Filmmaking – Page 2

Time and Reality

Last year, I wrote a post about Unity or Time (or why biopics have good acting, but are really boring). The basic problem is that real life is mostly boring. And even when you condense a very interesting person’s life into a two hour window, you’re violating one of the foundational laws of screenplay physics: your main character (real or fictional) is under pressure. If they do not achieve their goal soon, they will face serious, negative consequences. (Kind of hard to make that argument when your screenplay covers seventy years…)

John Lee Hancock’s The Founder sidesteps problem in two very clever ways. Overall, it is a very well put together film, and unquestionably worth your time. But if you’re struggling to make your “based on true events” story engaging, you should take particular note of how The Founder handles time.

The Founder tells the story of McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc (deftly and engagingly portrayed by Michael Keaton). One may argue that it is not a proper “biopic” in that it doesn’t tell Kroc’s life story. But that’s point number one. Ray Kroc is only interesting to us because he founded McDonalds (well, franchised it, but whatever… you have to watch the movie). We don’t care what his childhood was like, what he did during the war, or how he whiled away his golden years.* And Hancock wisely choses to focus on that one interesting “moment” of Kroc’s life: the founding of McDonalds.

The second, more interesting point, is in how Hancock handles time: he doesn’t. Intellectually, we know it takes time to get building permits, train staff, track revenue growth, etc. And all of this time, while Kroc is waiting to turn a profit, he’s sweating bullets. But Hancock never tells us how much time has passed. He never shows the changing of the seasons or ages Michael Keaton. So while the real events took anywhere form weeks to years, the pacing of the film feels like each scenes follows day after day and may only have taken a week or two. It’s entirely engrossing.

This all falls back on Robert D. Siegel’s expertly crafted script that continues to escalate and grow with each new scene. We’re not sure how long it takes for Kroc to realize he’s not making any money, and it doesn’t matter. The point is, he’s not making any money. This leads to a second infuriated phone call to the McDonalds brothers, Kroc’s wife finding out about the mortgage, and Kroc’s quest to reduce refrigeration costs (a plot point that instigates all kinds of other interesting complications). The story just keeps pressing onward.

Is this an accurate representation of Ray Kroc’s life? I can’t say. But I can tell you it’s a movie. And it’s a damn good one. So keep these two tricks up your sleeve as you work on your future projects, especially if they’re based on true events. When you get down to it, your audience’s time is the biggest factor you need to consider. And if they are emotionally engaged in your movie, they won’t be looking at the clock. It may not be a burger in thirty seconds, but it’s a service you should definitely aim to provide.

*Some mention of Kroc’s backstory (previous failed business ventures) is appropriately and entertaining revealed as backstory through dialogue in the second act of the film. It’s a great case study in effective use of dialogue and exposition.

Making Fiction Seem Real

As a work of fiction, even the most “realistic” screenplay will have some made-up elements. But there’s a bigger question about how to make aliens or time travel or ghosts “believable.” That’s where we get into “story reality.” What is the reality of this world you have created?

A lot of this has to do with how your characters react to the situations you put them in. If you walk down the street this afternoon and come across someone bleeding to death, how would you react? Call the police? Call an ambulance? Vomit and run away? Now what if you were walking down a beach in Normandy on June 6, 1944? You may vomit and run away, but you might also pull out a machine gun and start shooting Germans. Not a great option in the first example, but perfectly understandable in the second.

longest day

(image from The Longest Day via: http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Longest_Day,_The)

The problem is, if you create a fantasy world like Hogwarts or the Shire or Tatooine, your audience can only accept the “reality” of your story based upon how your characters act and react. Apparently, cutting off someone’s arm with a laser sword isn’t a very big deal in the Star Wars cantina. It may, however, be frowned upon at lunch in Hogwarts. Whichever the case, your characters need to react consistently to the “reality” that you have created.

That brings me to Zombie Honeymoon. I can’t necessarily recommend that you watch this movie. I watched it because seeing what doesn’t work can often inform you on what does work. Zombie Honeymoon (hilarious premise) was in many ways a hilarious movie. Newly married husband suddenly becomes a zombie and his wife struggles with the “reality” of that situation. The problem was, she had a very different view of “reality” than everyone else in the script.

zombie-honeymoon-poster-2004

(image via: https://thewolfmancometh.com/2010/09/18/zombie-honeymoon-2004/)

The guy at the video store freaks out when he sees the zombie. The local cop is out looking for missing persons. And the best friend runs away when she realizes the husband is “undead.” It’s a consistent reality that aligns with our own reality. But the newlywed wife decides that she’s going to see her husband’s zombification through much as though he had been diagnosed with cancer or Alzheimer’s.

zombie-honeymoon-blood-mouth

(Maybe this won’t be so bad after all! image via: https://thewolfmancometh.com/2010/09/18/zombie-honeymoon-2004/)

The thing to remember here is that by forty minutes into the movie, her husband has already killed half a dozen people. So instead of marrying Augustus Waters (The Fault in our Stars), she’s really married Michael Corleone (The Godfather).

(images via: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/saduraes/okay-okay/ & http://godfather.wikia.com/wiki/Lupara respectively)

The premise could still be resuscitated as a farce as the wife hides one body after another and tries to tape her husband’s ears back on for their double date, but it doesn’t. The new wife agonizes over “what to do,” leading to some decent performances and genuinely uncomfortable scenes as she hugs her decomposing husband. But her disregard for everyone else who’s died (including her best friend) and her casual acceptance that her husband is in fact a brain eating, murderous, animated corpse create a disjointed world that doesn’t follow the rules of its own “reality.” It was almost as though everyone else was hired for a horror movie and someone told her it was a Lifetime movie of the week.

Suffice it to say, a consistent “reality” is critical even if your script is reanimating corpses. For more thoughts on story reality and credibility in screenplays, check out these links.

CREDIBILITY: Story Reality vs Real Reality

CREDIBILITY Part 2: Making Your Story Beleivable

Make Movies, See the World

In this crazy business, you’re going to end up travelling for work. It’s as certain as Murphy’s Law or the phrase “It’s perfect” being followed by “Let’s do it again.” (As I write this, some of my coworkers are prepping for a schlep down to New Mexico to finish our current project.) If you’re lucky when you travel, you’ll have a one-night stay in clean and completely forgettable accommodations. If you’re unlucky, you may end up with bedbugs, a lifelong vendetta against a hotel chain, or brain surgery. (I’ll get to that.)

The_Overlook_Hotel

(Ah, yes. The Shining’s Overlook Hotel. Never been, but I hear it’s nice in the summer. via: http://stephenking.wikia.com/wiki/File:The_Overlook_Hotel.jpg)

The “Quality” Inn

The second feature film I worked on set up shop in a Quality Inn. We rented roughly an entire floor for the crew to stay in and jury-rigged two rooms into an office. Productions will often rent designated office space in hotels (rooms with extra phone lines, printers, and a higher desk to bed ratio than 1), but you can only do that if you use a hotel that has office space to rent. (Something you should consider if you plan on being there for fifteen weeks…) Even as I was making the necessary renovations to our office, something about our hotel choice didn’t sit right.

