Project: The "Making Of" Documentary Savannah, Georgia

Today we wrapped on the main part of the "making of" documentary I have been directing for the past 7 or so weeks. This takes a HUGE weight off of my chest, although not all of it, because it means I won't have to be driving hours out to set multiple nights a week and organizing an all too large documentary crew while at the same time trying to fulfill class requirements, tiptoe around the movie set so as to not get in the way, and pull as many strings as possible to get the interviews and coverage that we agreed to try to get at the beginning of the class. It's been a rough project with late nights and long hours(sometimes starting at 6pm and ending as late as 3am or 4am). I'm very glad it's done.

Here's the low-down on the project. The documentary is a "making of" documentary about a low-budget feature film that was being shot here in and around Savannah, Georgia this summer. The doc will most likely be included as part of the special features section of the film's dvd that will be released later this year. How did I get this particular job? It was part of a class.

Some of the nicer photos from the film set one night...







One of the classes I am enrolled in this summer is called "Shooting the Feature Film" and is basically an experimental one-time-only class that is being offered this quarter by none other than the infamous Professor Meyer himself. The class is basically one big case study of the film that he is executive producing here. The movie, although independent in nature and independent of the college is making good use of the college and it's personnel resources. Interns seem to be everywhere on set although the crew is young regardless. It's many of the crew's first time doing a large feature film and thus, a perfect time to study the process as a class. Oh yeah, and how better to compose a case study of a feature film but head up the "making of" docuementary? Righto!

I haven't yet gotten the go-ahead from the higher powers to reveal much more about the film, itself, so there's really not much more I can say about the actual film except that it is a low budget thriller with SAG actors and a few california kids on crew.

Here are some pictures from the main set one night during third shift. The set was out at this farm in Effingham county. The crew was shooting a sequence that involved two children being chased by a giant corn combine that was on the loose in a backyard corn field. No joke.

Some more pix: Click the thumbnail to enlarge it.


                                        


My job was (still is ,really) to basically organize the project for the class. My "crew" for the documentary consisted of about 12 people. This was terrible because it meant that we would have to rotate what days we went out to set and filmed for the behind the scenes stuff. We wanted to be out there as much as possible and at least every single day that they were filming but coordinating 12 people's schedules who are also taking other classes and working is so difficult. I had an assistant director (thank GOD) who really help split up the work load so that made things a little better but really it was very difficult. We only took two or three people on set at a time because the last thing that we needed was to have a ton of people getting in the way of the actual filming that we were supposed to be capturing the behind the scenes footage for. In order to do this, though, we had to split the class up into groups of 2 and three to go out and film every single day. This is terrible for a "making-of" documentary because when shooting a film like this you have to be considered and respected as part of the actual film crew working on the set. It's better if everyone working on set knows you by name and is comfortable being themselves around you. If a different person is going out to set every night then the crew has no way of getting to know everyone and getting used to the separate unit always being there, thus inhibiting the actual making of the "making of" documentary. Man that whole "making of" thing is annoying.

anyway

So it was a little bit rough to start out with, not to mention I left for Cornerstone Music festival (The Cornerstone entry is here.) and was gone for a week only about a week into our filming which is so not cool for me to do as the director but it all worked out in the end. We had to regroup and reorganize over and over but I think we ended up doing ok.

I have shot one other "making of" documentary about Smorgasburgh, a film loosely based on the children's book "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs". Smorgasburgh was a student film shot last quarter here at SCAD by a friend, Andrew Cook. I'm actually working on editing that documentary as I'm typing.... Well I'm not technically editing it right now. I'm only importing a tape that I still needed to capture into my system. This gives me some free time to write a journal entry while the computer is sucking in the video from my camera. I basically just have to sit here and make sure everything is running correctly while it goes. Compared to The Making of Smorgasburgh, this other making of documentary should turn out good if not better. One advantage of having a ton of people working on the film is that I can delegate responsibilities and jobs to other people. THis is good because then I don't get stuck doing all of the work or doing work that I am just plain bad at. A team effort is always a must but...

...if I ever shoot another making-of documentary It will be a two person run-and-gun effort and I'll make sure that we are a little more organized. Hey, I guess you learn as much as you can as you go and then you go again and learn some more:) After production I'll hand all of the tapes over to an editor and be like "ok your turn" then take a mad break while they transcribe and work with the feature's directors to figure out what can be used and what can't be. After my break I'll step back in and loosely oversee the editing (provided I'd have already had the structure for the film scripted out for the crew) while not touching a computer at all. haha.

I enjoy this work. I'll post a little bit of the Smorgasburgh making-of documentary as soon as I can get it online. As for the other one, that's up to the heads of production.

Here's to another late night surrounded by cameras, tapes, hard drives, Arizona Iced Tea Grapeade, an ipod on shuffle, and my trusty little computer. Class tomorrow at 9am , we'll go all day and we'll do it again.
Actually, in all honesty I'll probably hit it early tonight in celebration of having another documentary in the can.