Learning Experiences

In film school, I worked on a sitcom pilot for the campus TV station. It was for a class, so if you wanted to be either the director, the writer, or the producer, you had to interview with the professors. They made three highly questionable choices.

There were a lot of funny people on our crew, but the writer wasn’t one of them. It’s not that he had a strange, Andy Kaufman-type sense of humor; nor did he make obscure, Dennis Miller-style references. No, his dialogue was just… words. That weren’t funny.

The director had terrible instincts. We found an actor who was able to draw some humor out of the terrible script by creating a layered performance. He essentially treated his character’s public persona as a different person from his private one, and that tension built comedy. (Trust me, it was funny.) The director saw this and naturally decided the actor should do it completely differently. And less funny.

To complete the trifecta, we had a lousy producer. He was totally disorganized. He never knew what was going on, or when it needed to happen. It was amazing we got the show finished at all.

Did I mention I was the producer?

So, you see, Dawn, there’s a very good reason why I don’t want to be a coordinator, UPM, or anything along those lines. Besides the very obvious fact that I’m not good at it, I don’t enjoy it, either.

Being good at, and enjoying, producing is so far removed from my own experiences, that I really do not understand people who are good, and do enjoy it. Of course, my parents don’t understand how I can stand finding a new job every six months.

It’s not an insult. It’s genuine confusion. But I am glad there are people out there who do produce. Nothing would get done without them.

Video Killed the Fi-i-ilm Star

I know lots of people who can’t stand HD. I worked for an AC who would say, “I don’t care what the resolution is, it’s still video.”  Really, do you know anybody outside the business who can even tell the difference between HD and film, much less cares?

More pertinently, I had professors proclaim there is a discipline to working with film. You can’t just roll and roll and roll. Film costs too much.  Tapes (and now, memory cards) are cheap.  I’ve worked for some directors who never call, “Cut!” They’ll just say, “Do it again,” without giving anyone a break. It’s exhausting, for the actors, for the camera operators, for everyone.  I’ve heard of boom operators fainting under those conditions.

There’s bound to be irresponsible people misusing technology, but I figured this “film discipline” thing was just blather from Luddites fearing new-fangled gadgets.

Then, a few weeks ago, I caught myself doing it.

In school, I was given 1200 feet of film to shoot a short movie. The final product barely fit on a 400 foot reel. That’s a 3:1 shooting ratio. Not bad.

A few weeks ago, a shot three spec commercials on HD. At the end of the shoot, I asked my editor how much footage we had. He told me it was 80 minutes.

For a total screen time of 90 seconds.

For those of you too lazy to do the math, the shooting ratio was 53:1. That’s, um, pretty bad. Maybe my professor was right.

These are the kinds of lessons I want to remember when I become a real director. So many people forget what it was like when they were just starting out. This website is about not letting myself forget.

Or, if you’ve already forgotten, maybe it will remind you.