Failure to Launch

[Bar Louis in the Hotel Fauchere in Milford, PA. Sushi pizza here is the ultimate comfort food for me, and it is a good thing. See below.]

I can't even tell you how upset I am. Or rather, was. At least I can see straight now. Couldn't do that for almost three days. Ahhh, so many lessons learned this week. And absolutely nothing else accomplished.

I am still in the Poconos, staring at a sinkful of dishes and a mountain of food, much of it that will go bad if I don't give it away. Less than a week ago I was so far ahead of the game! This was going to be the smoothest shoot ever! Only two actors, instead of my usual cast of thousands, only 10 pages, only three locations, but the majority of it taking place in one house. I had had two great rehearsals with the actors, including blocking, and they had it down pat. I had gone to Sam's Club and put $350 worth of groceries on my card, the only one that isn't maxed out. 3 of the 6 people that were going to be on the shoot are vegetarians, but two eat fish, so what I saved not buying meat I spent on crab cakes and shrimp scampi. Had my car packed to the roof with all of this food, plus props, computer, dogs, suitcase, me... Got up here Saturday night, unpacked all of it by myself, took me about an hour and a half. Eric arrived a couple hours after I did, he needed to shoot some B-roll of a little town up here for his movie. We did that on Sunday, I talked to the grip, Kit, while she was on her way up, and when she was only a few miles away, I got a call from Michelle's girlfriend that she was sick and was not coming up.

No DP.
No gear.
No movie.

No kidding.

I don't really even want to talk about it, but this blog is for you, to show you the downs with the ups. I'm not going to go into detail about how I feel about the whole thing because I haven't really sorted it all out in my head myself yet. People get sick, can't do much about that. Kit was a good sport and I took her sightseeing the next day before she headed home. I was able to reach the actors before they got on the road. They were disappointed, of course. Disappointed doesn't begin to describe how I felt.

Eric had his camera with him but no mic or lights. He would have made the 7-hour+ roundtrip home and back if I had asked him to, he's a good friend like that, to get the gear, but it really didn't matter without a DP, and he couldn't take the next 2 days off work.

After Kit left on Monday, I felt like I needed to stay up here another day just to calm down, regroup, maybe come up with an alternate plan. But after thinking about it, I really have no time to do this all over again before the "Smalltimore" screening on December 9th. It is just too much. The DVD release is the priority now and I can't take my eye off that ball.

I got some emails taken care of and some other stuff related to the screening done, including final confirmations of the musical line-up at the post-party. Details coming soon, I'll save that for when I am in a better mood and can give you the news with the excitement it deserves. I'm calm now but quite depressed about the whole thing, and at the prospect of reloading the car with all this food. Giant pain in my ass. And nothing to show for it. Absolutely nothing.

I haven't felt this terrible since I was in the early stages of pre-production for "Smalltimore". I had been talking to someone about producing the movie for a couple months, I thought we were on the same page, and then he asked for money - money that I didn't have, and even if I did, couldn't see paying for production work. Production is hard work, it is a pain, and takes organization, connections, and patience, but it is not brain surgery. I'm not saying that producers aren't worth paying, I am just saying that I am capable of doing it myself. I wasn't sure of that back then, though, and I was terribly depressed because I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me. I thought this person wanted to be a partner because he believed in what I was doing, but it was just a job to him. I had gotten myself into the mindset that I needed him to get this done, and some of that was because he made me feel that way, that I didn't know what I was doing.

But after I got over being depressed about the situation, I got pissed off about the situation, and I was determined to get it done and get it done well, so I would never have to be dependent on someone like that, and so no one would be able to tell me that something takes longer to do or costs more than it does because if I did it myself I would know. And now, I do, and other people are asking me to produce for them. I never wanted to produce, I wasn't really interested in that end of it. But here I am.

And where here is, is that I am still dependent, too dependent, on people who know how to operate a camera. That has to change. And it will.

Victory is Ours!

[My first award, the Judith Rheiner Independent Spirit Honor! "The Red-Headed Menace" won 1st Place at the 29 Days Later Film Festival]

If you weren't at the Creative Alliance last night for the 29 Days Later Film Festival, you missed a great time. And not just because I won something shiny!

