FIGHT FOR THE ARTISTS

Early last year I was contacted by two professors at the University about doing some film work for them.  They were recreating a version of the Milgrim experiment.  This was a psychology experiment done in the 50's where people were asked to do word association tests.  If they got the words wrong someone would push a button and the subject would get shocked.  The more they missed the worse the shock until it would eventually seriously injure them.  The true meaning of the test was to see how long the person would keep pushing the shock button when they knew someone was getting hurt.  It was all staged, recorded, and no one was really getting shocked. Even knowing it was fake the set up was so authentic it was difficult to keep watching.  It was quite a challenge to recreate that feeling.  We put it together, they wrote the script, I cast it, made a board to use as a shock table, and we shot it over two sessions.  We weren't sure which would be accepted by the ethics board so we shot two versions of the final stages.  One with blood and burns on the victim and one without.

It was the first time I'd ever done this as a hired job for someone else.  I didn't have total control and made changes from my original plans.  I was putting more drama in to it than it needed.  It wasn't a dramatic story I was telling.  It was creating a plainly done experiment that was, in effect, torture.  I'm glad this happened this way.  In the real world it is rarely a one person show.  Even a producer and director has other people that have input and have to be dealt with.  It was a good real world film making experience.  We finished in June, the professors were both excited about the final product and the ethics board approved the more intense, blood versions fairly quickly.  Once they approved the project completely the money would be released and I would get paid.  Fair enough.

Then the wait began.  Wait, wait, wait.  The problems the ethics board had was not with my work, it was approved, but with the way the professors were going to conduct the experiment.  Who was going to monitor?  What details and who the subjects would be and how they were chosen, etc.  It just kept going and going.  I kept in touch with one professor who kept me updated.  Missed deadlines, misunderstood instructions, all sort of things that kept pushing it back month after month.  

At the start of November I was told it was going to be finished. "It's a good bet."  The November meeting came and went without approval.  I had been trying to be nice about it, not wanting to burn bridges and prevent any recommendations for future work, so I just waited.  Finally when the end of December came around I hit another missed deadline.  I was also informed that one of the professors had completely lost interest in the project.  One of the reasons they had missed deadlines was because he was dragging his feet and not answering the ethics board's requests.  I was also told that after it was approved and I was paid, it was most likely going to be dropped.  It would never be seen or used.  

So that was it!  Hard work to put together something very effective and 8 months of waiting went by for nothing. 

After the new year started I decided it didn't matter anymore about burning bridges.  Since it was never going to be seen there would be no other professors taking an interest in what I could do.  It had been such work it was obvious these two professors would never do it again.  I spoke with a friend, a lawyer, who've known for 15 years about what my rights were.  Though we never had a contract with the professors I had kept all of the emails we'd shared and there was enough proof that backed up my claim to be paid.  I considered going to small claims court,  He suggested that just contacting the legal council at the university would get things moving.  Even for small amounts they do not want public records against the university so I sent two requests for information.  One to the ethics board and one to the V.P. of the legal council.

Within 90 minutes I got word back from legal.  They had checked out the ethics board and the professors about the delay and instructed them to get it done.  There was some wrangling after that, a few more delays, but last week I filed out the proper paperwork, invoice, social security number, etc so the budgeting people are setting everything up.  A few days to go, maybe even today, and I'll finally get finished.

I really expected better from the University.  I'm especially angry at the ethics board who ignored my requests for info, even though they are a publicly funded institution, and send nasty emails to the professors.  Ethics board?  Hopefully the other work that I've done, an award winning documentary on the University theater, will be seen and get people interested in more work.  Since I never actually got the court system involved I believe it'll just be forgotten by the legal council so there are no bridges burned.

I couldn't help but feel it was because we were artists, film maker and actor.  Had they purchased a piece of equipment it would have been taken care of along time ago.  Since it was artists we could wait.  No hurry.  Maybe we'd just say "Ok, that didn't work" and let it go.

How many other artists were waiting to get paid for their work?  Were we the only ones?  Don't treat the artists like they are second class workers.  Never ever forget that.

THE BURNING ROOM

Rehearsing this week for a new film called The Burning Room. It's really the biggest thing I've ever written.  10 years ago I wouldn't even have considered doing this, but here it is.  It's a very politically charged piece dealing with censorship, voter suppression and media control.  I've done things in the past few years with this going on in the background but this is really in your face.  

It helps having 4 very talented and experienced actors.  Chelsea Wing, Alice Doherty, Tera Harvey and Danny Peterson are excellent.  When watching them rehearse yesterday I was so thrilled because they were all on the same page together.  They are all equally excited about it.  

