Plug me in, but turn me off
I was taking advantage of the weather today, walking on random trails in the quite extensive wooded area around my house. Taking Robert Frost's now prosaic advice, I strode off the beaten path to find new cut lines through the forest.
The summer should be good, I hope. As of Monday, I am one of the walking wounded: an employed person. I got a job teaching English again until 2nd year starts up in September. As of Tuesday, I will have a new place, still in North Vancouver but all to myself and closer to various 'power centers'. If you don't get that joke, go see Radiant City at a theatre near you.
There's a certain embrace of safety offered by having a comfortable place to live, a steady job and a nice girl (which I also recently acquired) in your life. Now, this is not to say it robs me of my ubiquitous ambition to be a filmmaker, but for four months of summer when you just want to do some weekend shoots and sit on patios and drink, these are glorious things to have.
The new job is going to get in the way of preproduction for the next shoot we're doing on May 12/13. I'm producer, and co-writing it with Davis (who's also DOP) and Dylan (Director). I feel spread a little thin, but this is the nature of the beast - and I think the story is strong enough to be submitted to festivals, so it's worth a few sleepless nights.
Ma and Pa came up for our year-end screening. It was great to see them again, get dressed up and watch our final movies in a real theatre. Afterwards we went to Victoria where I went shopping for the first time in over a year and bought a Wayne Gretzky doll. Sweet.
Here follows my production journal for Hook-Ups the final project which was screened in the theater. I wrote it fast and it's terrible but it's the only record I have on paper:
PREPRODUCTION
I am not too familiar with the people in my crew; I think I have only worked with one of them before. However, we are to that time of the year where you begin to know people by reputation and word of mouth. I think this will be a decent crew – I’ve heard the right things about most of these people. We met that day and got our script from Seanna. Truth be told, I had hoped our group would be privileged with receiving Dylan Ballentine’s script, because I’ve read it several times, know how hard he worked on it and how fucking good it is. Instead we got a script entitled ‘Hook Ups’ written by the Affolter brothers.
At first reading, I was not too impressed by the script, but I feel that was residual disappointment on not getting Dylan’s piece. I went home that night, though, and read it several times – getting more excited about with each subsequent perusal. I want to direct it; I can see the potential in it. I have many ideas for angles and my favorite part about it is that it’s truly a performance piece which will give me ample time to spend with actors and draw performances from them, which I feel is something a lot of film students lack – but I feel is the greatest part of directing.
We met the next day to go over our ideal roles on the project. Jessica Rivers and I were the only people interested in directing so that made that decision easier. Not getting the job as director for project one turned out to be one of the best things to happen to me. Getting rejected not only made this project available to me, it also prepared me for the interview process, which I think, went very well.
I got the job as director, which is extremely exciting. I have expressed my ideas to the group and I think we have an excellent start. Dave Gordon, our faculty advisor, has been fully present and helpful and watchful of our progress. In fact, I owe Dave Gordon a lot. Aaron has returned from Mexico and showed us a house in Burnaby, which would be perfect for our shoot (we could even paint the walls!). The stipulation of our project detailed that the film must be shot in the District of North Vancouver, but Dave pulled some strings and got us permission for use of the house.
And then tragedy struck.
I hate the blame game, but I don’t know how else to say this: our Locations Manager fucked us big time. We never had permission on the place, we were all under the assumption he talked to the stakeholders of the house and got the paperwork signed. This was never done. We lost the house. The last half of the second week was some of the hardest and most stressful days of work I have ever done. God bless Greg Howe and Jessica Hoyles who worked their assess off for me to get us Aaron’s house in two days, which is not as ideal but we can make it work. I have not lost my enthusiasm for this project – the cast is amazing and rehearsals went well. Locations do not make characters to stories better. And that is why people watch movies. Let’s get shooting.
PRODUCTION
The first day of shooting was almost like a reward for the stress of prep. The actors were receptive and I was feeling in my element and confident. We finished ahead of schedule on day one and the dailies looked great. Day two was a little more stressful for; unbeknownst to most of us two of the actors had to leave to attend a mandatory class for three hours right in the middle of our shoot day. That made things a little uneasy and I hate having to rush, especially actors – but tomorrow should be far more relaxed. On our last day of the shoot we had one scene. A night exterior. Despite our poor lead actress being teeth-clatteringly cold, we got through it quickly and adroitly. I was very sad to be finished shooting, it was my favorite part and I did love our cast and directing is something that suffused me with happiness and purpose. I can’t wait for Off the Grid shooting on May 12/13th.
POSTPRODUCTION
Michael has done a superb job of arranging our postproduction schedule and our rough cut was done early. That’s the good news. The bad news is our movie clocks in at 7:30 and has to be cut down to 5 or less minutes for delivery. We’re going to have to lose some very good moments. It’s always torturous to remove humorous glances or well timed lines, or strong performances from your movie because of time constraints, but it must be remembered that above all, those things only exist to further a story and if you can conceivably tell the story without them – they were never necessary.
