10.30.07
Posted in Classes/Books, Fans, Film Production, I-Man Cast Film Update, MySpace, Website Updates at 10:03 pm by Amanda Rogers
Yesterday was the one year anniversary of this little project going online. Can you believe it’s been a year already? Wow, where did the time go? This is a good time for me to catch everyone up on the latest happenings.
Film Project Update
A week and a half ago was a nice little milestone. The writer turned in the first draft of the treatment. I looked it over and, overall, I have to say I like it. Now, first drafts are never perfect and this one will probably have to go through several edits before it’s ready to show to the cast, but there were some really good scenes in it and it has a lot of promise.
Classes and More Classes
The last few weeks have been especially hectic for me. Besides doing a lot of homework for my Story Analysis and Screenplay Development class, I have also taken a couple of film budgeting classes.
One class was an overview of all the various film budgeting programs available on the market and their various applications. The other class was an introductory budgeting class. It’s funny, I would have never thought of budgeting as being a creative endeavour, but film budgeting is actually quite creative. Did you know that a budget describes the fundamental look, feel and style of a film? Yep, budgeters have to be able to take a scene in the script and have a point of view about it. They have to imagine how they would shoot or direct the scene. Now the director might have a totally different point of view on how a scene should be played, but if a director isn’t available yet, the budgeter has to make a best-guess estimate based on his or her own vision. Every excruciating detail of each scene must be budgeted for: every prop, every actor, every light, every vehicle, every piece of wardrobe, every camera. And it’s just not what’s on the set that must be budgeted for. A budget has to allow for how you’re going to feed the crew, how the actors are going to get to the set and how they are going to get home, how you’re going to get the equipment to the set, who’s going to build the set. It can seem endless. Needless to say, budgets are incredibly detailed documents. Screenplays are often described as the blueprint of a film, but, interestingly, budgets are also blueprints of a film. It’s really all very fascinating.
Saturday was a really busy and exciting day for me. In the morning, I had my weekly Story Analysis and Script Development class. In the afternoon, I met the writer of the treatment. She had flown out from the east coast and we had a really enjoyable meeting over a seafood dinner at the wharf in San Francisco. We hit it off and I’m looking forward to continuing to work with her on this project. She’s just as excited about it as I am. In the evening, we both headed up to Marin County, north of San Francisco, to attend a shortened writer’s workshop given by writer/producer James Hirsch. I say shortened because, originally, the workshop was supposed to be all weekend, but the LA fires put a crimp in those plans. Cheech Marin was supposed to be a special guest the first night, but because his home was in the middle of the fire area, he was busy hosing down his house and yard. Thankfully, Cheech’s home is safe. Because of all this, James Hirsch decided to give a “sneak preview” of the workshop instead. It was a great mini class and James is a really nice guy. I’m looking forward to attending the full workshop, which will be rescheduled in the future.
Whoa…I just felt some tremors. As I’m typing this I’m wondering if that is it or if they are just a precursor to a bigger jolt. Well, so far, so good. Let’s continue and wish for the best.
Website Updates
Between everything else in my insanely busy schedule, I’ve managed to get a few much-needed updates done to the website.
First off, the Blog Info page has been updated to more accurately reflect the various ways that readers can get news from this blog.
There is still the mailing list, of course, and I’ve updated the mailing list subscription page with some info that subscribers might find useful. For example, while the mailing list has a digest option, I don’t recommend it. There’s a couple of reasons why: For one, I rarely blog more than once per day. Secondly, digests are usually sent the day after the blog has been posted, which often delays the receiving of time sensitive information. Of course, the digest is still there if you want it and you are free to choose the options you prefer for this mailing list. If you want to change your options, PLEASE DON’T EMAIL ME. Simply go the mailing list subscription page, scroll down to the bottom and enter your email address. You will be then be prompted for your password. Enter your password to make the changes to your options. Forget your password? Scroll further down the page and you’ll see where you can have it emailed to you.
If you prefer the convenience of a blog feed, a feed for both posts and comments is available for your convenience. Simply scroll down to the Meta section of the sidebar (available from any page of the blog) and click on “Entries RSS” and/or “Comments RSS”.
For you Live Journal users, a syndicated feed is available for your convenience. I want to give a big shout out of thanks to Sheera for setting this up. To add the feed to your friends list, simply go to http://syndicated.livejournal.com/shoomzone/profile and click on the “add this journal to your friends list” link.
Lastly, if you have a MySpace page, you can subscribe to the blog via the Shoom Zone Productions MySpace page. Just click on “Subscribe to this Blog” and you’ll be notified whenever new items are posted to the blog.
