Motion Pictures II the sequel

Posted on February 25, 2009

Moving the camera, there’s a time to do it. A time to reap, a time to sow…

Being from a theatre and photography background, I appreciate a good composition. I really do.

A static frame can add to heightened dramatic tension (In the Company of Men), or comic absurdity (Napoleon Dynamite.)

Those who argue for a camera with cement shoes often point to classic films as evidence of aesthetic authority. But, what they don’t realize is that they have ignored a technological historical obvious fact: there’s a reason those old films didn’t move much, those cameras were tanks. They could’ve if it was possible. And when they could, they milked every moment out of it (Ben Hur, Singin’ In the Rain, Touch of Evil, Lawrence of Arabia.)

Oh, but they claim that they’re not complaining about jib, helicopter, dolly, boat, elevator, crane, cable, plane, dumb waiter, or truck shot.  (They don’t want it to seem that they don’t understand three dimensional space.  Even through that’s exactly what they’ve proved with such an inflexible opinion.) No, they hate the ‘Shaky-cam” as they call it. It makes them motion sick, they can’t follow the story. Those with a bit of learnin’ will go further to bemoan the schools of Dogma 95 and Cinema Verite.

Sure, the extreme use from filmmakers has resulted in extreme reactions from audiences and critics. There is a shaky-cam syndrome. The Blair Witch Project, NYPD Blue, Battlestar Galactica, The Kingdom, Paul Greengrass, all prove that it’s possible to use a single spice in the soup until nothing else can be tasted. But, the syndrome is merely a chronic nuisance, not an epidemic.

I was working on a feature five years ago. I had been lobbying for a dolly for months. All of a sudden, on the last night of shooting, it showed up. All of my blocking plans didn’t include it, but I’d try to fit it in. I hoped the schedule could conform to this new demand. What floored me was the moment I realized that the director had no idea how to use it. I knew we had no time to be finding and experimenting in an attempt to move at all times (Michael Bay.) That would have destroyed my back with all those setups (what with only a three man crew for all camera, light, sound, and light setups.) I did my best Poo, “Think, Think, Think, Think,….” I got it: move on important moments, beginnings, ends, climaxes, punchlines, only move on the aganorisis, the perepeteia, and the aristeia. (On a side note, when the DP has to decide all the actor blocking and camera choreography, is he essentially the director now?) So, in order to keep to schedule and still introduce a bit of movement artistry, each scene was limited to only three moving shots (in, out, punchline.) But, when it came to the climactic fight scene, it was time to change things up a bit. I insisted on going handheld. I quickly learned the fight choreography and became a third member of the scene. It was brilliant. Run up, duck a punch, run away, crouch, soar… the camera was unleashed. How did I know that changing the camera blocking approach would work? I saw the exact same thing done for the climax in Drop Dead Gorgeous and Napoleon Dynamite.

Back to the syndrome, the catalyst for shaky-cam grousing seems to be editing. “Quick-cut editing” is the term that puts the sour lemon expression on these critics faces. It’s true to an extent. Cuaron’s handheld work in Children of men was lauded because it was all done it one take one shot. Berg and Greengrass are criticized because their editing style is just as frenetic as their handheld camera movement. But I understand the intent of such style and am a fan and practitioner, when appropriate.

That’s because this philosophy views the audience as more participant than spectator. The filmmaker respects the audience enough to know they can handle a ride rough enough to equal what the characters on screen are experiencing. That’s the point, to enhance the viewing experience to a perspective that rivals the characters’. Bring the audience closer to the action. It’s a ride, not a show. We can’t move the seats or the theatre (it’s not an amusement park), so we move the camera.

My favorite philosophy regards the camera as dance partner. The master of this device was Stanley Donen (Its Always Fair Weather: suck on it, Tony Hawk!) The audience, with camera as proxy, is literally dancing with Gene Kelley, Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra, Howard Keel, and Cyd Charrise. Its the exploitation of the medium. Its not theatre anymore, break the fourth wall. imagine what he could accomplish with todays’ technology.

