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.

On set experience for Stopover City, pt. 1.

As you know, we did our first shoot for Stopover City this past weekend, and it was an absolute blast. It was incredible to get to see the script I co-wrote come to life with all the components--pretty amazing to think that it all started out as just a random idea between us writers one night. As for on-set experience, it was stressful at times, but I think that overall the work I did was a success so far.

Here's the breakdown of what I thought about how things went in my department:

Positives:

-set decoration, costumes, and props looked AWESOME :-)

-my art squad was so on point and they are all wonderful humans. There were a lot of things to bake and one of them did all of that for me which was a huge time savor. (I am learning to delegate, it's a process.)

-there were many costumes but I kept it all organized by putting small stickers on them that numbered which scenes they were worn in!!!

-positive relationship with my lovely director, director of photography, and AD. We all understood that each other had a job to do and tried to help the best we could.

Negatives:

-only had ~20 minutes to set up EVERYTHING in the bakery. (holy heck that's not a lot of time)

-was also pressed for time setting up for the bedroom scene...everyone started arriving at my house at 9 AM and the room we were shooting in was rather small so we all had to take turns setting up stuff ha.

-I'm worried about some continuity errors with placement of ash on Hazel's face in one scene, but we have pictures so we can hopefully re-create something similar this Sunday

-someone threw up all in my car saturday after the shoot which wasn't fun at all and kind of threw a wrench in my ability to remain stress-free for sunday's shoot ha ha ha

I am so excited for the last day of filming, and can't wait to see the scenes that our editor has already cut together. Will check in next week with updates on this Sunday's outcome!!

Until then, I'd like to share this precious photo taken on set of the other 2 writers & myself that I love a lot.

City of Angels

This past semester I spent in LA and I never thought I'd say this, but it was the one time in my life when I learned more about what I don't like than what I do. It took me until about 3/4 of the way through my junior year to realize that I picked the wrong career path. However, I don't really look at my change of interests as a negative thing because I've developed an immense amount of skills along the way. My college years have been the classic learning experience. One thing I've learned about the industry is to be prepared for anything and everything. This isn't even a reason why I don't like it, as  I often like to push myself to try new things that I've never thought of before.

One of my internships was with a company called Central City Stages. This was a family-run business and I guess I was technically an unofficial intern as they didn't have an internship program. I heard about the company through a professor here at Ithaca and decided to pursue them on my own because I desperately wanted to get experience with art departments while out in LA. I called them up, told them I wanted to intern for them, went in to meet them and was pretty much hired off the bat. I even quit one of my other internships because I knew that this was what I REALLY wanted to do. This was quite the unique internship. Very untraditional as I often found myself sitting at the front desk with the owner listening to his stories and conversing about something new everyday. One day, he gave me an entire historical lesson on 70s rock. Ironically I say I learned that I don't like the industry but I loved my internships because I learned life skills. For example, I learned to deal with being thrown into the mix and doing ultimate bitch work as an intern. Sometimes I was treated really great and other times, pretty much treated like shit. At Central City, I was basically handed off as an intern for the art department to utilize when productions came into the studio. Some of the most stressful tasks I had to complete were emptying about 8 bottles of mustard for a commercial (the hardest part was figuring out what to do with the excess mustard), transporting 500 pound trusses on a dolly through very thin doorways, and slating for two cameras for my first time in front of the entire guest population at Disney Land that night. Basically, I was put into very uncomfortable situations at unexpected times and had to problem-solve on the spot. Very stressful, but ultimately one of the best learning experiences I could have asked for.

Although I am most likely not going to pursue a career in the television industry, there are definitely aspects that I enjoy. You always have the opportunity to try something new (often not even by choice) , and it definitely never gets boring. I like being on my feet all day and the exhilaration of working on a time crunch. Set gets crazy and its a community experience. Its a great place to meet people and ultimately form life long friendships and bonds. I met some amazing people while in LA and they are definitely the ones that made it worthwhile. Although I am probably not going to end up living there, I am looking forward to going back and visiting and thanking all the people that made my time the best that it could have been.