For example, while waiting in the lobby for crewmembers to arrive, I noticed that a lot of people would come off the street to use the lobby bathroom… at the same time. Then there was the problem that the hotel was managed by Indians (from India), but the cleaning and maintenance staff were Hispanic. I realize this sounds racist, but it’s not really a recipe for success if your management and staff can only communicate with each through a shared, tenuous grasp of English. A minor request like, “Could we please get a second phone for the office, and, for the love of God, please fix the leaking sink,” would result in them replacing the phone (but not giving us a second one) and telling me there was nothing wrong with the toilet.

But production soldiered on and we made the necessary adjustments on our own. We removed all of the pictures to put up schedules, hangers for file folders, and dry erase boards. We disassembled the furniture and packed it into the closet. And we drilled through the walls to pull in that second phone line from the room next door. (This is what happens when you give creative people problems, free time, and power tools.)

The hotel did get its revenge. About ten weeks into the shoot, it became infested with bedbugs. Granted, this can happen anywhere, but as you can guess, the Quality Inn didn’t do the best of jobs handling the situation. First they denied it. Then they shuffled our rooms around much like the Catholic Church trying to hide a pedophile. And much like the Catholic Church, things didn’t work out great.

When we wrapped, the wardrobe stylist, who by this point had witnessed the rise and fall of several bed bug civilizations in the cast’s clothing, decided to just walk away and let the hotel deal with it. The baffled cleaning ladies dutifully threw the remnants of our film’s wardrobe into the trash. (It was a horror film, and frankly, torn bloody cheerleader outfits are not something you want to be seen carrying around.) For some reason, the staff thought this would be our procedure for checking out of all of our rooms. Two days later, when our poor production assistants were wrapping the set, the cleaning staff decided to empty out their rooms. They took fifteen weeks of accumulated living detritus (clothes, personal items, food, film equipment) and unceremoniously threw them in the dumpster. (They did pilfer some of the less bedbug prone merchandise like a rather nice poker set that only miraculously re-appeared in the break room after much cajoling and arguing in multiple languages.)

I did however get the last laugh. I was the last production person to leave the hotel and passed by our ramshackle office just as the hotel manager was opening the door. He had a look that was equal parts dread and disbelief, like some archeologist who had just pried open a newly discovered sarcophagus to exhume the discovery of his lifetime only to find it piled nipples deep with fifteen weeks of unspeakable film production horrors. I will cherish that look until the day I die.

grand budapest

(The Grand Budapest: too much drama for me. via: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/moviesandtv/columns/moviebob/11111-Is-The-Grand-Budapest-Hotel-Wes-Anderson-s-Best-Film-Yet)

Staybridge

On that same film, the producers quickly realized that they couldn’t keep our talent in the same hotel. Contractually, they weren’t allowed. Fortunately, even though we were filming eight miles west of west bumblefrack, there was a four star hotel within thirty minutes of the set. Unfortunately, they drew their staff from the same pessimal talent pool as the Quality Inn. Despite our block of rooms (which we wanted to keep and simply refresh when one actor left and another arrived) the staff decided to release one of our rooms when an actor checked out. That left me in the unenviable position of having to find another four-star hotel within the same hemisphere as our location.

I ended up in customer service hell, listening to prerecorded messages and repeating account numbers until I had apparently shouted enough profanity to merit live human intervention. The operator first recommended a cheaper hotel that was managed by the same parent company. It was only a few miles further away. I explained to him that I was contractually obligated to secure a four or five star hotel for my client to which he cheerfully replied, “Oh, we’ll we don’t use a star rating system, we use diamonds.”

“All right, how many diamonds is it?”

“Seven.”

“Oh. Out of how many?”

“Ten.” Granted, he was not being graded on this exchange, but I wish to God he had been because that would come out to a D-.

He does get an “A” for effort, though, because he then tried to find me something that was at least eight diamonds (which is apparently equivalent to four stars) and triumphantly told me that there were some available rooms in “Reeding.” I could be wrong, but I am fairly confident that Reading, PA is named after Reading, England and despite its misleading spelling is pronounced “Redding” across the globe. For my own amusement, I asked where he was located.

“Texas.”

So much for local service. We ended up shuttling the actor back and forth from New York.

Ace

More recently I stayed in the world’s most pretentious hipster hotel. The furniture was made out of repurposed wooden pallets, the wall fixtures were bare copper piping, and the room numbers were filthy plastic lamps that looked like they had been salvaged from a fleet of 70s era taxi roofs.

(Welcome home!)

It gave the overall impression of crashing on a friend’s couch in a shitty, walk-up apartment. I would know because I’ve done it. (No offense, James.) The pretense was so complete, I genuinely thought they were pumping in artificial city noise. It sounded like my room was directly above a subway station, below a construction site, and wedged between a kitchen and a brothel. It wasn’t (at least I don’t believe so), but the hotel had somehow managed to find the least sound dampening material know to man.

The real coup de grace, however, was that several of the walls were painted black. Seriously. Here’s a picture of my room with all of the lights on.

It could have been helpful, since we were doing night shoots, but a friend of mine got up in the middle of the day to pee, walked into one of the walls, and gave himself a concussion. He later required brain surgery. No I am not making that up. You can look for my review here or just read it here.

Then there was the ultra-modern “W” in D.C. (Seriously, are kindergarteners naming these places?) This is the kind of place that is so chic that it takes you twenty minutes to figure out how to turn the light on. The evening I checked in, I had been working for fourteen hours in the rain and just driven an hour and a half to the hotel. I boarded the elevator with my luggage including a pillow.

Some bros got on after me. They were headed to a party on one of the upper floors, one of those those yuppy gatherings that is equal parts networking and mating ritual. Joking around, they asked why I was carrying the pillow. I think I said something to the effect of, “Because I have a knife on me and if you say anything else, I’m the only one leaving this elevator alive.” The rest of the ride was tense, but silent.

I also had to do battle with the bathroom, which was something I thought humanity had more or less conquered about fifty years ago. The newest rendition of the toilet, however, has no tank, so you have no place to set your phone, glasses, or shower beer. The massive, minimalist, walk-in shower was impressive as well, but also lacked any place to set your beer… or soap… or towel. That latter issue required you to either hang your towel over the door (getting your towel soaking wet) or leave your towel at the sink (getting everything else wet as you went to retrieve your towel).

fontainbleau

(Goooodlfinger… via: https://fontainebleau.com)

But Wait! There’s More…

Then there was the time I couldn’t sleep because of how loud the HVAC was. I took the vent off of the wall and shoved a pillow in it. Or the creepily friendly hotel manager who repeatedly invited me into his office to chat about gladiator movies. While it’s never happened to me personally, a handful of my coworkers have returned to the hotel after working fifteen hours and opened their doors only to find that the hotel has somehow rented their rooms to someone else and not bothered to tell them or deactivate their room keys. And in perhaps the ultimate absurdity, who can forget the time someone literally took a dump outside the production manger’s door? (No, it wasn’t an irate crewmember.)

