Tales From The Inside

Chapter Ten: Really Close To Hell

It was my junior year. I was in the editing discipline, had a great movie to edit, was still riding high on my "Tell Everyone" accomplishment. One day I get approached by one of the Directing discipline faculty members. He asks me if I'd be interested in editing a horror movie that he was doing this upcoming summer. A creature, feature length. He comes from the cult, straight-to-dvd classics that are still talked about in hushed, reverent tones, fame. "Umm, hell yeah!?" is what I really wanted to scream, but trying to remain calm and poised I declared I was, "very interested but would have to think about it and read the script". Ahh, what a mature and professional decision. Well, in actuality, there wasn't much to think about. I'd be editing my second feature the second summer in a row. And this one had the possibility of going to DVD! This was no time to be picky about projects. I would take whatever I could get. Unfortunately, what I didn't know, this movie would break my spirit more than I was willing to admit.

Eventually, (like a week), later, I told him I'd do it. For getting into the editing discipline, I got a generous gift from my parents to jump start my career. A G5 Mac complete with Final Cut Pro. Top of the line at the time. Still, a damn good computer. We would start shooting in July, and the editing would start immediately there after. I would cut scenes as they came in. I got to hire an assistant to log and capture all the footage, this was almost like a real movie. We were all hired on something called a back-end deal. There's many a reasons why this could be called what it is. In actuality, it means once the movie is done, you get a percentage of its profits. These days, I feel like this deal is appropriately named because once you sign that deal, you might as well bend over and insert obscenity here. Lesson of the day: Don't sign a back-end deal if you want to ever see a cent.

But admittedly, I wasn't doing the movie for the money. For me, it was all about experience and resume/reel opportunities. The money was only a very wonderful perk. If things went as planned, the movie would be done around November, sold by January, checks by May...just in time for graduation. Going into the real world with a nice little chunk of change didn't hurt.

The movie I did junior year was great. It was a black and white, grainy, touching drama. Lots of room for creative play, like jump cuts, tons of parallel action that I adore. A quick note about parallel action: I love it because you are following two stories and, creatively, there's always a way to make the actions connect to each other, even if only for the purpose of subconsious flow for the audience. If there's two men walking, I always match their footsteps from cut to cut. If guy A is walking left, right, left, right, left, then I cut to guy B walking continuing where he left off, right, left, right. Little touches like that seem to make the flow and rhythm of the action so much smoother. You can also purposefully have the two working against each other to create an unsteady, or subtle conflict of action to represent the larger conflict in the movie. In editing, my theory is, it's the little motions and touches that really make the movie flow.

Well, at the end of the year, I went to Cannes Film Festival. It was a student filmmaker program in which you payed a lot of money to go to the festival and work at the American Pavilion. Just the chance to hang out in the South of France was a great opportunity, not to mention the networking possibilities. So me and one of my close friends went. We actually went a week early and spent our time in Nice. It was amazing. The plan was we'd go to Nice, and then Cannes for the duration of the festival, and then go backpacking to such places as Switzerland, Germany, Ireland, England, and Scotland. Ending up in Paris and flying out. The whole trip would be two months, and I'd be back right in time to start the horror movie. Nice was amazing, Cannes was great. I was basically a waitress. I met lots of people. but no one really able to help me out much. We got to go to posh parties and saw many celebrities. This was the Cannes of Jen and Brad. I was actually catering a party that was being held on a balcony above the red carpet as they arrived. I could have spit on their heads. Of course I didn't. I was too busy pouring red wine into people's white, setting trashcans on fire by empting ashtrays too early, or opening the fridge not very carefully and ruining a tray of cream puffs when they fell to the floor. Eck. I wasn't cut out for this. They all ended up being laughable offenses and actually was a conversation starter with the editor of "Hearts of Darkness", Jay Miracle. All in all, it was a great trip. As the festival started coming to a close, my friend and I, who at the time both had dogs, were getting word from home that all was not well.

