I’ve been feeling that old familiar sick feeling in the guts for the past couple of months.
It feels like loss of confidence in my abilities. The guts were proven true when I set up, directed and shot a drama a few weeks ago. The premise, laid out by my now on-family-leave colleague, Eddy, was a big wig at “the corp” and a member of the corp plan are having a conversation in a coffee shop. Pretty simple back and forth conversation: a one shot, a two shot over the shoulder, one shot, wide shot, a cut away, a two shot, etc. Basic film making right?
The big wig (BW) was played by a real big wig –not my casting choice, and the member played by a colleague (T.). I asked if we could have a few extras –a casting call went out an we ended up with 17 people. About 14 too many, but it was decided we shouldn’t turn anyone away, then my big boss suggested we use her daughter and friend as extras too.
The shoot started off noisily with the extras, my crew (S.), my boss, my big boss, and the talent milling about in a tiny coffee shop. It was stinking hot. The refrigerators and freezers kept cycling on and off.
We started running thru the script with BW and T –it quickly became apparent BW hadn’t read the script, nevermind memorized it. He started re-writing it on the fly –the script that had been thru many many levels of approvals: our CEO, Legal, and BW himself all had signed off on it. My big boss reined him in a bit, but he kept on complaining he wouldn’t use certain words in everyday speech.
I calmly explained that we had to say things in a certain way to ensure legal and shareholders were happy. This is the biggest wig of the entire organization: not my idea, but Eddy’s…where’s Eddy? Taking the summer off with his wife and new born boy. Thanks Eddy, I owe ya one.
Meanwhile my big boss is starting to get antsy –she’s not noted for her calm demeanour at the best of times…right now there looks like a major meltdown a-comin’ our way.
Finally we start to shoot –one of the mics develops an incredibly loud buzz. Nothing I do, like jiggling of wires, replacing cables, batteries, nor sub-vocal swearing on my part fixes the problem. I call a break and swap out everything: it works. Start to shoot again, the noisiest refrigerator in the shop comes on full blast. I get S. to pull the plug (and remember to plug back in). My big boss storms out, followed by my boss.
Start to shoot again. BW has a hell of a time just having a normal conversation: “Hi BW, thanks for coming to talk with me.” T. chirps, “Oh, uh, uh, uh, yeah, uhhhhhh, my pleasure….” looks at camera and me on last “uhhhhh” and immediately follows with “Got it?” To see if I GOT THE SHOT! “Awesome!” I say, “Maybe we could do it again, I wasn’t happy with the framing though–my bad.”
He grabs his script which he demands he have right in front of him so he can read it…. “Cool, as long as you don’t make eye contact with anyone you can pull this off without running away screaming,” I tell myself. I reset the shot so no script is visible and start again, all the while thinking what a goat rodeo; I’ll be lucky to get anything out of this shoot. I just wasted everybody’s time and effort including my own. This goes on and on for 3 hrs, all the while I’m playing calm and collected while the refrain in my brain is going, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, FU-UUUUUCK!”
The next day my boss asks to see a rough cut by end of day. I spend the better part of the day trying to figure out how to use this editing software that Eddy likes…ever heard of Song Vegas? No, not many people have…for many good reasons. It’s a total piece of crap. Once I figure out how to make simple j and l-cuts –not easy in Vegas (you have to force like it’s never heard of such a thing), I get a flow going, then the holes appear –they get bigger and bigger, I got nothing to fill the holes. What I have is a shoddy looking pile of garbage with the worst audio you’ve ever heard.
Eventually I get sidetracked trying to eliminate some of the aggressively overpowering noises. The most annoying is one of the extras: a loud talker with a shrill gay voice that cuts thru everything. During the shoot I pulled him aside a couple of times and asked him if he could just nod and mouth words. That lasted 5 secs before he was back at his loud shrill talking.
Anyway, while editing. I step away to walk around the building to clear my head. I get back and get shit from the big boss for not signing myself out –she came to see the video and I wasn’t there. The thing I really hate about this edit suite, besides Vegas, is it’s set up in the hallway in the middle of our workpods. People love to stop by and offer their unsolicited comments. It’s fun.
Last Wednesday, just before I left to pickup C. to find out the news from the oncologist, I went to my boss and told him we needed to re-shoot. He agreed and said we’ll hire someone to edit. “No-ooooooooo, it’s not the editing,” I say, “it’s the shooting. Trying to shoot, do audio, direct non-actors, and keep an eye on the script is insanely difficult. I suck. I can’t do it.” My boss replies, “That’s OK, we’ll help out as needed. We’ll hire an editor.”
I suck. I am doomed.
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