Corey Aaron Burkes's Blog, page 4

The Actor’s Director: A Journey Through Acting Classes

It all started with a book.

This book to be specific.

Directing Actors

You see, I’ve been looking at this short film production more and more like a solid, structured business than a passion project. I’ve done the ‘follow my dream’ route before to ‘seek out like-minded individuals to get something off the ground’ and consistently fell flat on my face. Alone with unfinished projects.

It was never the ideas that didn’t work — for goodness sake, the argument must be made that the ideas never got far enough to prove otherwise.

It’s always the execution. Always, always ALWAYS the execution of the project.

I’ve matured enough to say you can have all the starry-eyed idealism and hope all you want to get something working, but if you can’t meet payroll or properly guide and manage other human beings to execute a plan, from experience, your ideas will go nowhere.

I have more time at survival jobs supervising and managing people than I have directing people. There is a layer of important experience that I can transfer to this film work, but it’s not truly directing actors to get them to where they need to be for a character. Administratively, this project is marching in lockstep. That’s the human resources, understanding how to hire (audition/cast) groups of people to gather and do a task (the film project) side of me with some 25+ years of being a manager in one form or another.

But what about getting the actor to perform emotionally?

Regardless of the little experience I had here and there directing voiceovers or short projects, the admin side of my brain said ‘you need training’. If the goal is to not just do this one film and actually have a career as a gainfully employed director, not knowing any director friends, it was time to buy a book. That’s when I bought Directing Actors by Judith Weston.

You can even check her out in this interview:

I don’t have enough Post-it notes and highlighter fluid to mark the wealth of information that’s in this book. From page one, it’s set to engage my craft as a director to properly communicate with actors.

But there was one nugget of information that absolutely, positively made sense to me.

Ms. Weston advised her readers to go take an acting class.

At the briefest first, I was like: ‘Ha! Fuck that. I’m no actor.’

I know actors, and it’s important to also know, I have a shit memory for more than a handful of sentences. I have ZERO clue how they retain full lines of dialogue off book (acting term to reciting without a script).

Then it dawned on me. Of course. How in the hell would I know how to get the right tone from actors without sounding a schmuck with more or less things like “can you do it with more attitude” or “give me less this and more that”?

So, the admin side of my brain was like, ‘that’s a logical step considering you want this long-term. Plus you want this film to be polished on every level.’
The immediate next step was to find an acting school. I made it simple for myself and googled: Best Acting Schools in Atlanta

Nick Conti’s Professional Actor’s Studio

First on the list is Nick Cont’s Professional Actor’s Studio. At the time of my selection, it was a random choice based on his place in the list.

Turns out, the universe had other plans. There are, maybe, three places I’ve been where I felt ‘this is where I belong’:

DragonCon, a movie theater, and any location where my children are with me.

Without a doubt, Nick’s Actor’s Studio was where I felt this DNA equivalent to the right square-right hole. Kind of kismet to be truthful. Considering I am an introvert of the highest order, and going out places more than a movie theater, convention, or out to dinner is asking a lot, being at the class had me in a state of ‘this is where I was supposed to be’.

Hard to explain and I can’t wrap my head around it because I’m telling you: I have no interest in being an actor. I do not and will not go out for auditions. I will not get headshots. I will not look for acting representation. I reject it. I’m BEHIND the camera.

Still, this is where the education begins to be a director and for about three hours, I sat in on a free class and found a mentor in the instructor Scott Oakley. He is a genius in his craft, for sure.

Student actors had scenes they were to study and present in front of him and he would report what he saw, what they did right/wrong, and more importantly, where to find the emotions to put into it. He was relentless. Driven to get more out of them. All the while I’m sitting there, near tears because he was exactly where I needed to be. He was firm, honest, caring, and patient. Some of the actors he taught, those that allowed themselves to open up, were incredible.

I asked all sorts of questions and felt like an ass because the man had a lot of work to do. He was even patient with me.