Conversely, I’m critical of those that have used movement to excess. Kenneth Branagh loves his steadicam. Being a master blocker as a theatre director, I guess he thought it would translate onto the screen. There are scenes in Hamlet and Frankenstein where the steady cam operator is blocked like in a hoe-down during Cotton-eyed Joe. All the while actors and are flying in from the wings and background only to immediately exit. It feels like being the sole remaining member of your team in a dodge-ball match. It seems to last an eternity.  Sure, it was only used during important, climactic moments, and was an example of his mastery of the medium both technical and artistic. But, I thought it gilded the lily. Branagh and Carter were dramatic enough by them selves. (For Love’s Labours Lost, i noticed that he calmed down and took a few notes from Donen.) Ah, Who else? Of course, Michael Bay. Did the camera ever stop moving in Armageddon? Consider that none of these shot sequences I’ve just exampled conform to the definition of  ‘Shaky-cam” or ‘Quick-cut.” So, even well structured movement can wear out its welcome.

One of the hack directors I used to work with would never allow a zoom. He’d read in a how-to book that Hollywood movies don’t use zooms inside a shot, so he never would. I didn’t fight it. I just wanted the day to end. So, I never brought up Robert Altman. I’m jealous that he perfected the zoom and only he can ever use it. Now that he’s dead, we’ll never see it again.

The director I admire most once told me: “If your subject is still, move the camera. If your subject is in motion, keep the camera still.”

Utilitarian Objectivistic Pragmatic aproaches to the Gestalt of Aesthetics

Posted on February 24, 2009

I’ve disciplined myself towards a gestalt approach when considering the question of aesthetics. Like the aesthetics of the gestalt, within the school of architecture,  the demands of function dictate the product’s from.

Back in the fall of ‘96, I noticed that the content of a report I did in my Theatre History class could be applied to the demands of other projects from other courses. Humanities, history, writing, economics, science, logic, they all benefited from that one research report. With a little massaging, the message was made to fit the needs of every other medium. In fact, what I had realized was that each course was not asking me to deliver content, but exhibit mastery of a process: research, analysis, comprehension, and communication. This medium of process was the message, not the content, not the facts.

This lead me to discover what thousands before me had found: that there was a simple method, an obvious aesthetic standard to communications, a universal singular theory, hallowed by usage and consecrated by time.

I noticed that the same rules applied to all of the endeavors of man: interior design, architecture, fashion, painting, sculpture, media, music, religion, government.

Yes, Virginia, form follows function.

Allow me immediately to appear contradict myself:

I once performed a media transfer for a professor. He needed a series of EP cassettes converted to CD. They corresponded to a visual presentation stored on 35mm slides. He had already had the slides scanned and converted to JPEGs. His habit was to present them in a PowerPoint presentation to his class. So, all he wanted was an audio CD from whence to serve from a boom box he would port across campus. I couldn’t persuade him to use the computer’s media player to play the audio. He didn’t want me to cut and synchronize the audio to the appropriate slide in the PPT presentation. He kept and served the PPT presentation from an old CD-ROM. He could not understand my arguments for a USB HDD, or thumb drive, or network storage drives, or thin-client/web/cloud service. Furthermore,  I was unable to convince him to allow me to marry the audio and video into a single media file presentation. I understood all of this, it was a common defeat I would suffer from most members of his generation. But, what shocked me the most was not the medium difficulties, but the message.

He was using instructional media to deliver a lesson on advertising print communication. My problem with the content was it’s narrow concept of how to deliver messages to an audience. The program advocated – no, demanded, one layout and copy aesthetic standard for all messages, all products,  and all audiences. On and on, example after example it criticized photo and copy layout that didn’t contain enough information in an acceptably conservative manner. Surely, you don’t sell hot dogs and lingerie the same way you bark Cadillacs and condoms? Do you speak the same way to the audience that consumes your firearms as you would to the audience that dances in your leotards? Does the audience that needs life insurance even speak the same language as your customers that eat your Pla-doh?

