Five Things That an AD IS Not

The list could certainly go on, and there is certainly nothing more wonderful  than a list, instrument of wondrous hypotyposis" - Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

If you have a Facebook account (and who doesn't), you have come across an increasing number of links to - for the lack of a better word - "articles" that count down some random list.

You know the ones.

"Seven Things You Never Knew About Kale"

"Six Actors You Never Knew Were Episcopalian"

"Eight Things You Should Never Ask A Hot Dog Vendor"

They are usually the internet version of those magazines you grab at the checkout counter that alternately tell you of a new cure for cancer, or how they know your favorite TV celebrity is actually a visitor from another galaxy.

Sadly,  more and more of them are now part of more respected sources of news.

I used the terms articles in quotation marks because most of them are the type of off-the-top-of-your-head jottings any of us could come up with,  and often do, in places like this - blogs.

As with everything else I do, I probably over-think this blog. I pour over every word, research,  and scratch ideas that fail to come to full fruition.

That does not make this journalism, or high art. However,  if you're going to ask others to use their minds to read something,  you should use yours first.  Yet, these "journalists " who are getting paid to offer up something, are satisfied with these frills - or, really,  no-frills - offerings. As someone who had the pleasure of working with future CNN correspondents, PBS news hosts and network news execs* in college, I find this a soft-core excuse for journalism

This will be one of those.

One of my regular First ADs and I have been friends for many years, and we occasionally share an adult beverage  (or more), as well as our incredulity at the lack of awareness of what a First AD does.

Now, there are a few great blogs on being a First AD (like the one offered by my blog-sister Michelle ), so rather than offer five things your AD does, I will offer five things that you should not expect from your AD. (I use the male pronoun because AD in question is male; your AD's gender may vary.)

#1. First ASSISTANT Director Does Not Mean He Should Help You Direct.

Inspired by my AD's latest experience.

In a group email, the producer asked the director if he had sent a shot list to the AD, who he had just hired.

Now, they had just fired their last DP. The director asked if he were to send it, could AD put the shots in order of shooting.

AD was brazen enough point out that could not happen yet, as he a)had never been on a scout of the location (s), b) had yet to meet the DP, and c) had yet to speak with the director.

Director was upset and decided to go with another AD.

It is my belief that misconceptions about what an AD does start in film school,  where the AD is inevitably someone who, as the t-shirt suggests, just wants to direct. As such, they love having long conversations about the perfect angle, blocking,  mise-en-scene and any other aspect of directing.

In Europe,  I understand that being a First AD is a path to directing. In the U.S., that is not true, and ADs who offer directing advice don't last.

Now, most experienced First ADs have been around the block enough to be helpful when needed in that department. More often, they should be focused on keeping things moving.

Which leads me to #2.

#2 A Good AD Can Lead You to Set, But He Can't Make You Shoot.

This goes for the director and the DP. Let's deal with the director first.

The director must have the scene blocked, and then be ready to shoot. Directors generally call action on takes, and ultimately must decide if they are satisfied and ready to move to the next set-up.

When faced with an indecisive director,  good ADs will employ a series of tricks to keep them moving. Some will anticipate and start to call the roll when they sense the shot is ready but the director is still wavering.  Stan used to encourage me to do this, and let the director stop me if they weren't ready. This was a tactic only to be used as last resort, as it has the potential to cause conflict and undermine one or both.

One of my favorite versions of this was a tough-talking, chain-smoking Mama of an AD who, when she wanted to push a director to move on from one setup to the next, would call out, "Movin' On. You don't want to put your foot through a Rembrandt. "

As for trying to get a slow DP to move faster, suffice to say you cannot ask a DP to shoot when they are not lit or when they don't have frame. I've pissed off enough DPs that I will leave it at that, as I've covered this ground before.

Yes, keeping things moving is part of the ADs job, but that doesn't mean ...

#3 The AD is (Not) A "Grip With An Attitude"

This was the exact phrase a producer once (incorrectly ) used to describe a good AD.

A truly good AD moves the crew along with communication,  and, not unlike a good sports coach, will use various means to encourage a crew to move as quickly - albeit still safely - as possible.

Most crews want an AD to keep everything moving quickly,  as they don't want to spend endless hours on set when they can get home. In those rare occasions where a crew is slow or, let's face it, just a bit lazy (hey, it can happen ), private discussion or talks with department heads are options.

This does not mean screaming at them like the above drill sergeant. 