So what do I look for in hotel? Cleanliness. For the love of God, I can sleep in the bathtub, just make it clean. In the first world, water and electricity are (I hope) a given. Refrigerators are nice and ranges can be a fun perk if you’ll be there for a few days. Location is also very important. Proximity to set is nice, but proximity to a bar and some dinner options is more important. Hotel bars can work, as long as the food is decent and not too expensive. If your crew has to drive forty-five minutes for dinner every night, it will be abundantly clear at call time.

For your own sanity, throw earplugs and a sleep mask in your travel bag. Even the best hotel can have noisy neighbors. And personally, I’ve found that while it is a pain to drag the slippers, contour pillow, and chia pet along for a shoot, those little touches of home can make a surprisingly big difference after a brutal shoot day.

Finally, no sharing! Sharing rooms is one of those red flags that should make you wary about working with a company. It’s a sign that they’ll be pinching pennies and cutting corners every step of the way. And do you really want to deal with that after listening to the producer’s nephew snore all night?

While it’s true that working out of a hotel can be a pain, it’s also a fun to work in and explore new cities. Get the all you can eat crabs in Baltimore, check out Bourbon Street in New Orleans, and try the edibles in Colorado. But no matter what happens when you travel for work, you’re going to end up with some interesting stories.

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

It can’t be helped. We exist in time/space. We’ve all been at work, staring at the clock, wondering when our time in purgatory will come to an end. But on a film set, the different circles of hell each have names and meanings. As a filmmaker (especially if you’re a production assistant (PA)), it’s good to know what these times are and how they affect your day.

Call Time (In)

This is the time you show up to set. For our example, let’s say call time is 6:00am. This is known as “general crew call” because it’s when most of the crew will show up. However, any good production manager will say, “Be sure to check individual call times.” Production will generally have a “pre-call” to make sure doors are unlocked, parking is sorted out, and the caterer knows where to set up breakfast. Your individual call time is listed next to your name on the call sheet (pretty straightforward). So with a 6:00 call time, a PA can expect to have an individual call time of 5:00 or 5:30. Even so, if someone asks you what the call time is, they’re probably asking about general crew call. (And remember, if you’re early, you’re on time. If you’re on time, you’re late. If you’re late, you’re fired.)

Depending on the day, other departments may have a pre-call as well. The grips or set dec may need to get in early to prep a location. The camera department may have a special piece of gear to prep for the day. But no matter how many staggered call times there are, there will always be an official general crew call.

First Shot

First shot is when you get your first shot. (Duh.) The script supervisor is in charge of recording this. (On a small shoot without a script supervisor, however, an assistant director (AD) may record it.) Ultimately, this time goes to the 2nd AD who puts the production report together. An AD or producer may ask you when the first shot was. All you have to do is ask the script supervisor. (Fun note: The script supervisor is the official timekeeper of a film set and keeps a record of all of these times.)

Lunch!!!

Ah, the second best time of the day. Lunch is owed to the crew 6 hours after general crew call. In our example, lunch would be 12 noon (6 hours after call). Technically, production can break whenever they want, but there may be repercussions…

Meal Penalty

If production does not break after 6 hours, they owe the crew meal penalties (AKA money). This is why production almost always breaks after 6 hours and why ADs always freak out after 5 hours and 45 minutes. (Sadly, PAs do not get meal penalties and often end up working through lunch. But sometimes they do get to break early.)

NDB

What about those grips who were in at 5:30? Shouldn’t they break at 11:30? Yes. That’s why many call sheets will say, “All crew must NDB.” That stands for non-deductible break. As time permits (say the director needs to have a heart to heart with his star) crew members break away one at a time for a 30 minute break. That way they don’t go into a meal penalty, but production may continue uninterrupted. They will still break for lunch with the rest of the crew.

Grace

Production may also ask for a grace period to finish a shot in progress. This is only 12 minutes and needs to be asked for and agreed to by the crew. Then you may break for lunch at say 12:03 without going into a meal penalty.

Last Man

Crews generally break for half hour lunches, but that clock doesn’t start until the last crew member (last man) is through the line. Let’s say lunch was called on time at 12:00, but the crew needs to be shuttled 10 minutes away to catering. It takes a further 8 minutes to get the entire crew through the catering line. So your half hour starts at 12:18. As a PA, it may be your job to watch the line and call last man. After that last man is through the line, tell the AD the time for last man.

Back In

Back in is the time lunch ends. In our case, that would be 12:48. The crew is “back in” at catering, so don’t expect to shoot anything until everyone’s taken that 10 minute shuttle back (~12:58). At lunch, after the last man is called, PAs will be asked to inform the crew. E.G. “Last man 12:18. Back in 12:48.” As with these other times, you may be asked to relay this info to and from production, the ADs, and the script supervisor.

First Shot After Lunch

Same as the first shot, just… after lunch.

Camera Wrap

(That’s a wrap…or is it lunch? Or both?)

“That’s a wrap. Everybody go home!” Ah, the best time of the day. When the first AD says those magic words, it’s time to start packing the trucks. This is the official camera wrap, but much like the official call time doesn’t dictate when you stop (or start) working.

Wrap (Out)

Once the trucks are loaded and the crew is shuttled back to the parking lot, they are “out.” This is the individual wrap time and varies from department to department. Departments are generally (but not always) out as a group (e.g. the grips are out at 7pm). Most productions will assign a PA to each department to get out times. This information is relayed back to the 2nd AD for the production report. To simplify things, most productions have started using daily time cards that a representative will fill out and pass to the PA. That makes it easy to just run everything back to the office.

(Note: remember that 6 hour rule? If you continue to film 6 hours after lunch, production will owe another meal break or go into dinner meal penalties.)

Production Report

The production report is a kind of mirror image of a call sheet. Whereas a call sheet is when you’re supposed to show up and what you hope to achieve for the day, the PR is what ended up actually happening.

At the end of the week, production will send PRs to each of the department heads. PAs often call these “cheat sheets” because crew members will copy the information on them to their time cards. But PRs have much more information on them than in and out times (injury reports, rerates, additional crew members that weren’t listed on the call sheet, etc.). Department heads (or their seconds) should actually be checking the PR to be sure that the information on them is correct. If you want to sound like you have a clue, call them by the correct name.

Now when someone asks, “Did we break on time Tuesday?” “What was call time today?” “When are we back in?” or “What was camera wrap last night?” you’ll have a vague idea what they’re talking about.

Bonus! Time cards!

To make this all a bit more confusing, times cards are filled out in 10ths of an hour on a 24 hour clock. Before your brain explodes, let me explain. First, a 10th of an hour is 6 minutes. 0:30=0.5, 0:18=0.3, 0:48=0.8. So 7:24 is… 7.4. Not that difficult.

A 24 hour clock simply means that Instead of going to 1pm, you go to 13.0. Just add 12 to the normal time. 3:24pm=15.4, 5:42pm=17.7, 11:54pm=23.9.

But wait, there’s more! If you bleed into a new day, you don’t reset the clock. So midnight becomes 24.0, 1am is 25.0, 2:12am is 26.2. (Last week, I wrapped at 31.0 or 7am Saturday morning.)