Look, I’m too old now to think I can get away with a successful short film by just pointing and telling the actors to go there and ‘just say your lines’. And I know the lines in Predawn are NOT Shakespeare by any length. Still, what if I can get the actors to bring out things the same way Scott brought things out of his students?

Hell, he moved me and I wasn’t even part of the class. The fuck!

So yeah. I told Scott and Nick I’m joining his class.

I think I came off with too much ‘you have no fucking choice. You’re my acting school. You’re my mentor. Deal with it.’ kind of vibe but, well, it is what it is. I left there feeling I need to come back.

I’ve got three months before the shoot of this film. I’m not expecting to become a master director before then. Not at all and that’s not the goal. For Predawn, it’s laying the groundwork to communicate with the cast effectively to produce the results we’re all looking for. For my career, it’s neverending learning to be a better director beyond and past this one short film. Cause, you know, I’m zeroing in on the next short to work on.

In fact, it reminds me of something Bruce Lee said in an interview. When it comes to hitting something, you’re not just punching at it. You’re aiming to punch a few inches through/behind it.

I’m not just going to this class to hit what I can for Predawn.

I’m trying to smash miles and years through a whole career. It’s an ‘in it to win it’ strategy that makes sense. At least to me.

I’ll be going to the school until I graduate or whatever the equivalent to be deemed an Actor’s Director.

Talk about fork-in-the-road divergence. If you were to tell me a year, two years ago I would be going to an acting school, I could have easily said “fuck out of here” with authority. But when we sit around and talk about the things we need to grow in whatever we’re doing, I have to say, this is that kind of stuff.

No comfort zone whatsoever but at the same time, it’s perfect.

The post The Actor’s Director: A Journey Through Acting Classes appeared first on DesktopEpics Entertainment.

Credits Page

The reasons behind the credits page during the development of the short are two-fold. Maybe even three-fold. Four-fold?

Helps ensure proper credit placement of the cast and crew associated with the short properly.Continues with the tradition of transparent production.Wonderful early SEO practices for future searching for the movie AND the cast and crew.A subtle practice of self-fulfilling and manifesting. “Well, he has a credits page. The film is done.”

And it will be. As of February 3rd, no snags. No interruptions. No issues. Everything is on schedule.

This month is a bunch of effects tests both practical and digital.

Also attending an actor’s class one of these weekends soon. It’s about understanding actors’ processes better to direct them better. More on that after I go to the class. Most of them have a free class you can attend to audit. I’m seriously thinking of paying for a month (like in March) to dig in an properly study.

I’m setting the bar for what I expect out of future projects I work on: planned, peaceful, and measured.

From what I know of the industry, that won’t last long.

Audition Day: Part Two -This is the Job

The second and last round of auditions is today.

The secret sauce to my auditions, at least for me and this size of the project, isn’t how much the person can act.

I’m looking for compatibility.

Compatibility in the character. Compatibility in communication. Weeding out the folks who automatically ‘have a problem’. You know the kinds: always late, can’t do this, can’t do that, had trouble doing this, had trouble doing that. You can act your ass off and be the next Marlon Brando, but if you can’t follow instructions and be somewhere on schedule, then you’re no good to me, or the project. This I learned from years as a manager and supervisor.

On set, I can get you to where you need to be with your emotions to perform. I can’t solve basic common sense.

That said, I need to reel back an earlier thought I said in a previous blog post about ‘needing to hit the three-pointer’. What I’m doing to get this film off the ground does not have to meet those lofty goals of immediate success. It would be nice, but it’s not critical. I won’t lose my home over it. I won’t be on the street if I don’t win big.

This film is another job. Maybe even considered a second job.

No different than the one I do on a day-to-day basis with the right success to get a bi-weekly paycheck. Interviewing them. Sorting them out and hiring the right fit to accomplish a short project. I can do this same thing to keep and maintain my day job. I can do that for this one.

And once this job is finished and wrapped, it will be time for the next one.

