Got Film If You Want It

As Chair of the Film/Broadcast Department at Flashpoint Academy it has been a personal mission of mine to have our students shoot film. Typically we shoot HD, but this fall, thanks to Kodak, our advanced cinematography students shot some super 16mm. After seeing the rushes I felt confident that we could shoot our own film, so last Wednesday production began on October Surprise, Flashpoint Academy's 3rd Production-in-Action.

October Surprise is a film set in a TV news room on the eve of a presidential election. Some mysterious photos of the leading candidate have appeared and there is a rush to see if they are real or fake.

Our advanced students are doing the heavy lifting on this film. Supported by key professional crew members, our students are shooting film. Production wraps this Thursday, then a much deserved winter break. More details and photos to follow.

PeterH

BTW Got Live If You Want It was the name of the Rolling Stones first live record, so I borrowed the title for this post for our first film.

Chuck Close

Perhaps the most frustrating thing to me about being a dumb filmmaker is the lack of opportunities I get to practice my craft. I just can't wake up in the morning and announce that today I am going to make film. Like Blanche Dubois, I am dependent on the kindness of strangers (well-paid teamsters, SAG members, and other crew types.) I don't know if I would be a better filmmaker if I had more opportunities, but I certainly would be a different kind of filmmaker. I would really like to explore different visual styles and techniques.

All of this brings me to Chuck Close the photographer and portraitist, one of his self-portraits appears here. For more than thirty years Close has explored different versions of the same form. Typically he takes a photograph of his subject and then creates a grid on a canvas and paints huge portraits from the picture. Over the years his method has remained the same, but his style has changed.

Earlier in his career his portraits were photorealistic. Stunning giant portraits of his subjects that worked on the viewer differently from various distances. By the time you get close to a nine-foot tall face you see it very differently than from across the room. Today his portraits are much more abstract- see above- yet he still works within this same process of taking a photograph and creating a grid. Close's paintings take months to complete but they all start with that 1/100th of a second image which captures his subject and over the years he has returned to the the original photographs to make new portraits. I am envious that he can return to the same source material and create new works of art while exploring new artistic territory.

To me his process has many benefits. Everyday he can work on little pieces of his paintings. Each square of his grid becomes a mini-painting with its own abstract style. He can stop the work and return to it on and off for weeks. Each grid builds positively on itself and over time he has a finished portrait. The key here is belief in the process. Close has created a system which works for him and within that system he is free to change his style.

One final thing about Chuck Close. About 20 years ago he had a major stroke that rendered him paralyzed from the shoulders down. Since then he has done all of this work from a wheel chair with a paint brush strapped to his wrist.

PeterH

Religion-part 1

I guess it should come as no surprise that organized religion is having an influence on the film business. I am not talking about films like Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ or Mel Gibson's The Passion of Christ, but rather the impact from new modern day mega-churches and television ministries.

Over the last 10 years I have had more and more students come to class with film production experience not from their high schools but through their churches. Many churches have youth groups devoted towards filmmaking. Many of those same churches also have expensive cameras, switchers capable of creating a live TV broadcasts, and advanced editing suites.

Who would have thunk it?

I have seen my share of church-produced films and I have yet seen one that made me really take notice. What I have seen is a lot of young people having fun, going on outings and generally making a high end home movie. Not bad really, but like most home movies, of no interest to anyone who isn't part of that family.

So I don't really know what to make of this church based filmmaking. I assume it is a way to get more young people interested in the church. But what is the goal? I don't see it as a training ground for young filmmakers. Is it the modern day equivalent of an ice cream social? "Hey everyone come over to our sanctuary and let's make a movie?"

By contrast a student recently showed me the trailer for a feature film his high school made. And based on the two minute trailer it was really terrific. I could see the student filmmakers learning craft and taking something from it. It was not a home movie. Maybe this is an example of the separation of church and state.

I dunno. More on this topic later.

PeterH

Hard at Work

Labor Day got me thinking about hard work- something I try to avoid at all costs. Aren't p.a.s and t.a.s supposed to do the hard stuff while directors and "professors" do the "Big Picture" work?

One of those cliches (if I knew how to do one of those accent things over the e in cliche I would do it, so you grammar police leave me alone) every bad football coach likes to trot out is "Failing to prepare is preparing to fail." Yuck! As bad sports cliches go I much prefer "There is no 'I' in team,"but that is for another post.

But those bad coaches are on to something and I have seen first hand truly great performers bust their butts rehearsing when other mere mortals (or dumb filmmakers) would have been off doing something more fun. I am going to share a few of those stories here and you can infer what you want.

