The Screening and Directors' Choice Award

I'm so excited you would think I won the Oscars.

Last night, I went to the Digital Film Academy's Short Film Screening at Anthology Film Archives. (By the way, AFA is a pretty cool place. I'm thinking of getting a membership, especially since it offers the opportunity to meet lots of first-time directors when they screen their features.) At any rate, I was incredibly nervous as the lights went down and the short films began to roll. Every time one ended, I had a dizzy sensation, knowing that mine might come up next.

But, as the night wore on, I began to calm down - and seriously enjoy - all the other short films! It was actually a wildly entertaining evening, and everyone who submitted a short film should be thrilled with what went up on the screen.

Toward the end of the screening, it finally happened - the little production company logo I had created for myself flashed onscreen, and I knew my movie was about to begin.

I can't even describe the rush I felt seeing it up on the big screen, or how I was still glowing this morning. Yes, seeing it large made me really see some things I want to fix: it's dark enough to warrant some color correction (which I'd hoped to avoid) and the volume needs to be adjusted a bit... but, as I listened to the audience react, laughing where I wanted them to laugh, gasping when I wanted them to gasp, and, finally, applauding at the end, I was so full of joy that I could have danced out of that theater.

And then, the icing on the cake - the director of the school notified me this afternoon that my short film had won the Directors' Choice Award for the screening. (At which point I did actually dance for joy, in my apartment. Again, you would have thought it was an Academy Award.)

Right now, I'm feeling incredibly encouraged, and fueled up for more filmmaking. I plan to spend next week at the DFA doing the color correction and volume-adjusting that last night showed me I needed. Then, I plan to submit the film to the Williamsburg Film Festival, which has a student film category, and the deadline is next Saturday, April 21st.

Just two days ago I talked about wanting to see the landmarks on my new path. This was a pretty awesome one!

My 30th Birthday and My First Screening

Yesterday, April 9^th, was my birthday! My 30^th birthday, and that’s a pretty big one. As I do every year, I took a large chunk of the day to write in my journal, reflect on what’s happened in the past year, and think about what I’d like to have happen in the next.

All in all, 29 was a majorly pivotal year for me. Aside from the obvious – I got married – my life also drastically changed when I quit my job, finally leaving behind a situation that had made me so unhappy to pursue things I’m passionate about. This was actually the defining move of the year, as it has been the decision that has really changed everything. (With all due respect to my husband, I had felt as if we'd been married in our hearts for a long while.) 

While 29, I also finished a full-length screenplay, a few short screenplays, a novella, and a short film. And, of course, I learned all about making films, which had been a life-long dream of mine.

I feel like this was really the year when I got onto the right path. Now, I want 30 to be all about starting to see the landmarks on that path.

One such landmark is my first screening, which is happening tomorrow night at the Anthology Film Archives in New York City (32 Second Avenue, at 2^nd Street). The event goes from 6-8pm, and showcases a number of shorts, including mine. It will be my first chance to really see how people react to my movie, and I’m excited and nervous. 

I’ve also just about made myself crazy these past few weeks, running back over to the DFA to try and tweak the film again… and again… and again every time I noticed something wrong. (FYI, as a film editor, every time you watch the film, you'll find something wrong.) I almost completely lost it when I realized just ONE word (one!) was out of synch with the movement of my actress's mouth, and that I had to make another journey to fix it and burn DVDs all over again... but I'm happy to report she's now synched, and that I've decided to relax and accept that, for now, the film is what it is!

If you get the chance, I would love to see you at the Anthology Film Archives tomorrow night! (Tickets just $5.) And be sure to vote for Chance as your favorite film of the night!

www.anthologyfilmarchives.org

Done and Done!

Did you notice? The change made to my project tracker, over on the right-hand side?

I’ve had to switch from calling it  “Writing Project Tracker” to just “Project Tracker,” and yeah… add a section for completed films.

Last week was a huge deal for me. I finished the novella on Thursday, which wound up being a very emotional event. The ending turned out quite different than I’d originally planned and definitely more upbeat. It’s funny, since I’m generally a very upbeat person, that my writing is usually pretty dark. This novella was no exception – but it uncharacteristically took a turn for the best, right at the end.*

Then, on Friday, after eight straight hours in the editing lab and with only fifteen minutes to go until the DFA closed for the night, I finished my short film. (Let me just note that editing is a VERY addictive process – you could literally just go forever and ever if you wanted to.)

Now, I realize that I’m living in an age where a lot of people, and a lot of kids younger than I am, know how to create short films. It’s the era of YouTube, when anyone can post a video. But, in my case, despite being born into a technology-prone generation, all this stuff has always seemed like Greek to me. Last Friday, I achieved something I wanted to achieve since I was little, something I put off for years and years, always finding excuses not to try.

And now it’s done. I made a film, and I know all I need to know about making another. And I will make another.

I. Am. Elated.

Is it perfect? No. Will I probably make some changes before it’s screened? Probably. But it’s a tangible, finished product that taught me everything I set out to learn about film-making… and made me interested in learning even more.

*As far as writing goes, of course, I’m now eager to start a new project. However, I received some words of wisdom from my husband this past weekend: “perfect the one you have before starting something new,” and this is advice I plan on taking. Starting tomorrow, after this mini, three-day breather from projects, I’ll be diving into revisions – with an aim to get the novella submitted to prospective agents by June.

Almost There!

So, I am into the home stretch with film class! Final, edited short films are due this Friday.

It’s been thrilling to watch the film take shape, and has made me look forward to the next short I will do: mainly because, having filmed in Grand Central Station, I had very little control over things like light (we weren’t allowed to set up lights) and sound (acoustics varied greatly depending on how the mike was pointed, making sound editing pretty choppy).

           

I have really enjoyed the editing process, though. Yes, it is incredibly time consuming: I averaged about an hour per minute of edited film just to get a rough cut, then who knows how long I spent scrubbing the footage even further. Now that I’m involved in editing, I’m noticing continuity mistakes even in my favorite movies that I probably never would have noticed otherwise. Overall, I think my second short will be much better than my first, not just because I’ll have more control, but because I’ll better know what kind of coverage I need to get in each shot to help make editing an easier process.

One thing I find funny is that, at first, I actually ‘over-edited’ – there were more cuts back and forth between my actors than there needed to be, sometimes cutting right over an emotional moment when I just needed to rest for a beat and let things sink in. I find this funny because I think I’m a bit like that in life – rushing to fill a pause or a silence when, really, it’s ok to have them – and that it translated into my film editing. Now I’ve gone back and removed some of these cuts, and overall, am pretty well pleased with the editing. What remains is adding music, recording and inserting a short voice-over, and continuing to do what I can do to smooth out the light and sound issues.

Almost there!

In writing news, I am almost finished writing the first draft of a novella I started on February 15^th. (Well, if I can still call it a novella now that it’s about a hundred pages and counting.) I have two ‘scenes’ left to write and expect to be done by either tomorrow or the day after, depending on how I balance it with my time in the film lab. This novella, for me, marks a return to prose writing after recently focusing more on scripts. It has actually been a very soothing and encouraging process, and hopefully is the beginning of balancing script writing and prose writing on a regular basis.

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.