My dog was having severe seperation anxiety and becoming a routine misbehaver. On the other hand, Maggie's dog was on the edge of dying. It was her childhood dog, and she was reaching the end of her life. It was becoming apparent that she would have to be put to sleep. Maggie made the decision that she had to return home. After sincere apologies, she insisted I do the rest of the trip without her. Unable to fathom traveling around Europe alone, and due to my own dog's problems, I decided to return with her. We got refunds on all of our train tickets and rescheduled our flight for three weeks earlier. We were leaving the next week.

I'm really digressing here. I'm finding it so much easier to talk about my accomplishments, that's for sure. Here we go. (Deep breath.)

The movie was starting up before I knew it. I started cutting away as the scenes began rolling in. As a general practice, if time allows, I will try and cut without the script as a first cut. I'm not sure if this is good advice or not, for me it works. It helps me look at the scenes as part of the bigger picture. If something makes sense to me without reading from the script, I know that most likely, it will also make sense to the audience. The problem here was that I was getting scenes that were missing pivotal shots. Basically, I had scenes A and C, and I put them together temporarily while I waited for B to be captured. It was innocent enough. The three scenes were all action and didn't even follow the script very well. With the low-budget hectic schedule, there was no time for dailies/rushes screenings, or watching all of the unedited footage shot that day. Daily screenings are helpful because directors can point out takes that they like, and explain what the unslated shots are. It's a way for everyone to see what was done that day, and great for getting editors up to speed, (especially in the low-budget, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants movie setting).

The director called me and said that they wanted to have a little screening of what I had cut so far. It was very early on, and of what I had so far, it was an assembly edit at best. Well, all of the other positions were filled by other faculty members or other grown and experienced professionals. It was easy to say, I was the only one in the room still, "wet behind the ears". I started to explain that some scenes were still missing and they responded by saying, "No disclaimers needed. We only want to see the cinematography." There are many mistakes I made on this fateful day. One was believing that. It's never just about the cinematography. Admittedly, the biggest was not putting text or black up between scene A and C. "Missing Scene".

A first cut screening is the most horrifying thing I've ever experienced. It is terrifying. It was always my least favorite part of the process. In this instance especially. I was desperately trying to prove myself as a professional, trying to show that I wasn't a college student, or a female, or a kid, I was an editor. This was where everyone would see what I could do. If I lived up to all the hype. Every sigh, mutter, scribble in the room had my undivided attention. Heart slowly sinking as the sighs increased. When the lights came on, I was already near tears. Pure tears of terror. I sucked them back and focused on my pen and paper waiting for the notes that were sure to come.

"What the hell was that?" or something similarly shattering was the first "note" I received.

I tried to stay cool, "Well, there's still more coming, and it's just a first cut. I know it's rough."

"You cut out the cabin scene!"

"No, well..." I attempted to explain, but the director was hearing none of it.

"And there was no suspense! Where was the fucking suspense? Have you ever seen a scary movie?"

Tears coming up, pushed back, shakey voice, "Well yeah-"

"Why'd you show this to us, I just can't, I just-"

"It's rough, I-"

And wordlessly he left the room and went to his car and drove away. Drove away. Walked out of the fucking room and drove away. I felt hollow, like every good, encouraging thing anyone had ever said about me had been pulled out of my body in one fail swoop, leaving this skeleton of a person sitting in a room of sympathetic eyes, all on me. Waiting to see if I was going to say anything or jump out of the window, if I'd reenact scene 34 where the monster swipes everything off of the table in rage. Enraged.

I cleared my throat and shamefully turned to the other men in the room, humiliated, "There's a scene missing. It will be better."

And I left. I walked on my wooden, fucking legs, out to my fucking car, and drove away, my car creaking "failure" at every turn. The saddest songs playing on the radio. The tears still hadn't come. I just said "Fuck him". A lot. (And now I will continue to say "fuck" a lot. There's a possibility I'm still pretty angry about this event.) And drove, and drove by my house. Stunned and sad and feeling like everything that anyone had ever said about me being, "talented", all the talk about winning an Academy Award, everything was bullshit. My entire life up to this point was a fucking waste. All the hard work, and the nights watching them film Dawson's Creek, the movies, and encouragement, my uncles boasting about how they couldn't wait to see me on the big screen, everything was a waste. I was the biggest fraud of all time. Somehow I had convinced everyone I could do this. But put in a real situation, on a real movie, with real filmmakers, I failed. I was three feet shorter when I realized I had made a mistake. This was not for me. I couldn't take it. I wouldn't make it. Anger, regret, and then, then there were tears.