1) In 2001 I was making a TV show for kids called Rainbow Soup about art and world culture and got to observe a lot of different artists in their process. As part of this I had the chance to see and interview Peter Gabriel (pictured here) as he played his first concert in eight years. It was a rather sudden appearance- he was going to headline the Womad Festival in Seattle after Robert Plant had to back out. Originally Peter was going to place a simple acoustic set, but two days before the show he decided to go all out with a band. At 7am on a Sunday morning, twelve hours before he was to go on stage, there is Gabriel and band in a park in Seattle working their assess off rehearsing for the show. At 7 that night he walked on stage and 30,000 people went crazy. He proceeded to play, by his own admission, a very mediocre set. As part of our arrangement I spoke with him on camera just after he walked off stage. He shook his head and looked into the camera and said, "That's what you get when you only rehearse for two days." I'll never forget it, or him really working hard when he didn't have to. The crowd loved him anyway.

2) At the end of our commercial reel there is a spot for MVP.com where Michael Jordan looks into the camera and asks, "Any Questions?" Jim shot him at a Bulls practice, Michael was staying late, by himself shooting free throws. The six-time NBA champ and MVP was in the gym by himself practicing. Did he need to do that? He thought so.

3) Years ago I had to go on a location scout at a local Chicago nightclub. When the manager met us at the door and let us in and in there was loud music playing in the background. It sounded like Elvis Costello to me- he was in the middle of a three or four day stop in Chicago. We round the corner and there on stage was Elvis and the Attractions rehearsing. The manager of the venue asked me if I minded them rehearsing while we were there. What was I going to say, "No! Elvis give it a rest we need to talk here." Of course he could play, however I needed to get on the stage so Elvis stopped what he was doing and invited us up. He was very gentlemanly, asked us what we were about to shoot and if it was OK if he could continue his rehearsal. When I was finished with my work he paused and asked if everything was OK. I said sure and asked if I could watch for a while. He said yes, and proceeded to tear into Pump it Up. My question is this. In the thousands of shows Elvis has played since the mid 1970s how many times has he played Pump it Up? Thousands? Did they really need to rehearse that badly? I guess so.

Practice makes perfect. (Sorry for the cliche.)

PeterH

Laboring On

It is Labor Day weekend and for most of us that means a work holiday on Monday. Those of us in the freelance filmmaking or college building businesses never seem to get a day off, there is always something to do or something to think about, but at least I don't need to go into the office. I am splitting my work time this weekend imagining my first few weeks of teaching and then writing a proposal for the city of Aspen, CO which wants a documentary on their historic preservation program.

I joke frequently with my colleagues that I don't like to work and I really don't like teaching (if it wasn't for the students teaching would be great!) But that's not true I love both jobs and being a working filmmaker makes me a better teacher and vice versa.

My work time is generally filled creating things and making something (a college, a film, a class schedule) out of nothing. I get to work with clever and creative people who never fail to surprise me with their ingenuity and good humor. My big work complaints these days are along the lines of "Dan, the internet is down " and "What do you mean a January start- it can't be done!"

No, my job is easy and positively cushy compared to coal miners and firemen, and single welfare moms and day field laborers. They are the ones who deserve a day off with pay, so happy Labor Day and thank you for your hard work.

PeterH

You Can't Give It Away

Ten years ago this week we were hired to make a pair of commercials for Canada Dry and Schweppes. It was a promotional commercial and we had two build two sets using bottles of Ginger Ale, Club Soda and Tonic Water. One set was for the Canada Dry products and the bottles surrounded a Jeep they were giving away. The other set used the Schweppes products and we created a little putting green as their prize was a trip to the British Open golf tournament.

As filmmaking goes it was easy. Once the sets were built it was like shooting still pictures because nothing moved. The hard part of the job was building the sets with the bottles of soda. A semi-truck full of soda was delivered to the studio and for three days the art department and production assistants built our two sets with plastic soda bottles.

The shoot went well, and as often happens the agency was on a hard deadline so we had to transfer film on a Saturday morning- the morning Diana's death was announced- at double time. At the transfer session we asked the agency producer when someone was coming to pick up the soda and deliver back to the bottler. She told us we can't send it back because it costs too much to ship back to Dallas. The soda was ours to do with what we wanted.

