Tales of a Student Producer, Part 5

I'm rocking out the boom mic in this picture.


The director is the girl in yellow.


On location at a coffee shop. On good days they let me do the clapper.


We had to go to leave Ann Arbor to find a coffee shop that would let us shoot without problems. And when we did, they let us have complete rein over the place.


On location at a different coffee shop.


The director checks the framing.


Our cinematographer.




One of the first days of sync sound shooting.








Me and co-producer Meche, the day Patrick Swayze visited the set.

Tales of a Student Producer, Part 4

The film I was coproducing wrapped two weeks ago while I was abroad for spring break. Now all I have to do is record some budget stuff, plan the wrap party, and distribute DVDs in a couple of months.

I caught up with the director during our screenwriting class the week after spring break to see how the shoots went. Apparently they were crazy. They had limited time, a lack of actors and crew, and completely modified shots. I always felt a little badly when we had to modify something. You have to be flexible on a film shoot, but there is a line that you can cross that sacrifices the integrity of the film, and I was always concerned that the demands for flexibility would force the director to make choices she didn't want. I think that filming anything is a huge accomplishment, but I think that this film will turn out great and will update when I see the finished product.

One of the things we talked about is how the finished product never matches what we imagine. I think it's a struggle every artist goes through, the moment the realize that nothing they ever produce will be as good as what they envisioned. It's really discouraging at first. My stories are never as good as they are when I'm working them out in my head. It's like failing every time you go to work. I think that it's something every artist has to make peace with if they're actually going to make art a life-long pursuit. But just because you it seems like you'll never reach your ideal doesn't mean that you don't closer and closer each time you pick up a camera or sit down at your computer or mix your paints. And just because I'm probably never going to get to the level of emotional, intellectual, crafted brilliance I desire in my stories doesn't mean I'm not going to get pretty darn close sometime. Perfection isn't the result of genius (at least not for me). Perfection is the result of hard work. And with that in mind, I can reconcile my ideal with the result a whole lot more easily.

It just sucks for everyone else, because you will never know how good the story actually is. : )

Tales of a Student Producer, Part 3

We've almost got all our footage now. We have many one more weekend's worth of work, which has to be filmed either this weekend or next because the university's about to confiscate our equipment for the audacious reason of giving it to other students in other classes.

We filmed at a coffee shop on Sunday. We tried finding a place to shoot in our town, but all we have are chains and they were really unhelpful. One of the smaller, more local chains, who proposes to be dedicated to community arts, wanted to charge us $40/hour, even during business hours. Being a student film, we don't exactly have that sort of budget. So we branched out and looked at coffee shops in a neighboring town and found two that would let us film during business hours, no problem what so ever. Definitely no charge. Extremely helpful. I think that even having people who give you time and don't rush you allows us to also take our time and have time to move out of their way if they need us to. If we're not rushed to take a shot we don't have to muscle our way around to get the filming done. So if you're looking for a business location, look outside of the corporate chains and find an independent business. Even if it's a little out of the way. The cooperation makes the shoot much more wonderful.

I haven't seen any dailies yet. The director and cinematographer have, and they say that some color correction needs to be done on one of the scenes, but overall it's looking good. We did get some bad news from the lab that our first day's footage, the beautiful outdoor fall scene that we waited and planned and postponed and stressed over to make sure that we could capture the most brilliant fall colors, yes that un-reshootable footage had black lines running through it. It was frustrating to get that news, especially since there's about a foot of snow on the ground now, and the lab said that it looked like a film stock problem, not a camera failure or lab problem. The only consolation was the fact that the footage wasn't really necessary to the plot. But the director viewed the footage the other day and said that the lines aren't as bad as we were dreading and there's actually some usable footage. Whew.

The farther we get alone, the less stress I feel and the more fun I have. Maybe it's because I grew tired of being stressed more over this project than any of my actually school work or maybe it's because we bonded more as a crew and learned how to have fun together while we filmed. My coproducer and I get along really well, and she might produce my 1940s short. We were talking about film sets the other day and how each one is such a completely different experience from the next. I think it's just another reason why working in the film industry is a bit risky. And I think that's why it's an industry of recommendations. The people you work with make a huge difference on your experience of the shoot, and if you find people you work with well, you'll want to work with them again. Otherwise it's a gamble about who your next coworker is going to be. And consequently what your next film experience is going to be like.

Tales of a Student Producer, Part 2

That's not really my job. I'd love to just do slate all weekend, but usually I only get to play with the slate when we're short crewed.

We're about a third of the way done with shooting. We ran into some frustrating location issues for this weekend and, long story short, had to cancel the shoot. I hate doing locations. The place we were hoping to shoot wanted to charge us $40 an hour, both for overnight shooting and during business hours. We understood that we'd probably have to pay some for the overnight because most businesses like to have an employee there - but who is getting paid $40/hour at a coffee shop? Or even 20?

I've worked on one other senior honors thesis. I only PAed for just two days, but I learned some interesting things and got a little bit of a feel for the way it ran. It ran a lot different from the way we run ours. And for a while, I really struggled with that. The project is already pretty stressful for me, and having that comparison made it more difficult.

Until I put things into perspective. The other thesis film was produced and directed by a team of senior film students who had done a project of similar length and scope the previous year. So it wasn't their first time around the rodeo. Our project's director is talented and knowledgeable, but it's her first time directing some of this scope. Our producing team has never before produced anything of this length and are relatively early in their film training. And we're running on a very talented but limited crew.

