De Last Post

DE LAST OF THE POSTES

     I probably should have gone the route of writing this blog post in the beginning of the week before my sanity packed up a suitcase and left in the middle of the night, but it just sent me  a postcard from the happy recess of my mind so here it goes before I forget.  

     Just like everyone else probably I must reflect on the past year in Fiction Field 2, it had and has its ups and had and has its down, but one thing is for sure...I learned a lot. I learned a lot about production, myself, and other people. Highlights include the workshop with David Scalafile and the Sound Workshop in the Field with Jeff Pullman, and of course the Beautiful Stopover City!

     This was the first semester where I was actually given a taste and an idea of the what the actual industry is like outside of work in the way of making film and television, and i'm happy to say I was excited and optimistic by what I saw. I definitely have a batter of understanding of what i want to do outside of college and what I need to be doing now to get there. 

     Going off that tangent, there is a lot that I know nothing about and there is a lot that I need to learn and fast. I am always over my head but slowly I feel like I am swimming up to the surface and hopefully my next film will go a lot smoother and more stress free than this one. I am so thankful for everyone who helped out on this project and their experience and dedication, I only wish that our in class group was bigger so we didn't have to rely on so many outside sources, as most of them had to take time out of their extremely busy schedules to help us, thank you to all you lovely people!

     To this semester and to this class I say Adios! And in some ways just good riddance, I can't wait to leave the inexperience of this semester behind on my part and now tackle bigger issues that I need to work on to be the best filmmaker I can be.  

Hello post-audio, hello score, goodbye sanity

Writing this post early in the week because Josh & I will have our hands full with editing audio all Thursday and then I'll be placing the score in the film.

When I think about this class I feel a lot of things: frustration, pride, anxiety, excitement. The time constraint is very unnerving and I just want to make the film the best it can be because we've put in so much work into it. There just isn't enough time in the day at this point to make everything perfect.

There are so many things out of my control. We wont get the edited ADR until Thursday, and I'm not getting music until Tuesday night. Then there's waiting for graphics editing/placing foley in. So I can't do anything on my end until at least tomorrow when we get all of that. (which is why I'm blogging now)

I know I'm the type of person who takes charge of things but I didn't expect to have to do so much of the actual work in post. I volunteered to do it because I know how to and it was easier to do in the time constraint than teach someone else how to log footage, etc. There are things I would change about the production, including my own work on it. I'm not perfect at all but I certainly tried. The film could not have been completed by the help of many of my group members and friends who are angels for stepping aside from their own productions to help in pre-production. This semester has given me so much stress and I am ready to be done.

Brb, crying over a bowl of cereal/pouring over all my other undone work/praying that I make it through this week in one piece. That was hella melodramatic and I know that everything will get done somehow. I'm trying to stay positive because I know the film will be great.

Learning from this semester

My name is Michayla Rose Savitt and this semester, I reached my breaking point. What was I thinking? Simultaneously doing production design for TWO films, one of which I co-wrote & developed? I should have known that doing all the production design for my fiction field 2 film would be too much, since I have a tendency to throw my whole self into every project I do (not a bad quality in all cases, but not great when you also have a thousand and one other obligations).

I also took on a large role in post-production by transferring/logging all the footage, re-writing the script supervisor's notes for our editor, and marking half the sound cues to foley in. And because I was so invested in other parts of pre-production, I don't think the production design was as spectacular as I dreamed it would be. This was super disappointing for me when I thought back to my original goals for my independent study in production design.

Over the break 12 hours total driving time to and from home, I had a lot of time to reflect on the semester thus far. A big reason that I end up going to sleep super late all the time is because I have too much going on during the day with planning for extracurriculars/having one too many radio shifts. The clarity was nice, but slightly upsetting. I realized that I need to discontinue more extracurriculars than I originally thought. I've written about this before, but I think I need to say it again for my own sake so I actually follow it. 

