by Martin Pitts

Movie distribution is affected by advancements in technology as much as other areas of the industry.

A pivotal influence occurred several years ago, beginning with the efforts of a marketing company to command the attention of the college audience with a new strategy. This company staged free screenings of films two weeks prior to their general release at selected colleges throughout the U.S.

The showings generated buzz about the movie among students.

The purpose of these screenings was not for market research, but for film promotion.  The more positive the word-of-mouth buzz, the bigger the box office numbers.  To get the students more involved, this marketing agency started staging live promotional appearances by actors and other key people after the screenings.

To facilitate a simultaneous screening of the movie in several locations at once, digital satellite technology was used.

My role in this was as writer/producer for the live shows directly following the movie screenings.  All the major Hollywood studios were on board: Disney, Universal, Paramount, Warner Brothers, Columbia and Sony.

The live shows were staged at one university and transmitted digitally by satellite, and sometimes optical fiber, to colleges all over the U.S.  Typically, we would transmit to between 30 and 60 schools.

The interactive element of the show involved students around the country participating in a Q & A session with celebrity guests and directors over a video/audio connection at their location or through Internet chat rooms set up for the event.  Questions ranged from those about technical production details to others about the stars and their performance experiences.

More about Martin’s experiences with digital distribution right here on Friday.

The post DIGITAL CINEMA, Part 1 appeared first on International Academy of Film and Television.

Next up was Susan Seidelman, who worked on low-budget films in New York beginning in 1982.  Her first feature, Smithereens, was made for $20,000 and burnished her place in the halcyon days of guerrilla filmmaking.  Her actors and actresses were all solidly entrenched in the low-down and dirty punk movement.  The clubs and even the bands of the moment, like the brilliant casting of Richard Hell of the bands The Voidoids and Television in the late ‘70s, as a character based on himself.

Of course, the world remembers Seidelman as the director who cast Madonna in her first feature, Desperately Seeking Susan.

The scene changed a bit with the coming of several new players in the 1990s.  Kevin Smith (Clerks), Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi), Richard Linklater (Slacker) and Christopher Nolan (Following) are a few examples of the relevant filmmakers who started out way back when and are still working now, on big budget movies.

Each made their early films on a shoestring.  These films launched their careers, eventually taking them all the way to the A-list.

The key to making this leap was choosing the right script that only required what was within reach.  By limiting themselves to very simple locations, a few friends as actors, and a bare minimum of props, they succeeded in ways that other writer/directors never could.

In 1999, The Blair Witch Project gave the world a new perspective on low-budget features. Co-directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, having had a string of four previous flops, decided if this production turned out to be another disaster, they’d leave the business.

Keeping the script basic and allowing the actors free reign to do whatever they wanted with their characters, the filmmakers suddenly hit on a surprise success—a film which could be made for $30,000 and gross in the neighborhood of $100 million.  This was by no means a simple task, as it took months of preparation and a huge investment of time and energy to create an online, viral marketing campaign for the film.  The combination of an Internet-based campaign along with a powerful concept and minimal expenses proved to be a winner.

Their success was echoed in recent years with the popular Paranormal Activity, made on a shoestring and, based on its enormous reception at the box office, turned into an on-going franchise.

The upshot?  Success is achievable with a start in low-budget films, and aspiring filmmakers should consider this path a viable option to make it in the business.

The post GUERILLA MOVIES, Part 2 appeared first on International Academy of Film and Television.

by Nick Aquilino

“The game has really changed, and it’s harder to get a foot in the door, anywhere.  I think the wave of the future is to get a camera and some editing gear, and start shooting a movie.”

—Albert Hughes  [director:  Book of Eli, From Hell, Dead Presidents, Menace II Society]

Ultra low-budget, or “guerilla,” filmmaking is an underutilized entry into the world of feature filmmaking.  Filmmakers often overlook this method of breaking into the industry, but it’s an easier approach than many other alternatives.  Let’s review the historical precedence of successful filmmaking careers that started out with ultra low-budget features.

John Cassavettes was a guerilla film pioneer, though many would not traditionally associate him with it.  Cassavettes began his filmmaking career in the late 1950s.  His first feature as a writer/director, the black-and-white Shadows (1959), uses techniques now associated with modern indie films.  These techniques include natural lighting (black-and-white is generally more forgiving than color), improvised scripting, using actors who are new to the business, and creating a gritty feeling of life on the streets.

