My Deep, Dark Past

I have a confession to make. My short film – the one I’m now editing at the DFA – is not my first film. Don’t panic – there’s no secret ‘adult’ entertainment in my past. But there is something almost as embarrassing: a two-hour attempt at a feature film that I made my senior year of college.

In college, I founded the Independent Theater Club (or IT). The whole purpose of IT was for students to write the scripts that were being performed, so that the issues would be related to our experiences. My first venture, a one-act play called Lovers, Loners, and Those Who Live, was actually a success. It was a simple recipe: one set, in a small theater-style classroom, and 4 actors, 2 of which carried the stage for the majority of the time. (These were the very talented Dara Connelly and Kelly Bolton! Seriously, these girls should both be in Hollywood.) We rehearsed like crazy for two months and, when the big weekend arrived, we were ready. The actors were phenomenal, the story resonated with college students and visiting parents alike, and we felt like the toast of the town.

God knows what made me think I could jump from that to doing a feature film, when I knew virtually nothing about filmmaking. What I did know was a fellow student, the awesome Christina Raggio, who knew about film editing with Bela Viso. I also knew that the school’s film equipment was lying around virtually untouched. I remember clearly thinking that it would be so much easier to do a film than a play: instead of the nerve-wracking experience of hoping everyone remembers their lines and hits their marks in front of the audience, everything would just be captured on film, guaranteed to be the same everytime.

Which would be fine: if ‘the same’ didn’t mean playing the same mess more than once.

In the spring semester of my senior year, I set to work on casting and shooting Beginning-of-Life Crisis (and, I’m sure, of torturing my poor editing expert, Raggio). In a mere two and a half months’ time, the film debuted, back in the same theater-style classroom as the play. Things I remember: Raggio arriving with the final tape just about 10 minutes before we were supposed to show it, having worked on it right up until that moment; the film having to actually be on two tapes, since we’d run out of time to combine them; the sound on the second tape being completely fuzzy; me, hiding out in the hall as the tapes played, too embarrassed to show my face.

We hadn’t used boom mics – or any mics, aside from what was on the camera. I hadn’t dreamed up interesting shots, which I now know to do at least once per scene for the sake of variety; instead, every scene was shot in the same standard way – looking first at one person, then the other. (I don’t even remember doing close ups? Hopefully there were a few.) And, of course, I’d only allowed about 10 weeks for a project that should have taken 10 months, minimum. Remember, this was a full, two-hour movie, and we were full-time students with a lot of other things going on. Even 10-minute student films take a few weeks to polish.

This happened in 2004, and the experience of it was so exhausting and traumatic that I didn’t really touch filmmaking again until November 2011, even though it always interested me. Now, in my DFA course, I see everything that I did wrong back then… but, surprisingly, my course is also showing me just how much was accomplished, with limited resources, and I feel a new pride in that 2004 film.

The fact is, a group of girls who knew basically nothing about filmmaking actually FINISHED a full-length film in just over two months! Rather than be embarrassed that the film wasn’t more polished by the time we showed it, I’m actually amazed at how decent it WAS. Granted, I haven’t watched it in years – it’s in a bag under my old bed at my parents’ house, and I’ve been afraid of seeing it again – but I remember certain scenes clearly, and they were not bad. The audience laughed at some of the jokes and basically liked the story. Technical things like the sound were a mess – but had we known more about sound, this flick would actually have been passable.

What’s more, the spirit and enthusiasm of everyone who participated in the project made the process positive, which is more than can always be said for working with a 100% professional and trained group.

Taking this DFA course has brought up memories of ‘my deep, dark past’ with Beginning-of-Life Crisis. But, more than anything, it’s made me see that it wasn’t so dark after all. Everyone involved should actually feel a genuine pride in what we were able to put together.

(On a final note, I’m happy to report that, almost 8 years after my graduation, IT still exists and is going strong!)

  

Good Reading

I get really inspired by reading articles or books about other writers, and to that effect, I want to do a plug for Dennis Brown's Shoptalk. I actually found this book five years ago, for sale on a sidewalk just outside of Harvard in Cambridge, Mass. - yet only started to read it recently. I couldn't put it down. It consists of interviews with playwrights/screenwriters, a producer - and Tennessee Williams' mother.

Brown has a true gift for drawing out writers of all personality types and getting them to talk about both the process of writing and the ups and downs of their careers. Granted, the book is mostly devoted to writing for the theater (and, since the book was published in the '90s, it's a theater from several decades back) - but most of the playwrights have also written for the screen in their careers; the two writing tracks do a lot of overlapping. Finally, even though the business world in the book is from a few decades ago, the insight into the writing process remains timeless.