The summer should be good, I hope. As of Monday, I am one of the walking wounded: an employed person. I got a job teaching English again until 2nd year starts up in September. As of Tuesday, I will have a new place, still in North Vancouver but all to myself and closer to various 'power centers'. If you don't get that joke, go see Radiant City at a theatre near you.
There's a certain embrace of safety offered by having a comfortable place to live, a steady job and a nice girl (which I also recently acquired) in your life. Now, this is not to say it robs me of my ubiquitous ambition to be a filmmaker, but for four months of summer when you just want to do some weekend shoots and sit on patios and drink, these are glorious things to have.
The new job is going to get in the way of preproduction for the next shoot we're doing on May 12/13. I'm producer, and co-writing it with Davis (who's also DOP) and Dylan (Director). I feel spread a little thin, but this is the nature of the beast - and I think the story is strong enough to be submitted to festivals, so it's worth a few sleepless nights.
Ma and Pa came up for our year-end screening. It was great to see them again, get dressed up and watch our final movies in a real theatre. Afterwards we went to Victoria where I went shopping for the first time in over a year and bought a Wayne Gretzky doll. Sweet.
Here follows my production journal for Hook-Ups the final project which was screened in the theater. I wrote it fast and it's terrible but it's the only record I have on paper:
PREPRODUCTION
I am not too familiar with the people in my crew; I think I have only worked with one of them before. However, we are to that time of the year where you begin to know people by reputation and word of mouth. I think this will be a decent crew – I’ve heard the right things about most of these people. We met that day and got our script from Seanna. Truth be told, I had hoped our group would be privileged with receiving Dylan Ballentine’s script, because I’ve read it several times, know how hard he worked on it and how fucking good it is. Instead we got a script entitled ‘Hook Ups’ written by the Affolter brothers.
At first reading, I was not too impressed by the script, but I feel that was residual disappointment on not getting Dylan’s piece. I went home that night, though, and read it several times – getting more excited about with each subsequent perusal. I want to direct it; I can see the potential in it. I have many ideas for angles and my favorite part about it is that it’s truly a performance piece which will give me ample time to spend with actors and draw performances from them, which I feel is something a lot of film students lack – but I feel is the greatest part of directing.
We met the next day to go over our ideal roles on the project. Jessica Rivers and I were the only people interested in directing so that made that decision easier. Not getting the job as director for project one turned out to be one of the best things to happen to me. Getting rejected not only made this project available to me, it also prepared me for the interview process, which I think, went very well.
I got the job as director, which is extremely exciting. I have expressed my ideas to the group and I think we have an excellent start. Dave Gordon, our faculty advisor, has been fully present and helpful and watchful of our progress. In fact, I owe Dave Gordon a lot. Aaron has returned from Mexico and showed us a house in Burnaby, which would be perfect for our shoot (we could even paint the walls!). The stipulation of our project detailed that the film must be shot in the District of North Vancouver, but Dave pulled some strings and got us permission for use of the house.
And then tragedy struck.
I hate the blame game, but I don’t know how else to say this: our Locations Manager fucked us big time. We never had permission on the place, we were all under the assumption he talked to the stakeholders of the house and got the paperwork signed. This was never done. We lost the house. The last half of the second week was some of the hardest and most stressful days of work I have ever done. God bless Greg Howe and Jessica Hoyles who worked their assess off for me to get us Aaron’s house in two days, which is not as ideal but we can make it work. I have not lost my enthusiasm for this project – the cast is amazing and rehearsals went well. Locations do not make characters to stories better. And that is why people watch movies. Let’s get shooting.
PRODUCTION
The first day of shooting was almost like a reward for the stress of prep. The actors were receptive and I was feeling in my element and confident. We finished ahead of schedule on day one and the dailies looked great. Day two was a little more stressful for; unbeknownst to most of us two of the actors had to leave to attend a mandatory class for three hours right in the middle of our shoot day. That made things a little uneasy and I hate having to rush, especially actors – but tomorrow should be far more relaxed. On our last day of the shoot we had one scene. A night exterior. Despite our poor lead actress being teeth-clatteringly cold, we got through it quickly and adroitly. I was very sad to be finished shooting, it was my favorite part and I did love our cast and directing is something that suffused me with happiness and purpose. I can’t wait for Off the Grid shooting on May 12/13th.
POSTPRODUCTION
Michael has done a superb job of arranging our postproduction schedule and our rough cut was done early. That’s the good news. The bad news is our movie clocks in at 7:30 and has to be cut down to 5 or less minutes for delivery. We’re going to have to lose some very good moments. It’s always torturous to remove humorous glances or well timed lines, or strong performances from your movie because of time constraints, but it must be remembered that above all, those things only exist to further a story and if you can conceivably tell the story without them – they were never necessary.
posted by Jag at 7:26 PM
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