Later, Cassavettes revealed that the script for Shadows was actually composed of scenes improvised by those on his team.  To fund his early productions, he raised a few thousand dollars pleading for money on a radio talk show.  After a ten-year gap, Cassavettes attempted more low-budget features—Faces (1968), Husbands (1970), A Woman Under the Influence (1974), and Opening Night (1977).  He reached the prime of his filmmaking career in 1974.

The underground filmmakers of the 1960s were undeniably influenced by Andy Warhol’s Factory, which churned out ultra-low budget work in much the same manner that he had previously cranked out prints of soup cans and Coke bottles.  Warhol’s primary lieutenant was Paul Morrissey, another frustrated filmmaker who, like Warhol himself, wanted to make Hollywood movies, but settled for making low-budget features.  Morrissey’s works include Flesh (1968), Trash (1970), Heat (1972), Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) and Blood for Dracula (1974).

But Warhol and company would become more famous for their marketing stunts, like showing Chelsea Girls in a theater on 42nd St. in the middle of the porn district.  To increase the value of their features, they made watching their films an exclusive event, virtually guaranteeing an audience who wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

Read more of Nick’s History in Part 2.

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From the 2013 DANCES WITH FILMS Festival at the world-renowned Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard!

You know, the one with all the footprints in the concrete.

This is the 16th annual rendition of this festival, billed as Sweet 16, with a tag line that reads, “Defiantly original, uniquely inspired.”  This year from May 30th through June 9th.

I went to a couple of screenings of short films, including yesterday’s program, labeled Fusion Shorts Group 2.  IAFT student Sarah Kitchen’s 7-min. project, AIR, was one of 7 films in the lineup.

IAFT Mentors Steve Boe and Joe Romersa were also there, along with students Freddy Jimenez and Joseph Sanchez.  All three actors in the film were in attendance—Louiza Zouzias, Brian Barth, and Marci Richmond—and a number of Sarah’s friends, roommates, and even a cousin from Sweden!

The audience was just about full, and it’s a fairly large theatre.  The lobby crowded with festival-goers.

Many of the films I saw were student Thesis films, from AFI, UCLA and USC, among others.  In case you don’t know, a Thesis film is the project a student makes at the end of his or her course of study at an institution, qualifying that student for a diploma, i.e., if a faculty jury approves.

I must say, in my judgment, Sarah’s film compares extremely favorably with the best of the lot, and is demonstrably better than the rest.

Naturally, I’m biased, since she’s one of my students.

These other films on the program were made by students who spent four years in film school and paid loads of money in tuition fees, plus they had big budgets, some as much as 40 grand.  And the credits at the end go on and on…meaning huge crews!

Sarah’s film was not a Thesis film.  She shot it in her first term at IAFT (finished it in her second) on a budget of about a hundred dollars, and her tuition has been a small fraction of what these other students paid.  And she had a tiny crew.

Of course, it has a lot to do with the individual talents of a particular student…not all our students get their projects accepted into festivals…but nevertheless, I feel like we must be doing something right at IAFT.

I saw a bunch of student films in another local festival last year, and I would say with confidence that almost every student film made here so far is better than what I saw there.

After the DWF screening, all the filmmakers were invited onto the stage, Sarah included.  Each made brief remarks about the making of his/her project.  I noticed that Sarah was the only one who prominently mentioned her school in her opening remarks.

I’d like to give extra credit here to our mentors, who helped Sarah a lot with her production and post:  the afore-mentioned Steve and Joe, and Rich Hyatt as well.  Steve and Rich both handle Cinematography and Editing classes, and Joe is Sound.  Also, Steve was instrumental in getting Sarah’s film into the sights of the festival jurors and even helped out with her promotional materials.

Also, of course, Russ Marleau and I had a modest hand in her pre-production.  (Russ is our Screenwriting mentor and I do Directing and Class Film, a production course.)

I recall Sarah initially had written a completely different script (and not a bad one) for her 101 project, but she ultimately switched to AIR while in Russ’s class.  A good decision, in the final analysis.

The DWF Festival is competitive, with the audience at each screening being asked to vote on each film, by rating it from 1 to 5, 5 being the best.

You needn’t wonder how I voted.

The post A REPORT FROM THE FESTIVAL FRONT LINES appeared first on International Academy of Film and Television.