Am I a hypocrite? No. What’s often overlooked is the realization that the message, the audience, the product, the time, the space, the venue, the medium, the politics, religion, history, language… all have aesthetic requirements to be considered when constructing a communication. In fact, these demands are not restrictions, but contribute to the very message itself. The function demands a specific form. Even though they bear many similarities, you don’t build the same kitchen or uniform for a soldier in the army that you would for a soldier in the Salvation Army.

The copy and layout program didn’t cover guerrilla marketing, of course. That concept would have given them apoplectic fits.

I once worked for a director who hated handheld camera work. Against all of the argumentsof his peers and colleagues, he never would admit to having seen it aptly applied. Never could understand its potential contribution.

I’ve known media professionals who could only work in one medium. The TV guy couldn’t do film, the film guy could only do horror, the actor only did plays, the musician couldn’t freestyle jam, the director couldn’t work without a shot list or storyboards, the fight choreographer couldn’t block a dance. Some of these examples constitute a small leap forward or sideways within the same skill set. Others require applying utilities towards mediums they were not originally designed for. But, creativity is finding new applications for old tools. A bucket is a drum once you bang on it, and a canvas is blank until you…

The only concrete rule I have concerns the vulgarities. But, your use of archetypal communication standards can transcend the more common reference devices that will die or be co-opted or suffer etymological complete polar shifts of definition: metaphor, vernacular, idioms, axiom, myths, legends, urban tall tales, analogy of slang. They’re useful, but date the piece. Keep it classy.

I’ve worked in steel, PVC, dirt, tempera, emulsion, pixels, bits, electrons, bass notes, and humors. The mediums differ slightly only by degrees and dimensions but the basic aesthetic tools of communication remain the same: short simple declarative statements, moderate use of metaphors, strong use of  descriptive analogies, three to five point paragraph structure, three to five act story structure, varying use of contrast, polar shifts, hamartia, hubris, perepeteia, aristeia, anagnorisis, can you improve upon the methods that made Shakespeare and Aristophanes famous?

Maybe, that’s what artists strive for in experimentation. But, master the classic forms first, then get creative.

New York

Posted on January 22, 2009

Was fun, cold, inspiring, humbling, and big.

So good to be home. Can’t wait to get back.

I left work, after my first day back, yesterday. As I pulled out of the parking lot, I began to cry. I was so happy when I realized where I was driving: home. When I got there, I experienced my favorite two moments of every day: smelling my wife’s cooking and being stampeded by my three kids.

BackPage trailer

Posted on January 8, 2009

BackPage trailer from Hugh Massey on Vimeo.

I finished the trailer for my film, BackPage.

Micro, Macro, or Macross?

Posted on January 7, 2009

Daniel Craig said in Layercake, “Have a plan. Stick to it.”

I know a lot of people in this industry who just show up.

The guy in the box office or concession stand will say ambiguously, “Yeah, but what I really want to do is direct.”

That’s a bigger goal, a better business plan than most I work with. Like I said, they just show up. It’s clear that their business has no vision, direction, target. They just wait for opportunities. But, true opportunities are the ones you make. “See a need, fill a need,” to quote Mel Brooks. There’s a market or demographic not being provided a product or service. It’s right in front of you. You’re the only person in position to see it. You have it within you to create a new product or service by which a new market demand will be created and an entire new support industry will depend.

So, business plan: do you have a product or service that there is a demand for? Your resources, will you structure a vertical or lateral trust, owner-operator, single service or full-service. Target market: local, state, national, or international? What’s the demand for the quality level of the product in your market? Will the market afford you to be a quality boutique or a mass production factory? (One of my favorite market stories involves the comedy troop Four Day Weekend. They had just graduated from Second City in Chicago. They had two choices: join the tour circuit and be a slave to The Man, or start their own venture. They saw Fort Worth as a virgin market: large, diverse demographic, growing urban renewal, expanding downtown entertainment district, no competition. So they proceeded to corner the market. Fish in a barrel.) 