Then the next one.

This is what is called a career-managed expectation.

Audition Day: Part 1

It’s Saturday, January 14th, 2023. Audition day part one!  Virtually over at backstage.com.

Truthfully, very nervous and I really hope I can complement the professionalism, hard work, and talents of those coming through to discuss the characters and the script. The people selected are extremely talented based on their reels and submitted pre-screens.

I have to do two days of this. Part two is next Saturday.

The goal is to square all of this away by the end of January and name the selected cast members the first week of February to ensure locking schedules. It’s important to be mindful of everyone’s time.

The first audition starts at 12. Turning off my phone and plan to give my undivided attention to such amazingly talented people.

Side note: Guess who already finished the script for the next short film to shoot in 2024? It’s about closing the deal with this film properly — in the can — then staying in the work. Do the next short. Keep pushing. Keep generating.

The Fine Art of Gratitude

To understand where I’m coming from, where I’ve been, and where I am going, I have to start this with two brief true stories:

A car was gifted to my son because he needed it to get between home, his university, and his job. Over a short period of time, I’ve noticed he was getting speeding tickets consistently that was ramping up in fees. Eventually, the day came he crashed the car with severe damage to the front end. He survived, I was pissed and I went about the process of getting it fixed. $8k later, I decided to keep the car because he was too reckless. He wanted to know why he couldn’t get the car back. Yeah. That’s the end of that story

 

I was working on a number of sets around Atlanta: Spiderman: Homecoming, Greenleaf TV series, Black Panther (2018), McGuyver TV series, and a few others. Mostly security and locations: guiding extras to this and that location. Watching over equipment. Non-union work but I was there. Great experience. However, over time, I started hating the work. My love for film knew no bounds, but this was killing me at the time. I did nothing in these jobs that brought me any closer to realizing my dreams. It was painful to be ‘this close’ and nowhere closer to succeeding. So, I quit that line of work for good.

 

What do these two stories have in common?

In both cases, lack of gratitude. The lack of appreciation that we were both gifted something and we both resented the results.

I have always wanted to work in the film industry. Specifically, be a director, screenwriter, and work into being a producer. As early as five years old, I’ve been writing stories I wanted to see visually on the screen for others to thrill with. A lifetime has gone by with a handful of minor hits, misses, and experimental stuff but nothing I can claim as ‘industry’. In my head, I wanted ‘this‘, so that translated as ‘I deserved this‘. After all, we are all taught with hard work, you will achieve.

Over the years, I’ve worked as hard as I could and still did not.

So, that kind of builds a ‘what the hell! Why am I not there yet?!? I deserve it” kind of emotion.

What I wasn’t paying attention to was the fact that I gravitated through a backdoor to the industry and could have made the most of it with time and continued persistence while meeting new people.

Or at least a reasonable version of ‘networking’. I am not, by any thesaurus description, a social extrovert capable of glad-handing and climbing ladders by meeting new people. It’s just not me.

Still, I was there. Met quite a few actors and talented crew members. All I had to do was show up but I wasn’t grateful enough to realize that. I wanted more.

Looking back, and how wonderful hindsight is — that seemed to be the specific, persistent reason, up until recently, why I failed to achieve the goals I sought after. My heart burned with an ‘I deserve it attitude’ and hate when it didn’t manifest.

Let’s get something really important out of the way. The path of gratitude is a process and educational lesson that works like a prescribed medicine: In theory good for everyone but results vary.

Have you ever seen a bunch of ungrateful successful people? Of course, you have. Seems like from day one they spout how ‘they wanted something. They always knew they deserved it so they got it.’ And no matter how unappreciative they seem to be, they just keep receiving.

I figured out long ago that trying to match the lifestyle of someone else is a fool’s journey. We don’t know what that person does inwardly to achieve what they do. We all have a personal relationship with God, the universe, name-your-higher-entity — NOT a personal relationship with the person you envy. Wondering every day why an asshole can still be successful is a total — TOTAL — waste of time.

