It's My Bioscope Birthday!

Now I have been directing at Bioscope for two years. How about that? It's nice to have that feeling that you are doing what makes you really happy in life. The whole nine to five thing is a joke, when you realize it is possible to find a job that gives you free time to enjoy your life. Yes, it does mean that you never know when you're going to be broke. And it's hard to plan holidays too far in advance. And when you get busy on a production, everything else has to take a backseat.

But I love it.

So I will post one of my latest bits of work. I love it because I got to shoot as though I was living in my dream world, where I'm the boss of Jeremy Clarkson. Boom!

An Itchy Head Kind Of Day

Our receptionist - if you can call her that - is off sick again and I have been helping out answering phones. I am really crap at that. I am a chronic daydreamer, so I won't hear the phone ring until it's been going for aaaaaages. But I have an amazingly fancy phone voice, you should hear me. If you judged me from my fancy phone answering voice, you'd think of me as supremely well groomed and respectable. I am neither. I can just fool you with my fake phoneline fanciness. 

Really, I am just writing this to break up the monotony of this day. We have been so busy. All I do is churn out jobs at this is gut-wrenching pace with no lunch breaks, no time to rest my aching head, no time to sort out those stupid things I have to sort out, like bills I have to pay. 

Sometimes a bit of goofing off can make you feel good about work again. I wish I was more like our receptionist. Every time our boss is on a shoot, she gets this mysterious recurring "Throat Infection". Shame. She can't even call anybody to let us know she isn't coming in. Again. It also causes temporary paralysis of her fingers so she can't sms anyone. Poor thing.

I wish I was more like her sometimes. Get a few extra days off, you know? But I am not. I take life quite seriously. Being alive and involved is important to me. Being a wet sack is such a waste of life.

Says me. Taking ten minutes out of my day to amuse myself with a bit of blogging. 

What a slacker.

Okay, I am going for coffee now. I really do love that coffee machine. On my way to work this morning I was thinking back to how much money I used to spend on that morning pre-work cappuccino every day. I mostly stopped when the boss brought the coffee machine over. I can't drink that fucking instant stuff. I am a bit like the princess and the pea when it comes to coffee. Or just a plain old snob. In a way, I kind of gave myself a raise. Which means, if I really wanted to, I could go shopping RIGHT NOW and get myself another super soft little round neck jersey from Woolworths. 

Useless Freelancers

Wow. That guy I hired yesterday was like a bucket of poo in usefulness. I had three meetings in one day (it was four, one moved out to whenever) and needed some assistance. I called Joburg's most obvious freelance supplier to the world of production. Editors and researchers storyboard artists and writers and whatnot. I asked for someone who could print and mount pictures. Beautifully.

"Oh yes" said the stupid man who sends people. "I have just the person."
For the sake of not being a complete bitch, I shall call him Poopi, and not by his real name.
Poopi arrives, and by eight I had already been at work for an hour (eeuw to waking up early) and had printed all the pictures because I am a multi-tasking monster goddess. I give him the pictures to mount.

He takes fucking forever to CUT THEM OUT. I mean, come on. Does he not understand SERIOUS DEADLINES? Finally he gets it done, after my nervous running up and down the stairs many times to chase him politely along. He chops two pictures in half by mistake and I have to reprint. Finally he finishes with the cutting and starts to stick. And I am now convinced he has never actually stuck anything down on a board with sprayglue before. What a shit job. Skew, and grubby. Dirty fingerprints on so many of the pictures. The worst part is that we had no time to reprint and restick, so off my poor director went, with crappy skew and grubby presentation boards.

Fuck.

He was so crap, that I didn't even ask him to do the rest of the pictures for the next meeting. I did them myself. And left him in the office looking for video reference, because he made it quite clear that that was what he wanted to do, and hell, he was so crap with the sticking anyway. What choice did I have? Then the chatting started.

Freelancers - or freelance researchers anyway - have this irritating habit of chat chat chatting. I hire a freelancer because I am really busy and need somone to lessen the load. I don't hire them because I am lonely. I have a theory: Most of these retards are from film school and want to be directors. So when they finally get a chance to work at a production company, they are dying to prove how cool they are. To the detriment of my workflow. Here are some really awesome quotes from Poopi:

After telling me he studied writing and directing at film school, he ACTUALLY said: "You know, living the dream." He may have pulled a fist and dipped his head in reverance. I almost puked.

"I take my movie watching very seriously." There was no doubt he disapproved of my Harry Casual attitude towards movies. He even frowned at me.

I tried to chase him away at 4, so I could get some work done in peace. He said "No, I don't mind staying longer and helping out. It seperates the men from the boys."
"Oh, so you're calling me a man?" I asked in reply.
Then he left at 5. Ha ha. Big deal.

And on his way out the door he said: "Yes, I have to go and work on my script now." And then he hovered there in the doorway, begging me with his eyes to ask him about his script. I did not. I said "oh cool. Well, enjoy. Good bye."