How independant do you want to be? Such freedom requires resources. Facilities, offices, staff, transportation, communication; these capitol infrastructure overhead costs need addressing in your business plan, how much liability can you afford? How much will you assume in house or subcontract out.

It all need to be determined by your business plan.

What exactly is your product or service? I’ve seen companies provide combinations of the following: Post house, graphics house, production studio, print, web, creative, sales, promotion public relations. I’ve seen some ambitious groups try to tackle all.

Downtime, does your income stream generate a capital reserve large enough to float through seasonal doldrums? Is the current economic climate conducive to your model? Do you have a plan for the impending and inevitable economic climate change? In a downturn, you’re forced to contract: expendable in-house dpeartments are closed, and contractors are sought. Conversely, in the upswing, you need to expand:  invest in new infrastructure (capitol expenditures: facilities, equipment, or service providers: employees) to modernize and meet new demand.

By the way, computers and software are practically expendable purchases, not capitol expenditures, since they devalue so quickly. If you’re not completely replacing your electronics every five years, you might as well be shooting with a Knipkow disk and editing on a Steenbeck.

What’s your management philosophy? You can catalyze or castrate your enterprise just through your attitude and interpersonal connections. Will you you be a shouter, loot the coffers, be an absent landlord? Will you be a fascist? (I knew a business owner saw no correlation between rates of pay and quality of service. He saw no relation between increase in workload, with no parallel increase in personnel, and the corresponding result: decrease in quality and increase in errors.) Will you promote from inside, subsidize training and education of your employees, or will you resent proximity and familiarity and be seduced by the foreign, new, and exotic. Will you hold your freelancers hostage? Generate blacklists? Are you allowing employees freedom to utilize the company’s resources (at least, at a discount) during downtime to produce their own work (which ultimately promotes yourself, as well.)

How do you promote yourself? You’ll discover that industry clubs, seminars, conventions don’t have potential clients, only more desperate jerks like you. It’s like expecting hot chicks at the math club Christmas party (Danika Mckellar aside.) They only exist to increase tourism at the exotic convention site, and so that widget manufacturers can get you to drool over the next new accessory or adapter.

Remember to regularly turn you efforts inward. Are you so busy filling your customers’ orders that you neglect producing materials to promote yourself? You need to show off.It attracts the attention and buzz of your peers and competitors, and especially potential clients.

Speaking of side projects, I don’t understand why so few are not generating their own product to market, in order to advance to the next business plateau, the next class. That’s what the ultimate goal is in this industry: to graduate from service provider (beholden to clients’ whims), into a product producer (creating and feeding demand.) If you’ve paid off your overhead and infrastructure, it’s time to expand into a new venture: your own product. It’s the only option considering the alternative. (It’s an interesting debate: Growth, how do you define it? Increase in volume, or quality? Increase in profit or profile? Do you expand your capacity, getting a larger factory floor, personnel, shifts? Or increase what your customers pay? They only way to do that is to court premium clients. But those are high maintenance divas and you have to ruthlessly fight your bloodthirsty competition for access to them.) So, If the market is driven by growth, not profit, what else can you do? You can only squeeze the margins so much until you’re forced into cooking the books and hiding debt in your subsidiaries, or you restructure into a pyramid Ponzi model. So, once you’ve reached a certain plateau (that is, saturated your market and monopolized the service sector), your choices are clear: either spin off all your departments and subsidiaries into separate companies and reap a tidy IPO profit, or make the transformation. It’s evolution. You can choose to be the more fit and survive.

All of these questions and issues regarding your business plan are rhetorical and abstract. They’re broad and general, sure. But, pondering them, asking them out-loud, brainstorming and sound-boarding with your comrades will bring opportunities and challenges into specific relief. That way, you can confront them.

Who’s the more foolish: the fool, or the fool who follows him?