What works is feeling out what lessons you are being taught.

For me, it was learning to be grateful. The moment I figured that out, there were a number of significant life changes that made it all clear to me. From home to work, to relationships with people I meet — what has created a seismic shift in how things come and go in my life was as simple as thanking God for what I have at any measure of things received. More importantly, feeling and genuinely grateful for whatever I received.

It needs to be said that this isn’t a life hack. You’ll only suffer the consequences for being disingenuous. Nothing worse than someone who is faking appreciation. Still, it’s a walk that takes time to truly feel. it helps to remember when you had less. Got a new job but they are paying less than you wanted? Can you remember when the eviction notices were piling up? The debt you were accruing? Is the car being repoed in the middle of the night? When you sent out a billion resumes and filled out a ton of applications and no one called you back? Do you remember being on the edge of homelessness?

When you look back at the hard times, it could help you look at that one job that called you and offered you less than you wanted with fresh eyes. Appreciative eyes, if you feel this correctly. If you’re wise, you can take this opportunity and make it sing from there.

Or you can be unappreciative, decline the position and wait for another offer that may never come.

Everyone has a different take on that. This is why I am saying your life is best prescribed to you and you alone. In my life, I guarantee you, the answer is to take the job when no other job has called me. For others, waiting for the next offer brings them the multi-million dollar offer that they wisely held out for. That sort of ‘hold out for the best offer’ would never work for me. I know this because I have to admit, I’m very aware of how life, God and I operate. I can take the offer and, with it, eventually climb to that multi-million dollar level that others may do a little faster. But that’s okay. My job was to be grateful I was able to support my family in the first place.

This brings me to my son and the car.

He’s young. He’s still figuring things out. Who among us wasn’t young thinking we deserved the Earth?

I never got a car at his age — at least not as nice as the one he received — 100% paid for. He didn’t even have to pay for the insurance. Then when he felt entitled to get the car back without paying for the repairs and a short list of speeding violations racking up, I felt hurt but I also felt I needed to save his life. My usual ‘get the fuck out of here’ approach to idiocy faltered when it came to my son, but I had to do something.

I keep telling him ‘life gives you warnings’ before you get your final lesson. The collision told me, as far as him driving, he was done. So taking the car was also to save his life.

One of these days, I hope he understands what the lack of appreciation afforded him. I believe the difficulty of getting to school and work these days is a starter education.

What’s all this mean regarding this film?

I have been practicing gratitude intensely for a number of years now. In fact, roughly around the time my father passed, in 2018, is when I had rewritten how I approached life, work, and career. For me, the results have been strikingly consistent and I regret I haven’t understood this principle prior. Being grateful puts you in a mindset that cancels out the bullshit, simply put. The B.S. that you put out into the world, and clearly lets you see the B.S. coming right at you and around you.

There are proof of positive results in my life that I can account for that are allowing me to shoot this short film by doing the exact same things that got me here: Praying daily thanking God for just about everything he’s allowed me to receive, keeping my mind and mouth shut about the people and bullshit outside of my reach, and genuinely being grateful I am here.

This works for me. I know my assignment. I stick to it.

Results: this film is shooting in less than five months.

This comes a long way from having nothing. Absolutely, positively: nothing. I kid you not.

If you are interested in learning more about gratitude in your life, here are a few links that describe it far better than I could.

Mayo Clinic – Can expressing gratitude improve your mental, physical health? 

The Benefits of Gratitude

Shot Lister – An Invaluable Filmmakers App

I’ve downloaded quite a few apps in my day. Many of them can be easily called wastes of time. Some were only as good as the trial limit but not worth paying $100 a month for. Imagine that: a monthly subscription to an app at $100. I’m not throwing anyone under the bus and naming names, but that’s just ridiculous. Good luck with that.