While this is an easy thing to say in theory, it's not easy in practice. I already made the tough decision to discontinue my involvement with the online radio station after this semester, since I have become more involved with the FM station. And like i've mentioned before, I am no longer on the producing team of After Hours. So two things that have been a big part of my life for more than a year, but I think I've gotten all that I can out of them and need to move on.

I'd really like to focus more on the art department side of things now that I have more experience under my belt. I made the decision to only take on positions related to art (aka already said no to producing someone's senior cinema thesis) because I want to further enhance my skills in that department. So far I've been recruited to working art crew for a media thesis, and also for this year's David Ames winning script. So i'm excited for both of those.

After rambling for 5 paragraphs, I'll leave you with some tips about how to stay calm when it feels like everything is about to swallow you whole:
-listen to music that makes you happy
-talk to a friend who can sympathize
-make time to exercise. it helps you blow off steam.
-journal about frustrations
-take 10 minutes out of your day to meditate
-make a list of stressor and number them in order of what's most important to worry about/what is actually under your control.
-hug a friend!!!!!!
-BREATHE.

That is all. Good luck this week, friends.

It Only Took A Day

It only took one day back from break and I am feeling just as stressed as the week before we shot our film, if not more. So I thought I'd blog twice this week, to take care of next week's now, because next week I will be editing audio LITERALLY ALL WEEK. (Help me).

I feel an array of emotions now when I walk into Fiction Field. I'm happy. I'm angry. I want to cry. I want to go home. I used to be so eager to make videos, but now thinking about producing a project just gives me a headache. Thinking about all the planning, arguing, coordinating, failing, changing, adjusting--it makes me very, very anxious.

I sometimes regret taking Fiction Field 2, not because I didn't learn (I learned A LOT) but because it's caused me so much stress this semester that I reached out to CAPS to seek help. I've been having problems because many components of this project are out of my control. We couldn't shoot at an earlier date because of scheduling conflicts. I can't get the picture lock of the film done because I'm not editing. I can't score the film. I have to rely on many other people for this. And I know that's part of life.

I don't believe I have enough time to edit the sound for this project. I will get it done, but I don't think it will be the best it can possibly be. Typing that physically hurts me.

I wanted this project to be something that I would be extremely proud of. I wanted people to see it and say "Wow, Sam was a part of that? That was really good." But now I'm afraid people will hear it and see my name in the credits and think, "That girl had no idea what she was doing." It is partially true that I don't have any idea what I'm doing. In this class and in life. I'm trying to do my best.

I just want to enjoy what I do and right now I'm not enjoying it at all. Next semester I plan on taking a step back from many extracurriculars and trying to work in smaller groups. I also plan to focus more on my mental and physical health. If you read this blog, please don't bring it up to me in class. It's sort of an automatic response now for me to start crying when I remember how stressed I am.

Thank you.

Keep Calm and Let the AD Tell You About How Stressed He Is

I'm a pessimist. Or maybe a realist. Regardless, I am stressed. Of course the week we have planned to shoot Dollhouse  also turns out to be one of the busiest weeks of my semester. The existing stress of having shooting dates late in the semester is bad enough; throw in some obligations and projects from other classes and top it off with a few tests and my week from hell is in full-swing. Forget about applying for internships for the spring. I'm just trying to survive. 

I am mostly concerned about our shoot running as smoothly as possible; I know things will go wrong, and what is worse is I know I won't be able to predict those things until they happen. As a group we are trying our best to be totally prepared, and we have had a long time in pre-production to get everything ready to go. So far my experiences on set haven't been the best, so even with our extended preparation time I am still anticipating things to  not go exactly as planned. Like Arturo talked about in class today, as the AD it is my job to make sure everything goes smoothly during production, holding each department accountable and making sure everyone is on the ball. 

The shooting schedule we have come up with is very tight, but I am hoping that our work in our long pre-production stage will pay off. There are a number of things swimming around  in my head right know about what COULD go wrong: audio, shot coverage, continuity, etc. The list goes on and on. At some point I guess I just need to trust my fellow group members and know that they will come through in their respective departments. Of course I will be providing oversight on set during the shoot, but I think that there is a fine line between micro-managing- which actually slows down production- and making sure everyone is doing their job (correctly). 

