More Pictures!

A few more pictures from “WoMan,” my last project:

Saad Khan as the big, scary boss. (He was legitimately frightening – in the best possible sense. I didn’t have to do much acting for that scene.) This is yet another a test photo, this time of an over-the-shoulder shot for the short film’s penultimate scene.

Azadeh Mohammidi and Martin were excellent as mother-and-son for an uncomfortable (and very cold) scene in the park.

A test photo for the final scene. Park benches, helping to move films forward since… 2012.

The second and third pictures are from different scenes, though they were shot in the same park. Can you guess which scene was shot in the morning and which one was shot in the afternoon? (Hint: I did not mess with the color or the lighting in either of these pictures. These pictures are from raw footage.)

Adventures in Filmmaking

Well, to say that I’ve been lax in terms of posting this month is an understatement. So let’s take a look at what’s been keeping me away from the blog. A lot, to say the least. So we’ll take it in sections.

Chapter 1

Production and Post-Production

During the last couple of weeks in November, I worked on shoots for several short films (my own, as well as those for a few friends). After that was over and done with, I was consumed with editing my project – now titled “WoMan.” My own shoot for “WoMan” went fairly well, though I had to get an extra close-up in the middle of editing week. But that kind of thing happens to everybody.

I did learn one thing that I should never do again: act in the same film that I’m directing. Trying to concentrate on actors and a camera at the same time is difficult enough. Add to that trying to concentrate on your own performance whilst not being able to stand next to your director of photography (DP) during filming to see what the actors look like on camera. It could wipe the smile off of Glinda the Good Witch’s face and drive the witch mad. Well, assuming that she isn’t already  crazy, considering the general insanity of the quest that Glinda sends Dorothy on – not to mention the what-the-f*ckery of Oz itself.

I don’t know how other people do it, especially for feature-length films. Zach Braff must have looked like the victim of a lightning strike at the end of each shoot for Garden State.

I imagine this is vaguely representative of how Zach Braff looked after a day on the set of ‘Garden State.’ Or maybe that’s just me after a day of filming for my project.

But in the end, my project doesn’t look half bad. And it sounds decent, too. Actually, it looks and sounds pretty good. I currently am using a temporary soundtrack until my composer sends me something to work with, and the film isn’t exactly what I pictured, but I can’t complain. My crew did a good job – the shots are pretty, and the sound is good quality. Plus, the film is well under the time limit; it’s about four minutes long, including credits, though the time limit allowed for seven minutes, plus credits. I’m sure that you all are absolutely dying to see the film (well, in my fantasy world, y’all are insanely excited), so I will tease you with some pictures from the set. (Photos courtesy of Shani Edmond and Célia Thompson.)

Célia Thompson, the amazing DP for ‘WoMan,’ during a break on our first day of shooting.

Our wonderful co-director/first AD Shani Edmond discussing a shot with Célia during our second day of shooting.

Talking with extra Edoardo Herroz (center) and sound mixer/boom operator Benjamin Bargard (far right) during the shoot for the final scene. You will see none of the items at our feet in the actual film. Well, except for the (very flat) ball. That was kind of a crucial prop. Just a little important. Not like it was at all an excuse for the most important line in the film.

A test photo of a mirror shot for the opening scene. Célia would take pictures so that I could look at the setup before we actually filmed. In some ways more difficult than having a stand-in so that I could watch while she set up. But at least she didn’t have to re-adjust for height every time. I’m pretty sure that I was the shortest person on set, cast and crew included.

Chapter 2

The Evaluation

After we were done editing, we had evaluations, in which the teachers for our four core courses ripped our short films to shreds. We were allowed to drag our crew members along with us to the evaluations, so Shani and I sat in on each others’ evaluations as one another’s ADs. It was nice to have the moral support, especially for a mass shredding of a very personal film. It wasn’t my best-made film by a long shot, though my crew did a great job. All the same, I got a surprisingly decent review. At least my professors didn’t claw it to shreds, the way they did for some of the other films. And afterwards I got a huge hug from my cinematography professor, along with assurance that I wasn’t half bad and that I was only going to get better. I got some good advice from my professors, as well, and I was able to make some adjustments for the final screening.

Chapter 3

The Screening

We had a screening of all the students’ final projects for the semester on the twentieth and twenty-first of December. This time I wasn’t working two 14-hour night shoots, and was able to make it. Quite fancy, actually. The screenings were held at an actual movie theater – Kino Evald, on Narodni, which is a large, very commercial street in Prague. (Narodni Divadlo – the National Theater – is there, among many other places.) It was great fun to see everybody’s films.