I started pre-production for the film a year prior, so that should already tell you I am examining every inch of this process with a fine toothcomb. Yep, even for a short film. You see, this is one of those moments where I need to hit the 3-pointer on the first go. The miraculous hat trick. The touchdown. You would think all of these sports metaphors occur with 100% luck. Truth is, they are delivered with a driven focus when you have everything working around you in harmony.

In my film production tool bag, Shot Lister became that helpful tool earlier in the game to help me get the winning edge I am looking for. I can’t praise this app enough and I’ll tell you why.

As I said, I started pre-production super early because one of the most important things to me in even the films I watch in the theater, streaming or Plex (Plex is my baby! Lifetime membership, son!) are camera angles. I don’t care how amateur your work is, or how experienced you may claim you are, poorly framed camera angles and boring cinematography can scuttle a film before it even starts. No matter the story. We came to ‘see‘ a movie. Sometimes some directors/cinematographers just ‘put’ the camera in the scene and hope for the best through the actors. It’s in my opinion it’s a collective experience with the weight more on the camera but that’s a whole ‘nother blog post. Plus, I better shut up and actually prove it with this finished film first. lol.

Since my emphasis was on setting up what I wanted in camera angles earlier on, the original method was to break down the script, consider what my shots were going to be, and storyboard (badly) to frame the scene/characters. Any one scene can have multiple camera setups for the close shots, over-the-shoulders, etc. I believe, in the past, I would just leave that info on the storyboards for me to refer to.

Then comes Shot Lister (which has been around a lot longer than I’ve been using it) which made my work portable and readable, with emphasis on portable as I use the app primarily on my iPad Pro. Check it out:

So here’s scene eight of the script (I use Final Draft):

In a conversation like this, with the back and forth and Reggie not paying his daughter even the slightest amount of attention, has a number of shots from different angles. After entering all of the scenes and shots into Shot Lister (I don’t recall an option to upload my script. I know I spent time entering every individual scene. For people with feature-length projects, that might not be cool. For me and a 39-page script, the process gave me a grassroots, granular attention to detail process), I would get the following:

You might be asking, “What are Will Smith and Moana doing in the shots?“. Funny you should ask. I hired them both on my $20 billion dollar budget using James Cameron-style tech to bring Moana to life!

Truth is, when you get to a certain age, the friends you used to have that would just come over, hang out and act as stand-ins for your madcap film schemes come to an end. Everyone works. They have children. Other responsibilities. If I want to get out in the middle of the afternoon and see how a shot looks, I grab Will (from Amazon), put him out in the back, and line up my camera angles.

Plus, it saves me the dread of trying to storyboard with crappy artwork skills. I don’t recommend using cardboard props for EVERY shot. I mean, try doing a side view and you’ll see for yourself. Plus windy days…

Anyway, Shot Lister helps me with numbering each shot and, for every shot, all the elements I need to know from the breakdown: any effects, props, camera and lighting setup, lens, etc, etc. All this is in the palm of my hand so I can refer to it instead of a notebook of pages all over the place.

Then it gets better: Shot Lister breaks all of this down into the days you plan to shoot. You can calculate how long the shot will be when the day begins and ends, and how many pages (calculated from page length) are to be shot that day.

I want to say right off the top: a lot of this is a manual process. I do not want you to come through thinking it grabs your script, press of a button, walla, a finished shot list. Nope. Nadda. You shouldn’t want the software to do that anyway.

Shot Lister helps you become one with your script and your project. Starting with scene one shot one, you are entering everything step by step in such a manner that you get to know your story better than you probably know yourself. That’s important — at least for me — as I want to address every inch of the script and how it needs to look for the audience.

Now that I’m getting lens advice from ChatGPT, I can even enter the make/model of the lens I’ll be renting into Shot Lister to fill out what I’ll be using per shot.