What does one do with 10 or 20 THOUSAND bottles of soda? We had another problem- the bottles were sitting in the studio and we didn't want to pay $750 a day just to store ginger ale, so on that Monday we began the process of trying to give away a truck load of bubbly water. First we offered it to the crew, we all took as much as we wanted. (I don't drink soda, but I do enjoy a vodka and tonic. Note to self, next time get the Stolichnaya account.) We contacted charities and delivered cases of product to a Chicago social service agency called Off the Street Club- they were thrilled, but couldn't take more than a few hundred bottles.

We tried leaving it for the garbage collectors, but they wouldn't take it because the bottles were full. So at the end of the day we had a team of production assistants pour a few thousand liters of soda into the gutter and down into the Chicago sewer system.

I like to imagine all the bubbles cleaning the Chicago sewer system, but I don't think that happened.

PeterH

Shout it Out

Yesterday I shared a tale about a company (General Mills) that was too cheap to send us enough product for their own TV commercial so we had to go out and buy Raisin Nut Crunch and sell it back to them. Today, I’ll share a slightly different take on the behind-the-scenes world of TV advertising.

A few years ago we were hired to make a pair of TV spots for Shout Carpet Cleaner. It was a nice job- two or three production days and a couple of more days to build the set- plus a day of watching grape juice dry and getting paid for it. (When you do product comparison commercials there is a lot of attention paid to the legal end of things. Here we compared Shout to “the other leading brand" (Resolve) as “real people” tried to get dried grape juice stains off of white carpet. To make the test legal, the day before shooting a scientist from SC Johnson and Dan Dreesen, our ace prop master, poured exact amounts of grape juice on carpeting. The stains had to sit and dry over night to make the test valid and Jim and I had to sign affidavits agreeing to the above.)

It ain’t exactly like working in a coal mine this film business.

The shoot went great, lots of real women being amazed by how great Shout worked. It was one of those shoots where everything we did went as planned. As we worked through the first day of production Dan came up to us and said he had a problem. The prop bottles of Shout the agency supplied were beginning to crack. He was able to rig a workaround but we had to be careful how the women handled the bottles.

The next week Jim and I did the edit, Two spots cut to a re-written version of the song “Shout.” They turned into two great little commercials AND the product worked great too. Win Win, right?

Wrong.

It turned out the problem we discovered in the packaging while shooting was the fatal flaw. To make the product work affectively, the bottle needed two chambers to hold the different “ingredients” that make up Shout. That configuration stressed the spray nozzle and the bottles gave out.

So after millions of dollars of development money and thousands more on marketing- including our fees- SC Johnson pulled the plug.

Next a company that had so much product we couldn’t give it away.

PeterH

The Places You'll Go

When we were shooting the making of The Collector documentary a couple of weeks ago Jim and I were chatting with Pete Biaggi the cinematographer. Pete casually commented that one of the best things about this business is that you never know what you are going to do next and where you are going to be. (Pete is perhaps best known as being the cinematographer on the first Project Greenlight film for HBO but has done lots of other work including Robert Altman's last two films.)

As filmmakers we have been given the opportunity to go places and see things from a perspective that would be impossible if not for this job. In the last couple of years we have climbed 300 feet in the air and shot on the gold-plated dome of the capitol of Nebraska. We commandeered Safeco Field, home of the Seattle Mariners, and had run of the place. We witnessed the re-building of TWA Flight 800, which exploded off of Long Island in 1996, and were one of perhaps 50 people permitted in wreckage. (Not all of these experiences are "fun." You could really feel the presence of the lives that were lost in the accident.)

My point is that besides the title of a Dr. Seuss book and the theme for so many bad commencement speeches, the places you'll go is a very apt description of what one can expect if they throw themselves whole heartedly into this business. You cannot be timid or you will go nowhere. You must dive in and see where the experience takes you.

PeterH

Bright Lights and Baseball

Yesterday's post about finding a path into the film business has me thinking about my own path and how I owe an unexpected thanks to my great aunt Amy. Aunt Amy taught me a lot of things one of which is how to love the Boston Red Sox (and to swear at the TV, and at slow drivers an appreciation of whiskey and blueberry muffins). The summer when I was seven Aunt Amy gave my dad and me tickets to see the Red Sox play- it was my first baseball game- and on the same day she got my mom the chance to see Julia Child tape her TV show.

The game was a wild one. The Sox won in extra innings. Rico Petrocelli hit a grand slam, twice players ran into each other going after pop ups. I loved it and thought all baseball games would be like that. When the game ended my dad and I went to the WGBH studios in Cambridge to pick my mom up. The taping wasn't over- Julia kept burning her sugar and had to do take after take- but they let us in to watch.