Past high school football,  this technique rarely goes well. I always remember, and have often reminded more vocal ADs,that we in production may be figuratively be doing some heavy lifting,  but the crew is literally doing it.

Speaking of grips, I once saw an encounter between a bellowing AD, and the grip whose face he decided to get in, which is right on point.

The grip put down the equipment he was carrying,  took a breath, and said,  "I have two speeds, and if you don't like this one,  you definitely aren't going to like the other one. "

#4. The AD is Not a Script Supervisor

I have waxed and swooned about my love for the skill and.craft of script supervisors here. Suffice here to say that it requires laser-like focus on the action, which is impossible if you are also trying to make sure the actors for the next scene are through the works**, checking with art department if the next set is dressed, directing background action, and setting lock-up.

Yet, while no reasonable producer would double the 1st AC job with Best Boy Grip, I still see "keeping script notes" as duties listed in low-budget AD ads.

Somehow, smaller crews means "cut production people " first to many digital producers.

This leads to an even more common pet peeve that is becoming all-too-common.

#5. A First AD Cannot Prep Call Sheets.

The First AD is responsible for the schedule and everyone knowing said schedule. Long ago, in a movie - making galaxy now far, far away, call sheets were invented to distribute this information.

A proper call sheet is a work of art; a finished symphony; a perfect diamond. It also has a great deal of information to fill out, much of which can change right up until it is published. My favorite 2nd AD created a call sheet template (not the one listed below) so perfect that I would hire just for the call sheet alone, if not for the many other fine qualities he brings.

The First AD makes the major decisions on call times and what will be shot, but it is the 2nd AD who must get all this info loaded into the call sheet, in addition to all the other things he is doing. The call sheet is time-consuming and requires some free hands.

Avalokitesvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion shown above, vowed to not rest until he had saved all sentient beings. He struggled to meet the needs of so many, and his head split into eleven pieces. Amitaba Buddha, seeing his plight, gave him eleven heads to hear the cries of many, but when he reached out to them all, his two arms shattered, and, to once again aid him, Amitaba Buddha blessed him with a thousand arms.

Many a 1st (and 2nd) AD can attest to feeling like their head was going to split into eleven pieces, but all are limited to two arms, and as line producer, I do not have the power of Amitaba Buddha to give them any more.

More and more, First ADs are hired, and then told there will be no budget for a 2nd AD. This means often training a PA, which almost always mean it will be wrong for at least a few times - and teaching call sheets should not be part of the AD's job.

Now, on a very small shoot, with a very small crew, if everyone is fine with gathering everyone and just telling them where, when and what tomorrow, great. However, there is a reason for call sheets, and not having them will cause some level of confusion. 

You can have a proper call sheet and a 2nd AD, or a First AD alone and you do the best you can. You can't have both. Just don't go screaming at your First AD when the Best Boy Electric (I've been picking on grips too often) shows up at the wrong time or the wrong place.

I'm sure every department has it's own complaints. If you ever wondered about the types of things ADs bitch about when they need to blow off some steam, this is a small sample.

*Richard Roth of CNN, Ray Suarez formerly of the PBS News Hour and now with Al jazeera America,  and Bernard Gershon, ABC News and now Gershonmedia.

**Hair, Make-Up and Wardrobe

We (Do Not) Have the Technology

"It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you of how powerful they are."
-Clive James

Once the technology to do something exists, there is nothing more frustrating than it not doing what you want it to do.

In preparing a short series on a software I truly like, Jungle Software, the makers of of Gorilla and other production systems, I was reminded of those instances of what happens when technology does not work to your advantage.

Case in point: On my last feature, the script was written in Celtx.

Yes, Celtx is free, and, as Stan used to say, oh, the high cost of free.

Understand that for many years,scripts were typed, schedules typed, call sheets hand-written, and stripboards were really strips of cardboard. That is all well and good, but once we moved on, we should never have to move back.

For me, the prime example of the "never go back" principle is the coffee cup lid.

One day, some bright person figured out that instead of having to tear open a portion of the lid randomly, the lid could be perforated to offer the perfect opening from which to drink.

Surprisingly, this patent suggests that the technology was created in 1980 - exactly 11 years after we put a man on the moon and thirty-five years after we harnessed the atom so we could kill more people more quickly. It seems the boys at NASA and/or the Manhattan Project, respectfully, could have figured this one out during one of their, well, coffee breaks.

What does this have to do with making movies, or Celtx, you ask? Making revisions and sharing.

I am not going to get into comparing every software option for screenwriting - and certainly there are a number of ways that work, including simple templates in Microsoft Word, but I think most people in the business would find Final Draft the most convenient software from both a script creation and, more importantly, production-friendly standpoint.

