Okay you watched the Grinch, Frosty and Rudolph the Red Nose Reject that you accept only when you need him. (interest moral in that story!?) Now the kids are all snug in their beds, time for some Grown up Christmas Classics with a Bang. Last year I put to rest the PENULTIMATE CHRISTMAS ACTION MOVIE (that ones for you @hotdogsladies) Time to go to one of the lesser know Holly Jolly Flicks. Lethal Weapon(1987 R. Donner).
I know, the trailer fails to market the Ho-Ho-ness of the film but revisit this movie or watch it for the first time with some Hot cider and chestnuts roasting over an open fire. It has it all the Holly Jollies: Christmas music bookends the story, Riggs goes to shop for a Christmas Tree and he even has a less than tasty holiday dinner with the Murtaugh family.
Fear not, there is all the grown up action packed sequences edited by Stuart Baird veteran cutter and Richard Donner great rhythm and directing style. Mel Gibson crazy performance as Riggs is brilliant (foreshadowing his future wackiness) as he tries to get through the day without killing a Bad guy. Also, it may be the best Black retiring cop & Crazy White guy buddy movies of all time.
Ask Santa for this one for your stocking. Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays!
*Watch the Director's Cut, it has all these scenes that affect the pace of the movie by overstating Riggs Craziness. It is like watching Touch of Evil's Studio added scenes. Film akward.
A few months into my postproduction hiatus and I have realized something that has change in me in the last few years. I'm really comfortable with being wrong.
So, as I stated in my previous post that I was going to pay the bills the old fashion film ways; union film lighting. As I rubbed shoulder with my union brothers and catch up on old times, as we move big gear on big movies, I realize that there is this weird pressure to hit "perfection" on the first attempt at something. Having not done Big Budget shooting for about 8 years and some of the lightning equipment has evolved; so, I was a little rusty. No major mistakes that you get a nickname over or anything, but little things, little mistakes were made by myself. My bad.
I was surprised how people were quick to try to locate the offender but I was even quicker with my hand up to take responsibility for my faux pas and confortable doing it. Sometimes I would get friendly ribbing from people that now that I was just getting back into the swing of things. But sometimes, I would get disapproving glares, comments that were intended to induce some form of shame or even the mini speech about how it is done from younger members that didn't know me.
At the beginning I thought is was comical, then I was annoyed at why are we wasting time breaking down the mistake, then I thought about how film works; it is all about mistakes and adjustments. And most of the time things that were made a "big" deal out of turned out to be something that changed in the end like most things in the film world. I started thinking about why am I so un-phased about making a mistake.
Editing is making mistakes many times on an hourly basis. And over the years, I have noticed that if I don't just start making mistakes or editing, I develop editors block. So, I make the mistake and know that I'll come back to fix it later. I have gotten very comfortable with mistakes. For example, I think I nailed the essence of the cut and/or the director or producer points out key plot point that's not in the screener. My bad, I cut it out when I was trying to make the edit air tight for pacing. Or even better, I am at a show and tell with ad agency and don't like any of the 12 versions of the spot, technically my mistake. My Bad. I got a millions of these... Feel free to comment with your mistake stories. To quote Deniro in Cape Fear, "... Reminds you your human"
Conclusion. If you can't deal with making mistakes, editing is not for you.
I have had this Blog post in draft mode for the last few months now. As I was finished listening to Episode 53 of The Back to Work Podcast, I realize that I was listening to the "Return of the Jedi" podcast for freelancers editors.
Which means that Ep. 51 is "The New Hope" & Ep 52 is the Pana-ultimate-cast "Empire Strikes Back"! So if your only going to listen to one of te podcast's, you should listen to that one. My struggling with this post was finished. I am not a writter, so why not just leave it to the pros. They pretty much hashes out all my thoughts and more on the subject of what I like to call the "Invisible".
Please read at your own risk the draft of my thoughts on Freelance intagngable that most Productions don't take into account when picking someone to craft their project in the most important final stages.
(Begining of Draft)
I was recently chatting with a peer of mine about software (FCP X and 3D packages), post work in general and the state of working freelance in the film industry when I started to talk about that INVISIBLE factor. It is the invisible advantage that hiring someone like me (meaning someone with a certain level of experience) versus someone who can just operate a software package (Thanks Mr.Jobs you made my life easier but you made some people think that they don't have to "study" film to make film*).
I know that this is treading weird waters as I find it hard to write about this because it isn't a tangeble. Also, I don't think that there isn't a place for the "machine operator" as I call them. Moreover, I don't pretend that I don't opperate the machine and you should strive to know your tool to it's fullest so that it isn't stopping you or slowing you down from the task at hand. BUT, I know that most of my regular clients appreciate the INVISIBLE that I bring to the table. I think Malcom Gladwell touches on this on his book (which I haven't finished reading yet).
I don't really have to explain this to my current repeat offender clients but the new clients that come for a quote always seem to look at it from a dollar and cents perspective. Rarely do they look at how far their dollar spent is going to seen in the result of the footage.
One last thing on this I-Factor, the I might be for INSURANCE. What I always say to my clients, is that your paying for insurance that if there is a "road block" or something doesn't go as planned, you loose some footage,... any of the thousand of situations that happen on a film production. The more experienced, seasoned individual has that set of invisible tools to deal with that situation.
The sad and sometimes frustrating part of this is that the productions that don't run into a bad experience never really see the advantage of the INVISIBLE; since they completed the show, commercial or movie without the drama of a disater but one will never know how great it could have been if they hired someone with the INVISIBLE.
* What I mean by study film is not necessaraly go to schoold but read, eat sleep film. Really study it as a craft.
(end of draft)
The Invisible factor: Puppet elevate's the average actingfrom Good to Great.
I appologize if this isn't the most polished post, but like I said, I am not a writer. My stregth is writting with pictures, a soundtrack, ect... I am just "Shipping it"!
My old friend Haig Armen, web maven and all around great designer has a media studio in Vancouver. Last time I went to Vancouver to visit, he showed me his pretty sexy studio where his crew of mad web scientist do their craft. Way back when, we use to be roommates in Toronto and he introduced me to macs, adobe products and how PC's don't have to be clunky . Thanks.
Lift has recently started a cool podcast but as per usual they are not doing it the same boring "Charlie Rose" or 6 o'clock news style with a fake BG. When you check out the vidcast on the lift studios' site it takes over your screen in glorious MASSIVE FLASH.
For some reason, probably because I always have strong opinions, he interviewed me via Skype. Was nice to talk about Movies & Creative stuff with my old roomate.
Subscribe to the podcast there is always a good creative conversation a-la Ted Talks.