Available on the front page of the blog, which you can get to from any blog page by simply clicking on the header, is a section for the online petitions. Just because I’m not actively pursuing an I-Man project right now, doesn’t mean that they should be ignored. I might be able to use those petitions to help sell my current project with the I-Man cast so, please, if you haven’t signed them yet, please do so. We all benefit by getting to see the cast together again.
If you haven’t checked out Shoom Zone’s home page in a while, you’ll see that it looks quite different. Well, I’m playing around with a new look when I can squeeze out the time and, as you can tell, it’s not done yet. The logo there is simply a placeholder for now. I’m going to be getting a new one designed in the near future. Eventually, the whole website will have a new look.
Fans Worldwide
Without you, fans from around the world, this project wouldn’t mean much. Without an audience, films would be worthless. So whenever I go and look at my website statistics, I am very encouraged by what I see. It’s obvious that there are a lot of you who want to see the cast together again just as much as I do. In the past year, the number of visitors to this site has more than quadrupled. Fans from 55 countries around the world regularly visit this site.
I thought it would be fun to see what countries we hail from, so following is a list of all 55 countries in alphabetical order.
- Algeria
- Argentina
- Australia
- Austria
- Belgium
- Bosnia-Herzogovina
- Brazil
- Canada
- Chile
- China
- Costa Rica
- Czech Republic
- Denmark
- Dominican Republic
- Estonia
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- Great Britain
- Greece
- Hong Kong
- Hungary
- India
- Indonesia
- Ireland
- Italy
- Iran
- Israel
- Japan
- Latvia
- Malaysia
- Mexico
- Netherlands
- New Zealand
- Norway
- Oman
- Pakistan
- Philippines
- Poland
- Romania
- Russia
- Saudi Arabia
- South Africa
- South Korea
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Taiwan
- Thailand
- Ukraine
- United Arab Emirates
- United States of America
- Vietnam
- Yugoslavia
Wow. I want to thank each and every one of you and I know the cast appreciates your support too. It’s this kind of increasing awareness that will help to make this film a success. Thank you and I look forward to another productive year as the film project moves forward. I can’t wait to see Vince, Paul, Eddie, Shannon and Mike together again on the screen!
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09.30.07
Posted in Classes/Books, Film Production, I-Man Cast Film Update, Scripts/Screenwriting at 2:49 pm by Amanda Rogers
That rather long title is the name of a course that I just started taking. The class started Friday and for the next twelve weeks I’m going to be immersed in watching films; reading scripts, books, and articles; and writing coverage and development notes for the assigned reading material. Fun!
Coverage, for those of you not familiar with the term, is the process of reading and analyzing a story and then writing a summary and critique of it. Story analysts or “readers” are employed by production companies to do this job, and some independent producers also hire readers. They are usually the first person to read the scripts sent to production companies and their opinion counts. If they don’t think a script is any good, it usually doesn’t get passed on to the producer for consideration.
But for independent producers who don’t have the luxury of having a reader, having the ability to analyze a story and assess its potential both artistically and financially is an extremely important skill (and, really, all producers need this skill). Contrary to what some people believe, producing isn’t just about business. It also has a creative side.
The timing for this course couldn’t be better for me. I’ve been giving notes and comments about the story in progress to the writer for a few months now, but I’m really looking forward to this class to sharpen up my skills and help the writer make the story the best it can possibly be before I submit it to the cast for consideration.
If I thought my life was busy before, it’s now going to be absolutely insane. But this beats being bored any day.
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05.05.07
Posted in Casting/Acting, Classes/Books at 8:31 pm by Amanda Rogers
Last weekend I drove into San Francisco to attend a casting seminar taught by casting director Kim Hardin. Kim has 20 years of experience as a casting director and is known for films such as 2 Fast 2 Furious, Four Brothers, and the award-winning Indie film Hustle & Flow.
The class was geared toward actors, but directors and producers were also invited to attend. It didn’t surprise me that we were greatly outnumbered by the actors.
Even though it is still very early in the development process and we don’t know what, if any, other roles we’ll be needing to fill, this was a great opportunity to learn a little about the casting process ahead of time from someone who has been doing it for a long time. It also gave me a great excuse to go into the city on a beautiful day. I was delighted to find out that the hotel where the seminar was held was next to the cable car route.
The fun part of the class was the “cold read” (auditions performed without memorizing the script) audition practice at the end. Kim gave all the actors “sides” (a portion of a script to be read at an audition) and sent them out into the hotel hallway to practice for a bit. Some actors were teamed with another actor, and some were sent out by themselves because they would be doing their scene with Kim herself.