I have previously discussed the role of script supervisor and script revisions, so I won't repeat that here. On his wonderful site lineproducing.com, Stephen describes how to do revisions using Final Draft.

In the internet age, making revisions to any document and being able to share that document and those changes is important. Celtx made both of these difficult, even after we moved out of free mode and "upgraded" to some of their "premium" tools.

I am no tech whiz, and if it were just me, then I would concede a lack of sophistication with the software. However, the process stumped me, my production coordinator, my producer, and my First AD. It seemed at every step along the way, you could not, as they say, get there from here. You could do one thing but not the other You could do it on your computer but not share it. When even my aforementioned genius script supervisor could not do it, I broke down and hired a PA to retype the script into Final Draft, after which the revisions were simple and share-able.

This is not an attack on Celtx. This is the same frustration every time you discover that any advanced program (and I am not accusing Celtx of being an advanced program) does not do precisely what you want it to do, and it takes you longer to figure out how to do it than to have, say, just done it the old way. We encountered similar (but not nearly the same) frustration with Dropbox, and, to a lesser extent, Google Drive.

At one point, the director's email account was not properly receiving or sending emails, "eating" them, as we like to say.

Then there was the junction box we rented, which did not seem to get us wifi in some of the places we needed wifi.

These are, to be sure, Third World Problems. To use one of my favorite Hitchcock quotes, a child did not die. On the scale of progress of Mankind, these aberrations would have produced barely a glitch.

Still, once one gets accustomed to having these conveniences, being deprived of them seems all the more painful.

On the production side, there are certainly a number of companies that offer great software that save us time and effort, including EP Movie Magic, which I used to teach at New York Film Academy.

However, for a number of years, I have enjoyed using Jungle Software, which initially was just Gorilla, but has now grown to a larger family of production-related software. There are many reasons why Gorilla is the software I prefer, and I will explore those in a few posts where I interview Aaton Cohen Sitt, the President of Jungle Software.

Here's hoping that, until then, your version of Hal 9000 never says to you:

"Im sorry. I can't allow you to do that."

The Unattainable - Part 3 - The Seat of Wisdom

Scripty Extraordinaire Melissa

"She comes in colors everywhere,

She combs her hair

She's like a rainbow.

Coming, colors in the air

Everywhere

She's like a rainbow."

-She's a Rainbow, Rolling Stones

My admiration for script supervisors was made clear in a previous post. When it came time to hire a script supervisor for The Unattainable, I reached out to Andrea, who is pictured in that post.

She was not available. I explained the complexity of the script; that we would be shooting in digital and 16MM, that the script would be broken down into present, past and voice-overs that were part of the lead character's imagination.

She gave me one name - that of our scripty above, Melissa.

I spoke to Melissa briefly, and then sent her out our latest copy of the script at the time.

At the time, we had not published a script, which was undergoing constant revisions, and continued to do so right up until and after filming.

In order to keep track of changes in all paperwork, starting with the script, a color code is used to distinguish revisions. In the case of the script, the line producer, AD and script supervisor will confer on whether the changes are few enough to just color code certain pages, or go to a new color entirely.

The guide we used was: white, blue, pink, yellow, green and goldenrod. The standard color code includes more colors, but in order to save us the cost of buying even more reams of different colors (remember, this same code is used for paperwork such as schedules, vendor and crew lists, etc) I cut it off at Goldenrod.

Coming, colors everywhere. It is, indeed, like a rainbow, with a wash of different colored paperwork.

This being a very low budget project, I had originally budgeted one day of prep for script supervisor, which clearly was not going to work with our complex script.

For one thing, there was establishing a timeline. Designers needed to know what happened when, hair and makeup needed to know if this was our leads now or five years ago, the AD needed to schedule so as to not constantly having us change set dressing and the rest during the middle of the day.

The director had a very clear timeline, and it was laid out on index cards along one of her walls. She would show it to anyone who wanted to reference the timeline. When I say it was laid out on a wall, it was an entire wall, floor to ceiling.

The prospect of carrying around the wall was, well, not very enticing. We needed something simpler.

We needed the right person. After getting Melissa's initial response to the script, I knew she was the right person. I knew we had to have her, and looked to get her together with our director as soon as possible.

Below is a somewhat edited and redacted (national security, proprietary information, and all that - very hush hush as they used to say in the spy movies) version of her first email explaining how she broke down the script.