Alice Doherty as Petra and Danny Petersen as The State

Tera Harvey as Jess

Chelsea Wing as Dallas

 Three prisoners in The Burning Room

BACK TO THE BLOG

Well, here it is.  It has been to damn long since I've been here.  So many things have happened, some good and some bad, I'm not really sure where to start.  I'll start this revival with just a bit about what I'm doing now.
I'm getting back in to the habit of fiction writing every day.  Only getting a few pages a week but it's getting things going again.  I was a bit worried that it had been so long since I was working on Starpoint Mountain it would be difficult to get back in to character.  I'm doing okay with the people and places and story but I have to admit I've forgotten some of the details.  What did I name that god?  What was the color of the vest her was wearing?  Some of the names of the supporting characters I have to go back and check up.
Still, it's going.

STARTING OVER

Starting over after a very long break.  Will just pick up somewhere and start going with that.

IN THE SHADOWS OF NOVEMBER EDITING WEEK 5

A much better week once the green screen scenes were done and it's in the home stretch for the video editing.  I'm taking a few days of vacation during the next week and reserved studio time to edit so I'm sure I'll have a majority, 90% if not more, of the project done in a few days.

Then it will be the audio work, some fx, and a few pick up shots.  There is a scene where they are having a dinner and I need footage of the dishes, etc, so most of it is pretty easy.  I'm hoping Sara can spare an hour some Saturday so we can do a few shots of her as November.  

After that it's the music that needs to be done.  I'm hoping the guys who were going to do it will still be able but it's right before classes start and they may just not have the time.  Starting to look at plan B in case that doesn't work out.  The problem is I have no idea what plan B is.

I was hoping that, at some point in the production, I can get an emotional response from the viewer.  Even if it's just a smile in reaction to something good happening to the characters.  GOT IT!  It's one very light hearted moment but it's in the middle of a very dark story.  This week I'm working on the action and the serious drama scenes.  

IN THE SHADOWS OF NOVEMBER EDITING WEEK 4

Last week I finished feeling like Steven Spielberg but this week started feeling like Ed Wood.  I can only think it was because of outside influences, mom's health, etc, but I got very little accomplished.  Went back on Thursday and got much more done.  Sort of.

There is a simple scene with Sean, David Mione, and Hank, Kevin Litten, in a garage.  There's no fx or fancy lighting, etc, just some camera movement.  You can even hear me saying it'll be an easy scene to shoot on the sound track.  I think that's a curse just like "How hard can it be?" or "What else can go wrong."  

I wanted to get some actual camera movement for this scene.  As much as I like the ability to keyframe scenes and create movement with Final Cut Pro I still wanted the feel of actual camera movement but it turned out to be harder than I imagined.  I put the camera and tripod on a Radio Flyer and gently moved the whole thing across the floor in front of David.  I kept the frame wide so that would cut down on any vibration.  In itself that sounds like it should work but when you add the uneven surface of a well used garage floor it just isn't so easy.  It was just to hard to get a smooth surface and make the movement work.  I tried several takes from several angles hoping I could get enough good footage to string them together in editing.  I looked over every second but I couldn't get it to work especially when I added the reverse shots of Kevin talking to him.  Luckily I also shot the scene from a still tripod so I could use that footage instead.  Still, at four hours, it's the longest time I spent editing any scene in the production.    

IN THE SHADOWS OF NOVEMBER EDITING WEEK 3

I took advantage of my vacation year starting over and took some time off from work and spent three days editing for 4 hours a day.  I've got 8 scenes down and it clocks in at 15:05 as it is. In theory it supposed to translate at one minute of screen time for one page of script.  At this rate it's just a bit more than one minute per page.  

The only major change I've made was to swap some of the scenes around.  Three of the characters have scenes outside of the main building where the story takes place so I could poke around and give the viewer a hint of what the world they are living in is like.  Originally it was two drama heavy scenes then a third lighthearted scene.  I swapped the last two scenes because I thought it would balance the feel a bit better.  They also give me a chance to slow the pacing down a bit. It just feels like it's going so fast.  Spent about 45 minutes editing one of the few exterior scenes into a series of 12 cuts.  Watched it and realized I was doing it completely wrong and found the best take so it's now in one shot with a very short insert.  When it's said and done it really comes off as a much more personal conversation between two characters.

Also edited the first of only two scenes that involve green screen.   I have the basics down and got everything across in the scene it needs but need to try and expand it a bit later.  We took some footage of Jenn facing the green screen and delivering her lines.  My goal is to get just one shot of the two actors together, even though there's 4 months between the actual shooting.  It'll take a great deal of time, trial and error to get it right but my goal is to have a video edit done first.  That way I can pass it on the two people who, hopefully, will do the music and then work on the details.  Same thing with turning the video we shot during the day into night scenes.  I found a tutorial on how to do it with Adobe After Effects but it's a complicated process so I'll do it in the second draft of the edit.

For the most part the scenes I've edited remain very close to the written page.  Twice I changed the dialogue order to flow better and there were a few lines I got rid of.  Also have to admit there was one cringe worthy line of dialogue I took out.  I'm sure there was some logic when I wrote it but once I actually heard it and saw it I just shivered.  Luckily none of the other actors in the scene reacted to it so it was easy to remove.  

Plan is to take a few days away from it, nothing this weekend, then go over two evenings next week.