What I've Learned So Far As A Director

Throughout this past year, I've established myself as a Director/Writer and been strictly following that path. Although I am always desiring to further my knowledge in other aspects of filmmaking such as cinematography, editing, production design, and sound design, I feel that my true passion for filmmaking lies with writing and directing.

All three of my short films I have written and directed and through every film, I discovered new things, I succeeded at many things, and failed as well. However, it is through the hardships, through memory cards crashing and footage being corrupted where I learned to always be prepared. Preparation was probably the biggest thing I learned this past year. As a director, you must always be prepared for technical issues but also, it is just as important to be prepared for your crew and your actors.

Being a director isn't just bringing a creative vision to life, it's also about bringing a group of talented, artistic individuals together that will be able to maintain and sustain your creative vision and help bring it to the screen. Always be considerate and understanding, but never let anyone else run your set. Make executive ideas and communicate them effectively and in a timely manner. No matter how tiring, awful, or unproductive your shoot was, always thank your cast and crew for being there and commend them on their good work but also address those who need to improve in a constructive way. Devote yourself to the story and to the characters because in order to get the performances you need from your actors, you need to know exactly what it is you want to see and hear. These are the most important things I learned for myself as a director this year and I only hope to learn more as I continue to direct more films. I will not only motivate myself, but others as well. Inspire myself and inspire others, tell a story and have it be heard.

Cheating The Space In 'Like Dreaming, Backwards'

Like Dreaming, Backwards, is a short film that I am currently co-directing. In the film, there is a scene where the character, Nell, is attending a therapy session with a psychologist, Dr. Heimlich. For some time, myself, my fellow director, and DP discussed what kind of look we wanted. Were we going for a more sophisticated, medical space which would be a psychiatrist office? Or were we looking for a more comfortable, intimate space like a therapist's office? Ultimately, we decided that a therapist/psychologist office would be best for the scene and would further serve to tell the story better. The location we chose to shoot the scene was at one of our friend's house which proved to be convenient for we had the space, time, and ability to shoot, a freedom which was also cost efficient. However, for the scene we needed it to look like an office and not a house which means we had to cheat the space.

In our friend's house, he has two living rooms. In one living room, is a long wall that is essentially one long bookshelf. My fellow co-director felt that having the bookshelf and putting a desk next to it would really capture the feel that we were in an office when shooting Dr. Heimlich's coverage and I agreed. Although, if we were to reverse the shot and get coverage of Nell, the open space behind her would have been the kitchen. Our DP came up with the brilliant idea to cheat the space which led us to shooting Nell's coverage in our friend's second living room which had a closed off background.

Above, are the screenshots from the footage we recently shot of both Dr. Heimlich's and Nell's coverage. As you can see, it appears as if each shot was filmed within the same room. By doing this, we were able to achieve the look of a psychologist's office without having to shoot in an actual office.

My third short film, 'We're Okay', has officially wrapped!

Earlier this week, my team and I finished shooting the short film I am co-directing. Whenever I finish production for any project, I always feel a sense of relief but also a great sense of accomplishment. Especially with this film which is titled, We're Okay, there were many obstacles my team and I, as a director, had faced that made shooting it frustrating. However, through the frustration and the struggles, we learned new things and overall developed as professionals.

I'd say the hardest part of this production was reshoots and figuring out how and when to get them done in a timely manner and also making sure that our actors were available and weren't too overwhelmed, for they too have their own individual projects they're working on as well. Another thing is directors tend to work with the same group of people and have the same team working on all their projects but the crew I worked with on We're Okay was not my usual crew. Although it was the first time working with them, I'm glad to say that my experience was mostly a good one and I'd be happy to work with them again for another film.

As of right now, the film is in post-production and my team and I are working on a rough edit, which is close to being finished. The music for the film is by far my favorite part of the film itself and I feel the choices in music which my co-director made really make the film come together as a unique, romantic film. Ultimately, I am thankful to all my cast members and crew members that helped making this film even possible. I am very excited to see the final film in its entirety and see a beautiful story about an unusual love come to life in full effect.

The VFX In The National Domestic Hotline PSA

When I first imagined how the scenes where she wipes away the bruises would go, I came up with the plan to apply alcohol to her fingers so when she wipes across the makeup, it would come off. Although it could have worked, on the day of the shoot, my cinematographer (who is also quite proficient in visual effects) suggested that we shoot two part coverage of each scene where she wipes the bruises away. One part, where she will have the bruise makeup on and the other part, we shoot with the makeup off. With this, he planned to mask the makeup with the footage of her having no makeup and editing it so that it would appear that she actually was wiping away the bruises in one single swipe. 

I am so thankful for him because his idea proved to be much better and it came out just as I had imagined when I wrote the script. However, we came across a problem with the last scene where she wipes away her makeup and reveals the bruises. Our issue was when it came time to shoot the final scene, she had to start the scene with no makeup on, but my actress was already in makeup because my makeup artist had to do the facial bruises for she had another appointment and had to leave early. If we took the makeup off to start the scene, we would have no makeup artist or makeup to redo the bruises for the final shot. 

We were struggling to figure out how we could accomplish the scene when finally, my actress had the idea of wiping her bruise makeup off in a backwards motion, and then just reversing the shot in post so that it would appear that she was wiping away makeup to reveal bruises. It was absolutely brilliant and worked perfectly and had I not revealed that just now, you wouldn't have even noticed that was what we did and that is why I love working as a team where more ideas can flow and become useful. 

If you want to watch the PSA, check it out here.