I have attached my Short Form Breakdown by Scene Number below.  .  Everything after Sc11 is supposed to be chronological 

A few notes: 

1952 = Harry's birth year

1970 = Harry goes to Vietnam

1956 - 1975 = Vietnam War

10/1/2000 = FEMALE & Kevinbegin dating

10/15/2003 = Our story begins (Sc31)

2004 - 2006 = FEMALE & KEVINPAST

2010 = FEMALE & Harry's PRESENT

I will fill in the other details later.

Please let me know if you have any questions/comments/etc.

Best,

Mel

Here is the chronological list that (directors assistant) made yesterday:

LIST OF SCENES BY TIME

PAST: (x)scenes

PRESENT:(x)scenes

ATEMPORAL/IMAGINATION: (x)scenes

TOTAL: 124 scenes

The Short breakdown she refers to starts like this

Scene Location Characters D/N Date Time 1/8s ERT

Scene Location Characters D/N Date Time 1/8s ERT

Scene Location Characters D/N Date Time 1/8s ERT

1 EXT. DOCK BY THE SEA (FLASHBACK) - AFTERNOON D10 Sat-10/08/2005 12:36P

1 EXT. DOCK BY THE SEA (FLASHBACK) - AFTERNOON D10 Sat-10/08/2005 12:36P

1 EXT. DOCK BY THE SEA (FLASHBACK) - AFTERNOON D10 Sat-10/08/2005 12:36P

2 INT. PRISON VISITING ROOM (FLASHBACK) - DAY D11 Sun-10/09/2005 2:10PM 2 5/8 2:37

2 INT. PRISON VISITING ROOM (FLASHBACK) - DAY D11 Sun-10/09/2005 2:10PM 2 5/8 2:37

2 INT. PRISON VISITING ROOM (FLASHBACK) - DAY D11 Sun-10/09/2005 2:10PM 2 5/8 2:37

3 EXT. DOCK BY THE SEA (FLASHBACK) - DAY D10 Sat-10/08/2005 1:43PM 2/8 0:15

3 EXT. DOCK BY THE SEA (FLASHBACK) - DAY D10 Sat-10/08/2005 1:43PM 2/8 0:15

3 EXT. DOCK BY THE SEA (FLASHBACK) - DAY D10 Sat-10/08/2005 1:43PM 2/8 0:15

4 CREDITS OF FILM Z 1/8 0:08

4 CREDITS OF FILM Z 1/8 0:08

4 CREDITS OF FILM Z 1/8 0:08

5 INT. APARTMENT, EAST VILLAGE, NYC - DAY D17 Mon-09/20/2010 3:43PM 7/8 0:53

5 INT. APARTMENT, EAST VILLAGE, NYC - DAY D17 Mon-09/20/2010 3:43PM 7/8 0:53

5 INT. APARTMENT, EAST VILLAGE, NYC - DAY D17 Mon-09/20/2010 3:43PM 7/8 0:53

6 INT. BAR (IMAGINATION) - NIGHT Z16 Sun-09/19/2010 10:33P

6 INT. BAR (IMAGINATION) - NIGHT Z16 Sun-09/19/2010 10:33P

6 INT. BAR (IMAGINATION) - NIGHT Z16 Sun-09/19/2010 10:33P

7 EXT. HALFWAY HOUSE - NIGHT N16 Sun-09/19/2010 11:28P

7 EXT. HALFWAY HOUSE - NIGHT N16 Sun-09/19/2010 11:28P

7 EXT. HALFWAY HOUSE - NIGHT N16 Sun-09/19/2010 11:28P


This is a small part of the work Melissa did.

As we moved forward, Melissa's understanding of the script became crucial to every aspect of the shooting, and I have to say she was more involved in helping to get coverage and tell the story than most supervisors I have had the chance to watch work.

One day in particular that I remember was our Day 2. It was all meant to take place INT THEATER. At one point, the DP got the idea of shooting one section EXT in order to break up the shots and give us an intro the those scenes.

What time of year was it? Was she wearing a coat? If so, how heavy?

As our first team was discussing it, Melissa calmly looked at her notes and said, "It's January 20th, 2011."

End of discussion.

Her daily notes continued to not only help for editing, but helped me know details about what was happening during the day that would have been impossible for someone else to keep up.

I've waited some time for script supes to get me notes in the past; Melissa's were usually within two hours of wrap. She gave credit to some software she said she was using - I think she secretly created the software and just didn't want us to know. After my AD, she was the second person I would seek out when I came to set to get a sense of what was happening.

