Category: Film School

My 2017 in Review
I’m sure you can tell that this type of post is going to be a yearly post.

Well let me tell you, this has been one hell of a year. Definitely full of ups and downs, I’d like to think that it was more ups than downs. To be honest, thinking about it now I don’t really remember what my goals and resolutions were for the year. With that being said, I do feel like I accomplished quite a bit this year.

So let’s review this year shall we?

JANUARY
- Started off the year in New York with my mom’s side of the family – had a white Christmas and New Year
- Did an adult thing and got myself a gym membership
- Started working for the school for my last semester as a coordinator on shoots and a student assistant in the classroom.
FEBRUARY
- I reconnected with an old boss and got to work on a spec pilot that I recently learned is going to Sundance, which is really exciting!
MARCH
- I signed on to be a Line Producer to a ULB (ultra low budget) short in July
- Took a spontaneous trip with the family to the central coast #whereintheworldisMichelle
MAY
- Coordinated my first PSA (and got a spot as an extra 😉
- Graduated from college
- Watched U2’s Joshua Tree Anniversary tour
JUNE
- Worked on my first commercial and television series
JULY
- All Time Low’s Young Renegade concert – got introduced to a new band (Waterparks – if you haven’t listened to them, you should go and check them out)
- Production for short
- Travelled to Solvang to decompress from the short I had Line Produced
AUGUST
- Worked on Jameson First Shot – first APOC (assistant production coordinator credits!)
- Signed on to be a UPM (Unit Production Manager) for a short shot in November
SEPTEMBER
- Worked wrap out on a YouTube series
- Worked on a reality shoot – I was a walking disclaimer for a cool minute
- Visited my best friend in Washington #whereintheworldisMichelle
OCTOBER
- Worked on a feature for the entire month (yay being employed for a month)
- Went to the Rams vs. Seahawks game
- Saw Tom Hanks do a promo for his book – thanks to NPR
NOVEMBER
- Wrap out of the feature
- Prep, shoot and wrap out of a short
DECEMBER
- Saw Tommy Wiseau in person for a screening of “The Room” at the Egyptian theatre
- Worked on my first music videos (two in one shoot) – the exciting part about this job? I was the Coordinator!
- Did a holiday horror double feature (also at the Egyptian) – and went on a general adventure for the rest of the night afterwards
- Went to my first ballet, The Nutcracker (and I got to put a new coat of mine to the test)
I feel the downs that I experienced weren’t that many. If anything I would say, the few (three days to one week) breaks that I would get, I would start to get bored and question my ability to do a job because I wasn’t working. But then again I feel like that happens to most people who work freelance.

Just a word of advice to newcomers to the freelance film world…

Don’t be down because you’re not getting work. Just keep applying and hustling and sooner or later you’ll land a job. And remember: no job is too small. Don’t think that you’re better than being a PA, everyone starts somewhere. And remember, don’t let your mistakes define you. Apologize, then do better.

With that being said, and me explaining how my year was, how was your’s? Feel free to comment below!
December 19, 2017
A quick and easy recipe for filmmaking
No pictures this time. Just words.

I feel like a good majority of the time that I post anything on my blog it’s mainly going to be 20/20 hindsight. To be fair though, I did get this just through my second day of working on this show.

Now I’m not going to go do a bullet point list of everything that went wrong whilst working on this. But I am going to give just a warning for those of you who want to go into filmmaking.

FILMMAKING TAKES A LOT OF PREPARATION BEFORE ACTUAL EXECUTION.

Anyone who tells you otherwise, is either lucky, or an idiot. If there’s one thing I learned from working in production there’s five steps in the filmmaking process:
1. Pre Production
2. Prep
3. Production
4. Wrap
5. Post Production
Those are probably going to go against what you learned in school. But if you work in production (the department I mean) then you know what these steps entail.

