This Actually Happens Director's Blog Post 10/26/06
This Actually Happens is actually happening - I'm still pinching myself to wake up!
To give you some backstory, TAH started out as an entry into my first Play-In-A-Day festival at Umass Amherst in 2003. Only 2 playwrighting students were allowed to compete - I was one of them, my friend Mellissa Fendell being the other - and TAH was the only drama - and it won!
Cut forward several years to this past febuary - I really needed to shake things up a bit so I responded to the RIFC Sleather call for actors for extra work at the big Bandstand Live shoot. Little did I know that I would soon be bitten by the film bug, that in the months to come the RIFC would get me work on 4 crews, acting roles in 2 films (including a lead!) and that the team I joined for 48 hour film festival - wutup films - would win 2 awards and make best of providence! YEAH!!!
So that brings us up to now. This Actually Happens is the next official RIFC production and I couldn't be happier. It's a 20 minute film that's experimental in more ways than 1.
First, TAH is a test for the RIFC to monitor how much we spend on a short feature, including everything from gas to food to cameras, equipment and location rentals. This way the RIFC can track expenses and maybe start applying for grants to help defer costs in the future!
Second, TAH will be a stomping ground for new procedures and paperwork, so that new guidelines and easy to follow forms/practices may be established to help future productions not get muddied down in development hell with no paperwork standards to rely on.
Third, TAH is going to be shot in 1 weekend. That's right: 1 weekend. The plan is for no additional pick-ups, no rescheduling for more time. This means a LOT of preproduction work, but given my background in Theatre, I really look forward to this.
Last night (Wednesday the 25th of October) the core team, consisting of Mike Ryan as Line Producer/Producer, Broto Chackrabarti as AD, Brandon Meadows as DP and Mark Leonard as 1st Camera all assembled at my work to conduct lighting tests for the film in order to decide which gear we'll be shooting on. This is a hard decision because of the nature of the shoot - it's entirely at night in low light conditions.
To help out, A bunch of artists came by rehearsal: Jason Viscera of Armored Squirrel Productions helped with the cameras, Mark Aubrey of multiple RIFC productions documented the process with dozen's of photos and Darya Zabinsky stopped by as our stand-in actor-extrodinaire!
Brandon and Mark led us thru multiple setups repeated under multiple lighting conditions so we could later review the tapes and make our choice. Frankly, this is an alien world to me. Tons of cameras, lots of acronyms and lots of confusing but cool new ways to look at things: thru camera lenses and arpetures and "f stops". It's really damn exciting and completely dumbfounding at the same time - and always humbling.
This coming Saturday - October the 28th - is the big rehearsal everything's been building to - the introduction of cameras into our rehearsal process! We have storyboards, which I'm told will be up on the website very soon. I'm going to see if we can put up the whole bunch of them into an online album, so that anyone can log in, look at'em all and see what we're planning on. That being said, all the transitions to conversations are very planned out and generally understood - but rehearsing them means confirming the house, which we're close on. So for now, what we are blessed with this little time to go over the 4 big conversations in the film; what I'll be looking for is to really get the camera operators to be involved as a 3rd character in the scene. That means both the actors and the camera ops need to really bond in a way, get use to each other's intrusiveness while capitalizing on their shared attention. All this while exploring some serious drama - I'm f@#$!!ng stoked!
Ok - well, I hope that was a good first blog entry. If there's a way to add comments, please do! Ask questions, get answers, come together now, people! Another post soon - and I'll work on getting Mark Aubrey's photos online soon! All the best! Dave
This Actually Happens is actually happening - I'm still pinching myself to wake up!
To give you some backstory, TAH started out as an entry into my first Play-In-A-Day festival at Umass Amherst in 2003. Only 2 playwrighting students were allowed to compete - I was one of them, my friend Mellissa Fendell being the other - and TAH was the only drama - and it won!
Cut forward several years to this past febuary - I really needed to shake things up a bit so I responded to the RIFC Sleather call for actors for extra work at the big Bandstand Live shoot. Little did I know that I would soon be bitten by the film bug, that in the months to come the RIFC would get me work on 4 crews, acting roles in 2 films (including a lead!) and that the team I joined for 48 hour film festival - wutup films - would win 2 awards and make best of providence! YEAH!!!
So that brings us up to now. This Actually Happens is the next official RIFC production and I couldn't be happier. It's a 20 minute film that's experimental in more ways than 1.
First, TAH is a test for the RIFC to monitor how much we spend on a short feature, including everything from gas to food to cameras, equipment and location rentals. This way the RIFC can track expenses and maybe start applying for grants to help defer costs in the future!
Second, TAH will be a stomping ground for new procedures and paperwork, so that new guidelines and easy to follow forms/practices may be established to help future productions not get muddied down in development hell with no paperwork standards to rely on.
Third, TAH is going to be shot in 1 weekend. That's right: 1 weekend. The plan is for no additional pick-ups, no rescheduling for more time. This means a LOT of preproduction work, but given my background in Theatre, I really look forward to this.
Last night (Wednesday the 25th of October) the core team, consisting of Mike Ryan as Line Producer/Producer, Broto Chackrabarti as AD, Brandon Meadows as DP and Mark Leonard as 1st Camera all assembled at my work to conduct lighting tests for the film in order to decide which gear we'll be shooting on. This is a hard decision because of the nature of the shoot - it's entirely at night in low light conditions.
To help out, A bunch of artists came by rehearsal: Jason Viscera of Armored Squirrel Productions helped with the cameras, Mark Aubrey of multiple RIFC productions documented the process with dozen's of photos and Darya Zabinsky stopped by as our stand-in actor-extrodinaire!
Brandon and Mark led us thru multiple setups repeated under multiple lighting conditions so we could later review the tapes and make our choice. Frankly, this is an alien world to me. Tons of cameras, lots of acronyms and lots of confusing but cool new ways to look at things: thru camera lenses and arpetures and "f stops". It's really damn exciting and completely dumbfounding at the same time - and always humbling.
This coming Saturday - October the 28th - is the big rehearsal everything's been building to - the introduction of cameras into our rehearsal process! We have storyboards, which I'm told will be up on the website very soon. I'm going to see if we can put up the whole bunch of them into an online album, so that anyone can log in, look at'em all and see what we're planning on. That being said, all the transitions to conversations are very planned out and generally understood - but rehearsing them means confirming the house, which we're close on. So for now, what we are blessed with this little time to go over the 4 big conversations in the film; what I'll be looking for is to really get the camera operators to be involved as a 3rd character in the scene. That means both the actors and the camera ops need to really bond in a way, get use to each other's intrusiveness while capitalizing on their shared attention. All this while exploring some serious drama - I'm f@#$!!ng stoked!
Ok - well, I hope that was a good first blog entry. If there's a way to add comments, please do! Ask questions, get answers, come together now, people! Another post soon - and I'll work on getting Mark Aubrey's photos online soon! All the best! Dave
posted by Jeremy S. at
2:56 PM
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