As with most movies, the color wheel kept on turning, with schedule revisions necessitated by actor availability (we were sharing our male lead with a TV show filming in LA) and locations.  My small but incredibly efficient production office kept us constantly with the proper color, as "Megan, what color vendor list are we on?" would be answered with something like "Pink, but don't publish that one yet - we're still revising it."

I often wonder if we make making movies too hard, if we secretly enjoy it more if it's more of a challenge. Somewhere, people work with those simple, boring scripts I referred to in the start of this series. As my long-time AD once said when we were doing a complicated dolly shot through every room in a house on an Indian-American co-production a few years back, "JB, remember when people used to point the camera and shoot? What ever happened to that.?"

Maybe it's me, and I'm just drawn to more challenging scripts, having become numb to the endless stream of scripts that just regurgitate the same, worn-out plot lines and characters.  Indeed, sitting through trailers for upcoming films the other day, I wondered if I was in a revival house, watching movies that were just remakes of older movies, either clearly or inferred.

What I do know is that on this film, on this script, I was glad to have this lady.

"Have you seen her all in gold(enrod - my edit)
Like a Queen in days of old
She shoots colors all around
Like a sunset all around"

For this shoot, no, I have not seen a lady fairer.

Priorities - Coverage

There are points in the chronicles of the films I've worked on that I think it's appropriate to address a production issue at greater length, or expand on a point made in one of the production posts.This will be one of those posts.  I refer to these posts as "Priorities," the things we need to focus on in production.  As I brought up our script supervisor's participation on The Bet, I thought this would be a good time to talk about the work of script supervisors.   

The digital age has brought many wonderful advantages to aspiring movie-makers, but the reduced budgets have also led to breaking some things that were not broken, and they need to be fixed, among them an understanding of coverage and respect for the position of script supervisor.

They used to say that low-budget films are often set apart from their bigger brother counterparts by poor sound, but that is less and less of a problem even on no-budget sets.   As budgets have shrunk, budget priorities have become skewed, with money spent amply, and sometimes foolishly, in certain areas, to the  neglect of others.

Let's get one myth out of the way here and now - if you screw it up in production, it's highly unlikely you will be able to fix it effectively in post, and it will cost you more and not be as good as  if you had gotten it right the first time.

In the last post on The Bet, I mentioned that our brilliant script supervisor, Christine, was an integral part of the discussion on how we would shoot scenes.  We worked on some small budgets, but we would never think to save money with a less-than-experienced script supervisor.

Mind you, we were shooting film, so we had to worry about the cost of raw stock, and printing and developing, so making sure we had the right amount of coverage but not so high a ratio that we were wasting film was all part of the mix.  The script supervisor is essential in this process.

The completed project on The Bet is a testament, in no small part, to Christine's great work, and the work Matt, the director of Lucky Stiffs, did as editor.

Today, I see countless ads for "First AD/script supervisor" - two positions that are completely separate and cannot be done properly together.  On other sets, the script supervisor is whatever unpaid intern agrees to do it, often the person with the least idea of what coverage is needed.

I spoke with an actress making the transition to production recently.  She was hired on a film as a PA, moved up to production coordinator and asked to take script notes on a feature.  She had no idea what coverage was, but just wrote down what someone else told her, someone with as little understanding of coverage as she had.

Coverage has always been tricky.  When I made the transition from theater to film, coverage was the biggest mystery to me.  I could understand how to stage a scene, and how the master played, and could understand a few close-ups, but the range of coverage was something it took me years to fully comprehend.  It saddens me,then, that people who bring significantly less experience to the table think they understand it, and that they don't need any help.

I advised on a short about a year ago where the director talked endlessly about shooting like Scorcese and movement.  When the producer showed me the rough cut, I asked about shots that seemed to be missing.  The producer's answer over and over again was  that we didn't have that angle, or that the one take of that angle was bad.

This was not for lack of money.  Indeed, the director of photography could not have spent more on the equipment rented, insisting on anamorphic lenses and, when we discussed shooting on the 7D, which was more in line with the original budget, he said the crew wouldn't feel the movie was as "important" if it weren't shot on the RED.  The RED is a good system; the reason for renting it shouldn't be to impress the crew.  I hear this sort of nonsense endlessly.

So, he had his lenses, and a huge lighting package, and his RED, and then went out and got way too little coverage.  This for a director and DP who could not make one day as scheduled, despite a very talented and more experienced AD who tried her best to move them along.   The script supervisor?  It was a friend of the director's from when he was in school - when he showed up.