The second most common E&G sound mixer used in the RTS world is the Wendt-5, 5-channel mixer.  Unlike the 442, the Wendt uses a VU (volume units) meter to measure signal flow through the mixer to your recording device—this is the first issue that I have with this mixer.  Not all sound professionals, but most agree that they prefer a DB meter to measure signal flow over a VU meter.  Without getting into too much detail, the main difference between a VU and DB meter is their response time.  Both meters measure the power of the signal that is being recorded, but the VU meter only gives an average of that power.  Thus, there is a delay with VU meters, giving you a slower reading of the actual loudness or softness of a sound.  DB meters, on the other hand, measure in decibels and give you the exact measure of audio power at each fraction of a second.

Some of you reading this might be thinking that it really doesn’t matter if I use a VU or a DB meter because “I’ve been mixing for years.”  If that’s the case, I’ll let you in on another secret you might not already know about the Wendt-5 mixer.  Say you are doing house coverage, and there are four cast members in your scene.  For whatever reason, two of the cast members leave the scene and hightail upstairs where a heated screaming match starts.  Your director has already instructed you to stay in the original scene and another camera/sound team moves upstairs to cover the ensuing brawl.  As you remain in the original scene, you can still hear very faintly through your mixer the screaming match that is taking place upstairs.  You rush to make sure that you have those cast members’ mikes turned all the way down because you wouldn’t want their audio to ruin your scene.  To your surprise, their mikes are in fact turned all the way down!  So how come you can still hear your off-screen talents’ voices even though their audio is gained down?  That’s something only Wendt can answer, but it remains a huge issue with the mixer.  The only way to avoid recording unwanted sound that can be coming from a wireless mike off-screen is to switch off that wireless receiver.  Completely lowering the gain still allows for sound to bleed through and could potentially ruin the production track of your current scene.

James Sieczka studied at Columbia College and has served on the faculty of IAFT after several years as a production sound mixer. He has worked on a number of projects including College Hill Interns and College Hill Season 5 for BET Entertainment, a Boost Mobil Commercial for KDJ Productions, Fear Factor Home Invasion for Tri Crown Productions, Fox’s Celebrity Sports and one of the highest-rated premieres of an original program ever on a Fox Cable Network, the reality show Wrecked.

The post SOUND ADVICE, Part 2 appeared first on International Academy of Film and Television.

I’ve been on countless shoots where sound is the absolute last priority.  Hiring the sound mixer is an afterthought.  But he should be there from day one, so he can properly prepare for, or advise against, the dramatic dialogue-heavy scene right next to the blue-line stop in downtown Chicago.

Sound is just not on the minds of the producer or director.

I haven’t seen it all, but I’ve definitely seen enough to know that sound, in any of the visual dramatic arts, is vastly misunderstood and deserves 100% more consideration prior to shooting any film/television project.

I want to stress that I’m not referring to the film school student.  I’m referring to the big guys! The huge million-dollar reality television shows (RTS) too often think that if the sound isn’t good, we can just “fix it in post.”

Well, I must tell you the option to “fix it in post” is something that I hear on almost every shoot, and it should be your absolute last resort for reasons I will not get into right now.

Right now, I’m going to talk about how to record, as an E & G sound mixer, the best sound possible by comparing the two most commonly used mixers in the reality television world.

Let’s suppose you are a sound mixer on an RTS.  Not all, but most shows, will supply you with gear to use for the duration of the show.  If this is true, you will most likely be supplied with one of two sound mixers.

The two most commonly used RTS mixers are the Sound Devices 442 and the Wendt-5.

My absolute favorite of the two is the Sound Devices 442.  The 442 is a workhorse, to say the least, and it has a lot of features that I think most find useful.  One of the nicest features is the digital-illuminated decibel peak meter.  The screen on this meter can be set to different brightness intensities, so if you are recording in a poorly lit set you can bump up the brightness in order to see your mixing levels.

Another great feature on the 442 is the push pots.  These dials let you pan each of the 442’s four channels from left, center and right positions.  Once you have selected your channel’s position you can then push the pot in, and it keeps your mixing area clutter-free.

Come back for the second and last part of Jimmy’s Advice on Thursday!

The post SOUND ADVICE, Part 1 appeared first on International Academy of Film and Television.