Posted on January 6, 2009

There’s a classic practical joke seasoned crew members will play on green freshmen grips and PA’s. You simply look them in the eye, place you arm around their shoulder, wing them on in close and say earnestly, “Go to the truck and get me that box of f-stops.”

I was fortunate enough not be suckered into such social pitfalls. But, I was sent on numerous fool’s errands.

But that’s all in good fun and doesn’t misappropriate valuable production resources and time.

What surprises me is all of the unintentional dead ends that a production can run into.

In Chicago, I spent all morning on the phone, internet, and email tracking down images from the graphics department back in Texas and finding a local print shop to make labels for our mic flags. After interrupting the graphics department’s work to find and adapt, and approve, and email the files, the director decided we were out of time to go to the print shop. We had ordered the labels, we just stood the print shop up. You hardly ever saw the mic in out man on the street segments.

I can’t imagine the number of times I’ve set up camera, management courtesy seats and shade, camera assist, dolly with track, jib arm, and grip, light, or camara department headquarters only to be told (just after unpacking) that the location was wrong. The shot doesn’t have enough coverage. Management isn’t viewing this shot.

I spent three days of pre-production time to build and packed a co2 and oil smoke and propane flame sfx kit for a shoot. It was never used.

When I used to AC eng 16mm shoots I was constantly without the gear the director needed. Short sticks, tall sticks, lens hood, wide angle lens, matte box, filters, doublers, diopters, the fourth magazine, change tent, batteries, etc. Most of these locations wouldn’t allow us a HQ in close proximity. I would always have to run down several flights of stairs and across many city blocks back to the van to get the demanded item. By the time I got back, they had always completed the shot, deemed it unnecessary or stupid and abandoned it, or improvised a MacGyver solution. Later, when I attempted to carry all necessary accessories, or cart them around on the magliner, I was the slow one in the party who everyone was pissed off at, or I put out my back, knees, or ankles.

For video tele-conference meetings we would host for bi-coastal audio recording session, I was asked to spend a couple hundred dollars on craft services to impress the clients (even though the were in house members of our company.) They didn’t touch a morsel.

For satellite broadcasts, we’d set up line of site teleprompters that crowded the set and none of the talent would use.

The fool’s errand. I was sent on so many that I swore that one day, when I became a director, I would never…

That’s the promise every kid makes to themselves: not to be as bad a parent as theirs was.

Well, that’s exactly what happened.

I managed to get us out the door and setup on location. We had successfully left early enough to avoid traffic and had camera, dolly, lights, hq, sound, script, and craft services all setup. In a few more minutes, we’d take advantage of the dawn golden hour. The perfect start to a productive day.

But, I had the outrageously stupid idea that I would provide my script notes and continuity personnel with a wireless monitor. I had it all arranged: plenty of charged batteries for the eng monitor to run all day, a 2.4 GHz transmitter for the camera, the counterpart receiver for the monitor, and plenty of batteries for the transceiver kit to work all day. What I forgot was the BNC composite to RCA composite barrel adapter. That, combined with the wireless TC clipboard (yes, I had plenty of batteries for the transmitter and receiver) would make the job pristine and accurate.

We had already set up, it was too much trouble to pack up and return to the studio. Home base was only about a mile away. So, I sent my DP and Script notes back to the studio to dig up two adapters.

It doesn’t matter that the engineers decided to be obstinate and feign ignorance over the location of the reserve stock they stored. It doesn’t matter that the freelancers I’d hired wouldn’t know where to look in equipment storage. It was my fault for sending them on a useless fool’s errand. We lost the dawn golden hour and the following hour for setting up the next shot. Script didn’t need a monitor, had never used one. It wasn’t necessary.

But, in the heat of the moment I had panicked. I was dedicated with full blinders to a weak and vain idea. Vapor-locked in the brain, I plunged on heedlessly into a stubborn solution that was fruitless. I had committed the sin of myopic inflexibility and it cost me dearly. It was a most valuable lesson.

