Production Journal: The Principle of Things- Day 1 Part 1

I was cast in a principle role in a North Carolina School of the Arts short. This was to be a new experience for me, as I'm rarely just an actor and I don't often get the chance to work with film. This project was being shot on 16mm. Lucky NCSA kids and their film cameras.

Day 1:
I arrived on set at 5:50 am, 5 minutes late and aching with exhaustion. It was cold, and I was told that my nice warm leather jackets wouldn't work because the color was too dark. I was wearing a windbreaker and a hoodie underneath. I was hungry, I had planned to stop for something to eat on the way, but no where was open at 5 am. I wasn't worried though, I assumed that a production that promised meals would not neglect breakfast.

I walked up the hill to the call area and was greeted by the director. The director, Sergey, was nice enough, but his cadence, volume and use of language made me wonder if he only had a very vague grasp of English or if he was very stoned. I shook off his greeting and retreated to the closest building. It was filled with about 20 people I didn't know.

I briefly looked about for the other actors, I hadn't met them yet and wanted to start bonding before we were charged with acting like lifelong friends. As it happened, though, the actors forgot to wear their name tags, or carry an entourage. As I stood awkwardly inside, I looked out at the campus. Someone had once told me that the film portion of the school was decked out for filmmaking but I had never seen the campus myself. As I stared out at the fo-theater and shops I again cursed the privilege of NCSA students with bitter envy.

After a few minutes of waiting I heard someone say behind me:

"Are you an actor? Come with me, I'll show you to the dressing room."

They weren't talking to me. They were talking to a tall, impeccably groomed actor who had just walked in. I followed the two up a staircase and into the dressing room. I introduced myself to Woody, the lead actor who I had followed into the dressing room. I was a little intimidated, Woody was a good 3 inches taller than me and looked more like a model than an actor. I was a little worried that someone like me, who was a very part time actor, would not cut it in this sort of production.

Woody and I started to talk, he was a student at Chapel Hill and he was also into production. I had been told that both of the other principle actors were coming from a few hours a way, but it didn't fail to surprise me anyway. Before either of us had said much, the two make up ladies showed up. I had expected to be made up for every scene, but apparently Woody was the only one who was to get makeup at all, for his scarring do to an earlier scene where he gets beaten up.

As we were talking Sergey appeared with the script supervisor in tow. He informed us that the 3rd principle actor was not going to make it to the first scene we were to shoot that day (which, incidentally, was the last scene in the film.) It was only a few lines, but Eric, who was the actor running late had 1 of the lines. Taking it in stride, Sergey cut the line that Eric, or 'Leo', had and gave one to Woody, explaining why Leo wasn't there. I thought it was overdoing it, giving an explanation for his absence, but I said nothing. In truth, I wasn't that huge of a fan of the script, specifically the title, but it was miles ahead of the other scripts I had read from NCSA.

Sergey then picked out wardrobe with us, which was only a jacket, and decided on the light windbreaker I had brought. He directed us both downstairs where the producer was waiting to take us to the location. We hopped in the car with the producer, Erin, and the art director, and took off for the downtown location.

The scene we were shooting took place on a rooftop. They had garnered what had to be the 3rd tallest building in winston to shoot on. We walked into the extremely nice lobby and passed about 3 residents with dogs. I immediately decided that if I could get an apartment in the building for under 2 grand a month that I was moving when my lease was up. The overly helpful security guard led us into the elevator and up to the 18th floor. We exited, only to enter another elevator that took us all the way to the roof entrance.

They put out the food and I was heartily disappointed. It was a few crafties but no meal. So as I fought my gurgle in my stomach I went to check out the space. It was freezing and windy, of course, 20 floors up. The director noted that the first shot was going to have us standing on a heating vent and looking out at the city as the sun rose. It seemed easy, no dialogue, except that we had to stay as still as possible. Since wearing the hoody under my windbreaker gave me hunchback, and standing on a tall building at 6 am in February was about as warm as the arctic circle, not shivering became an issue, as did my red, red ears. Woody had it just as bad, he was wearing what he referred to as a "Canadian tuxedo", a denim jacket over a t-shirt.

