Cole III, the Revenge!
Mar 8th, 2010 by frank
I have these strange feelings of inadequacy when it comes to filmmaking. I keep looking at college programs, dreaming of attending lectures by profound and Yoda-like cinematographers, of riding in one of those elevated crane rigs to get that oh-so-epic shot, of sitting huddled in a tent with my Assistant Director and a crew of flunkies as I yell “cut!” while I watch the action on a monitor that costs more than my car.
But then I have nights where I set up my camera and my lights at 2AM and jury-rig a green screen set-up for a fish and I wonder what class would have taught me this.
There are filmmakers I admire, but few more so than Robert Rodriguez, who’s inspiring words in Rebel Without A Crew often remind me that I am living my film school. Every filmmaker does. All the classroom knowledge in the world won’t prepare you for the chaos of an actual shoot. Sooner or later, the rubber meets the road and your ability to adapt will be more important than just about anything.
I think I’m lucky I found my way to filmmaking the way I did. I don’t think I would have liked to have been stuck in a director’s track and never known how to cut my own footage. I would have loved to had some guidance early on in terms of shot composition, but I found my own style just fine and I did it the hard way. I did it by doing. Sound, lighting, special effects. I do it all, and I did it by getting my hands dirty.
There’s a very special tip of the hat I need to make here, though. I can’t recall how I found it, but my primary education on filmmaking came from The DV Rebel’s Guide: An All-Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap by Stu Maschwitz. When I first bought my camera equipment, it all sat in boxes for a month because I was too intimidated to open them. I didn’t have the first clue how to use any of the stuff I had bought. I just had a desire to tell stories in a new medium and I was willing to get out there and make my mistakes. The first thing I did right was reading Stu’s book.
Now it’s years later and I’m gifted with an amazing cast and fantastic friends who are willing to lend a hand on my latest short, Ghost and the Machine.
This movie has not been without it’s casualties. Our first betta fish, Cole, left us before we ever began principal photography. His successor, “Cole, the Sequel,” only lasted a few weeks once we got him home from the pet store. We managed to get his scenes in the can with the lead actors before he went to that Great Fishbowl in the Sky, but we still needed him for the motion graphics-heavy opening title sequence we had planned.
Enter “Cole III, the Revenge.”
It wasn’t easy to find a fish so ready for stardom. Nor was it easy to find a fish who could not only be a body double for the previous fish, but was also capable of method acting. No small feat there. But if you look very closely at the image at the top of this post, Cole III took direction very well when I showed him the logo for the film and asked him to pose just like that.
Ghost and the Machine is a 20-minute short we’ll be shopping heavily to the festival circuit. I’ve already cut together some of the footage from the great ensemble scene we did and I am just in love with this movie already. I can’t wait to start collecting “Official Selection” badges.
“Cole III, the Revenge” is swimming in a much larger bowl today, and has promised to stick around long enough to see the film’s premier. I hope you will, too.
jubilant
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