Sam was a Butcher, not a Producer

Posted on January 5, 2009

Your shoot is not a meat market. 

It’s a disservice to your project, product, reputation, and client to view it so.

I worked with a DP and a director whose sole purpose in production was to troll for companionship.

They would drool over the catalogs sent over from the agencies (this was before the catalogs were on the internet. So they were restricted from stalking the actresses Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, of websites in order to evaluate their status of age, proportions, age relationships. But, rest assured, that is exactly what they are doing now.) So, they would only cast actresses they were interested in dating.  they would get enraged when the actress didn’t match their headshot (that is, were a few years more mature.) They would chat them up for the first hour of the shoot until it was discovered that the women were in a relationship (had a life outside the shoot.) After that, there was no more small talk, no flirting. Furthermore, the closeups and featured scenes dried up, as well. They were demoted to extra.

The director was well over 40, much too old to be acting so desperate and immature. The DP was my age (just 30, a few years too old not to have a good excuse why he wasn’t married. He blamed his career, his art. But, we made industrials. Sure, that’s a profitable trade-off.) When the DP would see me speaking with an actress, he would immediately interfere and steer the conversation towards the status of my wife and kids. This was a show for the actress’s sake, it made him seem more family oriented (he never asked me about my family outside of these contexts.) He would feel so dis-confident that he felt the need to c***-block me (someone who was not a threat to his hunting haunts.) This actually would often present a problem for me. The actress would then seek me out to protect her from her pursuers.

I knew another director who pursued an actress for months after the shoot. It was all executed under the pretext of training her for a major role in the film. The staged publicity photo shoots and martial arts training sessions. It was nothing short of obvious and pathetic. The relationship quickly cooled outside the shoot (as it does with all inter-office romances, you really have nothing in common besides that one shared experience) when the following shoot never materialized.

So, if you’re successful in transitioning that working relationship into a physical one, you maybe ready to congratulate yourself. You’re ready to delude yourself into thinking that it’s an emotional connection with a possible future. But, hold off on that self-delivered pat on the back. If you’re capable of even the slightest bit of objective perspective, you may soon realize that you’re in a relationship with someone you’ve hired. And if, like all other professional relationships, the only thing you have in common is the work, that means she’s only with you because you’ve hired her, she’s your employee, she works for you. What does that make her? What does that make you?

Robbing The Donation Plate

Posted on January 4, 2009

Markers, favors, barters, I.O.U.’s, karma, etc. Your account balances with others are an unavoidable currency in any industry. But, in media production, such chits are defined simply as a day’s work. I owe many more people a day than owe me.

The true mark of a valued colleague is when they offer you a crew position on a super-cool project. They trust you enough with a potential opportunity that will benefit you both. The intent is either to share in the profit, the glory, or just the experience. But, there had best be such good times in store, or you won’t be able to call upon your friends again. That’s the warning.

I’ve seen both clients and producers lose their credibility when they abuse close relationships.

I had a producer friend who was courting a local charity for work. Mind you, this was the premiere, national charity that has a Way of Uniting people. Since this is a top-ten major market they work in, they have vast resources, connections, and budgets to be able to easily afford quality work. After winning the big account and delivering a product that was greatly superior than the budget, resources, and especially competitors could deliver, we felt confident that we would her from them next year for the new campaign. They were pleased with our work, the donations rose due to the media production’s inclusion in the campaign. Of course, we expected that the next year’s project to be even bigger. But, they came to use with a proposed budget barely ten percent what it was the previous year. So, with no other choice, we went ahead and gave them discount work in order to foster a closer relationship so that they would continue to consider us their preferred vendor for media production services.  The next year, one of their corporate contributors decided that their donation would not be in cash, but instead would be in service. Media production service. Not knowing any better, the charity’s officers accepted the donation. The company’s department providing the shoot was a corporate theatre, or media presentation department, not a production studio. The resulting fundraising film was less than satisfactory. So, after getting burned, we felt that this client had learned their lesson. The next year, we were happy to hear from them after they had seen our recent results for other charity groups in the area. After several conversations discussing their needs, goals, and planned message for the year, we were sure that any day now they would call to schedule a shoot. They called all right. The managing director called to ask whether the Panasonic AG-DVX100B was an appropriate camera to rent for their shoot and where could they get one? It seems that they had some mass comm major from the local junior college, a friend of a co-worker’s kid, who was going to produce their film that year. calling about this at 4:45PM on a Friday, hmmm… Good luck with that. Oh, and go ahead and (expletive-filled rant deleted.)