We went back inside as they continued to prep the shot, and for the first time, I truly realized just how boring it was to be an actor on a film. Previously on sets, even if I acted I always did something else as well. There was never any down time for me. I hung out and talked to Woody and the makeup girls as Woody was having his scar applied but I was painfully bored. I suddenly realized why actors never hung around after they were done for the day or helped clean up.

Thankfully, it wasn't too long before we were ready to go on the first shot. By the time the first take was over I had heard at least 4 words that I did not know. The curriculum at the school must mold these kids so they can be injected right into hollywood, because they used nicknames for everything and they had more crew at one location (a small b-unit was at the second location preparing to shoot there) than I usually had cast and crew for the entire production. For the duration of the production I was to learn exactly how that affected their methods.

Editing to music

Editing to music is something that I excelled at right away. It's something that takes more music knowledge than editing prowess.

The key is to let the music make things happen. Not only the cuts should be to the music, but also the camera movement and the character movement. This becomes difficult, specifically in fiction, to make it cohesive, but you are allowed a few frames to fudge with movement, as long as your cuts are in time.

Now the most obvious place to make a cut is at the end of a musical phrase. But very often the phrase is too long and you want to make multiple cuts within the phrase. Regardless, you should almost always cut at the end of a phrase, regardless of how many times you cut within it. If you let a shot carry over from one phrase to the next anyone who watches it will feel wrong footed.

Inside the phrase cuts should be made on strong down beats. This usually indicates the first note in a measure, or every 2 measures and so on, but it can vary greatly depending on the music. In your typical rock song, it's best to go with percussion or rhythm guitar. Bass is doable on many songs as well depending on how prominent it is, but vocals and lead guitar are typically not going to give good places to cut. A strong down beat for percussion will probably be snare, rim, bass drum, or some combination of those. Rhythm guitar's downbeat almost always comes at a chord change. Different instruments have down beats at different times, rhythm guitar might be every 6 measures while percussion is every 2, so you should pick which instrument you're going to cut to. If you get caught, and say, don't have enough footage to make it to the next rhythm guitar, you can switch to bass. Here is a small diagram to show how you might line up a phrase.



If this had been a real project, I probably wouldn’t have switched instruments so quickly, but assuming this is the beginning of the song, I like to get some quick cuts in to introduce the montage or whatever I’m cutting.

Something that you might run into is not being able to find the downbeat. Sometimes it’s a little hidden in ballads and certain types of electronica, as well as unusual occurrences in other types of songs. Listen carefully to each instrument, and when you hear it repeat, that is most likely a downbeat. If you are cutting to a ballad or something else with a weak beat, be careful how you use hard cuts, fades work much better until the end of the phrase. Quicker music with a stronger beat is another matter. If you’ve ever played music, you’ll be able to find the downbeat without any issue at all, but non-musicians might have some trouble. If you can’t find it by listening to each instrument and hearing where it repeats, try tapping your foot to the music. Listen for what your foot is following and wait for the loudest note. That’s probably your cutting point. It’s not a perfect method, but if you don’t know music, this probably isn’t going to be your game anyway.

Cutting is the easy part. Matching movement to music is much more difficult. If you’re doing straight fiction, you might not want to match movement to music. If you match it too close, it’s called Mickey Mousing, and as the name implies, is only fit for 1920s cartoons. If you’re working with a composer, though, he or she can make sure that doesn’t happen by giving you more subtle cues within the music. Since you’re matching your cuts to the bass, percussion or rhythm guitar, you want to match your movement to something else or things will get ugly. Movement works best with the lead instrument, typically vocals or lead guitar in rock.