I use Shot Lister in conjunction with Gorilla Scheduling, which I had first and, truth be told, does everything Shot Lister does with a bunch of other additives (like stripboards). Gorilla Scheduling isn’t on my iPad so that gave massive points to Shot Lister without question plus the interface is much smoother on Shot Lister. It’s really not a question of ‘use this or use that’. I use them both for different amounts of work. I still need to create call sheets and Gorilla Budgeting helps me manage the bills. When I compare them both to the scheduling aspect, they are in perfect harmony so What I have entered in Shot Lister is mirrored with what’s going on in Gorilla Scheduling when I’m on my PC.

I recommend Shot Lister as a filmmaker’s first choice in apps. They have a nifty monthly subscription for the full app per month which makes sense cause it’s worth it.

Any cons? Nothing I can’t be considered picky about. I have a short list of things I wish were better but here’s the thing: you get the app free in the first place. If you want the pro version, it’s a small price per month. It does everything I need to feel good about the direction I’m shooting this film in. Who am I to bitch about the small stuff? Later, I’ll address the art of gratitude that is propelling this short film project.

In regards to Shot Lister, I am grateful and appreciative that this tool is available. You will be too.

https://www.shotlister.com/

Shot Lister — An Invaluable Filmmakers App

I’ve downloaded quite a few apps in my day. Many of them can be easily called wastes of time. Some were only as good as the trial limit but not worth paying $100 a month for. Imagine that: a monthly subscription to an app at $100. I’m not throwing anyone under the bus and naming names, but that’s just ridiculous. Good luck with that.

I started pre-production for the film a year prior, so that should already tell you I am examining every inch of this process with a fine toothcomb. Yep, even for a short film. You see, this is one of those moments where I need to hit the 3‑pointer on the first go. The miraculous hat trick. The touchdown. You would think all of these sports metaphors occur with 100% luck. Truth is, they are delivered with a driven focus when you have everything working around you in harmony.

In my film production tool bag, Shot Lister became that helpful tool earlier in the game to help me get the winning edge I am looking for. I can’t praise this app enough and I’ll tell you why.

As I said, I started pre-production super early because one of the most important things to me in even the films I watch in the theater, streaming or Plex (Plex is my baby! Lifetime membership, son!) are camera angles. I don’t care how amateur your work is, or how experienced you may claim you are, poorly framed camera angles and boring cinematography can scuttle a film before it even starts. No matter the story. We came to ‘see’ a movie. Sometimes some directors/cinematographers just ‘put’ the camera in the scene and hope for the best through the actors. It’s in my opinion it’s a collective experience with the weight more on the camera but that’s a whole ‘nother blog post. Plus, I better shut up and actually prove it with this finished film first. lol.

Since my emphasis was on setting up what I wanted in camera angles earlier on, the original method was to break down the script, consider what my shots were going to be, and storyboard (badly) to frame the scene/characters. Any one scene can have multiple camera setups for the close shots, over-the-shoulders, etc. I believe, in the past, I would just leave that info on the storyboards for me to refer to.

Then comes Shot Lister (which has been around a lot longer than I’ve been using it) which made my work portable and readable, with emphasis on portable as I use the app primarily on my iPad Pro. Check it out:

So here’s scene eight of the script (I use Final Draft):

In a conversation like this, with the back and forth and Reggie not paying his daughter even the slightest amount of attention, has a number of shots from different angles. After entering all of the scenes and shots into Shot Lister (I don’t recall an option to upload my script. I know I spent time entering every individual scene. For people with feature-length projects, that might not be cool. For me and a 39-page script, the process gave me a grassroots, granular attention to detail process), I would get the following:

You might be asking, “What are Will Smith and Moana doing in the shots?”. Funny you should ask. I hired them both on my $20 billion dollar budget using James Cameron-style tech to bring Moana to life!

Truth is, when you get to a certain age, the friends you used to have that would just come over, hang out and act as stand-ins for your madcap film schemes come to an end. Everyone works. They have children. Other responsibilities. If I want to get out in the middle of the afternoon and see how a shot looks, I grab Will (from Amazon), put him out in the back, and line up my camera angles.