Now most of you may think that Pre Production and Prep should go hand in hand, when in reality they go one right after the other. In prepro you need to make sure you have the funding and schedule locked down. No exceptions. Except for the schedule, because that can always change. Funding, however, can not. This is where the line producer will come in. They will prepare a prelim budget to run with the producers and the producers will then try to see if they can cut anything or make the budget work and try to get the money. If you’re reading this and suddenly have the idea that this is the post where you will learn where to get funding, I hate to break it to you. But this isn’t that kind of post. Think of this as more of a recipe for filmmaking.

So important things that need to be locked down in pre production:
- Funding
- Schedule
Once you’ve locked down those two things then you can go into prep. Now this stage is just simple execution of your (or the line producer’s) budget. This is where you make sure you button up EVERYTHING. I do not know how else I can stress the importance of this stage. In prep you lock down the following:
- Talent
- Crew (incl. post production – but can be locked down during shoot)
- Scheduling
- Department needs
- Locations
Like I said, this is where you button up EVERYTHING. Now this stage can take from as little as two weeks to two months. Preferably, two months just because of talent and locations.

Once you feel comfortable enough that prep is all good and ready to go (even if you’re not because your shoot days will not move because you do not feel comfortable enough) you will then move on to the production stage. Some departments may think that production is probably one of the hardest stages in filmmaking. Which don’t get me wrong each department has their own challenges and I understand why production is challenging. But for Production, this is the easiest. Why? Because, like prep, it’s all about execution, execution, and execution. To be honest, once you pass prep it’s all a breeze from there. Production and wrap are the easiest stages. The main thing to keep in mind if you work production is that during this stage, you need to always make sure your crew is happy. An unhappy crew means an unhappy shoot. But you should do that with everyone not just crew, but it’s important to remember that they are the ones who put in man power to help make the film what it is.

Now once you’re done with shooting, it’s important (if you’re not doing payroll) to take a breather before going into wrap. Take a few days, a week even, either way take as much time as you need depending on how intense the shoot was before going into wrap. Why is this important? Because you’ll be drowning in paperwork. And you deserve to take a breather, if anything, you deserve to refresh yourself after x amount of 12-14hour days. This is the stage where you make sure all of your accounting is updated and ready to hand off to the accountant. This is where you close all your vendor accounts. Make sure your logs are up to date. And, if you’re like me, make sure everything can be found both digitally and physically in a wrap binder. Wrap should never take any longer than a month – but again this is also depending on how big of a show you were running.

Well, I guess this is the most wisdom I can bestow upon you for now. Please feel free to like, share, comment any other pearls of wisdom you may have about filmmaking here. Or if you have any soecific questions about it (because I know I only really spoke about it vaguely) feel free to comment or contact me via the contact page and I’ll answer them as fast as I can! Now go out there and shoot (film) something!
November 2, 2017
That’s A Wrap CSULB!

So yesterday was a pretty exciting day. Care to guess why?

Well if you follow me on Instagram you’d know. But if you don’t for the past thirty days I have been counting down to this day. And what day is that? GRADUATION DAY!

After 19 years of being in school, I can finally say I am done. Your girl has finished and received a BA in Film and Electronic Arts.

Oh yes, yesterday was quite the exciting day. My five years at California State University, Long Beach were probably going to be my more memorable years of my life. I went in as Computer Science then undeclared for a bit to focus on my general education then went on to Marketing until I finally got to settle on Film. You can say that my degree transitions were probably as colorful as that lei in the picture above.

I owe quite a bit to this school, more so than my primary, middle and high school combined. This was where I most likely made the friends that I’m going to be and they’re going to be stuck with (me) for the rest of my natural life.Not only did this place teach me how to excel in my career but this is also where I learned more about myself and grew into the (hopefully) adult woman that I am now.

I owe so much to my friends, my family and my partner for supporting me through my highs, my lows and everything in between. I could not have done this without you. With that being said, my degree is for you.