It’s difficult to explain exactly how to use movement because for every shot and every song it’s totally different. The only real advice I can give is my music editing motto again: Let the music make things happen. I’ve put an early video I did for Embarq below for an example. Watch how the music makes things happen, turning the lights on, swinging the logo, making the camera flash, etc.



In the spirit of letting the music make things happen, the music can be a little early, but never late. The audience’s brain is more likely to forgive lateness in the visual than the audio (though 3 or 4 frames is all the leniency you’ll get, and it’s best if you’re not early at all). However, the corollary to letting the music make things happen is of course, letting the video create the music. That is where the video would come early, but it leads almost immediately to Mickey Mousing, so unless you’re working for Disney, it’s not a good idea.

The inability to just enjoy movies

It's been developing ever since I got into film. I can't imagine I'm the only one this happens to, but as a movie is playing, less and less am I just being entertained and more and more am I think things like 'I bet the did that shot with a 12 foot jib-boom and a locked fluid head tripod'

The fact that it is becoming more pronounced became evident because I'm starting to do it to animation, too. I pick up on the subtle differences in the types of animation in futurama, and I watch how disney uses layered backgrounds to get the chance to do the animation equivalent of a 'oner' (a long, moving take that stretches on past where you would normally cut).

The truth behind it is- I stopped seeing this:



And started seeing this:



It, of course, comes from knowing too much about what goes on to make the movie. It makes me wonder if people who specialize in special effects (such as the cutting edge CG ones that I am blissfully unaware of the specifics behind) have it even worse than me('do you see the blending around that cutout? LAAAME.')

It's not such a bad thing, I don't guess. Career wise, it helps me identify techniques I might want to employ on one of my own projects. However, when I just want to watch a movie for fun, something just for entertainment, it becomes rather bothersome. Also, when I point these things out it makes me sound extremely pretentious.

Via La

I bet most ambitious people want to be revolutionary. I don't mean in the Remember Remember the Fifth of November way, just revolutionary in their own field. I know I do. When I was still way big into being a professional musician I wanted to revolutionize music. When I was in college and first got into advertising I wanted to revolutionize advertising. And of course after that I wanted to revolutionize filmmaking. It's exciting to think that you could be responsible for an entirely new way of doing something, or even doing something entirely new.

I heard on the radio yesterday that Coleman Hawkins completely changed the meaning of the sax. I think that's a bit of an overstatement, but it certainly isn't wrong. He was more or less the driving force behind making the sax a jazz instrument. Then later he helped move jazz music into bebop.

It made me think how hard it would be to be a revolutionary in modern society. In terms of science everything is moving so quickly forward that you'd have to make a hell of a breakthrough to be considered revolutionary. In the arts and many other fields the free exchange of ideas is impeding revolutionaries from breaking through. As anyone begins to have revolutionary thoughts or progress the community gets involved and progresses it as a whole. So the revolutionary is just a small part of the actual revolution-which is appropriately more gradual, and might not be called a revolution at all, just progress. And even if you are fully responsible who's to say it will be accredited to you? The community will probably get credit regardless.

And even without free communication interrupting the artistic revolutions, can there be progress? Now without strict guidelines on what gets shown (free communication strikes again) artists have explored areas they simply wouldn't have been able to get noticed a few years back. In filmmaking I could tie the camera from my doodle and spin in circles until I made myself sick and I wouldn't be doing anything original. And I hate to say it, but musicians are quickly becoming useless. Pretty soon we'll have the technology for computers to write and perform just about everything but vocals. And even vocals won't be all that far away. I'm sure there will always be human musicians because you can't simulate real emotions, but I'm not sure how much longer they'll matter.


It seems like revolution is all but dead. Except for the violent kind, which, admittedly would probably be fun. So I suppose the chances of anyone from our generation being a revolutionary is pretty slim. But I'll keep striving for revolutionary and hope to land somewhere in between excellent and groundbreaking.