If there’s no reutrn on investment now, maybe it’s an account that can be cashed in Karmically in the next life.

I had a producer/director who was notorious for demanding one more take (up into the double digits) without providing the cast or crew any direction that would solve the problem in order to lead towards a use-able take. Normally, this is fine when your employees are getting market rate for their services and you provide time and a half, and later golden time, in reimbursement for your incompetence. But one time we were out getting street footage of mass transit when we saw the most adorable grandfather and grandson both dressed as cowboys (hats, vests, big buckles, boots, bandannas, boleros, fringe, pearl snap shirts, the works.) We couldn’t pass that up, so we asked them to step off the bus again. Oh, just one more time please. Again, if you would. No, don’t go, I need it again. This is the last time. No, once more… Of course, we didn’t need the bus to make the round trip circumnavigating the entire block for each take. Sure, simply getting the bus to back up ten feet and make the stop just for the exit (which is what we wanted) would have made each take last a mere five percent of its total reset and retake time. But, karma is a foreign word to some people. After for or five takes, this old man and his toddler grandson had invested nearly an hour of their valuable time together in our project. The director, of coures, hadn’t told us, the crew, what the issue was to solve in order to avoid another take. The grandfather was so elderly and the grandson so young, they both had the same immense difficulty getting on and of the bus. It was a miracle neither of them fell down. The punchline is that none of their footage made the cut. The two of them took over twenty seconds to exit the bus. An eternity in commercial time. The director should have seen that coming.

Abusing free resources. That really offends me.

One of my first features I DP’d for required the cast and crew work at reduced pay for the opportunity to work on a supercool project.  After completing the majority of the picture in a two week stretch, we took a break for a few weeks to restore our mental and physical faculties. After those first few weeks, it became disoncerting when the director wouldn’t commit to a restart date. In fact, they wouldn’t return any calls or massages. (Since it took a couple of weeks of planning and negotiating in order to get everyone to agree on new shoot dates, the proccess must be started soon in order to ensure successfull completion of the production.) Yet, they insisted on keeping both cast and crew waiting for months before resuming. Aside from the loss of valuable momentum the project badly needed, there was another cost for this most unprofessional behavior. The cast and crew ended up turning  down other work and social events while they waited on the film. Yet, this practice continued on the promise of “in a couple of weeks, we’ll start up again.” Worse, he wouldn’t let anyone see the film being assembled. The cast andcrew needed clips to promote themselves, none ever came. They had all discounted their services and dedicated months of work and waiting for him on the promise that they would be the first to recieve copies (it’s the independant code: credit or copies or food or alchohol.) Even worse, when the shoot was finally scheduled, we were given less than a week’s notice. A shoot on the other side of the state with no gas stipend, no expeses, crappy accomodations, no per diem, no wrap party. It’s all good. We believed in the project. We had faith. We’re still waiting.

So, you’re banking on your professional and personal reputation when your currency is charity, I.O.U.’s, or markers. When you cash out your aacount’s principal on such a gamble, the return is immense when paid back in full. But, the penalties are permanent when defaulted.

2 In a Row?

Posted on January 2, 2009

I once had a director who would demand two good takes in a row from an actor’s performance before he would consider the shot completed and adequately insured by a back-up safety take.

Mind you, not just two takes: two takes in a row.