On set, everyone still speaks about time in the normal 12 hour, 60 minute way, but if you see a bizarre number like 14.6 on a PR, now you know what it means. (Also, it’s always morning when you start your day even if it’s 7pm… or 19.0.) As a nerdy form of masochism, check out the time card below and see if you can get the same results I do! (Notes: Even though I list the whole lunch time, only 1/2 hour is deducted from the time worked. Also, straight time is 8 hours, 1.5X is 4 hours, any additional time is 2X.)

$Time Card Math$

The Muse

One of the biggest issues I faced in college was coming up with ideas for scripts. Without too much self-pity, I have to admit that it’s difficult for college students to write a decent script. For one thing, they simply don’t have enough life experience. Production issues create another major problem. While film students may have brilliant ideas (probably not, but maybe), they don’t usually have the means to produce them. You can only shoot a dorm room from so many angles. Something that really would have helped and that I recommend all young writers do is find their muse.

The Muse

In classical Greek mythology, the Muses were goddesses (or nymphs) who flitted down from the ether and whispered ideas to artists. The Greeks (who were also ridiculously chauvinistic) believed that there was a pure, objective form of beauty and that the Muses themselves embodied it. Naturally, this is what the artists used as inspiration for their work.

In subsequent drama, the muses are often portrayed as beautiful women whom tortured artists obsess over. In an amazing example of life imitating art imitating life, Maxfield Parrish, who had a major influence on the look of fantasy in the early Twentieth Century, fell in love with his model, Susan Lewin. But when his wife died and he didn’t marry Lewin, she went off and married someone from her home town (at the age of 71!). Parrish never painted again.

Reveries 2 (Who would think the guy that painted this would have relationship drama?)

But your inspiration needn’t be a woman. (In fact it’s probably better if it’s not.) Nature may be your inspiration. Or music. Or old literature. Or Irish folktales. Or history. Or true crime. Or you may even just jot ideas down and pull them out of a hat like Mad Libs. I, strangely enough, stumbled on NPR.

To be clear, I’m not necessarily talking about the news broadcast. But NPR does a lot of in-depth reporting about human-interest stories, technology, and even book reviews. And delving deeper into these subjects often tickles my brain. How will this technology change the world in ten years? Why was this peculiar law written in the first place? How would this news story unravel differently if the gender roles were reversed? I stash away all of these ideas, characters, and psychological puzzles, and I let them simmer until they coalesce into my next idea.

Hey, that was my idea!

If you’ve read my posts about copyright, you hopefully have a handle on how to protect your work. But what do you do when you’re sitting in a theater and see a preview that seems an awful lot like that script you’ve been working on for years? Well, sadly, probably nothing.

One theory of creativity questions whether we can ever come up with an original idea or merely recombine things we have already experienced.

(image via a fun article at AmandaBarnes11)

Even if you don’t fully agree with that theory, it’s not hard to see that the zeitgeist, the “spirit” or “attitude” that’s driving societal trends, will have a major influence on what artists create. Something happens and then BAM, eighteen months later, you’re inundated with scripts that are all about the same thing.

When I started covering scripts years ago, I read three scripts in one month that tried to tackle Die Glocke. It was a supposed Nazi time travelling machine that crashed outside Pittsburg in the 1960s. The scripts were all very distinct from each other. None of them had the same characters or general plot outline so none of them infringed on the other’s copyright. Sadly, none of them were very good, either. But it did have me wondering where the sudden interest in Die Glocke originated. (Sidebar, I’d stay away from moon Nazis, time travelling Nazis, and really any sci-fi Nazis when you’re writing.)

nazi-mech-suit

(Thank you SciFiIdeas, but that’s a hard pass.)

This wasn’t the first time I’d noticed the phenomenon, either. 1995 brought us Braveheart and Rob Roy, true stories about Scots fighting the English for independence. Then there was 1998 with it’s hyper-realistic World War II epics Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line. Okay, sure, lots of war movies come out every year, but 1998 also brought Deep Impact and Armageddon as well as Antz and A Bug’s Life. True, especially in the last case, studios may be intentionally trying to steal market share from their competitors. But scripts don’t materialize overnight. The inspiration for the stories, the drive to produce the stories, and the technology required to make the films all coalesced independent of one another, but at the same time. (Wikipedia actually has a page dedicated to so-called “Twin Films.”)

armageddon-deep-impact

(Maybe we’d all be better off if one of these had been a documentary. Image via another fun article here.)

I’ve had to kick myself more than once for coming up with an idea, but getting beaten to the punch. (Not to say that my ideas, sketched out in a journal, would be as good as or even similar to the works that came out later.) In December of 2008, I made a note that I should write a dark comedy about cancer. I even wrote that “The Big C” would make a good title. In August of 2010, Showtime premiered The Big C. (Too bad you can’t copyright titles.) In April of 2013, I started jotting down notes for a TV series about pirates. It just felt like the time was right. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one. A few weeks later, watching previews before The Great Gatsby, I saw a trailer for the Starz series Black Sails. You can ask my wife, I nearly threw a shoe at the screen. In March of 2006, I scribbled down something about a love story for a musical I was brainstorming. It was about Aaron Burr…the man who shot Alexander Hamilton.

hamilton

There is a silver lining to all of this. At least I can say with confidence that my ideas are not totally off the mark. In fact, they’re not even off the market. You can’t copyright cancer or pirates or American history. So long as my expression of these topics is different than the others, I’m still good to go. Furthermore, when pitching my own version of the famous Burr/Hamilton duel, I can use the success of Hamilton to entice investors. Of course, I have to be careful not to use any of the fictionalized characters, dialogue, or other original plot devices that the brilliant Lin Manuel Miranda used.

Should you watch movies that are similar to your idea? Of course. Everyone else is. If you pitch an idea about a theme park full of cloned dinosaurs to an investor, you better be able to explain how it’s different than Jurassic Park and why it’s worthy of their money. Watching similar projects will also inform you about what works and doesn’t work for a particular genre or story. It may even spawn another, better idea. Don’t be afraid that watching similar work will influence what you’re writing. It will. But if your project is so similar that it risks copyright infringement, you should probably quit while you’re ahead.

What if one of these other movies was really, shockingly similar to a script you had already completed and registered with the copyright office? That was the case when FX was sued over its show The League. Two writers say the series had multiple similarities to their own work The Commissioner. While I couldn’t find the results of the lawsuit, I seem to recall it being settled out of court. http://deadline.com/2012/09/fx-networks-sued-for-copyright-infringement-over-the-league-joseph-balsamo-peter-ciancarelli-jeff-schaffer-337937/

Obviously, if you have legitimate reasons to believe that someone stole your “original work of authorship” that was “fixed in a tangible form,” you should fight for your rights. But my bigger point about the zeitgeist is, don’t get too paranoid.