Chapter 4

Coming Home

On December 23, I took a plane back to the States. I am now spending the holidays with my parents and enjoying the relaxation time before I return to Oberlin on January 2. My winter term project (a month-long project of our own choosing) will be to take photos around Oberlin and blog about them daily. So look forward to that!

It was a very pleasant flight home. I even got bumped up to business class on the second, longer leg of the journey and got absolutely spoiled. (Sweet potato curry and Bordeaux for lunch and a delicious sandwich at teatime, plus plenty of free music to listen to and a seat that folded out into a bed.) And it’s quite nice to be back, too. But I will miss the beautiful Prague and the wonderful people who I met there.

Progress is in Progress

First off, I want to apologize for what is shaping up to be a slow month in terms of blog posts. (Other months have been slower, but I actually have decent excuses this time around.)

I have been writing for (Inter)National Novel Writing Month, which lasts for the month of November. For those of you who don’t know what it is, National Novel Writing Month is a solid 30 days in which participants – it can be anyone, anywhere, including you! – think up of and write novels. The goal is to write 50,000 words of your novel in November alone, which averages out to about 1,667 words per day. Of course, we all have our good days and our bad days. (I’ve had a couple of days this month when I’ve written nothing at all, but thankfully I’ve caught up and I’m back on track.) Even though you don’t worry about editing, etc. and you’re just brain barfing into your notebook or onto your computer for 30 days, it’s still pretty intense. And intensely fun, of course.

To my fellow NaNoWriMo-ers: Keep plugging along! You may have your down days, but on those days remember that, as Orphan Annie says, “The sun’ll come out tomorrow! Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there will be sun!” Everybody has those downer days when they can only come up with 500 words (sometimes even less). But I’ll bet ya anything that tomorrow those grisly clouds of writer’s block will scuttle away and you’ll be able to churn out a good 3,000 words (or something else that’s ridiculously better than 1,667 words).

Cemeteries, Scenery, and So Much Greenery! (Well, more like orange-and-yellow-ery)

Author’s note: So this post, it seems, has become a sort of “month in review” recap of my adventures. I don’t know how it got to that. I was planning to do a post in which I basically just said “Yay! Look at my pictures!” I guess it just, well… snowballed.

It’s truly become autumn here in Prague, and it is beautiful. We had our first snowfall of the season a few weeks ago and even I didn’t complain, it was so picturesque. And I had to run around like a headless chicken as the “producer” (production manager/production assistant, really) for a friend’s shoot. I was very wet and perpetually slightly cold for most of the day that day.

 

Tried to take a picture of the view from my roof with the snow the night after our shoot. Didn’t work out too well, but I did manage to capture some flakes in the midst of falling. (I can occasionally be quite happy with taking what I can get. If I’m not too busy being grumpy.)

The day after it snowed, I finally got around to snapping a few pictures of the Jewish Cemetery near my flat. I was going to pretend that I had been a good, proactive human being and had actually taken the pictures much earlier, but I think the snow kind of gives it away.

 

A monument in the Jewish Cemetery. You may recall that I sketched it in September. I wanted to go inside the cemetery, but unfortunately the gates always seem to be locked. The Jewish community in Prague really does themselves and everybody else a disservice in making it so difficult to visit places like this. It’s so easy to access cathedrals and the enormous (and beautiful) Christian cemetery that, well, everybody visits them. It’s much more difficult to go around to see the Jewish cemeteries and synagogues here.

One more for the road.
I don’t think you can really see it in this picture, but some of these gravestones are covered in long passages of writing – in Hebrew. I unfortunately could not see the writing well enough to read it from outside the gate.

 

Speaking of cemeteries, I also promised a while ago that I would post some pictures of the Christian cemetery, which, as I said, is absolutely gigantic and beautiful. I’ve been there a few times now and I’ve only seen a comparatively small section of it.

There are tons of paths like this, that are basically serve as rows of mausoleums and family tombs. At least, I think they’re called mausoleums. I just think of them as “tomb houses.”

Some of these mausoleums are old enough that they have some serious flora growing off of them. It’s really beautiful.

And some of the graves have some pretty beautiful statues, too.

 

I’ve also had some other adventures recently.

I found yet another cool park. It’s small, but there is quite a mix of beautiful and simply cool-looking architecture around it.

I sat and sketched for a while. Right next to this little tree. We’re buddies now.

This clock tower with a musical angel standing at the corner is right across the street from the park. This kind of architecture can actually be found quite a lot around Prague.