Thus, just like any other shoot, after one or two flubs we would capture the first good, complete shot. Then, a few attempts later, we would acquire the second. Two good takes in the can: time to move on?

No. The first good performance was forgotten. It didn’t count until it was immediately followed by another equivalent take (I guess he had a short term memory, like a goldfish.) We had to continue in this repetitive cycle of torturous, Sisiphean misery until the actor had completed two good takes.

What made it worse was that the director was also the writer. He filled the script with the most impossible, dense jargon unimaginable.

So, after thirty or forty-five minutes of repetitive nonsense, the actor’s perky, lively, enthusiastic performance was reduced to an ash-crap load of flat-lined mush. But, that didn’t matter. As long as they got in two good takes in a row, those were the two takes that mattered!

(Thank god he didn’t complicate the shot with extra camera, dolly, jib, or actor blocking.) 

That was the second unfortunate tragedy of this practice. The script notes assistant was instructed to only note the two good takes in a row. Thus, several, perhaps dozens of fabulous performances were ordered ignored by the editor from the script notes instructions.

Thus, we went into over, and often golden, time due to this ignorant and insane OCHD practice.

What a waste.

Bearing Standards

Posted on December 31, 2008

I used to be a staunch critic of certain conservative academic philosophies. A certain university in Texas had a reputation for not allowing underclass students to work in production courses until they had fulfilled a large number of prerequisites. These classes were unpopular because they dealt wholly in theory.  Back then, you could get away with that kind of approach. Equipment was still expensive and complicated. It wasn’t ubiquitous on every laptop, like today. I can’t picture them having the same curriculum these days, with every incoming freshman with hundreds of hours of content on their own Youtube account. (The university that I was attending in north Texas had a steady stream, an impressive exodus, of disenfranchised production majors from the other university in Texas.)

There’s something to be said for giving your customers what they want. College is the place to make mistakes. You, as the student, are the executive producer, you’re paying for the production, you should get to succeed or fail on your own terms. That’s what you’re in college for, to screw up. You do it there so you don’t do it in the field. Your own mistakes are the most valuable of lessons. I know I’ll never professionally repeat the disasters I was responsible in school.

But, you can’t know how to break aesthetic and technical standards until you’ve first mastered them.

That’s the question: aesthetic and technical standards vs. creative license.

Conversely, I’ve known too many artists who won’t take any chances.

My favorite discovery is mixed colors for three-point lighting. The producer I was working for just didn’t get it. We had a 2k broad hung as a cyc-light left over from a previous shoot. We turned it around in an attempt to use it as a back light. It was too strong. The technical backlight-to-key ratio exceeded the 2:1 aesthetic standard for industrial videos. It happened to be hung in the grid on a dimmable circuit, so I suggested dropping it’s power ten to twenty percent to back the harsh edge off. That’s when the producer contributed the only technical input he was aware off: “That will warm up the color temperature!” He protested. (I avoided getting into a semantics argument over the difference between the aesthetic definitions of warm vs. cool lighting that contradict with the technical spectrum wavelength terms defined by kelvin temperature measurements.) I did point out two issues: Where is it written that the key, fill, back, and background lights all have to be the came color? You identify daytime indoor lighting near a window by the bright blue wash. It gets harsher and more golden closer to dusk or dawn. Furthermore, as the client/talent was in makeup and due on set any moment, we don’t have time to rehang that light. Could anybody pass the Pepsi challenge to identfiy the one to two hundred degrees lower Kelvin color temperatures that the ten to twenty percent drop in voltage the dimmer would produce? No? Then shut up if you don’t have anything productive to contribute.

Sometimes you just have to do the opposite of convention. Just for a change, just to see if it will work, because sometimes it does. It just does. And you’ve succeeded in channeling inspiration and achieved artistic creativity. You’re a hero, an artistic god.

And when it don’t work, then it’s something to remember. A bar tale for the ages. America loves a spectacular failure just as much as a heroic success. Everyone still remembers Vinko Bogataj’s agony of defeat. That could be you.

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