So you want to be a filmmaker? Well, having worked on feature sets as well as short films and commercials I can offer a bit of perspective on doing this kind of work. In part 2 here let's look at the realities of working on a feature film set.
The Grind of it All
In the film business there is a saying: If you are early, you are on time. If you are on time, you're late. If you are late, you're fired. The day typically starts between 5 and 6AM and runs until early the next morning. 18 hour days are pretty typical. Film crew members have died falling asleep at the wheel after a day on the set. Most folks that work in film spend very little time at home and see very little of their families. Schedules are unrealistically short and as a result are dangerous.
The great Cinematographer and activist Haskell Wexler headed up an effort to shorten the working day to 12 hours on and 12 hours off but it never came to fruition. There are exceptions. Clint Eastwood is known to wrap at lunchtime on many of his shows. This is attributed to his work on TV where the hours tend to be much more reasonable.
TV commercial and music video shoots also tend to have much more reasonable schedules for projects as well. For me personally, I much prefer to shoot a commercial than work on a feature set. The grind of a feature is much too punishing and grueling for my taste. While it may be easy to dismiss commercials you should remember that a commercial has a much shorter time frame in which to tell a story. In my opinion it's a greater challenge to convey nuance and a meaningful, emotional story in 30 seconds than it is to do the same thing in 2 hours or more.
The great Stanley Kubrick was a big fan of commercials, especially beer commercials because of this very nature of that medium. In an interview in Rolling Stone Magazine that he did right after finishing Full Metal Jacket he talked about it a bit:
Despite his reputation as a filmmaker of the highest order, Kubrick was not against the idea of TV, or of TV commercials, as this interview from the time of Full Metal Jacket's release makes clear. "Some of the most spectacular examples of film art, if you leave content out of it, are in the best TV commercials...I get the pro football game sent over to me and Michelob...has done a series last year, of kind of impression, people just having a good time..."
He continues: "With the editing, photography and...you know I mean eight frame cuts just beautiful and you realize in 30 seconds they've created an impression of something rather complex, and I haven't done it that no one else has...the ultimate way of telling its own story would have more to do with TV commercials than it does to the way they are presently told, the economy of statement and the kind of visual poetry...you get it with what they're doing."
For me, commercials offer the best opportunities and are the least noxious of the filmmaking world. No, you do not get the fame and possible fortune associated with feature films but for me, its about the content. The ability to create your art and make a living at it. From my perspective that is the pinnacle of success.
In the next blog post we will talk about the idea of film school and weather or not it's something you might want to consider.