Round 1- Tips to succeeding in the 48 Hour Film Project

Since I'm not a posting whore, I thought I might try to be and impart some knowledge, or at least encourage discussion with people who read this and never ever post a comment. Not that I'm criticizing y'all's silence. At all.

Anyway, here's round 1. Tips for the producer/team leader. Any questions or comments can and will be used in future versions.

BEFORE THE MADNESS
FOR PRODUCERS/TEAM LEADERS/SHE WHO HOLDS THE MONEY


- Basically, it all comes down to this- you’re the man. You hold the key to making sure this shoot works. Everyone expects you to know what’s going on at all times. If you’re not comfortable with that, find someone who is and modify your role.

- Do not direct AND produce. Unless you’ve done it before, you are Superman, and have a shit-ton of caffeine pills. Or if you’re that CinemaSolo guy.

- Establish up front if you want people locked into roles (which means there’s 1 boss, well, maybe 2 with the director) or if you’re going more egalitarian. Obviously it helps to have 1 person where the buck stops with, but whatever works for your group. Make sure your cast and crew know how you’re running the show. It’s all about communication people! And craft services. Mmm, donuts.

- Write up a contact list of everyone involved that includes name, number, e-mail, do they have a car, what days can they work, and what their position is. If you’re dealing with a bigger crew and multiple producers, make sure all your producers know who their “team” is during pre-production and production.

- Map out a plan of attack for each production day- who’s going to be on set/location, where post is taking place, who will be there, etc. This can be instrumental in figuring out if you have enough crew. Plan to have the actors on Sunday in case you need to do emergency pick ups or ADR. Or if you just need general amusement, praise or more people to suck up your craft services budget.

- Make call sheets for your cast and crew that includes pertinent contact information. Make sure they know the chain of command so calls about their issues (stuck in traffic, slept through alarm, dog died, etc) go to the right person.

- When making up your call sheets, TRY TRY TRY to make sure people aren’t working 3 days straight. Example- make sure a writer isn’t script supervisor on Saturday and editing something on Sunday. People do not work well on lack of sleep. Expand your crew to make sure that doesn’t happen if at all possible.

- Cast beforehand. Meet your actors. Make sure they know what your process is (are they waiting for your call on Friday night? Will they get a script that night or Saturday morning?) If you like an actor a lot, BOOK THEM NOW.

- Have a bank roll for the production in cash. Props and food need to be purchased. PAs are good at this. Keep the receipts and if anyone spends their own money, make sure they get reimbursed. Unless they're feeling generous. And they're your friend.

The Best Job I'll Ever Have

That about sums up my thoughts on this job. I will probably never have another job like it, which is quite depressing when you think about it, or at least, not for some time. If anything, I reckon this job serves as a goal to eventually work toward again.

This job is on the coast of maine, which in and of itself, is definition of heaven. I know even in the dead of winter, I would still love it. There is something in me which is inexplicably drawn to the ocean. More schools and production companies need to set up shop on the East Coast. Or I need to ponder a West Coast move. Nnnnnah.

The duties of the job itself are easy cheese. I'm slated to work 40 hours, I'm scheduled for about 34, and of that, I work possibly 28-30? Sometimes I edit, sometimes I surf the web, sometimes I sit on the porch. I also get paid to eat. Sometimes 2 meals a day. That's phat my friends.

I can also tell people their edits suck. And be that blunt. Honestly rules. I am in my element here.

My boss backs me up. How rare is that? Ok, maybe it's not that rare, but I worked in retail for awhile. Nuff said.

My rent is taken care of (freelance projects before I left), and I have no outstanding bills. So while I get paid crap, there's very little, economically speaking, I have to worry about, aside from gas.

So, perfect locale, no money issues and easy job. Le sigh. It's pretty much perfect.

Editing comedy is tough

Man I am THE QUEEN of uninventive blog titles. But at least I'm the queen of something. The peanut gallery can cease their whispers now :P

Today's topic is editing comedy. For whatever reason, I tend to get involved with/cut comedies. I don't think I've ever cut a serious, dramatic piece. This is not to say I don't think I could do it, but it's the way the dice have rolled for me.