Deadly Sin #4:  NEGLECT OF STRUCTURE

The narrative construction of a screenplay is the only factor mastered utterly and solely by the screenwriter.  Many actors can improvise snappy dialogue and a good deal of directors have great, spontaneous ideas on how to stage a scene.  This leaves the writer with the structure.  He controls it, and he is needed to control it.  This is where his power really comes from. Designing a cinematic narrative can be compared to composing a piece of music: it’s all about bars, beats, pacing, with mathematical proportions determining the efficiency of the result. Film is movement, movement is rhythm, and rhythm has rules.  Let grouchy screenwriters and scholars hurl rocks at Syd Field for the “boundedness” and “stiffness” of his good old three-act paradigm as much as they want–they can never change the fact that he’s right.  The more steady-going and smooth the narrative flow and its manifestation on the page is, the more effective the storytelling will be.  Putting the first plot point around page 26 of your script is still good advice, and let nobody tell you otherwise.  Be aware that a screenplay is not a novel.  It’s not literature. It’s the blueprint for a film, and if it’s not designed carefully, taking into account all the elements required of it, the resulting structure may not be strong enough to support itself and collapse.

Deadly Sin #5:  DISTRUST OF GENRE

When movie genres were first being established, they were strongly influenced by theater and literature.  The Western is the only genre without precedence in play or novel form.  The rest, however, ranging from fantasy to sci-fi to romance to adventure, have older roots.  The genre you select for your story will influence a number of its components–several character types, themes and settings are typical of certain genres, and the audience expects them.  Most moviegoers may not be consciously aware of this, but intuition leads them to be deeply disappointed when a horror film does not scare or a comedy does not make them laugh.  It’s a common mistake among screenwriters to pick a genre they’re not familiar with in the first place.  Write only the sorts of films you love to see yourself.  Even more often, writers lack the knowledge and stamina to painstakingly construct a story by the rules of a genre, which frequently leads to an involuntary change of genres within the story (a true deadly sin) that will result in an emotional and thematic shift destined to put off the audience.  Writers have to learn to accept genres as their allies, not adversaries.

Deadly Sin #6:  TELL, DON’T SHOW

Many aspiring screenwriters don’t want to become screenwriters.  They want to become novelists. As exemplified by myriads of students I have taught, they want to cram pages with overly long descriptions of beautiful landscapes, human faces and the thoughts swirling about in the gray matter behind those faces.  In screenwriting, everything is abbreviated, compressed, simplified.  The visuals should drive a film, other fuels like theme or dialogue are always subordinate.  If that’s contrary to your liking, then you should, indeed, write novels.  Or maybe radio plays–did you notice that some movies are perfectly comprehensible just through the dialogue, and you wouldn’t even need the visuals to understand them?  In my opinion, those are not good films.  The craft of the screenwriter is not so much storytelling as storyshowing.  The short, precise descriptions he delivers on the page have to conjure images in the reader’s mind, painting pictures with words.  This is where a good screenwriter really excels.  The screenwriter, as part of his role in the filmmaking process, must know how to use the technological elements involved in the medium of film.  Many fledgling writers circumvent the creative possibilities offered to them and rely on dialogue and voice-over texts instead.  By neglecting cinematic techniques, however, much of what a film could have been will fall by the wayside.

Deadly Sin #7:  FUMBLE THE ENDING

Many screenwriters do it, even experienced ones.  For a hundred pages, the narrative flows in the most brilliant way, and the suspense keeps you on the edge of your seat–until suddenly, all of it breaks down.  Very often, the third act of a script will feel disconnected to the rest, and readers wonder: “What was that all about?”  There’s nothing more frustrating for an audience to emotionally invest in a story and then find themselves let down in the last few minutes. Some films end too abruptly, not granting viewers the time to float back into reality after leaving the dreamlike state of the film.  Others take much too long to wrap it all up.  You already brushed the popcorn off your jacket, but as you’re getting up to leave, there’s another “last scene”… and another one.  Don’t try to twist and bend the story forcefully because you want that happy ending or you want that character to die to make the audience weep.  It’s not about what you want.  It’s about what your protagonists need.  A smashing ending always flows from the character arc.  If you don’t have an arc in the first place, of course, it may further complicate things.  Always listen to your story and your characters.  They will tell you what to do.

Axel Melzener is a produced screenwriter for television and films.  He has been teaching the art of storytelling for ten years in his native Germany as well as in Spain and Switzerland, and of course at our IAFT location in Cebu.

The post THE 7 DEADLY SINS OF SCREENWRITING, Part 2 appeared first on International Academy of Film and Television.

First of two parts

Humans learn best from mistakes, especially when they’re artists. That’s why the ability to accept criticism is of vital importance to a screenwriter striving to hone his craft. One of his biggest challenges is to find mistakes in his own stories before it’s too late – meaning, before others do.