Dawn & Dean, the organizers of the event and the competition, did a fantastic job, as well as contributing shorts of their own to the evening's line-up, though they decided they were not personally eligible for an award. There were 10 films in the competition, plus Dean's and Dawn's, plus a bonus short from Mob Television, so attendees got to see THIRTEEN shorts for $8! There was drama, horror, and lots of comedy. No two were alike, and all were enjoyed by a very enthusiastic (and sold-out) crowd.

Forgive me my cheesy-ness, but it really did warm my heart to see so many of the people who participated in the making of "The Red-Headed Menace" in the crowd. Of course Regina was front and center, of course Michelle was late :) . Of the EIGHTEEN actors that had speaking parts in our little 8 minute short, nine of them were present, including Nicole Smith, who played the oldest of the three children in the movie. She looked excited and happy when she arrived, but after we won, I thought she was just going to burst! Other actors attending were Cheryl Scungio, David Thornhill, Jr. (who got more screen time than he bargained for, thanks to some funny improv he did with Megan Rippey), and my reluctant star/"Make-up Girl", Lisa Knoch. Also both of our stunt guys, Jeff Wilhelm and Mark Mosier and their wives were there, and they seemed very happy with the way the stunts came across on screen. They are already thinking about how we should kill/maim/ignite Mark for the next production. Many of my extras were in the crowd, such as Kelly Coston, Linda Gustafson (who snagged the primo spot I had slated for Kelly, but she arrived a few minutes after we were ready to shoot because she was coming directly from Philadelphia airport), Lois Tuttle, and Lois' fake date Gary Morin. Crew members Megan Reed, Fred Besche, Elizabeth Foks, and J.R. Maroney were there, and Craig Herron, who was not actually crew but an actor this time, but he also designed my logo for Steel Corset Productions that I got to use for the first time. Short story long, "The Red-Headed Menace" was well-represented.

As a bonus, dear old Mikey B (ONE OF my Executive Producers on "Smalltimore" - Hi Tom!) came down from New York for the big to-do, and we are heading to his cabin in a few hours for the weekend. I'll be taking my hard drive and laptop to do some more tweaking on the short before I turn a copy over to the Hampden Short Film Festival, so hopefully you will be able to see an even better version of it there on Saturday, September 12, and ALSO since we won first place, "The Red-Headed Menace" will screen again at the Creative Alliance on Monday, October 5, during the CAmm Salon/Cinelounge monthly event.

I want to tell you about how happy I was to win this award and how much it meant to me, but I can't quite figure out how to tell you without sounding obnoxious about it. I put a LOT of work into this short, and it was nice to be recognized for that, but everyone who made a short can say the same thing. "The Red-Headed Menace" really was a group effort, and though I was at the helm, it would not have been a fraction of what it was without the incredible (and extensive) cast and crew - almost FIFTY people! I was even happier for them than I was for myself, because everyone worked very hard, took direction well, and it was a long day of shooting, but everyone did everything I asked of them, above and beyond. When Dean announced us as the winner, it was the shouts and squeals and (Regina's) screams that put a smile on my face more than the actual win did. It was an electric moment and I truly enjoyed it.

Michelle supplied the Grand Prize of a weekend's gear rental, but she was not one of the judges, none of whom I had ever met, so it was an impartial panel. I was talking to one of the guys from Mob Television (they took Second Place) afterwards, and he told me they didn't mind Second Place because that was the prize they really wanted, 8 hours of special effects work provided by Craig Herron/Herron Designs. Mob Television's short, "Tiny," was hysterical and my favorite (besides ours), and I would not have felt bad if they would have won. They always come up with funny shorts and I knew they would likely be my stiffest competition. "Tiny" will also be screening at the CA on October 5th.

The Judith Rheiner Independent Spirit Honor is named after a friend and mentor of Michelle's. Judith is battling cancer and was not able to attend. I've heard some amazing stories about her and hope to be able to meet her someday, and I am very proud to have received the first award in her honor.

Everything about this competition and the production itself was a lot of fun, and it is hard to pinpoint what "the best part" is. It is very satisfying to be recognized, it is good for the resume, it was an incredible feeling of camaraderie to have so many of the cast and crew there, excited and cheering for us. It was encouraging to have people who worked on "Smalltimore" want to be a part of it, and now to have those same people plus all the new people that worked on "The Red-Headed Menace" asking and offering to be a part of whatever I come up with next. That means more to me than I can explain in words, it makes me feel like I am doing something right, and it is more flattering than any award could ever be.