Look to your left in this park, and you see the clock tower with the angel. Look to your right, and you see these gorgeous buildings. (And the sky looked just amazing that day, too.)

There’s an even bigger park near the small park. It spans several blocks and is actually cut into sections by several roads, so I wonder whether the “smaller park” might actually be part of the bigger one. Sleuthing time!

Look at those trees! Ain’t they gorgeous?

 

In film news, things are slowly coming together for my fourth project for Prague Film School. I’ve been hitting a few bumps, but we are moving slowly forward. As some of you may know, it’s an intensely personal short film about a transgender man (female to male, like myself). In the end, it looks like I will be acting in the film, essentially playing myself. I’m incredibly nervous about it, but thankfully it looks like I have a great crew who will be able to help me out.

And just as exciting, my screenwriting teacher has taken me on as continuity supervisor for a short film that he’s making. I’m very excited, but more than a bit nervous to be on my first (semi)-professional/non-student film shoot. Especially because we will be doing two late-night shoots in a row: one all-nighter tomorrow night, and then another three hours on Saturday evening. I hope I don’t fall asleep on set!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Boobs On Set, or “Will You Take Your Director With Boobs, or Without?”

I’ve finished shooting my third project for the semester and we got some very beautiful footage, which I can’t wait to edit. Look forward to some impromptu shots of little kids waving out of windows at the actors and cats strutting around the backyard. (Well, there’s actually only one kid and one cat. It just sounded cooler to put that in the plural.)

Shooting was very stressful, but a good experience in the end. I even learned a bit about using the Canon 5D, which I used for the first time during a shoot. Mostly I learned that it’s really annoying to use, you have to change lenses all the time, zooming generally isn’t a thing, and focusing is a bitch. At least the picture is pretty.

I also found the crew dynamic to be very interesting. My crew was very heavily male – four men, two women, and me – and the men certainly dominated the scene, while the two women faded into the background. One of the women admittedly had a very undemanding, small task as the script supervisor. But the boom operator somehow ended up taking over most of the job as the sound person, which was originally the task of the one other woman on the crew. Despite that one strange, accidental re-assignment of roles, the crew worked very well together, and since we were shooting on my roof, it was great to have a director of photography (DP) and a sound person (the original boom operator) who were rather gung-ho about climbing around on a wet, slanted roof. That is not to say that there aren’t any women at the school who would be eager to do something like that, but most of the women that I’d worked with up to that point didn’t strike me as the climbing-all-over-a-small-slanted-roof types.

The author talking to his actors and assistant director from the roof. Wearing anything warm whilst on a roof in 11-ish degree (centigrade) weather: overrated. Picture courtesy of Pablo Schmitow.

It was fascinating to compare this to the crew I was on for a shoot that began an hour or two after mine ended. This was a four person crew (including the director), plus one actress. And the only cisman on set was the assistant director (AD). (I was on sound.) There were two shoots for this project – the one on Saturday night, and one that took up most of the day on Sunday – but the atmosphere for both was much different from my shoot. In some senses, much more relaxed, especially on Sunday. Perhaps partially due to the size of the cast and crew, but also, I think, in part due to the amount of estrogen in the room.

For example, even the moments when we were joking around and goofing off felt very different. On my set, the most memorable moment of the crew goofing off was the sound guy sneaking up on our script supervisor and scaring her by waiving a piece of trash in her peripheral vision and causing her to run back inside. It was a huge laugh at first, until the script supervisor didn’t re-appear. (She eventually came back out, and things seemed to smooth over.)

On the set where I was working sound, the most memorable joke involved using the light reflector to make wings for ourselves and, at one point, hovering over our sleeping assistant director with “wings” that looked an awful lot like, well… a man’s genitals. The entire time we were laughing ourselves senseless.

Over dinner after Sunday’s shoot, we couldn’t help but talk about the difference in atmosphere between various shoots. This led to a discussion of women on film crews. It’s painfully obvious that at this school, at least – and judging by today’s popular feature films, in the professional world as well – women are rarely put in positions such as director or DP. It’s not necessarily for lack of women to fill those jobs, either. At PFS alone, there are several women who are both interested in and skilled at working with the camera. (In fact, one such woman has already agreed to work as the DP on my fourth project.)

We all agreed that our cismale fellow students are wonderful people, but there is a definite underlying, subconscious sexism in this film industry. We even find ourselves falling into patterns of thinking of directors, DPs, and the like as male roles by default. From now on, we’ve promised ourselves, we will do at least one small thing to promote women in film – whether in who we choose to put on a crew, or what we choose to show in a scene – in each of our projects.