One of the assez difficile things about cutting comedy is the timing. You've got to figure out where people are going to laugh, build the pacing of the piece for maximum allowed laughage, and figure out *how long* people are going to laugh. I'm fairly good at pacing a piece out with jokes, if they're in the script, but it's the "how long will people laugh" question that always nibbles my bum. The answer is always longer than I think, which sucks because the next lines of dialogue are chewed up by audience laughing. What's also boggling is people laugh at the weirdest shit! You can think you've got your jokes all paced out, allowing for the laughage, and then people laugh at something completely ridiculous, like a 2 second pause on someone's face. Go figure I say.

I've got a pretty good sense of humor, but I've yet to come away from watching an audience watch a piece I cut without wondering how I missed a funny beat that got yuks. I reckon this is one of the few pacing practices than can be learned over time (I'm a big believer in pacing CANNOT be taught to some people) so there's hope yet. I still have to recut my last 48 Hour piece to get the yuks in quicker, and I'm cultivating more ideas.

ETA: http://www.showreel.org/memberarea/article.php?62

Now, on a side rant, there's this girl here who does not understand file management. She does not get the difference between media files and the project file. I'm not sure how many times I've explained this to her, but it still hasn't sunk in. I'm afraid to ask if she knows how to keep her file hierarchy in tact *shudder*. COME ON PEOPLE, LOOK AT THE FILE SIZE. Media? Huge. Project File? Small. DO THE MATH. OR I WILL BEAT YOU WITH A KEYBOARD UNTIL YOU GET IT.

Oh, that's right, Editing is what we talk about here!

Silly me! How quickly I forget!

So I edited something last night. Hooray. Except it was boring. Not as boring as toast mind you, but maybe as boring as toast with margarine. And that my friends is an abhomination. (Someone spell that for me, will you?)

Imagine a room with 6 directors, 1 editor, and 20 minutes of footage to advertise a lighting product. Imagine the teacher, as a funny ha ha to himself I'm sure, let these 6 directors do the taping sans script. At least everyone in the class actually does video stuff for a living. Otherwise we can all imagine THAT nightmare scenario.

Thankfully it wasn't that bad. I had to deliver my list of demands to the direkitors a few times, mainly "I will ignore you until 1 person, and 1 person only calls out my name to tell me what the next shot should be" since of course being the producer/direkitors they are, they must discuss everything to death. It's nice having the skill to block out people's voices and hear it as background noise. Unfortunately I can't really turn that off. Big problems in bars. But more on that later.

I complete the 30 second edit for this ad piece and call it a night. I don't think it's well done, nor do I think it tells a good story. A 10 second montage would've helped, but what do I know? I'm just the editor. The pixel wrangler, the motion monkey, the, well, you get the idea. I push pixels around. Too bad that doesn't burn calories.

So then at lunch today part of the class is there and calls me over. The teacher? Loved it. He's there and compliments me. I'm surprised. I thought it was cucky.

It's nice to know people like cuck. Especially professionals. And it's nice to know I don't get too bent out of shape over delivering cuck.

The high school students have invaded. I'll be working with them soon enough. More on that later. And, if you're lucky, pictures. I bought me a digital camera, woo hoo.

My summer in Maine, or more appropriately, Eating Mahi-Mahi in the Rain

Yes! The Post Girl (in DC) is now the Post Girl (in Maine).

What this means for y'all is:
You get to read about me complaining about the rain in Maine
Entertaining you with a page count of how many pages I've read thus far in Maine
Begging you for movie rec's for my Netflix
Possibly some on-topic content about post
And most importantly, invitations to hang out (be bored or party) up in Maine.

I knew y'all would be MOST excited. This excitement shall continue until August 19th, when the Post Girl (in Maine) hangs out at her parents house before trudging back down to DC to Move.

In the rare case that someone was not excited, I leave you with the following links to entertain you:
www.thesuperficial.com
www.amalah.com
www.waiterrant.net
www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/end.php

And, the reasons I have no fabulous post stories to entertain you with are as follows:
It's not that busy up here
I've only trouble shot a few technical problems not dealing with editing
I've been busy drinking on Panasonic's tab
I have no chair at my temp accomodations, therefore no editing of my own to do
Camden has good coffee, news which is almost as good as editing

Ok, maybe not the last one (well, there is good coffee) but you get the idea. I move on Sunday. The YoFi's (Young Filmmakers of high school age. be scared. i am.) invade next week. More itneresting tid bits then!