Darrin Fletcher, Storyboard Artist/Director

What stuck out most to me of what Darrin Fletcher said in class yesterday is that there are a thousand different ways that you can become a director.  Of all the directors he's worked with in the film industry, each one has had a different rise to their directorial debut.  He talked about the tenacity each person has to have in order to eventually make it in the movie industry, and that it's important to form your own style after looking at the work of so many others.  Fun fact: he's also worked on the classic Transformers and Spiderman and His Amazing Friends cartoons!!
Work hard.  Be the hardest worker that you can.  That's what stuck out to me most.  He also said that if you're working on more than your first picture for free, than you're doing things wrong.  Here are some other things that I thought were really profound.
-Accept responsibility for your job.  Do your best.
-The business is 99% who you know.
-Every single project you work on is different.  Don't allow yourself to sink into a routine.  Treat each project differently.
-GREAT DIRECTORS ARE GREAT LISTENERS, and they're humble!

On top of all this, he showed us a rubric for a typical storyboard layout, and he said that a typical storyboard for a full-length feature will circle an entire room nearly from ceiling to floor.  The rubric he showed us fit on a typical sheet of paper.  On the right side, you have the widescreen borders of each shot, and to the left of each border, a description of the camera movement, lines from the script, and what's generally going on in the shot.  It was a pretty useful layout, and I can see myself using that same method on pictures I'll make in the future.

Wrapping Things Up

For the past week or so, we've been spending our class time working separately on all of our responsibilities within the production.  As of right now, my bio on Phil is complete.  I've also typed up the first draft of the synopsis, and I've sent it to Phil to get his opinion.  In class today, he told me that he would like the Pofrey Peak opening to be a little more exciting on paper so it can prime the reader for the rest of the story.  He also told me he'd like the elements of current-day Picabo talking to her younger self and the idea of implying a dual feature/documentary style.  I've been working on that pretty hard since then, but it's kind of difficult squeezing the whole synopsis into just one page...

I'll also need to type up the bio of Marshall Moore as part of the production book.  I actally couldn't find any information on him online, so as I was looking for information on him, I remembered that he gave all of us his business card during our Park City trip!  So I shot him an email, asking for a bio, and he responded in a matter of hours.  He sent me a bio and his phone number, so I got to call him up and ask him how things were going.  He was extremely cordial and polite.  I thanked him for allowing us to view the Park City studio, and he told me that he hopes I'll be working there someday!  Man, that would be so awesome...

My writing portions of the production book are due in two days, and it looks like the deadline won't be much of a problem.

Tabletop shooting, the Star, and the Final Stretch

So here's what's gone down in the past week or so.

On the 26th of March, we were supposed to have a "special guest" come speak to us, but that ended up falling through, so we ended up doing some tabletop shooting.  We took some of the trinkets we got from Dee Street's place and placed them on a lazy Susan, then twirled them slowly and got some footage of it.  Luke Jensen is a pro at it, so he set up some lights, busted out a dolly track and the Sony F55 and got some footage that we can use in the documentary.  I learned that with tabletop shooting, you want a little bit of shadow that can fall on and off the object as it rotates, so you adjust lighting as such.  Kind of interesting.

On Tuesday, Picabo came to visit!!  The one and only!  She spent about fifteen or twenty minutes telling us stories from her career, funny things that happened on the slopes, and then we spent the rest of the class filming her, mostly.  Ben, Luke, Dave and Judea had set up an interview setup in Studio C with the right lighting and an A cam and B cam.  Picabo sat down in a chair and she talked about riding down Pofrey Peak as a child with her friends.  It was a pretty cool story to listen to.  After that, she took the time to get pictures with the class and sign autographs and stuff.  She's a really neat lady--full of energy and really personable.  So I consider it a pleasure to have met her.

Yesterday, Phil let us know it was all go time to finalize our jobs on pre-production.  I'm on the writing team with Maddie Kelm and Keshara Bjorkman, and we apparently have more stuff we need to write for the production book than just the treatment.  We've got bios on the above-the-line crew that we need to write up, along with a disclaimer, a page outlining the benefits to investors, and a wrap-up page explaining why this is going to be the best sports documentary/feature ever.  And it's all due for us in two weeks (April 16th)!  That's for the writing team anyway.  The people working on the production book still need to compile everything together.
Here's how we've divvied up the responsibilities.  I'll write the treatment/synopsis and get bios on Marshall Moore and Phil Tuckett.  Keshara is going to get bios on the DP Ben Braten, the screenwriter Brian Strasmann, and the staff and crew, which is basically our entire class.  Maddie is going to write on the benefits to investors, the wrap-up page, and the disclaimer page.  So that'll be due in two weeks!