Keep Writing

The biggest way to get over your slump is simply to keep writing. This is what you want to do, right? It’s very unlikely that you’ll come up with and execute an original idea perfectly on your first go. If you trust yourself as a writer, you’ll just get back to work with your next great idea and hopefully hit the market before the next guy. I’ve also noticed another peculiar phenomenon.

phenomenom powder (Coincidence?! Image via PopCultureCruchBlog)

Ideas beget ideas. You’ll be in the midst of doing research for some project and suddenly get hit with another brilliant premise. Or you’ll finish a project just to realize it’s complete trash, but that one minor character you created is pretty cool and maybe, just maybe, deserves their own story. The muse can come from anywhere. You may also discover that your billion dollar idea that was going to make all of your dreams come true is just a massive pain in the neck. You might not be able to look at it for ten more seconds without vomiting. That’s okay. It may be a good idea (maybe not), but it’s not going to be your idea. And maybe, just maybe writing period educational pieces for children isn’t what your destined to do. The only way to find out is to try it and follow that muse wherever she or he or it leads you.

The Tragedy of Tragedy Girls

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(image via: http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/264412/tragedy-girls-starring-alexandra-shipp-brianna-hildebrand-hits-blu-ray-february/)

With the Oscars this week, you’re probably scrambling to watch all of the films you’ve head about but haven’t seen. One little nugget that flew under the radar last year was Tragedy Girls. I only learned about it through the Queens of Crime podcast. (Highly recommended if you like true crime stories.) I enjoyed it for all of the reasons I thought I would: a ridiculous premise (high schoolers become murderers to publicize their blog), campy humor, ridiculous gore, and surprisingly high production value. The acting was spot on and the cinematography was creative and effective.

All that being said, there’s a reason this film flew under the radar, and it can be a lesson for the aspiring filmmaker. Tragedy Girls disregards many of the “rules” of screenwriting, and it shows. It wasn’t bad enough to be a B movie, but it wasn’t likable enough to be mainstream. The biggest thing I felt while watching it was discomfort. And here’s why.

Does your protagonist need to be likable?

No. But they do need to be relatable. The main characters, Sadie and McKayla, are snotty, narcissistic teens who are obsessed with social media. And while they can be funny, they aren’t likable. Nobody is rooting for them to succeed. The film never builds a bridge between these antiheroes and the audience. There is no “save the cat” moment or humanization of these sociopathic killers.

The film could have humanized them in a variety of ways. It could have better explained why they were killers (bullying? revenge?), given them their comeuppance in the end, or given them an opportunity to make amends for what they did. It also could have made their victims more despicable, turning Sadie and McKayla into the lesser of several evils (think of Dexter). But for some reason, everyone else in Tragedy Girls, is strangely guiltless and generally likable.

The Three Act Structure

Tragedy Girls disregards the three act structure, starting with Sadie and McKayla committing their first murder and capturing (and torturing) a serial killer. While it does get things moving quickly, it raises more questions than it answers. Who are these girls? What is their ordinary world? Why do they believe they are morally justified in killing people? Why is social media so important to them? Why do they want to be notorious killers? Answering even one of these questions would help endear them to the audience which is, after all, the primary function of the first act.

From there, the girls spiral into their killing spree–a kind of Mean Girls but with murder. And while it does have its comedic moments, that’s sort of it for the rest of the film. If you don’t find that entertaining, the film has lost you twenty minutes in.

The final act offers no real resolution or change. Sadie and McKayla are essentially the same on minute 1 and minute 91, giving the impression of a drawn out SNL sketch rather than a feature film.

Too Close to Home

When you strip away the jokes, you end up with a movie about two teens who kill their classmates and get away with it. The film offers no real alternative to the outcome, and it isn’t really a cautionary tale. If, for some perverse reason, you end up rooting for Sadie and McKayla, you end up rooting for high school murderers.

That really brings me full circle to discomfort. At every point in the movie, you’re not 100% sure if you should be laughing, cheering, or vomiting in disgust. I do have to tip my hat to the filmmakers because, production-wise, it’s very well put together. They also stick to their guns. They made a movie about unabashed serial killers who get away with their crimes. They bucked convention. As to whether or not it worked, you’ll have to judge for yourself. But as you build our own stories and craft your own characters, it’s important to keep in mind how some of these “rules” operate in screenplays and the reaction an audience can have if you disregard them.

Copy That (Part 2)

If you didn’t get enough of it last time, here are some more fun facts about copyrights! For example, did you know that like being a Scientologist or owning a gun, copyright is protected under the United States Constitution (Article 1 Section 8)? Or that Walt Disney successfully lobbied to extend copyright protections to their current length in order to preserve its copyright on Mickey Mouse. Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up.

mickey-mouse-copyright

(image via: https://www.uprinting.com/blog/legal-concepts-need-know-content-marketing/)

Copyrights Never Die. They Just Pass into Public Domain

Seventy years after you die, all of your work will pass into the public domain or PD as they say. Public Domain means we the people now own your work and can do whatever we want with it for free. This is great for filmmakers who want to do a spinoff sequel to Hamlet or use Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata in their soundtrack. But be forewarned, while Beethoven’s music is PD, specific recordings of the Moonlight Sonata are copyrighted by the person who recorded them. You’ll have to make your own recording of Beethoven’s music.

Interestingly, too, while you can make an adaptation or derivative work from something in the public domain, you can’t use any elements from other derivative works that are still copyrighted. The Wizard of Oz is a great case study. The original L. Frank Baum works are public domain, but the 1939 Warner Bros. movie is not. What’s the difference? For one thing, L. Frank Baum does not describe the Wicked Witch of the West as green. So when Disney made its Oz the Great and Powerful a few years ago, they had to be careful not to use Warner Brothers copyrighted shade of green. Read more about The Wizard of Oz copyright here.

(Sidebar, my first job in television was securing music rights for a high school band concert. We needed separate rights to broadcast the music and rights to synchronize the music to the televised concert.)

Fair Use

Fair use allows you to use part of copyrighted works for specific, limited purposes. Courts generally consider four criteria in fair use litigation.

1) Nature of the use. Educational and informational purposes are generally permitted while commercial purposes are generally not. Since I run a free, educational blog, I’m not too concerned about including a copyrighted image in a post to help illustrate a point. (That being said, if you own the copyright and were not credited or don’t want to be associated with my blog, I’ll gladly remedy the situation.)

2) Nature of the copyrighted work. While audio and video recordings may be copyrighted, audio and video recordings of newsworthy events (facts), may not be copyrighted. Time magazine, for example, tried to purchase the rights to the Zapruder film–the assassination of President Kennedy. But as a matter of fact and public record, the court decided the film should be in the public domain.

3) Amount of the copyrighted work. Screening the first scene of Saving Private Ryan to educate film students on a particular cinematography technique is probably okay. Screening all of Saving Private Ryan to a packed theater, not so much.

4) Damages. Of course, all of this comes down to money. If you start selling pirated Game of Thrones DVDs or Game of Thrones themed T-shirts, you’re taking money out of HBO’s pocket. But if you reprint a promotional picture for educational or news stories, you’re probably okay.

4B) Parody. But wait there’s more! One dicey way that you can ride off of the success of copyrighted work is parody. That’s how we end up with all of those porn parody gems. The key here is that your new copyrighted work is parodying a specific other work, but not infringing on the same market. That is to say, people who want to watch the adventures of Jack Sparrow will not intentionally purchase Pirates XXX.