Over the years, I’ve read and evaluated a multitude of treatments and screenplays for film students and friendly screenwriters, and the reasons many of them didn’t work were of striking similarity. As a screenwriting mentor at the International Academy of Film and Television, I developed short film scripts with about 50 students from all over the world.

And here I again encounter the small and big mistakes in narrative conception that keep repeating themselves. They are old acquaintances.  I’ve wrestled with them before, and I’m still wrestling with them whenever I sit down to put my own story on a blank page.

My desire to bring to light, unmask and caution against the 7 Deadly Screenwriting Sins has grown steadily over the past months and has urged me to present them to you now.

Deadly Sin #1:  PASSIVE PROTAGONIST

The Greek work “protagonist” means “the one who acts first,” and this is exactly what the main character of a cinematic story should do.  Either driven by a deliberate purpose or unconscious need, his task is to accomplish something through action.  Narrative tension results from the hero’s movement towards a goal as he overcomes growing obstacles, and the audience emotionally invests in the character because he acts.  If you factor out the goal, you take away the anticipation that’s really the fun part of watching a story unfold.  Characters that are determined entirely by their environment are bound  to become problematic as they are not allowed to be defined by actions.  Remember that choices make people, just as people make choices.  A character with an undeveloped profile and destiny will leave the viewer cold. All too often, solutions are offered to protagonists on a silver plate or, in the worst case, the story’s hero is degraded to a minor character—the protagonist is pressured into the role of spectator in his own story.  Never let your protagonist become a toy of other characters or a cue ball of fate.  Remember that your main character is titled “protagonist” for a reason, so don’t let the sidekicks run the show.

Deadly Sin #2:  LACK OF ANTAGONISTIC FORCE

There’s nothing more misplaced in fiction than “slice of life” or “a day in the life” stories.  If you’re interested in those, you should become a documentary filmmaker.  The purpose of a narrative is to abstract real life, not to depict it, and a strong antagonist is the key to this process.  Essentially, the hero and the villain of a story are always two sides of the same coin. The hero can only grow as strongly as the countering force of his opponent requires him to. There’s no need to give in to the cliché of the eye-rolling madman, however.  When AFI, celebrating the 100th anniversary of cinema, voted for the best movie villains, nurse Ratchet from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and HAL-9000 of 2001–A Space Odyssey ranked highly, and neither of the two quite fit the image of an eye-rolling, psychopathic brute.  To me, the best villains are always seducers–Hannibal Lecter, a perverted “priest” taking Agent Starling’s confessions, and the conquistador Aguirre, from Werner Herzog’s film of the same name, who leads a group of Spanish adventurers on a promising, but ultimately fatal, trip into the Peruvian jungle, manipulating his fellow travellers by exploiting their weakest spot: their greed for gold, which will lead them all to damnation.

Deadly Sin #3:  ABDICATION OF THEME

It might be true that most moviegoers aren’t interested in a film’s theme before they go see a film, but you can be sure that after leaving the theater, you will find them discussing the meaning of the story in some way.  The value of a film, its earning, is not the cast or the cinematography.  It’s what the story has to say to the viewer, and the emotions it employs to make the audience experience it.  Most mainstream Hollywood movies are dull these days simply because they refuse to take a stand, and the people who make them are too anxious to speak their minds.  The dilemma is that if you’ve got nothing to say, you’ll not be able to tell a gripping story.  The greatest dialogue, the tightest structure, the most faceted characters will not save your narrative if you don’t have a theme to glue them all together.  Theoretically, it’s impossible to make a film that isn’t about anything because a narrative structure requires content to manifest itself in the first place.  The word “theme” may sound dry and academic at first glance, but I don’t think that intelligence and sophistication stand in the way of entertainment.  Quite the contrary, the enjoyment of movies can be hugely enhanced by making audiences think.  Still, beware of those writers who want to be teachers instead of storytellers–they will constantly allow the “message” to overpower the story instead of merging both, turning the narrative into a propagandistic parade.  Some filmmakers want the audience to work as hard watching the film as they were making it.

Find out about the other Sins in Part 2.

The post THE 7 DEADLY SINS OF SCREENWRITING, Part 1 appeared first on International Academy of Film and Television.