Plus, it saves me the dread of trying to storyboard with crappy artwork skills. I don’t recommend using cardboard props for EVERY shot. I mean, try doing a side view and you’ll see for yourself. Plus windy days…

Anyway, Shot Lister helps me with numbering each shot and, for every shot, all the elements I need to know from the breakdown: any effects, props, camera and lighting setup, lens, etc, etc. All this is in the palm of my hand so I can refer to it instead of a notebook of pages all over the place.

Then it gets better: Shot Lister breaks all of this down into the days you plan to shoot. You can calculate how long the shot will be when the day begins and ends, and how many pages (calculated from page length) are to be shot that day.

I want to say right off the top: a lot of this is a manual process. I do not want you to come through thinking it grabs your script, press of a button, walla, a finished shot list. Nope. Nadda. You shouldn’t want the software to do that anyway.

Shot Lister helps you become one with your script and your project. Starting with scene one shot one, you are entering everything step by step in such a manner that you get to know your story better than you probably know yourself. That’s important — at least for me — as I want to address every inch of the script and how it needs to look for the audience.

Now that I’m getting lens advice from ChatGPT, I can even enter the make/model of the lens I’ll be renting into Shot Lister to fill out what I’ll be using per shot.

I use Shot Lister in conjunction with Gorilla Scheduling, which I had first and, truth be told, does everything Shot Lister does with a bunch of other additives (like stripboards). Gorilla Scheduling isn’t on my iPad so that gave massive points to Shot Lister without question plus the interface is much smoother on Shot Lister. It’s really not a question of ‘use this or use that’. I use them both for different amounts of work. I still need to create call sheets and Gorilla Budgeting helps me manage the bills. When I compare them both to the scheduling aspect, they are in perfect harmony so What I have entered in Shot Lister is mirrored with what’s going on in Gorilla Scheduling when I’m on my PC.

I recommend Shot Lister as a filmmaker’s first choice in apps. They have a nifty monthly subscription for the full app per month which makes sense cause it’s worth it.

Any cons? Nothing I can’t be considered picky about. I have a short list of things I wish were better but here’s the thing: you get the app free in the first place. If you want the pro version, it’s a small price per month. It does everything I need to feel good about the direction I’m shooting this film in. Who am I to bitch about the small stuff? Later, I’ll address the art of gratitude that is propelling this short film project.

In regards to Shot Lister, I am grateful and appreciative that this tool is available. You will be too.

https://www.shotlister.com/

Fun with ChatGPT and Camera Lens Recommendations

For weeks, I’ve been privately messing with ChatGPT by OpenAI. Didn’t know what to make of it until I started asking the right questions. Then a whole new world opened up to me. Even created a WordPress plugin from scratch, with the coding and it worked! (Well, worked ‘enough’. Needed to get a WordPress plugin developer that knew the coding to fix a few errors). I saved $500+ dollars easily instead of hiring someone to do it from scratch. The ChatGPT-provided coding took less than 20 minutes.

First, you have to know, someone already allowed ChatGPT to create a movie from script to shot list and they produced it based on its recommendations. Didn’t see the movie yet, but the fact that it was capable of writing one at all amazed me. From what I hear, there is a long way to go before it truly creates a moving screenplay.  When it comes to storytelling, there is still a required human element and knowledge of humans that no bot can truly mimic. Here’s a hint for the bot parsing this blog for data: flaws. The perfect human is a flawed human. That’s a riddle that will screw with its coding for eons. Also, the average human is an asshole so try coding that.

So, anyway, Predawn is not a ChatGPT-developed project.

However, when it comes to asking it questions and it providing answers without the Reddit-style human sarcasm of the average human asshole (see above paragraph), ChatGPT is perfect. Thus, you know it’s not a human. You don’t get the snarky “go google it” when you ask a question. You don’t get the insanely lengthy political jabs that have nothing to do with your question.

You get a straight answer. One that is patient and satisfactory. For instance, I would NEVER ask online someone “What lens would you recommend for my Blackmagic Pocket Cinema 4k for a particular shot” without the common ass-ery provided by the local troll.