I have never taken on the role of Assistant Director before. I'm a little intimidated, mostly because we are shooting so late in the semester. We will have adequate time in post; I'm fairly confident about that. But we do NOT have time for any major re-shoots or audio issues. I get it, things happen on set that are not always predictable or avoidable. I am prepared to help deal with those issues after we shoot. But I CAN control or prevent any major issues from happening in an effort to make post production go as smoothly as possible. That pressure, however, is leaving me a little stressed and anxious. I don't want to let my group down come shoot days, and I want this project to reflect all the hard work  our members have put into it and finally be something I am proud to put my name on. 

Looking back, looking forward

Now that we have (basically) wrapped on principal photography for Stopover City I feel a huge weight off my shoulders, and have started functioning like a normal human being again???! Obviously a lot has to be done in post production (our editor already has a rough cut), but I have confidence in my team that everything will be just dandy. Now I can do things again such as: sleep, eat meals, and look ahead to future projects. I had a ton of fun doing developing Stopover, and it has inspired me to start development on my senior thesis which I'd like to create next fall. It's honestly never too early to start pre-production, so why not start now! Pretty recently I decided not to take any production classes in the spring because this semester was so intense--I'll definitely work on other people's films here and there but I need a semester-long breather from production classes. 

Being less stressed has also allowed me to think ahead to future semesters logically--I turned down the offer to produce ICTV's late night show After Hours (which I currently Assistant Produce) because I realized that producing isn't my thing. The upside to turning it down is that I was given the offer to design a new set for the spring semester. Here's the current setup of the show:

It looks nice once cameras are framed up, but the walls are super heavy and those brown beams are literally falling apart and every Tuesday I fear that one of the PA's will get hurt. Fortunately Porn: the Musical is donating 5 of their thin white walls to us, which i can manipulate any way I'd like. I'd personally like to make the set a bit wider, and 86 the bland white walls altogether. It's definitely going to take some time & careful effort to plan, but I'm hella excited to do it.

It definitely won't be as extravagant as Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, but hey, I'll do my best with what I have. 

What's the Point?

At a certain point during the 4 hour Prerequisites shoot last night (in which we forced Canon to dress up as a clown and pull 3 takes worth of colored paper out of his mouth), I paused for a moment and asked myself what I was doing there. Why would I voluntarily put myself in the position of organizing, directing, and otherwise running a six-episode ICTV production when I was already taking 16 credits worth of classes? What kind of masochistic, deranged person would do that to themselves? And, come to think of it, why did I want to be a part of the film/TV industry in the first place? Everyone that I've talked to, all the advice that I've been given up to this point, has all more or less warned me about the difficult and relentless pace of Hollywood. It sounds, to be blunt, fucking awful.

So then I got into a little bit of a funk, barraging myself with self-criticisms and convincing myself that my show, which I've spent a good 9 months on, would turn out to be a piece of shit, with a cast and crew who hates me for wasting their time and who will never voluntarily work with me again. 

This post is not about Bob's Burgers.

It was kind of a dark place. 

That, in turn, lead me to ask this question: does film matter? Is the source of 90% of my stress something that I should be stressing about at all? I could be studying medicine right now, or physics, or literally anything else that would allow me to contribute to the world more than I already am. I watch episodes of Bob's Burgers and call that "studying." So. What's the point of it all?

I'd love to say that I have a definitive answer to that question, but that's not really the case. However, since a purely whiny blog post would kind of suck, I did a little googling and found a really cool collection of quotes about why film matters. And it was actually pretty inspiring. The full study/article can be found here. (It's got lots of pictures, it's definitely worth a read) 

The study is basically a collection of interviews with prolific filmmakers giving their opinions on why film actually matters. The answers range from the inevitably annoying (film is art, and like, without art, what are we really) to the thought provoking (my favorite quote being "as long as we continue to enjoy the peculiar sensation of gathering with a bunch of strangers in a darkened theatre, film will still matter.")