Locations fell through.  I woke up on the 9th day of shooting, and we were set for our first shot at a hardware store in South Bay.  At the last minute I got a call from the owner saying the site wouldn’t be available.  This couldn’t happen.  We were already behind schedule, we couldn’t waste a whole day because our location wasn’t available, so starting at 6 a.m. I re-arranged the entire day’s schedule.  Instead of the hardware store Interior/Exteriors, we were going to shoot an outdoor car wreck scene that was scheduled for 2 days from then.

I woke up in Hermosa Beach, hopped in the car and drove out past OC and set myself to finding a deserted road in the middle of nowhere.  We needed a place where no cops went and where I knew we wouldn’t be bothered by anyone while we were crashing a car on the side of the road.  While I was searching, I had my AD and Line Producer organize a parking lot scene that we could shoot instead of the hardware exteriors.  Then I found the road.  I can’t even remember the name of it, but it was in the middle of the desert, and it was going to work perfectly.

I drove the 45 minutes back to base camp in South Bay and alerted the crew that we were headed to the desert.  They were all at first skeptical…until we got there.  The generator rumbled to life, the lights kicked on, we crashed MY car into the ditch and shot our scenes all night.  I didn’t get to sleep until 6 the next morning.

That was the first time I felt like a Producer.  I knew I had pulled that out, I had made something out of nothing, and that is what YOU will have to do when you embark on your own adventure as a first-time Producer.  It’s all about problem solving.  It’s emergency after emergency, and you have to make immediate judgments as to their severity, and prioritize on the spot, then dictate to others what those priorities are and make sure they get it done, and you always save the biggest problem for yourself, because you can’t trust anyone else for that kind of stuff.

Producing that film was simultaneously the most fun, stressful, terrifying time of my life.  I had no idea what I was doing, but that is honestly the best way.

Jump into deep water, let it overtake you, take in a couple gulps of salty terror, then fight your way to the top, poke your head above and take a deep satisfying breath, then make for shore.  I promise you it will be the swim that you remember, and remember fondly.

The post MEDITATIONS ON AN EMERGENCY, Part 3 appeared first on International Academy of Film and Television.

Pete Wassell takes on the task of Producing his best friend’s movie…and realizes he’s plunged into a flaming pit of terror!  (Part 1 was posted on 5/15.)

So I raised the money from friends and family, which puts even more pressure on you.  Though your family and friends would never wish that, the truth is that you care about their money way more than you would a rich stranger.  These are your loved ones, and they probably don’t have much money—mine didn’t—but they believed in me and my Director, and so now not only was I the guardian of their pocket books, my own heart was invested.

This is a good thing.  If you’re going to Produce a movie, you need to put it all on the line.  Only then will you do what is necessary to see it through to the end.

The money was in the bank, so now I started setting up meetings.  I used Mandy, Craigslist and some plain old name-dropping word of mouth to find our DP and our Gaffer who brought along his own grip.  I found us the makeup woman, our Script Supervisor, a Line Producer (Now I know!  He’s the watch dog of the budget and the paperwork), our PA crew, and I organized our auditions until we had our cast.  We were ready to shoot.

Wait, where?  I had to find locations.  Two bars, a liquor store, an apartment.  We needed to shoot driving sequences, a hotel room, and an outside restaurant.  Normally you would get permits for all this shooting, but not us, we couldn’t afford it, and our guerilla style filmmaking made us feel young and cool and a bit dangerous.  I got our locations, now we were ready to shoot.

We set our date.  We had one last meeting, the Gaffer told me what he needed, as did the DP, the AC, and the Makeup/Wardrobe woman.  I called the rental houses for expendables, gear, extra lighting needs, etc…and then we set up Day One.

The first day was great.  Our first set-up was in an office, and it went off without a hitch.  The crew worked well together, the actors were happy and things were moving quickly…SOUND!  I totally forgot, I also had to find a sound guy.  One more thing!…back to the shoot.  Everything was going great.  Then Day Two, we were shooting in my apartment, so that should be easy.  No way.  Efficiency went the way of the dinosaurs.  We slowed waayyyyy down.  It was no one’s fault, we just had a lot to shoot and not much time to shoot it.  This was the beginning of the first emergency.  We had to speed up, which meant we had to move things around.  I spent a lot of sleepless nights going over the next day’s schedule with the 1st and 2nd ADs, both good friends of mine, and let me tell you, it put our friendship to the test on a few occasions.

Tune in right here on Monday for the thrilling conclusion of Pete’s Ordeal By Fire!

The post MEDITATIONS ON AN EMERGENCY, Part 2 appeared first on International Academy of Film and Television.