2004-07-26
THIS MORNING ON THE PHONE:ANDY: Hey, Mom, what's up?
MOM: Oh, just sitting in the doctor's office waiting for the results of my pap smear.
At 10 AM the morning after two consecutive 14-hour days of my senior overview film shoot, I think that it's indicative of my tenaciousness that I found the strength to laugh at that.
Remember the unbridled hopelessness of my last entry? The one where I reported the loss of my lead actor mere days before the shoot? It seemed like the production would have to be put on standstill until a replacement could be found until Todd, the producer, suggested that I direct myself in the role. He had mentioned it before, weeks earlier as we were drywalling. It was mentioned jokingly then, but the thought had apparently resurfaced devoid of humor when we realized that we had reached an impasse if we were to stay on schedule. So he approached me in all seriousness, and I considered the option in reciprocated seriousness. Two days before the shoot, I accepted.
It turned out to be a wise decision. Johanna, the actress that we hired to replace Lizz Edele, carried her weight well on set. I actually had to focus on her performance about half as much as mine, and we worked well together. Yet, pulling actor/director duty was a very trying experience, and new to all of us. On my other shoots, I could concentrate on the setting up the camera for the shot, followed by the actors. Then, I'd sink back behind the camera to call the shots and make sure everything went how I - not the director of photography, not the assistant director, but I, I, I - wanted it to go.
On this shoot, however, I set everything up and then stayed in FRONT of the camera. It was working out well until we reached a part of the script that we weren't as prepared for as we could have been, and small power struggles began to erupt the clarity of actually WHO was in charge of how the shot should look became increasingly ambiguous. We persevered though, and through 28 hours of laughs, walk-offs, gripes, and (for like of a less cheesy word) triumphs, we made my film.
I make it sound rough, but really it was a lot of fun at times. Once instance in particular came with my big dramatic close-up, where I have to tell my bride-to-be how I cowardly dehumanized her during the legal process after her accident. I told everybody to set up the shot and take a few minutes while I got ready for it. Every actor has their ways to prepare for a highly emotional scene, and mine included pacing around, breathing heavily, generally pissing myself off. And once I was ready I walked onto the set, went right to my place and we shot. It was an extreme close-up of my face, and as I spoke I could feel that tightness in my chest that you get when the tears start a-coming. I was NAILING it. Yes. YES. Rob, who was working the camera, later told me that he could hardly see the action because he was actually CRYING into the eyepiece. And I come to the last line of my speech, and suddenly, CLICK. The film rolled out, promting me to calmly yell "FUCK!!!!" right into the boom mike, nearly shattering Matt Bills' eardrum. Sorry, buddy.
The shoot = finished. I'm satisfied with my performance and Johanna's, the set was constructed within an inch of yuppie authenticity, the crew worked well together, and the shots are beautiful. But I know that untimately, something will fail. A bulleted list (surprise surprise) of my three most notable film projects that failed not by my carelessness, but by act of God. And keep in mind, three most notable. Which means that there are more.
* FILM I - "The Block." My film was the most ambitious, detailed, and insanely planned shoot in the class. Nobody who was in the class and knew the kind of hours that I was devoting to that five minute film could objectively argue otherwise. Just ask, I'll show you my shot list and schematics. Take THAT, Mike Witman. And we pulled it off without a HITCH. And then we sent the film off to the lab, where half of it was destroyed in processing. RESULT: an A in the class, but a modest, cobbled-together cut of the original footage that I managed to finally find the time to put together only last year.
* VIDEO II - The trailer for "Barriers." The BEST editing I've ever done. I pored over a dozen tapes for a dozen hours to put together a 60-second preview for our class project. Every single frama was considered and accounted for. That's about... 20,800 frames. RESULT: And A in the class, but the trailer was deleted from the editing hard drive the night before I was going to print it to video.
* DIRECTING FOR FILM - "Stranger In A Strange Land." The night before the shoot I sat down with my actress and actor and said, "Okay, call time is 9 AM tomorrow..." and my actress said, "Wait. I thought you meant 9 PM!" And poof, she was gone. I had to call Emily in as a last minute replacement. This wouldn't have been a problem, but my grade was based on the performance of my actors, and we just didn't have rehearsal time to warrant an A grade. But just to stick it in and break it off, God decided to command the DAT machine to eat my sound tape halfway through the shoot. RESULT: Trainwreck. B for effort.
"Somber Carolina" is the most important thing that I will do as a film major at Webster. That should be sufficient enough for fate to come in and fuck with it. So cross your fingers for me. Yesterday I stood on the set and thought about how I'd had this idea floating around in my head for 7 years and it had finally come to fruition, and I'm too proud of this to let something like fate ruin it for me.
EDIT: "That was an anticlimactic entry. Tell us about the pap smear." -Ripple-Andy