The sad part is, there are too many Poopies in this world. Who have gone to film school thinking they will become hotshot directors, all of them with big attutudes and little talent. They are rude and irritating. With no concept of how being rude or snotty to one wrong person can end your career before it even starts. Not that I am in any way suggesting I have that kind of power. I just know it happens. And my opinion is to be friendly and respectful to everybody I meet. You never know who is going to teach you something amazing. But if you already think you know everything, how the hell are you going to learn anything?

The Trauma Of Ad Land

Trauma, I tell you. Not that I am any kind of expert. I have only existed in the production side of Advertising. Shooting the TV commercial. A recent foray into directing highlighted many not-very-romantic bits of the profession. The irritating bits. I could suppose that any job has these kinds of problems, but how would I know?

I got the awesome opportunity to shoot a music video for a really nice song. Thrilling. My first job as a director for my company, with, like, a whole crew and everything. (Not just lonely old me shooting, directing, editing, and youtubing). A real music video, for real people, going to real tv stations.

Nice.

So, first of all: Pull off an awesome original idea to please the band and my producer, with no budget. Well, yes, okay. There was a budget, but really, it kind of almost covered the costs of the crew, and everything else was all favours and kindness. Keeping in mind that impressing the producer in this case was very important, as it would most very definitely affect my chances of becoming a director proper. Which, so far and to this day, remains my ambition.

I think of three million ideas. Many are vetoed by Producer Guy. Many never make it his office. Many aren’t possible on The Mini Budget. Keep those ideas, hope to use them some day. Eventually, an awesome idea arrives. I am relieved. I BELIEVE in this idea. A lot. Producer Guy unconvinced, but likes it and sees potential. I nurture the idea, and plans are made. I present to the band. They like it a lot, and decide to believe in the new girl. All is good.

A grand trauma of finding somewhere to shoot follows this victory; and enough people to volunteer to be in the video because of The Mini Budget. Okay, found a location. The finding of the people is coming along nicely. The deadline will be met.

I am furiously storyboarding, and after a discussion with my DOP, realize that fitting in all the shots I need in one day is going to kill us. But we can’t afford a Day Two. He gives me an idea of how many hours, and it is many. But he is a nice guy, and offers to work with no charge for overtime hours, regardless of how long we carry on. Obviously, being blonde has its perks.

The day arrives. I am there at 04:30. Clearing the room, setting up the camera and equipment. Cast members begin to arrive, we shoot each person on their own, a different set up, dressing and lighting for each scene. 30 people. 1 Day. It is madness. My feet get really sore. My VT operator brings me a box at one point and forces me to sit down because I am not getting any rest. One chic never arrives. Another girl arrives an hour late, fucked on something. Coming down off something. Couldn’t understand what I wanted from her, kept giving me the same performance every time and kept looking at the camera. Had to trash her altogether. Thank god we were shooting on HD, not wasting film. Fuck. One chic is so incredibly hot, but with only one facial expression. Must be weird to fuck her. Someone else had an eye infection and we planned a close-up so we had to change that plan.

My DOP turns out to be a fucking perfectionist. Which is great, except we have different ideas about the end result. He is going for lank pretty and tweaks the lights for ages. I want natural and much darker lighting. We argue politely over every shot. It slows us down. We run late by about an hour and a half. Not good, but kind of normal. At one point, at about four o’ clock, Producer Guy arrives. Watches for a bit on the VT monitor n the other room. Pulls me aside and gives me his opinion. Tells my production manager that we have to hurry the fuck up and he doesn’t want us working beyond 9pm. Bah. Whatever.

It’s a great shoot. The crew are having fun. They like working for me, which is great, because I have seen plenty of directors thoroughly despised on set by the crew. I’m the only girl, and they are calling me “yes sir, uh, um, ma’am . . . . “ Personally, I like “Sir” better. “Tart” is pretty cool, too.

We are all fucked by the end of the day, but miraculously finish by about nine thirty. My feet are sore up to my knees. My eyes are aching. We clean up and go home. Now comes the rest of it. The editing. I really liked my editor, but he just couldn’t get it right. I spend many hours trying to tweak it because he can’t seem to make it kick. It plods along, all neat and annoying. I am convinced I can get it better. Until Producer Guy tells me I have spent quite enough time on this project and hurry the fuck up and finish. So it gets squished into a “finished” result. Yeah. The band sees it. They make changes. They change it back. Producer Guy adds his two cents. Then off it goes to plonk the animation in where the green screen is. Easy peasy. Except it is not. Clean edges are not happening.

The editor graded the footage off the tape, not the film stock. (The scenes for this bit was shot on film. The rest, HD). Wow. They redo it. Oh, surprise, clean edges, and Voila! The perfect plonking in of animated backgrounds. That was a fucking panic.

In the end, I can’t even look at it anymore. It takes me about four months before I even want to. When I finally do, I see it turned out okay. But okay isn’t really good enough.