Go The Extra Mile!

LESSON LEARNED:
FIRST FILM SCHOOL PROJECT.

I write this because I want everyone to understand that your film crew (All positions) has an enormous effect to your final product or some of us call, "our baby!". Nobody wants a project that is looked upon as a failure, right? right. I'm going to compare two film projects that I've worked on. "Shelly", which happens to be a short film. The other is, my Absolut Vodka Pear Commercial. Shelly was my first film school project. If you watch the short film below, you'll see that it's not so great. Why?

SHELLY - SHORT FILM (2006)


Well I'll tell you why, It has everything to do with the film crew. Even though, I was a "1st Assistant Director", I've learned so much of why I would never do this film again if I had a chance to go back and re-shoot it! It's been almost 3 1/2 years since we shot this as a group. I'm very honest with people but I rarely ever speak out loud on the internet. I'm more of a face to face guy. The short film "Shelly", had a lot of flaws. Now, I'm not going to mention anything about Full Sail University. They've been a great assist to many of my projects. So, As you can see, I'm not a big fan of this particular project. "Shelly" isn't even on my official website. Am I embarrass by it?...well, it's more of a "disappointment" issue. I would like to point out the issues of young film students, acting, workmanship and following directions when told to do so.

I had nothing against the script. The Instructors only gave you a short amount of time to write it and then you had to pic the script out of 5 others. When I spoke with the writer, he told me that he had such a different vision than the director did. This film went sour when they finalize all crew positions.

While I was sitting down, I looked at my group wondering "This short film is going to be a disaster". Yeah, I could be "that guy" that stops thinking negative and does a 180 degree turn to help the group as much as possible. But that's the problem. My group seem to have all of their own agendas. No matter what, some one wanted to be a director, Director of Photography (DP) or a Camera Operator. This was the cause of our groups communication issue. Because everyone couldn't have a "Key Position", this would then turn others to find some way to attack the project or in other words, not putting in a 110% of their given title.

Being an AD (Assistant Director), I had to find some way to keep this crew under control. I was dealing with a group that wasn't picked base on their own choice. It was the instructors that picked the groups. So this creates another problem. (Trivia - "In the Motion Picture industry (For Key Positions), the crew isn't force to work with anyone". ) After that, everything went down hill.

*A student was removed from her duties because she did not lock down the location properly. There was only 3 (out of 12) of us that did research for our given positions.

*The camera Operator did not know how to use the camera. Even though he was given open "Labs" to study and learn the camera.

*Because our casting department was unorganized, we lost an actor. Which then had to be filled by our DP. Now I'm worried. Having our DP light a scene and then get ready to act for his character. This is going to be so much fun. When has anyone ever seen a Director of Photography take on a supporting role? My point exactly.

*The Acting wasn't even near par. There were only 8 seconds total of decent performances. I can't stand watching a film that has an actor trying to hard to deliver his/her lines.

*The director did one table read with 2 actors out of 3.

*One of our crew members decided to be brilliant and leave set without telling anyone. Not even the producers knew.
(Trivia - "The Industry does not tolerate that behavior. You would be "BlackListed", as they call it.)

Even though the list still continues, I would rather not waste your time. I just wanted to point out some main issues that needed to be mentioned. You just need to find that right "Film Crew". What am I talking about? Well, using the short film above as an example, I had no interest in the film crew. I haven't seen any of their work. I wasn't even sure what their skills were. So here I am thinking to myself, what am I going to do, to separate myself from others. This is what I did.

I went around Full Sail University to find students that were hungry to work but still were creative and passionate. Once I have gathered a crew, I then went ahead and pitched a commercial idea to a production company that I've worked with for about a year. I was working as a part-time editor. Well after I pitched my idea to the executive, soon enough it was green-lighted for production.

Now I knew that I had to show what I was capable of doing while attending film school. (This was 4 months after Shelly) I rounded up a 30 man crew for the project with a special effects team to do the ending visuals. There was a small budget (disclosed). The spec-commercial happens to be my very first outside project. I went into this project shooting for two different markets. American and International Release. Believe or not, the day that we shot this commercial on, happen to be my birthday. Even though the shoot lasted for about 14 hours, it turned out to be a successful shoot. So now, check out the Absolut Vodka commercial and you'll see the difference in production value. Member, the two projects are 4 months apart.

This is one of my favorite screen grabs from this commercial.



ABSOLUT VODKA PEAR COMMERCIAL(2006)
CREDITS

This is proof that you can do anything you want to do, as long as you know what your doing. As you saw above, the quality and visuals were so different. It had that feel of having a hight production value. Notice, that all it took was for me to take control and conduct my own business. Till this day, the Absolut commercial sparks interest in many of my clients.