Umm... can I talk to Marketing?
I received an email over the weekend from the production coordinator of a film I worked on last year. Apparently, it's been accepted to the 29th Hong Kong International Film Festival.
There was a link to the film page, and so on. However, the picture the director decided to submit, leaves a little to be desired, and doesn't represent the film well... at least the film as it was scripted when we shot it.
Let's just say I'm not surprised. I was pretty sure from the time the film started that I wasn't going to be enamoured with the end result. However, the nature of this business is that when you're starting out, you don't always get to pick what you work on.
It was the second paying gig that I'd gotten. I was to be the 1st assistant director, I was going to get to meet a bunch of new people and hopefully make contacts. That and the producer was a guy I'd met and worked with on another project, so I hoped that it'd be a good way to get to know him better.
The director is from Hong Kong. English was definitely not his first language. When it suited him, he'd pretend he didn't speak or understand it. Few of the cast spoke English. Fortunately most of the crew did.
For those not familiar, the assistant director basically runs the crew. My responsibility was to make sure that we got all the shots that we'd outlined in the shot list, shot all the scenes that needed to be shot on that particular day, and made sure that it all got done as efficiently as possible.
Let's just say herding cats would have been less difficult. Herding incontinent paranoid squirrels with ADHD would fall in the same general area.
The shoot was supposed to be 8 weekends, spread over 3 months, with a month break in the middle. It ended up being 12 weekends, plus 8 weekdays spread over 5 months. I turned down other work because of this film, which made me angry.
Anyway, long story short, we captured some incredible visuals in the film, shots that I was really proud to be part of setting up. And the Director decides to go with a "Shocking/Sex Sells" shot.
Lowest common denominator I guess. But it still makes me feel a little cheapened for being part of the film.
There was a link to the film page, and so on. However, the picture the director decided to submit, leaves a little to be desired, and doesn't represent the film well... at least the film as it was scripted when we shot it.
Let's just say I'm not surprised. I was pretty sure from the time the film started that I wasn't going to be enamoured with the end result. However, the nature of this business is that when you're starting out, you don't always get to pick what you work on.
It was the second paying gig that I'd gotten. I was to be the 1st assistant director, I was going to get to meet a bunch of new people and hopefully make contacts. That and the producer was a guy I'd met and worked with on another project, so I hoped that it'd be a good way to get to know him better.
The director is from Hong Kong. English was definitely not his first language. When it suited him, he'd pretend he didn't speak or understand it. Few of the cast spoke English. Fortunately most of the crew did.
For those not familiar, the assistant director basically runs the crew. My responsibility was to make sure that we got all the shots that we'd outlined in the shot list, shot all the scenes that needed to be shot on that particular day, and made sure that it all got done as efficiently as possible.
Let's just say herding cats would have been less difficult. Herding incontinent paranoid squirrels with ADHD would fall in the same general area.
The shoot was supposed to be 8 weekends, spread over 3 months, with a month break in the middle. It ended up being 12 weekends, plus 8 weekdays spread over 5 months. I turned down other work because of this film, which made me angry.
Anyway, long story short, we captured some incredible visuals in the film, shots that I was really proud to be part of setting up. And the Director decides to go with a "Shocking/Sex Sells" shot.
Lowest common denominator I guess. But it still makes me feel a little cheapened for being part of the film.
posted by Surly Canuck at 2:52 p.m.
1 Comments:
Hate to say it, but that's the way it rolls. I actually had just the opposite experience recently. A few years ago, I worked on a film called Love Hollywood Style, and the shoot was a disaster.
I was only there for one day (they needed an accordion player for a still shot). Since my friend was one of the designers, I went with her and was kind of stuck there the whole day. The 1st 1st AD disappeared halfway though the day. A fire alarm went off and all of the extras walked off, which meant that crew and assorted people (myself included) were recruited as replacement extras. It was a disaster.
Add to that the fact that it just didn't look or feel funny. It just felt like a big clusterfuck.
Then the trailer (http://www.natepence.com/love.html) was released, and it actually looks pretty sharp. I honestly cannot wrap my mind around this fact... that's how bad it was shooting this thing.
P.S. If you look in the bottom left-hand corner of Montel's "concert footage," you can see my big, bald head.
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