Last summer when I was shooting, "Smalltimore," which overlapped my friend Eric Thornett's shooting of his own feature, I was sort of jealous because Eric has his own sort of semi-permanent crew/cast/entourage, that work pretty well as a team, people he can count on, who will line up just to work with him for nothing but the glory of it. I also saw that on a monthly basis when attending CAmmSalon/Cinelounge at the Creative Alliance, with Mob Television setting the example of what a tight and self-sacrificing group of creative friends and cohorts can come up with. I wanted that. I really wanted that. But I had no idea how to go about getting that.

I think that probably the best part of making "The Red-Headed Menace" is that I feel like I have that now, or at least the beginnings of it. I do have people now, both cast and crew, who know that they can count on me to do what I say I am going to do, and to pull together a production that they can be proud to be a part of. And they reflect that back to me and give me their best, and that hand-in-hand effort is what results in a great production.

And I think the single most important thing that has come out of this that it has cast in stone both my friendship and working relationship with Michelle. We really were like a well-oiled machine the day we shot, and I know it is just going to keep getting better. If "The Red-Headed Menace" had not won, it was my evil plan regardless to talk her into doing another short with me before the end of the year. Now that I won the gear package for a weekend, that will definitely be happening - just with a bit less arguing about it.

I Do

(picture: Orlando Gonzalez, Joyce Scott, and Cheryl Scungio share an unscripted laugh during our grueling week of rehearsals. See #7 below.)

Tom Boynton of The Remnants came over last night and watched the movie straight through with me. We are talking about him possibly scoring some of the scenes that have no music or would do better with non-lyrical music. The sound still needs a lot of work, and it is driving me crazy. At least it is leveled off now so that I don't have to watch it with remote control in hand to turn it up or down, but in many scenes I seem to have overcompensated and now the music is too low. It is different watching it on a television from the other side of the room than on a computer in front of my face. The sound is perfect there!

Dinner with Phil Calvert tonight, yay! Now I have to remember the things that I did right that I wanted to tell him about. I had a few more things for the list of what NOT to do, but I didn't write them down and now I don't remember. They will probably come to me as I write this. Oh, there's one!

1. Carefully plan your shoot according to the seasons. Since "Smalltimore" is a romantic comedy, I wanted bright, colorful outdoor scenes. We shot for 2 weeks in August, and the weather was amazingly cooperative. However, there were some scenes we didn't get to, and as I mentioned, it took me 4 months to get those actors I needed all together for those scenes - several of which were outdoors. So for the day scenes we had to make sure we didn't shoot any trees, because now they were bare, and for the night scenes my poor actors were freezing because they had to be in summer clothes with no coats. And one of the scenes was driving around with the convertible top down! So if I were shooting a comedy, in Baltimore, I would try to start production in April or May. For something that needed to be more bleak, maybe end of October.

I'm sure more things will come to me, but let's move on to what I did that I WOULD do again:

1. Join the Creative Alliance and take every film-related class you can. I'll remind you that I had NO formal training in filmmaking. Before January 2008 I had never taken a single class on the subject. I took as many classes at the Creative Alliance as I could before going into production, and I still continue to take them, they can only make me a better writer, director, and producer. Especially if you see any class taught by Michelle Farrell, Rob Pawlosky, or Steve Yeager, TAKE IT. Also Aaron Gentzler or Stacie Jones-Gentzler. I haven't had the opportunity to take their classes, but I know them and they do a great job.

2. Make contacts and keep them up constantly. The film community in Baltimore is very small, so this isn't that hard to do. Actors, producers, crew... you never know when you are going to need someone. Be respectful and even when you really want to and you know you are right, NEVER talk badly about anyone in the industry. Everyone knows everyone, you will probably have to work with them sooner or later, and it will come back to bite you in the ass. Last summer, I think before we even started production, something bad (and COMPLETELY untrue) got back to me that someone said about me, and I was barely in these circles for a minute! Luckily the person who heard this misinformation knew the truth about the situation first-hand and straightened out the third party - who I had never even met, but I had heard of him because he has produced several movies.