At any rate, I just finished reading the book this morning, and definitely recommend it to all writers. It has greatly inspired me to write, write, and write some more. Now that my film course is almost at an end (we're now into film editing, with just two weeks of class to go!) I'm re-entering a very devoted writing phase, and am planning to churn out multiple scripts in the next few months. Who knows? Thanks to Shoptalk, one of those scripts may even be for the stage.

Someone Else's Shoot

Just wanted to give a quick shout-out to another major educational force this past week, which has been helping out on the film shoot of one of my classmates. My own shoot was an invaluable experience, since it forced me to plunge head-first into finally having to manage the images on the camera and the direction. But this past weekend, I served as an extra pair of hands on a classmate’s shoot, and found that, without the pressure of being the director, I was able to gain more valuable (and calm) experience operating the boom microphone, the camera, and the lights. Since he was filming at the DFA, there were no restrictions on lights and sound like I had at Grand Central, so there was more room to experiment.

After this past week of filming, I feel way more comfortable with the camera. I know more about its functions (particularly color-correcting a scene when the white balance doesn’t quite do it), how to hold the camera to achieve certain shots, and how to set up the sound. I’m really looking forward to my next shoot, which will likely be in April. I have two short scripts ready to go, and both are set in locations that allow more control over the set-up.

If you’re interested in learning filmmaking, the best advice is to jump right in and start! That’s really the only way to start to understand how it works. Shoot me an email if you’d have an interest in helping out on one of mine: nomfaproject@gmail.com.

Auditions and My Shoot

A lot has happened in the last three weeks! For starters, I was in India for 10 days getting married for the second time to the same man. (It was an absolutely incredible experience.) Also, I selected my actors for my short film, held rehearsals (on either side of the India trip) and then, today, had my film shoot.

Overall, I don't think the short film is going to be all that spectacular when completed. I'm sure that's bad for me to say, but I'm being realistic - it was my first film shoot, and I have a lot to learn. I'm taking this particular shoot as just a major learning experience, so that I can move onto my next shoot with more confidence and better organization.

To give you a brief overview of everything, the auditions were great. Having invited about 16 actors and actresses, I had a final turnout of 11, which I was told was good. This surprised me, since I envisioned New York actors to be somewhat desperate for parts and auditions. What I learned is that serious actors often have so many auditions lined up in a day, in addition to a 'day job,' that some auditions may go by the wayside - and I'm sure auditions for unpaid student films would be more likely to get cut from their schedule than others.

Overall, the talent was good. Yes, I had one goofy moment where I realized one actor, who forgot what he was auditioning for, had actually applied to audition twice, using two different names and two different headshots in order to get two timeslots - but for the most part, everyone was professional and enthusiastic. I taped the auditions, to review later, but pretty much knew who my picks were by the end of the day.

My rehearsals felt awkward to say the least. Again, as a first-time director, I was a bit unsure of myself, which I think hurt things. The first rehearsal, a basic read-through just a few hours before my flight to India, in order to give some emotional notes, was fine. But once I returned from India, the rehearsals unraveled. Jet-lagged and frazzled with two days before my shoot, I think my instructions were unclear. To add to my angst, my actress, though super-talented, was reluctant to rehearse fully and wanted to save her juice for the actual shoot. Being a bit unsure of myself, I didn't know what to say to coax her into a more thorough rehearsal, which would have put my mind at ease. She said to trust her, and I did - and it actually all worked out because, at today's shoot, she was brilliant.

I barely slept last night due to my nerves over the shoot, and struggled to come up with a clear shot list. Of course, once the camera's set up at a certain angle, it's best to shoot all the necessary dialogue from that angle - even if it means jumping around in the script. (For instance, one camera set-up was the same on page 2 as on page 5, and it would have been good just to film both those pieces together.) While I tried to plan for this in my shot list, it didn't really pan out, and we basically wound up doing the entire script in order, which I'm sure wasted some time and energy.

Happily, though, we completed everything involving the actors today, even though I'd also scheduled for tomorrow. Now, all I need to worry about tomorrow is getting some basic shots around Grand Central to include in the film. This is a huge relief, since I'd worried about going over-schedule. Instead, I'm a day early.

Now, exhaustion is completely taking over, and I'm getting ready to crash. I'm proud of my actors and my crew, which consisted of two of my classmates and an assistant from the DFA, and think we probably all pulled together the best footage we could under the circumstances. My next adventures are going to come in post-production, when I try to correct for both the horrible light and sound in Grand Central - hopefully with decent results!