When I walked into my house I would have usually made a beeline for my bedroom, unable to let anyone see my weakness. See me cry. But I had too many tears. I didn't know what to do with them. They kept coming, and I was hyperventilating, and I was a mess. And this voice in my head kept reminding me, "I was a failure".

My friends and roommates were great that day. They tried desperately to restore my confidence, a fruitless effort I admit. Tom, one of my roommates who had a bad experience himself with this guy, grabbed his phone enraged. I made him put it down.

"How dare he?!"

"Who does this?!? And to a kid!"

There it was. I was a kid. I was out of my league. I wasn't an editor. I could do a decent impression, and I could laugh at the jokes, but I was still a kid.

I cried myself back to the present. I knew I had to finish the movie. If they'd still have me. I couldn't give up on it. Because then he'd know what he did to me. I would not give him that privledge. I could do this movie, and I would do this movie, and when it was done, I would forget about it, and move on. I couldn't, and wouldn't, let this guy stop me from continuing on. I couldn't let him know that I was just a kid. I had to be an editor. But I was scarred. And it was deep. And even now, I haven't forgotten. I don't think I ever will. But I continued the movie. I watched a lot of horror movies, (at his insistence, not a bad idea I admit), and I just worked and cut the movie passionate-lessly. It was cut, cut, cut. Makes sense. Scene done. Suspense, suspense, suspense. Anytime I tried to put any creativity into it, I was shot down. It was one of those instances where I knew that I wasn't being viewed as an editor, I was being viewed as a student. Any ideas that didn't come from the "professionals", wasn't even considered. It was far closer to hell than originally advertised.

It got to a point where I was merely a puppet. I didn't have creative input, and when we finally got to the fine cut, school had started back up, and I had to begin thinking about my senior thesis project. A project directed by the mastermind of "Tell Everyone", someone who I knew valued my opinions and would let me work and play as an editor. Because really, in editing, the work should involve a lot of play. Especially if you like the job. I had to step away from the project. I was tired of two frames left, 5 frames right. I was merely controlling the machine. I had never quit a job. Seeing something through completion and getting that satisfaction is one of the reasons I'm an editor. But I couldn't be there anymore. It was hurting me far more than it was helping me. And I knew, if I wasn't careful, my senior thesis project would suffer. At that point, many people would be effected, not just me. So I quit. We got another student with a compatible computer to finish. I got to approve the final cut, and still got the editing credit, but I wasn't going to finish it. I watched the final cut, and knowing that it was merely a formality, and any objections that I had would be overruled, I gave them the go ahead. They started on sound and I put "Hell" behind me.

For all the bad things I can say about this experience, I should say that I'm still glad that I did it. I learned to have a thicker skin, and I'm now no longer frightened of first cut screenings. I still get nervous, but I know that no screening could go as bad as this infamous one. These gains came at the price of a lot of self-evaluating and second guessing.

I still have yet to see the final cut with music and sound. I still have yet to see a dime. It sits on someone's shelf, maybe one day going to dvd, maybe not. Unfortunately, I can't bring myself to give a damn.

Rereading this entry, I realized that I sound very ungrateful. I was compelled to edit the hell out of it, but I decided to keep it as is. Because it is a lot of raw emotion that I hadn't really ever gotten out of my system. It's also truth. Well, from my perspective, which is all that matters here in TFTI. I am very thankful for this experience, because as bad as it was, it was a great opportunity and also allowed me that first failure that I spoke of in an earlier entry. And come on, it was bound to happen right? No one stays on top forever. Just ask Britany Spears. So I thank the people that gave me the chance on this movie, and do regret the way things turned out. I needed a kick back down to reality, and frankly, I think I needed to fail. It helped me make an important decision. But more on that later. Stay tuned...

Labels: back-end deal, fear of failure, Final Cut Pro, independent movie, quitting a job

posted by ms bct @ 2:27 PM 1 comments