3. Treat actors with the same respect you treat the film crew. As a general rule, in life, I try to treat everyone the same anyway. A lot of people on the production side of things tried to convince me that actors are a dime a dozen and should be glad to take any part I threw their way, do it for free and like it. I thought this was a terrible approach, and I would never even think about an actor that way, let alone treat them like that. What good would that do anyone? That kind of attitude just breeds discontent, poison on a set. On the flip side, I have been on a set where the Director actually said to the production crew that the actor, "is God." That attitude is equally disastrous.

4. If possible, hold your auditions someplace that has a professional feel about it. I was lucky enough to be able to hold mine at Baltimore Theater Project. This, I feel, gave the project some "cred," and got the actors more excited about trying to do their best and land a role.

5. The audition process should be pretty grueling. This is not to intentionally torture anyone, this is to weed out those who aren't serious about it. Tape all auditions. Review them several times (it should be grueling for the director also, not just the actors!). Call more than one person back for each role, even if you THINK you know who you want. The second round of auditions should be extensive and tough. See who's left standing, those are the people you want.

6. Have a table read, and allow the actors some input. This is something that only made sense to me, but I found out that very few writer/directors do this. Of course I had the final say, and there were some suggestions I turned down. But for example, this process is what led to Joyce Scott completely turning the character of Mrs. Talford around. As it was originally written, she was pretty crude. Joyce helped me to find a way, simply through vocabulary, really, to make her much more endearing, intelligent, and quirky. Having this sort of input also allows the actors to really OWN their characters. It means a lot to them to be a part of the process, because they are very rarely asked their opinions. Honestly this is one of the best things I did in the whole process, and I will do it every time. The other thing that I would not skip, that many do is:

7. Have rehearsals. Since actors in low-budget indies are often doing it for cheap or free, this may seem like a lot to ask. But I believe it is exactly why the chemistry between the characters in "Smalltimore," truly comes across on screen. Because we had this time together to become at ease with each other, and work out the kinks of what I was looking for from each of them in every scene, in every page. Especially with an ensemble cast, there was so much going on. I think the whole thing would have been a holy mess if we had not put the time in together in the trenches (40 hours total) before stepping on the set.

8. Be up-front with actors from the moment you place the casting call. If you can't pay them, say so. There are still loads of actors out there who will do it, and the ones who won't will just be pissed off that you wasted their time, and they will spread the word. Have a questionnaire at the auditions, and make sure everything is clear between you and that actor before the audition is over. Will they work for what you said you can (or can't) pay them? Will they do nudity? Have a problem with playing a gay character? Have reliable transportation? Even simple questions can help you suss out the divas who are going to be a problem on the set. If they answer every question with two or three sentences instead of checking the "yes" or "no" box, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

There's loads more, but I have to get some other work done today, so time to wrap this up. If you want to know more about my personal do's and don't's... take my pre-production class at the Creative Alliance on June 6th!

Class Action

I finally figured out how to make screen grabs (stills from the movie), so now I can give you a picture with every posting. This one above was actually from a camera test when Michelle was fooling around (that's her on the bench, as "Crackhead #1"), it wasn't supposed to be in the movie. But it is my movie and it makes me laugh every time I see it! And it makes Michelle rolls her eyes every time she sees it. Which also makes me laugh. Every time.

Anyway, I have awesome news! No, haven't heard back from any film festivals yet, calm down. Actually, the news might not be as awesome to you as it is to me, but I am personally very, very, very stoked. I will be teaching my first class at the Creative Alliance on July 6th! A one-day seminar on pre-production for indie films.

Michelle has taught a bunch of different classes there in the past, actually she is just wrapping one up right now, so she will probably find my enthusiasm amusing, as it is old hat to her. But I don't care! I get to talk about something I love for 5 hours straight, and get paid for it!

I have learned so much, a lot of it through trial and error, and I can't wait to share it with people who also hope to manifest their ideas for movies into reality. One of the things I love most about traveling within circles of creative people is the opportunity to watch an idea sprout from nothing, a tiny seed of an idea, into full-scale productions, whatever that might be - a movie, a play, a song, a painting. It is simply magical. And this class will give me the opportunity to meet even more people like that.