PiratesXXX

(image via: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_(2005_film))

Similarly, no one looking for a bowl of Campbell’s tomato soup will accidentally purchase Andy Warhol’s famous paintings. They’re different markets.

Campbells_Soup_Cans_MOMA

(Image via: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_Soup_Cans)

Other Intellectual Property

Intellectual property rights are largely covered in three categories: copyrights, trademarks (which I mentioned briefly in the previous post), and patents. Patents are distinct from copyrights in that copyrights protect “fixed works of authorship.” Patents protect processes. If you make the world’s first 5D film, you can copyright the film. But you’ll want to patent the process for making all future 5D films.

Copywriting

Copywriting is different than copyrighting. Writers may work on copy (text) for advertisements or articles. That’s called writing copy. And while copywriting may be copyrighted, make sure you’re using the right copy when writing copy about copyrights.

More fun with copyrights

Phew! That was exhausting. But the fun’s not over. www.copyright.gov actually does a really good job explaining copyrights. I highly recommend checking it out if you have questions. In the mean time, get out there all of you creative people and fix some original work in a tangible form!

Copy That (Part 1)

I’ve had a wide range of bizarre and usually misinformed conversations with people about copyrights. Having just copyrighted my most recent script, I thought maybe I should write a post about it. As with other posts that get into legal matters, this is merely meant as a guide and a primer. If you need legal help with copyrights, please consult a lawyer.

Intellectual Property Rights

Owning physical property, like real estate, is pretty straightforward. There’s only one property at 123 Fake Street in Springfield, California. I can’t be enjoying the ocean breezes of 123 Fake Street in California if I am freezing my butt off in Ontario. But what about something a little less concrete? What about “intellectual property?”

You may have a hardcopy collector’s edition of The Hunger Games trilogy sitting on your shelf in California. I may be huddling with a secondhand, tattered paperback edition in Ontario. But we are both able to enjoy (or slog through) the series at the same time. Why? While the book is a physical piece of property, the story is intellectual property. Its main value isn’t derived by owning the actual book.

Lots of things are intellectual property: books, poems, screenplays, computer code, movies, music, choreography, architecture, photographs, paintings, and sculptures just to name a few. Ownership in these cases has less to do with the physical object than the idea. Catniss Everdeen isn’t real. She’s an idea. You can’t water your garden with The Rain Song. It’s an idea. And you can’t smoke tobacco in The Treachery of Images. It’s an idea (not a pipe!).

the-treachery-of-images-this-is-not-a-pipe-1948(2)

In all of these cases, the original manuscript or recording or painting becomes worth less as more and more copies are made. If I can download The Rain Song to my computer, I don’t need to hunt down Robert Plant to hear him sing it. The real value in intellectual property is being able to produce (and sell) copies or as those of us in the know call it… holding the copyright.

What is a Copyright?

Straight from www.copyright.gov “Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States to the authors of ‘original works of authorship’ that are fixed in a tangible form of expression.” (Well, that was easy.)

Original

It may seem obvious, but copyrights are only allowed for unique works. If I write a screenplay about a modern day theme park full of dinosaurs created out of fossilized mosquito blood, it would be hard for me to argue that I wasn’t somewhat influenced by Jurassic Park. This flip side of this, however, is that copyrights do cover derivative works. Once you invent Jurassic Park or a Galaxy Far, Far Away, or The X-Men, all the spinoffs and sequels are still protected by that first copyright. That’s why movie studios are so interested in “intellectual properties” or IPs, as they say. You can make endless sequels merely by purchasing that first copyright. You can also see how well that initial IP did (say the New York Times bestseller The Girl on the Train) before you spend a lot of money turning it into a movie.

Curiously, some things—titles in particular—are too short to be deemed “original” and can’t be copyrighted. Otherwise, someone would just start smashing words together and copyright every title imaginable. Brand specific words like lightsaber or frappuccino, however, can be trademarked, another form of intellectual property protection. That’s how you know the Halloween store’s “Pubescent Frog of Silent War” isn’t official Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles merchandise.

TMNT

(image via: http://www.vorply.com/fail/list/names-of-products-gone-absolutely-wrong/9/)

Work of Authorship

You can only copyright something you’ve actually made. A painting of the ocean? Yes. A picture of the ocean? Yes. An audio recording of the ocean? Yes. A bucket of ocean water? Not so much. And despite what PETA thinks, no, a monkey cannot hold a copyright.

Interestingly, you cannot copyright facts, either. Something that is known to have happened is simply a fact. World War I happened. Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated. The Allies won. And any information published about that is now public knowledge. So why have you heard about companies purchasing “life rights?”

Life rights give the purchaser access to additional information from the subject (a diary, for example), which may not be public knowledge. It also protects the purchaser from being sued for defamation. You can’t sue me for defamation if I gave you the rights to publish my story. You really don’t need life rights for public figures (who have a lot of facts floating around about them), dead people (who can’t sue you for defamation), and dead public figures (who are pretty helpless). Want to claim Abraham Lincoln was a vampire hunter? You’re gonna be A-okay.

lincoln vampire

(image via: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Abraham-Lincoln-Vampire-Hunter-DVD/dp/B006DZUR5Y)

‘Fixed in a Tangible Form’

This is probably the part where people get most confused. While we’ve been talking about “intellectual property” and ideas, you can only copyright something once it is in a tangible form. You may have a great idea for a Nazis on the moon script, but until you write it down, or film it, or carve the plot into stone, you don’t actually have the copyright for it. Your idea must somehow be fixed—permanently and irrevocably set—into some kind of physical medium.

Could someone overhear you talking excitedly about your “brilliant” Nazis on the moon script, jot everything down on a napkin, and steal that copyright from you? Yes, they could. It would be unethical, but it wouldn’t be illegal.

Another way people describe this is that copyrights don’t actually protect ideas, merely the expression of an idea. Nazis on the moon is an (intriguing and ridiculous) idea. That scribble on the napkin is the “expression” of that idea. It is “fixed in a tangible form.” Now if you don’t have time to “fix” your Nazis on the moon idea by writing the screenplay, you could perhaps write a short story or a treatment and copyright that before you start talking about your idea in public. Then at least the basics of your story and the characters are satisfactorily “fixed.”

And to backtrack briefly, while you cannot copyright a fact, e.g. World War I, you can copyright the original expression of those facts, e.g. The Guns of August or Lawrence of Arabia.

lawrence of Arabia

(image via: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lawrence-Arabia-DVD-Peter-OToole/dp/B0050A2J86/ref=sr_1_2?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1517316046&sr=1-2&keywords=lawrence+of+arabia)

How do I copyright something?

The good news is, as soon as you fix your original work of authorship in a tangible form, it is copyrighted. As the author of the work, you have the exclusive rights to copy, sell, distribute, or create derivate works from it. You also have the right to prevent anyone else from doing the same thing. Things start to get weird when someone else tries to claim credit for your work, which is why it’s highly recommended that you register your copyright.