I mentioned that there is a balance between over-shooting and not getting enough coverage.  Even on movies where I've seen not enough coverage, I've seen tons of footage shot.  They were often in long takes, or endless takes to get the shot right, or angles that seemed like coverage but didn't cut so they left the editor in an either/or situation , not really more choices.

Let me repeat: the fact that you exposed a lot of footage does not necessarily mean you have enough coverage.

I find it ironic that in an age where the cost of raw stock, printing and developing is no longer  a concern for the very low-budget filmmaker, micro-budget films seem to suffer from a lack of coverage.

To move efficiently, I try to explain to directors that you are either looking at multiple takes or multiple angles, and on low budget films, you don't get both.  That means if you have carefully thought out your coverage, and your DP and your script supervisor both see it as sufficient, you are doing as many takes as you need to get few angles right, or you do enough angles that you will have choices when one angle isn't perfect.

Don't only try to cut in your head - the beauty of movies is that it is not necessary.  Your shot list or storyboard should not represent the only possible way to cut the movie, it should be your guide to choices you can make later.

If there is one mistake I can keep low-budget movie-makers from making as they read this post, I would suggest that they take the role of script supervisor seriously.  If you really feel you cannot afford this position, then hire your editor before the shoot and have them do the position.  This isn't optimal, but it's better than the alternative.

I have had the honor and privilege of working with so many amazing script supervisors.  They contribute so much to a completed project, and as producer, line producer or AD, I always consult with them and listen to their opinions.  In an earlier post, I mentioned a movie where the producers could have known on Day 3 that they needed to make cuts to the script; instead, they ignored the script supervisor's advice (and mine) and wound up cutting more than half the film after shooting it, at a great cost.  The Black Box.

All of this is not to mention the obvious advantages of having a script supervisor; avoiding continuity errors and saving time when editing because you know exactly what you have available in any given scene.

Now that monitors are pretty much WYSIWYG, scriptys can usually be found in video village, that wonderful cove set aside for monitor and key crew to view it.  Back in the day, even though we had monitors, script would always try to position themselves somewhere immediately behind camera, so that they could see the action from the same angle as camera.  This often meant script supes doubled as contortionists, cramming themselves into whatever small, hidden space they could find that was not in shot and did not throw a shadow, all while timing the shot and writing away.  Today, we don't spend as we used to on Polaroid film from that angle for continuity, but, of course, use digital, but those images are still quicker for script to have than constantly going back over footage to check which hand the cigarette was in.

They provide both lined script, showing that each and every line of the script is actually covered and from what angles (below right), and script notes, (below left) showing director's preference on takes and any issues or problems with those takes that were done.

Of course, when shooting 35mm film, this helps in terms of knowing what takes to print and which ones not to print, which saves money.

When wrap is called, the script supervisor's job isn't done.  Many will type up their notes - I know Christine always did - to make them easier to read.

Everyone brings a special craft to the set, but because people see this one person seemingly just sitting and writing, I often feel they aren't given their due in terms of their importance to the final picture.

Long-time pros, of course, know the value of a good script supervisor, and for them, most of this post seems obvious.  The point of these "priorities" posts is to highlight some areas I see over-looked today, and to pass along some helpful advice to emerging filmmakers.  For those not in film who follow this blog, and want to know more about script supervisors, I direct you to the  Script Supervisor's Elevator Speech, a wonderful blog for those in any area of the business as well.

I've been in this business for more than twenty years, and if I were directing a project tomorrow, I wouldn't think of doing it without a good script supervisor.  No matter how smart you think you are as a director, or how good your DP is or thinks he or she is, a good script supervisor is a vital asset.

Respect them, and respect the work they do.

Okay, preaching over.  Next post, the reason why the subtitle to the tale of The Bet is "The Fall of Love."

Andrea, one of many talented script supes I know

The Black Box

In the wake of an airplane crash, the National Transportation Safety Board searches for the black box, which hopefully tells them what went wrong, and helps to prevent future crashes.

Movies are a little different. We have production reports, which should accurately detail how each and every day goes.  Good 2nd ADs and 2nd 2nds keep detailed notes, and I have always encouraged them to write it down, even if they aren't sure.  If I am the 1st AD, I will call out notes (privately on Channel 2, or as private as Channel 2 is when other departments aren't spying) as they occur for my 2nd, because I may not have time to write it down.  Better to have a record of it than not - we can always sort out later if something noted is important or not.