I have been so lucky to have met some fantastic people by taking their classes at the Creative Alliance. First and foremost, of course, Michelle, but also Steve Yeager (Acting for the Camera) and Rob Pawlosky ( Screenwriting Basics), among others. And through chance and happenstance, gotten to know other people along the way who have been invaluable to "Smalltimore," names you have already heard a hundred times or more, like Sean Stanley, Eric Thornett, and Charlie Anderson. All of these people have been so generous and honest with their advice, it always amazed me, and at the same time it always kind of made me wonder, "Why are they being so nice to me? Why are they giving me so much of their time?" There have been times I felt guilty about pestering them for advice or assistance, but they never really seemed to mind. And now I better understand why.

They must have had people like themselves helping them when they were as green as I was when I met them. It is an opportunity to give back, and pay it forward. And you get to talk about something you love doing, with people who want to do it themselves someday. If champagne were thrown into the mix, it would be the perfect day. I tried sneaking bubbly into the class format, but they put the kibosh on that.

(BTW, if you are interested in taking the class yourself, the new schedule should be out around the first week of April. You can register online at www.creativealliance.org. And OF COURSE I will be reminding you about this when the time comes!)

Anyway, the blurb and itinerary for the class goes a little something like this:

Workshop blurb: There are a lot of universal truths about movie-making. One of them is, for every dime and minute you don't spend on pre-production, you will spend ten times that during production. Another is, movie-making is a ton of work, but it is not brain surgery. Save thousands of dollars (and countless headaches) by learning how to be well-prepared before ever stepping foot on the set. Jeanie Clark, founder of Steel Corset Productions and writer/director/producer of the new romantic comedy, "Smalltimore," walks you step by step through the basics, including:
- How to be open to and receive reliable critique on your script.
- The re-writing process
- Factoring in production value
- Creating an LLC
- Funding
- Networking
- Dealing with actors: auditions, call backs, contracts, rehearsals, scheduling
- Crew & gear, your biggest expense: finding a crew to suit your needs without overspending.
- Building your Production Team
- Location management
- Insurance & permits
- Breaking down the shooting schedule
- Generating buzz for your project
- Craft services
- and generally preparing to expect the unexpected.


It is a LOT to cover in one day, but I am pretty organized when it comes to stuff like this, and a lot of it is much simpler than you might expect. You probably already know this, since you are used to my writing style by now, but I wrote the introductory blurb. I wasn't sure they were going to let me keep that bit in about filmmaking not being brain surgery, but I am glad they did. I mean no disrespect towards filmmakers - it IS a lot of work. But when you break it down into the individual tasks and components, other than the actual camera work, there is no reason a person who is creative, intelligent, organized, disciplined, hard-working, honest with themselves and others, and a good leader cannot make a film. Those are the components it takes, and it does take all of them.

Some of them, you either are or you aren't and there is not much you can do about it if you aren't - like being creative, or intelligent. There is a line in "Smalltimore" that Joyce Scott delivers as Mrs. Talford,

"No one ever used to be an artist! Any more than one can aspire to be an ar-teest! You are either an artist or you are NOT."

I didn't think that much about that line when I wrote it, I was just writing from the heart, thinking how I might talk 20 or 30 years from now to a younger version of myself. And I didn't know when I wrote that line that Joyce Scott would be the one delivering it. She never said anything about it to me, so I could be wrong, but I think that is the line that may have helped her make the decision to do the film. I remember there was just something about the way she said that line at the table read that made me think, she knows that I really get that, and I know that she does, and she wants to say that line.

I digress... but that is the truth. That doesn't mean that someone who is not creative can't have a large hand in making a movie. It just means they need to get the right people to collaborate with them on the project. Even a person who has ALL of those qualities can't do it alone, so you shouldn't be afraid of the collaboration thing.

Some of the other qualities I mentioned... well, you might have them and not even know you have them. In my case, I think of, "organized, disciplined, and hard-working," specifically. At the beginning of this holy mess, I never thought in a million years that I could produce a film. Write, yes. Direct, possibly. Produce? No thanks.