The bright lights, so hot, and the huge prehistoric looking pedestal cameras amazed me. And the colors! We only had a black and white TV so first with all the green at Fenway Park, and then all the colors of Julia's TV kitchen; it was if I woke up in Oz. I will never forget that day, and I am sure it was one of the catalysts that lead me towards the film business.

PeterH

Navel Gazing

It was an interesting week for the dumb filmmaker. As you saw in the previous posts I was simultaneously shooting a film and teaching eight incoming students. If it was 3:30, I must be teaching, 4pm, filmmaking and back and forth throughout the week. It was all a blur but it went well.

I didn't even think about becoming a filmmaker until I was in college. There was no path, I didn't know anyone in the business. Filmmaking- whatever that was- was something that happened in a place called Hollywood and I didn't give it much thought. Today it seems everyone knows a little something about how movies are made. DVD extras, websites and those infotainment TV shows all illuminate some part of the process, and as I result I think the barriers to entry in the business are much lower and more accessible. This is a good thing, I think.

Yet, despite how much my students thought they knew about the business, they were taken aback by what really happens on a film set. I think it was Werner Erhard (I am not a disciple, in my first draft I originally called him William- but a good quote is a good quote) who talked about three types of knowledge. 1) There is what you know you know. You use that in your life. 2) Then there is what you know you don't know- that is why you learn and discover. 3) Then there is big other area about what you don't know you don't know.

One of my jobs as a teacher is to expose students to the idea that there is a lot more out there than what they know they know and what they know they don't know. I like to peel back the curtain to expose something they didn't know existed, and then let them learn and discover on their own. When it works, like this past week, it works well.

PeterH

Wearing a Lot of Hats

I am wearing a lot of different hats this week. Paula Froehle, the Flashpoint Dean, is shooting a short film and Jim and I are shooting a "making of..." documentary to be used as a teaching tool. We have shot off and on for the last couple of weeks as Paula and her crew have been in pre-production. This week it is all production.

Paula's film, The Collector- based on a short story by Jonathan Lethem, will be finished by September 17- the first day of classes. The Collector and our "making of..." companion piece will be screened on that first day of class to illustrate the collaborative nature of all four Flashpoint disciplines. There is a lot of work ahead of us.

Jim and I are shooting with the same gear as my students will use, so not only do I get a practical lesson on workflow and the ins and outs of this new (HD) technology, but this process will make me a better teacher. You can never stop learning. So far I have really liked what we have shot. The future is here.

Additionally, Tuesday through Friday afternoons this week, I will have eight incoming Flashpoint students on the set and I will be teaching them "production in action." As Paula shoots, I will be working these students in with her key crew. I will be able to literally stop the production and have these students ask questions and really mix with professional filmmakers. We are using this experience as a dry run for a larger Production in Action class Flashpoint students will take in January. I will keep you posted on developments.

PeterH

A Boy and his Camera

Something happens when you bring out a motion picture camera to both those in front of the camera and those of us on the other side. Anyone who has seen a home movie knows what happens when the camera appears- your inner ham comes out. Even professional actors have their on-camera personality and know how and when to turn it on and off.

Something similar happens on the other side of the camera too. In Victimless Crimes about half of my cast gets killed and the other half does the killing. This means I had to film lots of shooting, strangling and stabbing. These scenes- which in another film I would watch through my fingers- just seemed like work. When a take was over I would say let's do it again and the actor who had been shot or stabbed changed his clothes, put on new squibs (exploding blood packs) and an hour or so later we did it again. This went on all night.

My point is that as a filmmaker you shoot until you get what you need and the camera gives me confidence I don't have in my regular life.

While shooting a TV commercial for OFF, the mosquito repellent, we had to make a ten-year old boy stick his arm into a transparent box full of mosquitos and hold it there, still, for 30 seconds. He did and he got bitten and there were tears and I felt like Hell but it was the job and we had to do it. (He was wearing the "other leading brand" which wasn't as good as OFF, but he was well compensated and his parents knew what they signed up for.)

Today, Jim and I are wrapping up a documentary about teen parents and I sit opposite these young woman and ask them very personal, very probing questions about choices they made (or in some cases didn't make) . It's not something I would do if the camera wasn't there and I have to get into another mindset in order to do it, but again it is part of the job. I am always surprised when they open up and start revealing themselves to me. The power of the camera is really working for me in these instances.

Now I need to remember the next time I ask for a raise to bring a camera with me. No one can say no to a boy and his camera.

PeterH