(I wish I had a group picture with friends, but unfortunately they took too long and my stomach (as well as the rest of my family) were getting hungry)

As Darryl Philbin once said,

“Everyday when I came to school, all I wanted to do was leave. So why in the world does it feel so hard to leave?”

(The Office, 2013 – “Finale” edit: changed “office” to “school” for all you sticklers out there)

But as with all great adventures, they must come to an end. So as I say good bye and essentially close this chapter of my life, I flip to a new page with hopeful eyes and begin a new one.

Good bye California State University, Long Beach you were good to me and I will always be grateful for the lessons you taught me.

And now, onwards to my next adventure!

…whatever that may be 😀

May 28, 2017
WTF!? – Nessa Knows (S01E01)

Hi all,

Sorry I haven’t been posting lately. If you’ve been keeping up with my via social media, you can see that I’m (currently as I write this post) 13 days away from graduation! Woo! Exciting stuff guys!

Well during this semester, I’ve been keeping very busy. I produced a pilot on youtube (for a class), coordinated a PSA for the Orange County D.A’s office, producing a short to be filming at the end of July, all while juggling exams, papers and projects. So, yeah – been staying pretty busy.

Anywho, there is one project that I had wrapped back in the beginning of April that I never got a chance to write about. So I’m going to write about it now.

Over the semester, I had the chance of co-showrunning a pilot for YouTube called Nessa Knows. The show itself is about a Vanessa (played by Alexandria Lewis), a senior in high school, who learns that she has a unique gift of reading minds, but her insight becomes both a gift and curse. She soon realizes the world is full of stereotypes, and learns the true nature of the people she interacts with everyday.

Long story short, this show was fairly difficult to run because, unfortunately we had a difficult personality on the crew that kept holding us back. However, she did pull through with production. Not so much during wrap and post. But what are you going to do? You deal with it, work around it, and move on.

On the upside, the final product turned out to be pretty good. I’ve attached a link below 🙂 And for our final we’ll be making an indiegogo campaign for the show. So if you like the pilot, you can keep an eye out for that!

Well, enough of my rambling. On to my next piece of good news! Post to follow shortly after! 🙂

May 14, 2017
One Semester Down, One More To Go

Obligatory “Last First Day” selfie

I can’t believe that after this semester it’s good bye school forever and hello adulting. What I find interesting is that I’m not that scared about the future. Sure it’s going to be daunting because it’s going to take me a while to get work but I’m not scared. I’m going to continue to look for work while I’m in school, like how I did this semester.

Last semester however did kick my ass. I had to write a 30 page script, produce a lecture series and a horror trailer, and then focus on academics. Granted the first three are also for school too. So let’s break it down.

To start off writing is not one of my strongest suits. Last semester I even had trouble writing a five page script, well that was more so to cut down my original seven to five. Hence why I went to my professor’s office hours almost every time he had them last semester. However, this semester I know I should have gone to my professor’s office hours, but I didn’t. I don’t know why, but I didn’t feel like he would give me the same criticism as the one I had last semester. Anyways, writing that 30-pager was a mission.

30pg mission

I have some high hopes though for this semester. Not just because I’ll be finishing up with school (maybe forver…?) but because I have a lot of things going for me this semester. First off, if you haven’t noticed one of the projects that I was developing fell through. Which wasn’t that surprising to me. But after I realized that it really wasn’t going to go anywhere, I suddenly felt like I was in a rut in terms of my film career. I wasn’t producing anything any time soon and I wasn’t necessarily looking for work. So I was in a rut. That was until I was talking to a friend of mine and we just decided, “You know what f*ck it. Let’s gather up the crew and make something this semester. Doesn’t matter what it is, as long as we shoot something.” That thought gave me the boost I needed to get out of my rut. And soon following that, I was offered the job to work for the University as a Student Assistant for one of the film classes.

Just goes to show you, that if things look bleak now does not mean that they’ll look bleak forever. Just for the time being. So pretty much moral of the story: when life gets you down, get back up and kick some major ass and take names.

February 1, 2017