After a short practice period, Kim called everyone back into the room. It was fascinating to watch their performances. Some were obvious beginners, while others had much more experience under their belt. Nerves got to some of them and the sometimes long periods of silence betrayed the fact that they forgot their lines. In an effort to be understated, some gave performances that could best be described as bland, while others went too far the other way with their over-the-top performances.
As I-Man fans, we often brag about the incredible chemistry of our cast so, of course, I closely watched the actors who were paired up in teams. One couple really caught my attention. They came across as though they had known each other for years. The chemistry was there and it was very obvious. Others just weren’t clicking.
During the instruction part of the class there was one young man, looked to be in his teens, that kept asking questions about things that Kim had already covered just minutes before. It was apparent that he wasn’t paying attention, but Kim was very patient and answered all his questions. I was curious how he would do. When his turn came, he read opposite Kim. And when I say read, I mean, literally, read. He didn’t act the part at all, he just read it. I’ve got to give him kudos for having the courage to do the practice audition. He must have been incredibly nervous. He has a marketable look, but he definitely needs training.
An older gentleman, who used to do a lot of theatre work and was just getting back into acting after a long stretch off, absolutely nailed the part of a pastor. He was quite convincing.
Kim gave some of the same sides to more than one actor in order to give us the opportunity to see how different actors interpret the same scenes differently. It was fascinating to watch each actor bringing something different to their roles.
After attending this class, I have to say that I have a renewed respect for actors and what they do for a living. The majority of us only do a small number of job interviews in our lifetime before settling into our respective jobs for at least several years. But can you imagine spending most of your career going to job interviews (which is basically what an audition is) all the time? Well, the majority of actors do exactly that. Getting an acting job takes a special kind of fortitude that, dare I say, the majority of earthlings wouldn’t want to deal with.
I tip my hat to actors everywhere who are chasing and living their dreams.
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12.09.06
Posted in Casting/Acting, Classes/Books, Film Production at 10:00 pm by Amanda Rogers
So last night finished up a directing class that I’ve been taking at a local community college. We got together and had a screening where we got to watch our work and, afterward, a guest speaker, who is a local production coordinator, talked about budgeting.
During the course of the class each of us had to choose a scene from a script, break it down, create a shot list, and storyboard it. Let me tell you, I couldn’t draw if my life depended upon it, so it was stick figures for me! We learned about casting calls, but I missed the day they talked about acting and working with actors.
Then each of us got to play director and shoot our chosen scenes. We were running short on time so I opted out of directing my scene. I don’t have any plans to be a director, but my classmates do so I figured they would need the experience more than me.
But, low and behold, we were short on actors, so guess who got recruited into the job? Now, the only thing I’ve ever done in front of an audience is public speaking and dancing. Acting was a totally new experience for me. But it was interesting to get a small taste of what an actor does: memorizing lines, repeating the same lines and actions over and over again for each take, taking direction from the director, keeping my movements smaller for closeups. Actually, when I think about it, there are some similarities to public speaking and dancing. So would I ever want to be an actor? Heck, no. Even though I got compliments on my acting, it was downright painful watching myself at that screening last night. Nope, no acting for me. I’ll do the world a favor and remain behind the scenes.
Getting past the pain of watching myself, it was a good learning experience to watch the scenes that we shot. The teacher pointed out mistakes that are typical for a beginner director. A few that I can remember off the top of my head are:
- In one shot the framing was off and there was too much air space above the actors’ heads.
- Another time, the actors weren’t blocked properly and it looked like the actress was on the head of one of the actors. Also, there was no continuity and sometimes the actress was in the shot and sometimes she wasn’t. It not only looked strange, but the whole reason for the shot lost its meaning without her.
- The funniest was seeing the fuzzy fur-covered microphone at the top of the shot and one of the lights over to the side. Oops…another framing mistake.
So maybe by now you’re wondering why I took a directing class even though I have no plans to be a director. Well, producers have been described as generalists. They need to know a little about each job, but they don’t have to be experts in those jobs. But they need to know enough to be able to hire the right people and budget for those jobs.
So far I’ve taken classes in scriptwriting, lighting and cinematography, directing, film production, and early film history, among others. Since I’m new to this, I’ve got the double job of keeping the project moving forward while I keep my education moving forward. I’m always in the middle of reading of a book or two and when one class finishes, I start looking for my next class. Fortunately for me, I love learning, and this is a job where the learning never stops.
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