It’s extremely easy and cheap. Simply go to www.copyright.gov, follow the prompts and voila. The United States government has a record of your creation! The only downside is (being the government) they often take a while to get back to you.

If you’re in a hurry, you can register your screenplay with the Writer’s Guild of America. WGA West if you’re west of the Mississippi, WGA East if you’re east of the Mississippi. This is slightly cheaper and must faster, but they apparently destroy all of their files after a few years, so you have to keep renewing it.

I’ve also read about the “poor man’s copyright” several times. Basically, you mail a copy of your script to yourself and leave it sealed, using the Post Office’s postmark date as proof of when you fixed your original work in a tangible form. It is not a substitute for registering your work with the copyright office and according to Snopes, has never actually been tested in court. So in the U.S. at least, you’re better off just registering your work.

That gives you some basics about copyrighting your scripts. Next time, I’ll cover some of the other interesting copyright situations you may find yourself in as a filmmaker. Copy that? Over and out.

Get a Grip!

When all of the credits fly by at the end of a movie, “grip” tops the list of titles that keep people scratching their heads. What is a grip? What does a grip do? (Insert any number of punch lines here.) Grips have a wide range of responsibilities on set. Most of them involve lifting heavy things (sand bags, steel pipe, stands, cameras, plywood, lights, weights…) so these are some of the toughest guys you’ll see on set. But gripping also requires a lot of problem solving and smart working (How do you minimize the amount of heavy things you have to lift?) so grips also need to be well versed in film equipment, knot tying, construction, and physics. When there’s a twenty pound light swaying in the breeze above your actor’s head, you want to be sure the guy that put it there knows what he’s doing. So what exactly is a grip?

Gripping

Gripping is essentially attaching things to other things: attaching a camera to a dolly, a clamp to a pipe, a flag to a stand, a stand to a condor, or, like in this picture below, attaching some transmitters to a Ferrari.

IMG_E4885

Although it’s a little hard to see, the camera is on the left of the car, outside the driver’s window on what’s called a “hostess tray.” The grips are using speed rail and short arms to secure it. Look at that nice sturdy triangle they’re building!

Grips use a wide variety of clamps, special film equipment (Cardellinis, cheeseboros, apple boxes, elephant ears, ducks bills, etc.), rope, ratchet straps, screws, and tape to make this happen. Of course, you want to be sure you’re using a nice soft suction cup (not a screw gun) on the Ferrari. You’ll also need to be sure the suction cup is strong enough. How heavy is the transmitter? How much wind resistance will it create? How fast is the car going? Some jobs require impromptu carpentry, building platforms for gear or people.

Once the gear is set, it also needs to be secured with ropes or safety chains. Anything that creates a lever needs to be counterbalanced with weights. Stands need to be weighed down with sandbags. And that brings us to the grip department’s second, but perhaps more important job.

Safety

Because of all of the heavy things grips schlep around, they’re in charge of safety on set. Obviously they need to make sure all of the lights and cameras are safe. (Will the camera fly off that Ferrari and hit someone? What about the antennas on the transmitter? How secure are they? Did someone remember to remove the tape rolls from the hostess tray?) But because of that, they take on a broader safety roll.

Are there fire extinguishers and fire lanes on your set? Is it too windy for the camera operator to go on the roof? Is the road closed to traffic? Does everyone working on the boat have a life vest? And while different people have different responsibilities when it comes to safety, it’s ultimately up to the key grip (the head of the grip department) to make sure you have a safe film set. And if he says, “That’s unsafe, we’re not doing it,” well, that’s that.

Removing Light

A grip once explained his job to me this way. The electric department adds light. We take it away. Apart from all of the other things grips are responsible for, they also use a wide variety of flags, nets, and diffusion to control the light the electric department throws around on set. When you see behind the scenes photos, that’s what all of the random stands are for.

grip behind the scenes

(photo from: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/monakr-rosemary-behind-scenes-nick-cavalier/)

Grips are extra busy on outdoor shoots. When you’re on a set, the electric department shows some restraint in adding light. Cable is pretty heavy, after all. The sun? Not so much. Here’s a “flyswatter.”

We started filming a scene in a cloudy parking lot, but had several days of work. Eventually the sun came out. No worries, grip department to the rescue. The flyswatter is your custom built, movable cloud. (The “boom lift” or “JLG” brand name lift that the flyswatter is attached to is commonly called a “condor” on film sets.)

Moving the Camera

Grips are also the only people who aren’t in the camera department that can actually control a shot. While the camera operator is in charge of panning and tilting, the dolly grip pushes the dolly that the camera is sitting on. It’s up to him (or her, I know some great dolly grips who are women) to get the speed right. In the below photo, the dolly grip is on the far left, pushing the camera.

dolly grip

(photo from: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/art-of-behind-the-scenes-photography_us_5734d1b0e4b08f96c18281c4)

Cranes and booms, which may also be built on dolly track, may require the whole department to lend a hand. Pretty neat stuff.

technocrane

(photo from: http://www.cinematheia.com/spectre-opening-shot-technical-point-view/)

But Wait, There’s More!

On the last feature I worked on, I had the good fortune to work with the rigging grips. We would show up before the shooting crew to set up larger rigging projects that may take hours or days to finish. The flyswatter was one of our projects. Here is another.

The electric department placed several lights on the condor. We built the box around them out of speed rail (1.5 inch diameter aluminum pipe). Although steel is stronger, you don’t want to put all of that weight eighty feet in the air. We ultimately covered the frame with blackout cloth and put diffusion on the front creating a very large, very powerful spotlight.

Film crews often black out windows so they can control the quality of light, no matter what time of day it is. Here is a tent we built over a sunroof. First the frame, then with the sides.

Wind was a major concern. You can see the copious number of sandbags weighing down the corners as well as the hemp safety lines.

Another fun project was blacking out or tenting the entire side of a building. Here’s a time lapse of us removing the tents after the location had been wrapped. For perspective, each of those pipes is twenty feet high.

Another fun project was building this scaffolding on the stage. We used it to throw stuntmen out of a third story window.

Here’s the same scaffolding after we covered it with green fabric. That allows the visual effects department to match it to the actual location even though we filmed it in a studio.

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Here’s an electric car known as the “big rig.”

In the first photo, you can see the camera with the camera operator, key grip (driving), and support crew in the back. There’s also a generator on the front to power all of the gear for the support crew. The grip department built all of the speed rail and secured all of the gear to the big rig.

Here’s another fancy car setup for filming vehicles racing down the road.

One camera is on the tricycle. Another was on a crane known as the “Russian Arm.” In the first photo, the Russian Arm is the car on the right. The arm is extending to the left with the camera hanging down. In the second, the Russian Arm is the furthest vehicle to the right, the arm extending in front of it with the camera near the sedan’s driver side window.

The director and the support crew sat on the back of the pickup truck. The truck lights the driver and passenger for the scene and pulls the sedan. Again, these vehicles show up to set completely empty. All of the “gak” (that’s a technical term for stuff) was secured in place by the grip department. That’s some serious gripping.

So the next time you want to build a pretty awesome looking fort, blot out the sun, or safely race around the street on the back of a truck, get a grip.