There are other clues I look for as line producer or UPM, also from the production reports.  Set-ups, of course, are crucial.  I also look closely at the script notes: how many takes are we doing, how long are scenes running, what does the coverage look like, and, if we are shooting film, how much film are we exposing.  All of these things can give you clues, but they don't give you the answer.  Much like the Black Box, it's all in the interpretation.  Thankfully, on a movie, you (hopefully) have live witnesses you can interview to get more information.

Unlike plane crashes, we try to analyze the crash while the plane is still spiraling to the ground.

It's amazing the little things you will notice from production reports, especially the script supervisor's notes.  For instance, I line produced a film where I noticed that, for a scene that would run, say, one page, the masters would run two minutes or more.  Hmm, no matter how you cut the coverage into the master, that means the scenes will run a bit long.  Not a big deal for one scene; definitely a big deal when it's every scene.  I had a first-time feature director who had done shorts and music videos and thought he could just fix it all in post.

After two or three days of this, I sat the writer/producer/lead actor, exec producer, and scripty down and discussed this.  Indeed, her timings, and the way we were running, would mean the entire screenplay would run over 4 hours!  The time to fix this was now.  We needed trims to the script, I needed to see better shot lists, and we needed to get this under the control.  The director blew it off, and the writer/producer was unwilling to cut anything from the script.

Long-story short: the film, which I left because if they won't listen to you, there is nothing you can do, was a story with a past, a present, and a future.  It ran almost twice the length of the original shooting schedule and triple the budget (yes, the line producer who replaced me was very competent and the AD was very good - there is only so much you can do).  Worse, the final film cut out almost all of the past and future and just used the present; they only used about 40 percent of the movie they shot.

This was all predictable and avoidable.  They wouldn't listen.

I choose this point in the blog to address this because of the problems noted on Lucky Stiffs, and the eternal question we have of why things go badly at times on film sets.  Like in a plane crash, there are mechanical problems (like the dolly mishap, or, on other shoots, REDS freezing - they like to do that).  Also as in a plane crash, there is often human error.

Note that I say human error, not pilot error.  Depending on how you look at it, pilot error on a feature film is either the director or producer.  On studio films, the producer can fire the director.  On indie films, the director often is the producer, so that's not going to happen.

Also like on a plane, though, it may be the pilot that seems at fault, but it may begin somewhere else, a mechanic missing something faulty in the working of the plane earlier, for example.  By the time gets the pilot, it may be too late.

The  Hollywood Juicer , in his wonderful blog, has a classic article called The Circle of Confusion, that shares three disaster flicks - the happenings on the shoots, that is - that happened earlier in his career.  He also notes his surprise, coming from it originally as a naive kid in film school to these Hollywood shoots, that professionals could make these sorts of mistakes.

In the indie world, we look at problems on set and bemoan our lack of money, or sometimes write it off to the smaller budgets meaning smaller or maybe less seasoned crew, but is it really that?  Francis Coppola, who produced one of the most successful and, by most lists, one of the best films ever made ( be it Godfather I or Godfather II - you choose - I know it wasn't Godfather 3), took American Zoetrope through some very shaky financial times, with film after film that went over budget and did not recoup their money.  Spike Lee, an admired filmmaker, went  over budget on Malcolm X and  the bond company took it over for a time.

I could go on, but clearly having talented professionals and boundless money does not solve the problem.  Why, then, are movies so damned hard to make?

I go back something Martin Scorcese was quoted as saying in the book, Scorcese on Scorcese.  I'm paraphrasing, but it was something to the effect that 'every time I come on set, and I see all these people and all this equipment, I think to myself, I'm not qualified to do this.'  Granted, this was shortly after he had close to a nervous breakdown but right before Raging Bull.

The point remains that there are a lot of moving parts, mechanical and flesh and blood, on a movie set.  We try to have contingencies for everything - cover sets for rain days, more than enough equipment if something goes down, etc.  It is even standard to build a contingency into a budget.

However, when you take all those mechanical moving parts, and add them to human beings at the control, the possibilities for delays and overruns are endless.  Oscar-winning actors can have bad days, where take-after-take may not work.  The hero car that got to set fine doesn't start.  The DP and director have the same idea in their head for the shot, but it just doesn't look like they drew it up, and a re-light is in order.  The art department ordered the prop in more than enough time, but Fed Ex broke it in shipping.  The costume designer is breaking up with her husband and her distraction is leading to sub-par costumes that have to be redone.

The human equation is not theoretical, and not so easy to determine.  I had two experiences hiring people who had previously been wonderful who turned out all wrong on another shoot.

