experience was slightly Utopian. Everyone was so pleasant to work with! Everyone was really happy to be there, nobody complained when we ran over (which we did each night), just genuinely nice people and REAL PROS, even the youngest actors who were only 10 and 11 years old and who had HUGE amounts of dialogue.

I was also the Script Supervisor. Now that is no small task. Sometimes I assisted with blocking (which actors move where and when within a scene) but mostly I dealt with continuity and the lines themselves. Continuity, to put it nicely, is a bitch. But for some reason I kind of like it. Continuity is trying to remember every single frickin' little nuance of how a scene was filmed, and then make sure it is done that way again in every following take, especially for the close-ups.

A good example of patchy continuity is a classic, "The Wizard of Oz." Dorothy will be skipping along the yellow brick road, and her hair is tightly curled at the ends of her pigtails. Then they move from the wide shots to the cutaways when she is having a conversation with someone, like the Scarecrow. Close-up on Dorothy, her hair is tight and falls only an inch or two below her chin. Cut to a close-up of Scarecrow for some dialogue. Back to a close-up of Dorothy. Now her curls are loosened and fall several inches further down her chest! Back to Scarecrow. Back to Dorothy. Tight curls again! Many a drinking game has been borne of movie mistakes like this.

So that is the sort of thing I had to watch for. "Cross your legs the other way!" "Put your elbow on that pillow!" "Don't lean in, you're casting a shadow on the other actor's face!" Plus if someone forgot their line, I would feed it to them. Or if it was a scene where it was important they run straight through and I NOT feed it to them (because for whatever reason my voice could not be edited out later), I would have to remember where they screwed up, and try to help them find a way to remember the line correctly.

All in all, I think I was properly prepared for the experience, and approaching it the way that I described in my post a few days ago, like it was a wedding or any other huge event that I have already had plenty of experience doing, served me very well. Some things were a little different, because I was describing that wedding as if I were the Director, which I was not on this set. When you are an AD (or whatever I was), it isn't the lead actors that are your Bride & Groom, it is the Director (Arlette) and the Director of Photography (Michelle). But again, lucky for me, they are both pros and there was no major drama between them. I can see, though, how it could get pretty hairy if you are not in such an ideal situation, because there will always be differences of opinions from time to time about how something should be shot. In the end, the person who wins is the person who is writing the checks.

Friday's shoot was from 6:00pm-12:00am, Saturday's from 8:00am-9:30pm, and Sunday's from 8:00am-9:00pm. You do the math, I'm too tired. But I think everyone involved walked away from that set with a sense of satisfaction of a job well done, the knowledge that they were part of creating something that they can be proud of, and the hope of working with a lot of the same people on other projects in the future. Not to mention a new appreciation of their own pillow.

Breaking Down

Don't worry, that's a good thing! Starting to really get to the meat of the matter. I am still in the VERY early stages of it, as the script is not, "locked," yet. "Locked," is when you finally say, that's it, the script has been through a million rewrites, through so many tweaks, trims, and tucks it would put Joan Rivers to shame, and that is about as good as it is going to get. That is when you have the "shooting script," and you can start breaking down the script, scene by scene, so that you can map out to the last detail what you are going to be doing, when, where, and with whom, once the cameras are rolling. That is "pre-production", along with a gaJILLION other details. For example, where exactly you are going to get those cameras. Or, more likely, camerA.

I am trying not to get ahead of myself, but this is how my brain works, how I problem-solve. It is not that different from what I have done in the hotel or restaurant business, or in the art circuit, organizing group exhibits. It is organization that requires extremely holistic thinking, and I find that if I let it stew in the back of my head, things start falling into place in my sub-conscious, and then when I am ready to set them to paper it flows a lot easier.

A one-day shoot takes weeks (and depending on the shoot, possibly months) of planning. Think of it this way: If you have ever been any part of a wedding, you know how involved it can be. In theory, it is an event that lasts, what, 6 hours including the ceremony, driving from the ceremony to the reception, then the reception. Right? HAH!

The Bride and Groom are your stars. The wedding party are your supporting cast. The guests are your extras. The mothers of the Bride and Groom are often your Lindsey Lohan and Britney Spears. They can be really valuable if they focus on the task at hand, but often they can be your problem children.

There are so many things that have to be planned, just like on a movie set. There is an agenda to be followed, lines to be spoken, and so many things that can go wrong. Costumes! Make-up! Music! Locations! Even photography and lighting. And don't forget the all-important catering. Tensions rise as blood sugar drops. And many a nervous Bride has hit the floor after forgetting to eat that morning.

Also, like on a low-budget movie, whoever is organizing the whole to-do (= producer) has probably roped a lot of people into doing a lot of things for free that in reality, they don't have the time or desire to do. So you have to also worry about (a) making sure those people don't drop the ball, and (b) making sure they know how much they are appreciated.

Going from ceremony site to reception site = changing locations. Another CRUCIAL thing to think about when breaking down the script. In scene two, Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma's house, in scene twelve, Grandma is dead and the wake is at her place. Guess what - you're shooting those scenes back to back, in the same day, to save time, money, and aggravation. But you still have to deal with costume changes, redressing the set, and getting everyone in the cast to go from cheerful to mopey.

So many people besides the Bride & Groom to think of...the Officiant, the florist, the caterers, the photographer, the make-up artist, the hairdresser, the limo driver, the band... you get the idea. Even who you are going to ask to drag all the presents from the reception to the house, who's going to do something with the flowers, who saved a piece of wedding cake to freeze, did someone tip the priest? It doesn't just end when the open bar closes.

You get the idea. Now think of planning a DIFFERENT wedding every day for 10 to 15 days straight. Boggles the mind, doesn't it?

It does. But when you break it all down, into little, manageable pieces, it becomes...manageable. It is nothing more, and nothing less, than an enormous, difficult, challenging, mind-boggling, intimidating, and manageable jigsaw puzzle. And I, for one, am entirely and unequivocally PSYCHED.

Bonjour Mes Amis

Just a quickie, as I am in an internet cafe in Paris and time is money. Today I will be worthless, as last night I was at the Best Bar in the World, La Pomme d'Eve, watching the Super Bowl with some French friends until nearly 5:00a.m. However, I have been getting loads of work done on the script while I've been traveling by train to Toulouse, Lyon, and Dijon. I don't know what it is about France but my mind just opens wide as soon as the Eurostar exits the Chunnel on this side. When I woke up in Dijon yesterday morning, as soon as I opened my eyes I was struck by a bolt of lightning and suddenly figured out exactly how to flesh out a minor character that I thought was impossible to lend any depth to without getting very complicated. But right now I have to go to the grocery store, as my flat is completely devoid of wine.Au revoir!