Bowling for creatives

In advertising, the creative directors, writers and art directors are called creatives. Now, I've wanted to be a copywriter since I got into my advertising major and learned what a copywriter did. After that I got into the film scene. Since then I've had aspirations to be a screenwriter, director, editor, and producer. Not at all at the same time and not with the same intensity. I also like advertising as an industry, so I've thought of mixing the two worlds, like I'm doing now or going to work for a production company that does spots.

Recently I've had a bunch of career prods, and I'm not sure what direction I should take. I suppose there are a few options:

Copywriter: Pretty cool and not terribly hard to get into in comparison with the rest of my job specs. However, I've seen how young copywriters get treated and it's not pretty. In the end they answer to some know-nothing creative director. And if you don't like your job you're pretty much screwed because you're going to be there 60 hours a week. Plus, this will probably involve 2 more years of school- it's required at mullen and it would probably be a good idea for anywhere. Also, I would go crazy if I wasn't making films, and the extra time at work would make it hard to even have that as a hobby.

Director: Hah. How many people aspire to this? True, I have actual talent, but the only improves the odd very slightly. The only way I'm ever going to get to do this is if I produce the films myself. Which, if I come into some money or find a wealthy investor who is interested in the art of film and not making money- I could do some equally unlikely thing. And when I say wealthy, I mean it. I have 4 feature ideas I'm working on right now. The cheapest to produce at a rock bottom budget would be 75,000. It was all fun and games in college, but the gig's up, sweetheart.

Editor: Well, I've got and I'm getting experience. I could probably break into the big times as soon as I get to do something worth showing at mullen. But I'm not sure this is for me. I've got some skill at composition, but being in advertising I'm asked to do all sorts of stuff like animation and sound design. And judging by the trend of the business, there might not be a place for a straight composition editor like myself who sucks horribly at animation. Also in many things I do I get to be told how to edit by people who wouldn't know how to digitize media. I'm sure it's worse in an industry like advertising where not everyone is in production, but I know a good many directors who don't know jack about production. Besides, forfeiting creative control every time the director wants me too, even if he does a good job, isn't my idea of a fun time.

Producer: I don't think my heart can take this job. I have an easy in- I've been told a number of times that I might have to be moved to production if business keeps up. Once I work in advertising production it would be easy to move to whatever media I want to work in. But it's a ton of pressure. I like the leadership of the role, but again, I'm not sure my heart can take stopping every time something goes wrong in ANY facet of production. On the other hand, it's a good position for someone like me, who is well rounded and has touched every possible job in filmmaking.

Screenwriter: This would be pretty cool, but it's something I can try to get into while working in another job. Also, even if I got steady work as a writer, I'd still not be happy unless I got to do something else during production. I'm writing 2 feature scripts right now to send to studios that I've already decided if I can sell them, I'm using the money to fund one of my other productions on the table.

So I have any number of complicated options, with the nagging fear that I won't be happy no matter what I do, and that if I go into film and 'make it' that I'll be restless because I'll have no where to go from there. Right now, I'm trying to decide where to make my next step. 3 things have happened very recently that could open a career for me.


1) The writer's strike- I was only half joking when I said I was going to be a treacherous scab. I'm blazing through one of the feature screenplays I'm working on and hopefully by the time it's ready to go the studios will be eager to hear from writers.

2) I just got a form in my e-mail asking me where I see my career heading. If I write in that I'm planning to go into producing, I'll probably be in LA by next week, and I'm not exaggerating.

3) I just got invited to go bowling with the creatives(agency event, pretty much everyone is going to be there). A good many of them owe me a favor(that's the great part about having a job no one else can do without training, people think they owe you just for doing your job). If I ask them about agencies that don't require portfolio school, or to help me put a book together, or to put in a good word for me at VCU, miami or brainco (the only portfolio schools I really want to go to) I have a great shot at being a copywriter or in portfolio school by the time my lease is up.

So really that next step is almost as baffling as long term goals.