A 1st AD who had just experienced the birth of his first child.  On our previous shoot, he was energetic and detail-oriented.  On this one, small things were slipping, and it culminated in a tech scout where he seemed to not know what scenes were being shot where.  It turned out the baby was keeping him up and he was getting no sleep.  One of the most unpleasant experiences of my career was this person whose wedding I had attended.  More on that in a future post.

The other was a location manager who had come on and saved a shoot I had taken over.  On this shoot, she was about three months pregnant, but assured me that it would not be an issue.  Once again, the blessed event of childbirth reared its ugly head to hinder the clearly more important task of making a movie.  Her mood swings made her impossible to deal with as a co-worker, and she wasn't finding us any locations.  Her foul spirit at the time made her termination a little more easy to bear.

If Dante was correct, I wonder what circle of hell line producers who fire pregnant women and fathers with newborns occupy.

Oh, and for the record, I discourage any crew or staff member of mine from quitting smoking during the course of our shoot.  I will gladly be supportive later; for now, smoke 'em if you got 'em.

Multiply these sorts of things times the 30-40 crew people on even a small indie shoot, plus the cast, and you get the idea of what human error can look like.

Certainly, all of this should lead us to despair, right?  Maybe not.

I have worked on far more movies that came in on budget than over budget.  I have worked on many films I am extremely proud of, including post supervisor on a movie shot in Cambodia on a 5d for less than $300K that looks like a million bucks just recently and films that have had major distributors and won major film festivals.

I told students that I learn on every movie I work on, and if you ever kid yourself that you have nothing more to learn, it's time to get out.  Each script is different, and has different challenges.  Your last film had lots of stunts, and you figured out how to do all of that?  Great, this film has no stunts but most of the cast are children.  Next movie is filming in the Gulf Coast during hurricane season, or animals abound, or you name it.

There is no cookie cutter, no template, no one-size-fits-all.  There are tried-and-true procedures, and you lean on them for all they are worth, because while there is no template, there is no need to reinvent the wheel either..  (Have I used up my quota of metaphors and analogies yet?  Now you know why I have trouble with Twitter).

What can you do?  It starts with taking time with the hiring process.  Find not only good and talented people, but people who want to be on this particular job, and are a good fit with each other.  The best DP in the world is not gonna work when you have a limited budget and he can consistently needs 60 minutes to get the shot "just right."  That AD might be very talented, but if his or her personality somehow doesn't mesh with the director, there are going to be problems.  We are humans, and we bring issues to the table.  In a business full of freelancers, otherwise known as people who have trouble with routine, authority and convention, let me tell you, the table is pretty overcrowded with issues.  I often say that my 'usual suspects,' my preferred crew, have their own issues, but since I know what those issues are, I find a way to work with them.  A good  team  means checks and balances, and someone will likely be there when an oversight occurs.

Some I have worked with might suggest I have issues, but I can't imagine that to be the case.  At all.  Really.

Those of us in production should be trying to find the right balance of rigidity and openness; no, I will not do something I have seen fail a dozen times before because you think it's a cool idea.  I believe in most of the conventions of film-making, and standard production procedures and practices. They have been developed over years, and those that stuck did so because they work.

There is, however, something to be said for the fact that you need to know the rules in order to break them.  There are times when the standard doesn't work or doesn't apply, and then you have to be able to adapt.

Hopefully, there will be more lessons along the way.  I will put out there all the things I know that work, and all those I have seen not work, so others can learn from mistakes already made when possible.  We will have a little fun along the way.  Stick with me, and you will learn everything you wanted to know about working with draft horses, snakes, the wonderful world of "mob actors" and a whole lot more.

Most of all, remember that the light at the end of every tunnel is not necessarily an on-coming train.  Matt, for all our problems, loved the final result of Lucky Stiffs.  Did you see that smile in the last post at the opening?  The same can be said for the people who made that movie where the final product was only 40 percent of what they shot; they got distribution and some nice reviews.  People don't tend to remember the days when everything went right, and, at the end, an audience  doesn't care, as long as the final product is good.

What if you are not the director or producer?  What do you have to look forward to on difficult shoots?  On even the worst shoots I have been on, I have met good people who I brought onto future shoots, good people who brought me onto future shoots, good people who became lifelong friends.  On other films I  learned something I used on future shoots.

Forget if the glass is half-full or half-empty and enjoy the water (ok, it's rarely water) that's in it.

Get all of that data from the black box, then get that next plane up in the air.  We have places to go and movies to make.