Basically, I realized that the two different films I worked on were, in fact, two different films. And I should treat them as such. And that helped a lot. Realizing that I didn't have to live up to some standard that didn't actually even compare made me feel a little more at ease with the job. I was talking with my screenwriting professor the other day about how producing was probably making me more stressed than all my classes, he sort of raised his eyebrow as if to tell me that I needed to rethink something. And he reminded me that everyone in everything has a learning curve. I think the goal is to just maintain your course on that journey and not let yourself be overwhelmed by the mistakes and challenges that are inherent in improvement.

Sure, it's a lot of work and it's stressful sometimes. But I have no doubt that this film is going to be great. Our crew members are so talented and skilled that I can't imagine it coming out anything less than stellar. And they're amazingly fun to work with too. And that keeping that perspective helps me realize what an enjoyable experience this is.

Tales of a Student Producer, Part 1

This year I'm coproducing a senior honors thesis, titled "Grace," for one of my friends. Not going to lie, having two other producers makes the work load pretty light (even if having three coproducers might be a bit excessive), but this is still the major cause of stress in my life right now. The senior honors thesis films are supposed to be the most advanced, well done films our department produces. Our ability to produce will be reflected in the finished product - very clearly.

Since none of the producers have ever produced anything of this caliber, I sorta feel like the first month our meetings consisted mostly of, "Soo... what now?" We're not doing too badly, though, and now we're much more in the full swing of preproduction, with our first shooting weekend in a week and a half.

So this is what's happened so far and what I've learned:

- You can't produce until you have a locked copy of the script from the director. I got a draft of the script as soon as I signed onto the project (I'm just trying to sound professional. I didn't actually sign anything). However, we knew upfront that this was not a final draft. Since we didn't know how much the script was going to change, we found it difficult to pursue elements like casting and locations since we didn't know if they were going to stay in the script or not. The director gave us some pointers about which elements were stone (like the main character), and we went after those. And having seen a more recently draft this weekend, I was relieved to see that most of the changes made the script simpler, with fewer locations and characters, not more complex. Which made me glad that I hadn't pulled up my old undertaker's assistant contact to try to secure a funeral home location.

- Ask for help. One of the things I did a couple of weeks ago was set up a meeting for all of "Grace's" producers with a recent grad from our school who was the producing guru when he was a student. He gave us a lot of information and a few challenges, but it's better to be overwhelmed with information about things you have to consider and watch out for and plan around than get caught in the moment wondering what the crap you do now.

- Budget and schedule are paramount. I know our production designer is concerned about how much of the budget can go toward set dressings and props. The producers want to know if we'll have enough money to keep plenty of good food and coffee around. Because the honors thesis films operate on grants, we don't know how much money we'll get yet. We'll start shooting before we have any real ideas. Because of our meeting with our producer friend, we have some idea of what to expect when it comes to the grants, and some ideas of how to raise some more money. Scheduling is tricky for a student production because it comes down to the talent and the locations. Our crew is either large enough or well trained enough so that if someone can't be there, it will still function. However, we might have talent coming in from out of state. And we're looking to shoot in a department store and a coffee shop. We'll only be able to shoot when these elements say it's ok. I'm in charge of location scouting, and I'm finding it to be one of the most stressful parts. Maybe it's because I don't have a car. I don't feel like I can approach a location until we have a date set of when we want to shoot, or at least a few dates, but I don't feel like I can ballpark a range until I know what sort of schedule the director and cinematographer want, how long they think they want at each location, how much time, etc. etc. And we'll probably be shooting around the hours of the businesses. Shooting day-for-night is possible. But can you shoot night for early morning, even if it's indoors?

- Auditions. We held our first auditions on Saturday. Our casting process is going pretty well. Two of our producers posted casting calls on a few websites, got a ton of responses back, and we went through the headshots and resumes with the director during one of our meetings. She picked out who she was interested in, and we called them in for auditions. Ok, I'm not going to lie, it was fun being a producer in the auditions. First of all, producer in the real world carries a whole lot more weight than in the student world. In the real world, they're actually running the show (with their money). In the student world, they're running errands for the director. But at auditions, I got to introduce myself as a coproducer, then sit there not saying anything as I operated the camera, looking good in my blazer - but not like I was trying too hard (oh yes. You have to look like the part you are playing). Auditions are actually pretty tolling on those who are auditioning, which the director expressed to me afterwards. We have to hear the same scene fifty times.

Something I found remarkably interesting was the fact that most actors played the scene the same way. On one hand, this reflects well on the writer, that their intentions are so clear that most every actor can pick it up to a general degree. But I saw very few actors taking risks. Maybe it wasn't the fact that it was the intent and character were clear but that it was just the easiest, safest take on the character. One of the activities I always did with my drama classes up at camp was to have them say the same sentence over and over again with different intentions (yeah, Stanislovsky). I kept thinking about David Lynche's Mulholland Drive, which I saw recently for class, and the two different ways Betty plays the audition. The first time, when she's rehearsing, she plays it the way most people probably would have played it. But the second time she totally changes the character and, essentially, the scene, and makes it three times more engaging. It's an interesting thing to note if you want to write or direct (or even act). Is every scene predestined to play a certain way if it's written clearly enough? Or is every scene just a template onto which an actor or director force their own vision?