Hello, Hive!
When people think of filmmaking, they’re picturing the part of the process known as production. Everyone on set, the actors getting in the zone, the shouts of, “lights, camera, action!” The reality is a little less glamorous than people imagine, but there is still a certain energy that you can only find on set, and I crave that energy.
On the first night of shooting, I was acting in a small role, just for fun. It was a short couple of scenes, so it didn’t take long to knock out. It was by far the easiest day, and we got to have a lot of fun goofing around in between takes. I felt that it set a nice tone for the rest of the shoot, because it meant that we could get comfortable with each other before things got crazy.
Catch me directing from within the scene
On the second day, the scenes were a little more complicated. I had more actors, one of whom was a child. His name is Jake, and he’s actually the son of one of my professors, who had been working on getting into acting. He was young, but had a good sense for the arc of each scene and the emotional journey of it. In one of his scenes, he was supposed to scream off-camera, and was having trouble getting into it. I didn’t want to scare or traumatize him, so I had to come up with a different solution: a game.
Ready to go!
I stood in a circle with him, Linda, and Steve (the actors playing his parents). When I pointed at someone, they would shout their line and point to someone else. We went around the circle, shouting and laughing, growling and screaming, and just getting into the game. I had the Noise Boys in the room to record it all, and got all of the sounds I needed.
Steve and Jake get into the game
On Saturday, things got off to a rough start. The first scene on the schedule required a lot of background actors, or extras. I had worked as background plenty of times myself, which did not prepare me to be directing extras. Having a large group of people in a shot that aren’t familiar with the script or shooting schedule is a challenge. It took much longer than I expected to get them all to reset and quiet down after each take, and before I knew it, we were two hours behind schedule.
Chekhov's gun - if someone gets a targeted ad for a gun, it has to go off by the end...
I had to step outside and think. We had a lot of wide, establishing shots with the extras, but only for one scene. I had planned to have both wide and tight shots for every scene, but I knew that was going to have to change. With the day fading away, I decided to send the extras home and shoot everything else close enough that the background wouldn’t be very prominent. Once it was down to the crew and the 3 main actors, we were able to get back on track and even recoup the lost time.
On Sunday, we had more locations than any of the previous days. Each “company move” takes time, and we had some other unexpected delays. On their way back from lunch, the actors got lost, and we couldn’t shoot without them. At one point, the camera batteries were all out and we had to take a while to recharge. Even so, we had fallen into a rhythm at this point. It only took one or two takes to get each shot, and we used the camera downtime to record extra voiceovers and sound effects.
Our highly professional studio sound setup
The final shot of the film also happened to be the final shot in our schedule. We call this the “martini shot,” and I’ve heard several origins for the nickname. I think my favorite story is that it came from Italian filmmakers who would celebrate the end of a shoot, called the wrap, by going out for martinis. Anyway, our martini shot was a drone shot that my friend Dan captured. He could only be there for a little bit of the shoot, but everyone was very impressed by the production value his drone brought to the film.
Dan, over by the edge of the couch, with other crew and cast members
Then, I had the joy of calling, “That’s a wrap!” on my first film. Instead of martinis, we went out for chicken wings. All of the energy seemed to leave my body, and I realized how much adrenaline had been keeping me going through the shoot. My friends were joking about me having been in “director mode,” taking everything seriously, even sarcasm and jokes. Now that I had the chance to decompress, the feeling of accomplishment was almost euphoric. That night, I wrote a poem.
”...Now I’m standing on a mountain range in a beach town
wearing the boots everyone else gave me.
I didn’t get here myself, but I was the one with the strength to climb.”
There was still a lot of work to be done. I knew that the clips and files wouldn’t magically arrange themselves into a movie. Next week, I’ll tell the story of the post-production process, but before I started editing, I realized something important. Throughout so much of school and working on film projects, I wondered if I fit in, if I was skilled enough, or if I was talented enough. I felt challenged to prove myself to my peers. But then, I realized that I never had anything to prove to anyone else. I had something I needed to prove to myself. And I did.
xo,
Cecilia
Congratulations @ceciliakeirstead! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
Your next target is to reach 6000 upvotes.
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPCheck out the last post from @hivebuzz:
Support the HiveBuzz project. Vote for our proposal!