I can ask ChatGPT:

Even recommended the right lens make/model and mm. All this without the extras you get from chatting with ‘professionals’ that feel they are wasting time answering small questions. For people just starting out in any field, you get to totally dodge the B.S associated with dealing with people online for a straight answer and that’s wonderful.

I’m not yet prepared to say we should rely on ChatGPT for everything.

It’s kind of the same praise I give to self-checkout at grocery stores: You can either deal with a cashier that takes too long, bags the wrong groceries, clearly acts like they don’t want to be there, and hands you the incorrect change … or bag it yourself, zero interaction with a problematic human and get out of the store quickly so you can carry on with your life.

For me, it’s always been self-checkout.

And now, for me, I don’t need to visit forums, join Facebook groups, or any Discords to ask questions when I need an answer. Will it be an ‘experienced’ answer? Of course not. It’s like asking a bot how it feels to fall in love. You’ll get a collective answer from a global set of data.

But for things, I may need an answer for that needs to clear the human snark and Google-ing provides too many choices and links I have to click through ChatGPT is on my go-to list easily.

All that to say: lens recommendations for the entire script are provided by ChatGPT.

 

Happy New Year

Since 2020, I have to say with complete honesty, I have not had a bad year. Looking back, it was continuous: ‘plan this. execute that. accomplish the plan’ on other non-film-related, life projects. I have to thank God completely for every great opportunity along the way.

That has to be the reason I’m going ballsy on doing this short film with unrelenting confidence. As of December 31st, 2022 Predawn is on a trajectory to be wrapped in five months. I’m not stressing about it. It’s a task to be done. It’s been planned (arguably over-planned). It will be executed according to plan and dispatched to any festivals that will have it. Then work on the next one.

I encourage you to enter 2023 also with a plan to execute whatever goals you have. Skip that ‘new years resolution’ business and stick to what works, focus on your goal and just get whatever it is you want done.

Happy New Year! Now let’s get to work.

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Storytelling With What You Have

Predawn, which was a working title that conveniently stuck around longer than expected, was written to be compact, affordable, and still provide entertainment and production value. After a number of years of attempted filmmaking — some successes, some fails — if you already know the budget is going to be just so much, and the script can’t be created with what you already have, then the recipe for failure is already baked into the mix.

I have been writing a whole lot longer than filmmaking. Weaving a story will never be an issue compared to the weighty topics of directing, cinematography, lighting, editing, etc. But since all of this industry MUST start with a story, I always feel that, at the very least, this is one topic I can put to bed without sweating the details too much because detailing what I want the audience to feel is already incorporated into the screenplay. Ideally, I would just need the right crew to pull off the visual aspect.

Now, since we moved to Covington Georgia, the prominent fixture I already had at my disposal was this big ass forest in my backyard. You can’t wake up in the morning and go to bed without seeing this crazy expansive forest and coming up with ideas about what could be in there. The forest practically writes itself.

With the location already provided, it was just a matter of doing my usual ‘what if-ery’ to build what could be going on, who would be involved, etc, etc.

In my head is a couple of thousand terabytes of movie history. I kid you not — when I’m creating a blueprint for a story, it’s a few days of … “Characters do X, Y, Z .… No! It’s too much like Evil Dead. Okay, ‘Characters do A, B, C … No! They did that in Phantasm, but that part of ‘B’ is good if you change a few things. No, then you have Star Wars. So, Make characters do B, I, X, and Y. Getting there, but Y feels too much like The Howling. So try .…”

On and on and on until I come up with an outline that makes sense, feels good, and doesn’t come up in my internal Turnitin Plagiarism Checker (college students will get that). All this with the understanding that my locations must be limited to this location (except for one other shot in Union City, GA Thank you Sharon!) and there is no room for expensive costuming and makeup for zombies.

Truth is, that fact alone made the screenplay much more original.

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