Thesis films are over. And as far as film school films go, we’ve shot our last frame. Hopefully these won’t be the last films we make.
The realization that this was the end hit me when I was walking to the final location on my set. Perhaps that’s why things dragged on and we went into [...]

I shoot my thesis in three days. I’ve been going with my “everything works out” attitude, and I know it will, but I won’t lie. I’m starting to panic.
I just need a few simple things, such as a cast and locations. Locations look a little more promising than casting. They at least can’t leave Tallahassee [...]

This is part four of a five part adventure that involves driving Geoffrey Gilmore (the Director of the Sundance Film Festival) around Tallahassee, Diet Cokes, private jets, The Visitor, tea, a 4 am flight, and of course, coffee. Part one and Part two, and Part three.
Friday felt a lot like Thursday. Geoffrey was going to [...]

This is part three of a five part adventure that involves driving Geoffrey Gilmore (the Director of the Sundance Film Festival) around Tallahassee, Diet Cokes, private jets, The Visitor, tea, a 4 am flight, and of course, coffee. Part one and Part two.
Geoffrey, the Dean, Paul and I went to Urbane downtown to meet Steve [...]

This is part two of a five part adventure that involves Geoffrey Gilmore, the Director of the Sundance Film Festival, driving around Tallahassee, Diet Cokes, private jets, The Visitor, tea, a 4 am flight, and of course, coffee. Part one.

For the mode of transportation, the school decided to rent an SUV. This proved to be [...]

In a perfect film set world (real world), you shoot for the day, send the film to the lab that night to be processed, return the next day, shoot some more, and then during lunch (or beginning/end of the day), you watch what you shot the previous day. These are called dailies, because you do [...]

Yes, we got 91 set-ups1 in 3 days. That’s about 30 a day. The 6 day show had 106 set-ups. Bottom line is we got a shit-ton of shots.
And this was despite company moves, lots of extras, a tired crew, and broken/missing equipment. The odd thing is no one brought up any objections or said [...]

As I get ready to DP this Sunday by box building (for lights) and color temperature fretting, I decided to stop by one of the other sets that was filming today.
I knew they were shooting in a park near downtown. What I didn’t know was this little park had a lost forest.
As I walked in [...]

Ten cans of film have been turned in after the longest producing job I’ve had yet - six days of summer thesis kick-off. You get three days to shoot your thesis film, or you can team up and double your resources as the DP and Director did here and shoot for six days with twice [...]

The storm has calmed. Last week really was the perfect storm, as my friend Justin and I described it1. I had always heard stories of film schoolers getting loaded with a ton of work and scrambling to meet deadlines. I thought that was a myth. I was proven wrong.
As usual, a new draft of my [...]