I overheard Sean once say he was going to print up a T-shirt that just said, "Producing is HARD." And it is. And I didn't think I'd like it, and it is excruciating for me to try to do things I don't like, let alone be any good at them. Producing is doing a million little crappy details like setting up the LLC, bank account, locking down locations, breaking down schedules, and all the stuff mentioned in the above bullet points. I did NOT want to do all that crap! I thought if it came down to me having to do all that crap, this movie would never get made.

But in the end, on the budget I was working with, I could not in good conscience pay someone to do things I was perfectly capable of doing myself, but just didn't want to. And it all turned out just fine. I gave myself a solid six months or so of pre-production time, as I was doing almost everything myself. The next time around I will probably get a small team of people together, but I am very glad I did it all myself the first time, because now I know how to do it. I wasn't super-disciplined, in that I did the things I wanted to do first, and put off the things I didn't want to do until I had no choice but to do them. But if you look back through my blog postings at that time (from the beginning of www.charmcitythemovie.blogspot.com up until production started August 1, 2008) you will see that I just chugged steadily along, and was just happy with myself as long as I accomplished one or two little tasks every day that needed to be completed for the movie. I really surprised myself, because not only did I do it, but I actually enjoyed doing it. Sometimes the little task of the day was as simple as posting a blog entry. That might not seem very important, but think about it - I know you are going to go see my movie, aren't you?

Festivus for the Restofus

Hey gang, I am SO sorry I have been a totally lame blogger lately, but I have been super-concentrated on editing, as I had some big deadlines coming up. I was working 4, 6, 8 or more hours a day on editing, mostly sound. I would get through the whole movie, painstakingly going practically frame-by-frame (there are 24 frames per second. That is PER. SECOND.), would review it again whole scene at a time before moving on to the next scene, then when done watch the whole thing straight through, and then think, "I can't believe I thought that sounded good!" and would start the whole thing all over again. The hardest part about pre-production was breaking down the shooting schedule. The hardest thing about post-production is DEFINITELY editing sound.

Istarted editing yesterday at about 3:45pm and stopped about 5:30am this morning, slept for three hours while the movie burned to DVD, then spent the next couple hours watching the whole thing straight through to make sure it burned without any glitches and then burning a few more copies I needed to send out in the mail to be postmarked by today. THEN had to scrape several inches of snow and ice off my car before I could get to the post office.

Also spent 7 hours with Michelle and several of my actors one day last week recording ADR for some scenes that the dialogue and/or sound was terrible in. ADR, as you probably already know, stands for Automatic Dialogue Replacement. That is an oxymoron of epic proportions. There is NOTHING automatic about it.

Though it really isn't as hard as I thought it would be. And I even did some Foley stuff. Foley, as you also probably know, is little sound effects you might have to add in. Like, a cell phone ringing, a door slamming off-camera, a beer keg sputtering. Some of that is easy, like just recording a cell phone ringing. Some of it is harder, like shaking up a bottle of soda before opening it to make it sound like a sputtering keg. The hard part was keeping Michelle from talking while recording the sputtering.

The hard part is the layering of sound, which I have mentioned before. Conversation ver roomtone over music over barroom chatter... it is exhausting trying to figure out what levels sound somewhat natural but still allow the viewer to focus on the dialogue.

A lot of you have been following this blog for a long time, some even from the very beginning, over a year ago, and I am really hoping it will pay off for you soon. And by that, I mean, pay off for me :) About a month from now, I should start hearing from the festivals I have been submitting to, yay or nay. And I'm not going to sugarcoat it for you. You'll here about the ones Smalltimore does not get into as well as the ones it (knock on wood) does. Probably some of these results will result in stories of money wasted, either on long shots or in festivals that let Smalltimore in but are far more po'dunk than they tout themselves to be and don't do me any good at all. But the whole purpose of this blog is to give you the behind the scenes of how it does (or doesn't) all work. Who knows? I may have just spent the last 18+ months of my life and thousands of my own and other people's dollars on something that will never bear fruit. But, honestly, I don't think so. There are so many things, adventures, crusades that I have been on or in in my life that I have put a fraction of the time, effort, blood, sweat, tears, etc, into and in them have experienced moderate to great success. Making this movie blows anything I have ever done absolutely away. I have never worked so hard or so long at anything, and have never loved working so much. I know that what I have gotten out of this experience already is invaluable, and could never be replaced any more than it can be described. There is no way that all that was for naught. But send your good energy my way regardless!!!