Producing, Collaborations, and Film School (maybe)

I’ve gotten sick twice within the past month, once from the Covid booster. But twice? Currently writing with some fatigue. I haven’t written for movies today at all. I feel generally bleeeggghhhh.

This week I’ve been analyzing a script on CoverflyX along with the screenplay from Unforgiven, by David Robert Peoples. C.R.T. should be done by January. It’s interesting because PreGame we shot in October and it was finished by February. C.R.T., which didn’t require any extensive basketball choreography or anything, took an extra two months. I have no idea why this is. I think the color and VFX required took longer than anticipated, and I’ve had to work within the current schedules of other filmmakers. The person performing the aforementioned tasks on this movie, who did a really terrific job, wasn’t available until the start of November, about a month or so after Stephen and I finished editing. My sound designer, who I brought on after I had to pull the project from the post mixer I had hired because I wanted to go in a different direction, started working on the project at the same time. And he’s likely got his own projects, too.

For the record, I’m not complaining at all. That’s the way it is. I want to take this opportunity to note that even with their other projects and commitments going on, the people I’m working with in post have been upstanding. They’ve been communicative, transparent, flexible, thoughtful, responsible, and honest. I’m fortunate to work with them. It needs to be said that I’m paying them professional rates, and may not have had access to this sort of talent otherwise. It should also be said that these are people who I’ve worked with before. They know how I operate and that they’ll get paid what they asked for on time. And I can go days without hearing from them for a while because I trust their quality of work on all levels.

In an interview for Film Roundtable, David Lowery talks about how being able to trust a collaborator you’re working with on a movie provides you with a certain sense of relief. As someone who’s currently spearheading her own projects, I get this. You want to be sure that all the planning you’ve done in the shot selection, blocking, location scouting — that whatever is in your power to do as a director and producer to see the project through with a particular vision will be worth the investment. The skill, taste, and collaborative qualities of the professionals I’ve worked with thus far have ensured that the investment of my time and finances have yielded satisfactory results. Now, it’s ultimately your responsibility to shepherd the project to the best state it can be if a sound pass doesn’t come back to your liking or something, but that’s all part of the collaborative process. It’s nice to know that you and the other professional are willing to do the work to get a certain element of the film the way it needs to be to create a quality cinema experience.

I applied to film school again. This year I feel like is the year where I need to decide if I’m going to film school, or if I’m going to find another way to make movies. Now you may ask why I feel the need to go to film school if I’ve already made two projects outside of that context. That’s a great question.

One of the reasons is support. I’d like the scope of my next two projects to be larger. I don’t know if I have more pressing stories to say that can be executed within the confined space and limited blocking of my previous two shorts, which all took place at one location and with less than three actors. The next short I do will likely have more actors and/or locations. Coordinating C.R.T. and all the challenges I faced in pre-pro almost destroyed me. Had I known what I know now, I would have given myself a longer pre-production period. The challenges at this stage of filmmaking are likely unique to every production. Two months was not enough time for me to finalize the script, comb through eight hundred applicants of actresses, deal with unexpected personnel negotiations and dropouts that took hours of my time, storyboard the film, prep with Charles the DP, hire and communicate with sixteen crew — now that I think about it, it’s a miracle that this short has come out the way that it has. I’m not sure how much the chaos behind-the-scenes affected what’s in the cut. At the very least, from watching the final edit, you’d never know about the tornado that went on in pre-pro. My creative choices seem more like the results of writer-directorial strengths and limitations, rather than a lack of planning on my end. Which I guess is something.

But what’s clear, especially if I want to make projects on a larger scale, is that I’m going to need someone with more experience to handle the logistics. Producing projects of that magnitude on my own while shepherding them as a writer-director would be too much.

It’d be cool, for example, to work with aspiring producers getting their NYU Tisch/Stern MBA degrees. Getting that kind of degree requires a certain seriousness about the business and financials of filmmaking. As they’re also fulfilling their roles for a diploma, there’s the insurance they’ll take their roles seriously. As students who may have limited filmmaking experience, though, will they be able to perform their jobs competently? Hmm. That’s an important consideration.

There is really no point in making a film of a certain scope if you don’t have a competent producer. I say this from experience. Even Take Out, which had a total of four people in it, had four producers according to its IMDB page (though its two leads produced, too). Medicine for Melancholy, which pretty much features only two people in the film and had a crew of five at any given time, had two producers.

I do not consider myself a competent producer. With a couple of exceptions, there have been no lines drawn in the sand where it comes to money, which is what a good film producer enforces. Now, I’m not spending $80,000 on this short or anything, but I know in certain situations that have come up on this film where a producer would have and should have drawn the line. In pre-pro, a producer would have been able to help me find a good crew for a lower cost that could probably more or less still executed the vision that I had for this movie. Now, I may have been able to do this myself with more time, but this would likely be a prolonged task with its own challenges. A producer could help with this. And there’s other things I didn’t know producers did that would have helped in post-production. When it’s just you and the editor assessing footage after four weeks of refining the cuts down to a matter of frames, some additional project input from a trusted source couldn’t hurt.

Filmmakers: David Firth, Kogonada

Reading: Lil Kalish’s article on Los Angeles community fridges

Watching: Cashback (Sean Ellis)