There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lance

The vast majority of jobs in the film industry are freelance. That means you, as an employee, are only hired per assignment (commercial, TV episode, feature film, mayonnaise training video…). Technically, you work for Paramount or Fox or Comcast NBCUniversal, but only for a few days at a time. The closest comparable thing in the “real world” is an independent contractor. These people own their own businesses and enter into negotiations directly with a client. Roofers, plumbers, electricians, etc. are all often independent contractors.

There is a slight difference, however. Freelancers are technically employed by a company (just for a few days at a time). If an independent roofer falls off of your roof, he’s the one paying the hospital bill. If you fall off of a roof making a commercial, the production company’s stuck with the bill. While it leads to countless jokes and is confusing to literally everyone, freelancing is a distinct form of employment that affects things like filing taxes, applying for loans, and unemployment compensation. (For example, when a project ends, you no longer work for Paramount Pictures, but you weren’t fired.)

Supposedly, the term “free lance” comes from the Middle Ages when unemployed knights would hire themselves out as private ruffians. They were literally “free lances” AKA mercenaries. And that’s probably the most accurate description of what we do. Freelance cartoon 1

So what does the world of freelancing look like? Well, here are a few thoughts.

Who’s the Boss?

People will sometimes describe freelancing as being your own boss. That’s patently false. As a crewmember, your department head is your boss. Even as a department head, the producer or director is your boss. And if you’re in a lucky enough position to be a director, art director, or even producer, the client is your boss. Point is, once you get into the trenches, there will always be someone above you telling you how to screw up your job. Negotiating these conversations (using your skills and experience to achieve what your boss wants) is one of the freelancer’s most critical assets.

The Schedule from Hell

Can you set your own hours as a freelancer? Definitely not. As with your boss, once you sign up for a project, your time is at the mercy of the production company (or client). Working a one day job? Production doesn’t care if they go for eighteen hours because they only need you for one day. You, however, may have another job tomorrow. And if you do have something to do, it’s incumbent on you to find out if your shoot will go for eighteen hours (production will often give you bad information) and have your own contingency plan. (Keep a babysitter on hold, notify tomorrow’s production manager you may be late/exhausted, and sell your concert tickets.) Again, once the job starts, you’re in it for the long haul.

If there’s an act of God (inclement weather, a location falls through, an actor is taken hostage by the mob…) your job may push. Producers understand that you may not be available when this happens, and they won’t hold it against you. But you won’t earn that paycheck…

And of course, once you buy tickets to a sporting event, schedule a vacation, or plan a date, you will inevitably get a call for the most exciting job of your life. My wife’s friends (who have filled in for me on many dates) have started subtly suggesting I purchase more tickets to the ballet.

Freelance cartoon 2

Right of Refusal

The idea of being your own boss and creating your own schedule originates from the idea of that you have a right of refusal. If you work for a normal company and your boss assigns you a shitty job, you can’t really get out of it without quitting. But if you’re a freelancer, you just don’t take the shitty job. Great in theory, doesn’t always work in practice.

For one thing, refusing a shitty job is contingent on whoever calls you for a job being honest about its shittiness. (Unlikely.) But questions like, “Who’s the director?” “How many locations are there?” “How many cameras are there?” and “Who’s the client?” can give you an idea of what the job will be like. (Pro Tip: If the person calling you can’t or doesn’t want to answer your questions, it’s probably a shitty job! I have also noticed that the number of phone calls and emails I receive before a job is directly proportional to how shitty a job will be. Sadly, at a certain point, it’s too late to back out.)

Then there are the market forces. A job you’d never take “in a million years” might not look that terrible in early January when you’ve drained your savings account over the holidays and haven’t been employed for three weeks.

Finally, if you turn someone down enough times, they’re going to stop calling you. That’s not always a bad thing. Some people just attract shitty jobs. But you never know who they’re going to talk to. It’s s small world and a smaller industry…

Rates

Rates are fairly standard by region and they tend to be higher for freelancers than full time employees. But part of the reason for that is, if you work for eighteen hours Monday, you’re probably not going to be working on Tuesday. It’s also important to clarify rates with new employers before you start. How is overtime calculated? When does it start? Are you paid for travel or mileage? Do you get a prep day? A wrap day? What about a kit rental? Depending on your department, this might be a slider, lights, lenses, filters, microphones, mixers, monitors, transmitters, tables and chairs, tents, props, or vehicles. Union crews don’t have to worry about this as much because everything is covered by a contract (except kit rentals), but it’s up to the crew to make sure the contract is followed.

Also, if you’re starting out, it’s a really bad idea to undercut other crewmember’s rates. It creates a race to the bottom, and you won’t make any friends. You’ll also quickly learn that you’d make more money at Starbucks.

On the plus side, rates are a good way to weed out some of those shitty jobs. For one thing, if a production manager offers you a shitty rate, it’s an indicator that a job will be staffed by inexperienced people with low standards. On the flip side, if you know this will be a shitty job, inflate your normal rate a little. If they say no, don’t take the job. If they say yes, hey, all least you have some extra cash for your pain and suffering.

Paperwork

If you read this post about taxes, you know what the bulk of freelancing paperwork entails. In addition to that, it’s entirely up to you to worry about heath care and retirement plans. If you get in a union, you’ll at least have a group plan, but you’ll still be amazed at the amount of paperwork required to maintain it. And sadly, there’s no H.R. office down the hall that you can visit on your lunch break. Freelance cartoon 3

Speaking of H.R….

It’s hard to talk about the film industry without bringing up Harvey Weinstein. With big personalities, small crews, and offices that constantly change locations and bank accounts, it’s not surprising that the film industry is a high-risk occupation for sexual harassment. The past few months have shown that men are pigs in all industries, but the film industry has no overarching governing body to enforce best practices. All of the unequal power dynamics that existed before Harvey was outed still exist today. Sadly, it’s up to you to look out for yourself.

Should you Freelance?

Depending on what you want to do, you don’t really have a choice. When you envision a film crew on the sidewalk, everyone (grips, gaffers, sound mixers, PAs, etc.) is freelancing. Most scripted TV employs freelancers, but shows with permanent sets (talk shows, game shows, late night shows, multi-camera sitcoms) will have a full-time staff. If you want a full time position, you need to find a brick and mortar studio with an open position. But recognize that it is your workplace and job description from there on out.

The real perk to freelancing is the variety of jobs, people, and places you get to experience. For some personality types, it’s the only way to live. But it is a lifestyle choice more than a job description. Hopefully this post gives you some good food for thought before you join the circus.

P.S. Resumes

The majority of freelance work comes through recommendations. And freelancers get it. If someone asks you for a resume it’ll look pretty weird (usually just a list of credits). Freelance cartoon 4 But if you apply for a “real” job after freelancing, you’ve got your work cut out for you. For one thing, most people don’t understand what freelancing is (a euphemism for unemployment?). And most jobs now require you to submit resume information online. How do you type in your employee history when you’ve had twenty-five employers in the last year? It’s not fun (though it’s not impossible). I highly recommend taking a resume writing or career-coaching course if you do go in that direction.