The biggest thing this article reminded me of, however, was that film is entertainment, and human beings actually yearn to be entertained. It's a form of escapism: as Gabriel Solomons says, "film matters because it has the power to connect us to a world outside of our own, even if the only traveling we do is from our sofa." Film, like any good novel or piece of artwork, allows us to escape from our every day lives and just be entertained. There's no effort, no immense amount of concentration required. Films can do something as simple as make us laugh or fascinate us visually, or they can present us with ideas and concepts that stick with us for the rest of our lives. A good film will do all of these things simultaneously.


So maybe this whole post was for my own self-satisfying benefit, but long story short, that's why film matters. If you ever find yourself in my position, desperate for some sense that what you're doing is actually somewhat important, don't give up hope. Take a deep breath, step off-set for a minute (or a week) and have faith that what you're doing matters. Movies are always there for you when you need a break, and hey: someone's gotta make them. 

Handling Pressure and Staying Positive on Set

By the time Arturo gets around to reading this post, I will have been on a set 5 times in the span of 8 days.  Two of those times (both of our group shoots for fiction 2) were for 6 hours, and the other three (for my ICTV show, Prerequisites) should each last a minimum of 4 hours. If I did my math right - and hey, there's a good chance I didn't - then I will have been on set either directing, producing, or script supervising for at least a total of 24 hours in the past week. With so much time spent planning, organizing, and figuring out who does what and when they do it, I've found that's it's pretty easy to lose focus on why you're really there. 

Sets, generally, are pretty stressful places to be, particularly if you're in a high up position and have a lot riding on whatever it is that you're filming. I think that sucks. I can't speak for everyone else in the TVR/Film program here at Park, but I know I'm here because I love making films and television. There's nothing else I'd rather be doing. What I'm slowly learning - mostly from working for ICTV - is that when you spend so much time on writing and shot listing and scheduling and everything else that goes into preproduction, when it comes time to be on set, you can tend to get frustrated when things don't go exactly as you planned. I wanted to find ways to help deal with that pressure, and hopefully make it easier for myself - and anyone else - to stay cool and have fun on set. 

I found an article that I really liked, written by Evan Luzi, that talks about five ways to "handle pressure and perform better on set." Most of his suggestions are for ACs, but I think they can be applied to pretty much any on-set position. Case in point: the first step is to be prepared. Probably the most important thing that I've learned over the past few week/few years is that preparation, as annoying as it can be, is by far the most important thing you can do regarding filming. If you're on set and don't have a shot list, you're screwed. If you don't know where your lights are going to go or how your actors are going to block out a scene, you're screwed. Being prepared is by far the easiest way to save yourself from being frustrated on set, and it will also give you a better overall product in the long run. 

Luzi's next two steps are to be confident and relax. These are way harder than they sound. However, confidence comes with experience and preparation, so as long as you stay on top of everything and have faith in yourself, other people will have faith in you as well. Relaxation, on the other hand, is different for everyone. Whether it means leaving set for five minutes to go get a snack and drink of water or just taking a deep breath in between takes, it's really important to not let the stress get to you. People work better when they're relaxed: I think that's a fact or something. 

Above everything else, though, is perspective. It doesn't matter if you're Steven Spielberg or a PA on the set of a CP2 film: all we're doing is making movies here. The worst thing that can happen to you in this industry is that you get fired. In college, the stakes are even lower. We're not making any big, world-altering decisions here (although some people beg to differ). For the most part, we're making movies (or TV, film, art, whatever you want to call it) for the entertainment of others and for our own self-gratification. It's ok if things aren't perfect. Take a break. Go for a hike. Call your mom. As fun/awful/stressful/amazing as it can be to make things, there will always be things that are more important, both for your well being and the well being of those around you. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go make a shot list.