Director's Cut-Edit 3:Meet the EIC

Since I wanted you all to know who this infamous Gino I keep refferring to here he is, the EIC-Editor in charge, my pinoy brother Gino.















I almost had to fire Gino tonight though. :/ Gino recommended, make that insisted that, he have some snacks while he edit. “We need some snacks man”. Well while he edit changed to before he edit. He loaded up on salsa and tortillas and then caught “the itis”. For the uninitiated “the itis” is slang for the general feeling of lethargy and well-being experienced after eating a satisfying meal. In other words he got sleepy.

He didn’t sleep, but he was lethargic. I was almost about to get my Donald Trump on (you’re fired!) when he snapped out of it. See I got the snacks because I know what a long process editing is. In college I spent upwards of 14 hours editing a 3-minute piece. I was just kidding about firing him. How can you fire someone who’s willing to work for snacks? Suffice it to say though he WON’T be getting any snacks before editing again though LOL.

For real though Gino is the EIC because he is an excellent editor. “The editor is the one who ultimately creates the production......The editor has to analyze the given material and make intellectual and aesthetic decisions that will result in the finished work." 1

The person who performs editing (in consultation with the director) on a movie in my opinion is one of the most important people on a film. We could shoot film all day and night and it won't mean a damn thing if it isn't edited together into a coherent piece. So for now I guess I’m gonna have to stick with Gino…


at least until this film is finished. LOL.

You can see a piece Gino edited in the official ‘Nother Brother Entertainment blog post Here's to the Heroes

1 The third eye: critical literacy and higher order thinking skills are improved through a film studies class; Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, Nov 2002 v46 i3 p220(11)

Previous editing blog entries:
Director's Cut
Director’s Cut-Edit 2

The Part-The photos

We finally have our photos up for view. I must give MAJOR props to Yvette and Joy for taking the pictures. The photos are displayed in pretty much the same order in which they were taken throughout the production. I will caption EVERY photo...eventually, but for now without further adieu...

You can see a bigger version of the slide show by clicking the camera below :-)

Pre-Production-Scene 3: Leap of Faith: The Andrea Ross Story

Well this isn’t the story of her life, this is not even about how she was cast. (You can read that here ) This story is about what happened AFTER she was cast.

As I said before it was quite a feat even auditioning Andrea (pictured left). When we finally offered her the role and she accepted there was a problem. She couldn’t come to rehearsals. We only cast her twenty days before our shoot date and she had a pre-planned vacation for the date of our rehearsals August 17th. This is a short film and I didn’t want to rehearse numerous times our even that far in advance of our shoot date. I needed the rehearsals fresh in my actor’s minds.

So even though I had my lead I could not even rehearse with her. That’s where my “leap of faith” comes into play. When I had everyone cast BUT my lead, I didn’t lose my cool. I knew that I would find her in time without having to reschedule the production. I had faith if it was meant to be that it would happen. When I saw Andrea’s audition I liked it, but I would still have liked to rehearse with her in person. My alternative was to have her rehearse with her “mother”. Kesha Afrika Oliver was cast as her mother, referred her, and they both lived in VA. I asked Kesha to rehearse with Andrea before they came to Baltimore. Even though this short story is all about the character of Aisha and she is in almost every scene I had to hope and pray that when Andrea got to the set she was everything I saw (on video) and heard (from Kesha) she was.

You can probably guess because I’m writing this that it was not a disaster. The result was everything I could have hoped and prayed for. The mother/daughter chemistry I had in mind when I wrote it was brought to fruition through their performances. Even my editor Gino who was not there on set during principal photography and has only seen their performances on film really likes their performances. I can’t wait until everyone can see what a FANTASTIC job they did.

Well that is the story I promised waaay back when I introduced Andrea as our lead. It was truly a testament to God and his power. God is good; let the church say “All the time”. :-) When you plan something like this you can’t anticipate every contingency, but you must pray, “roll with the punches” and go with what you have and sometime you just gotta do like a George Michael song and “have faith”.


Previous “scenes” of Pre-Production:
Pre-Production-Scene 1
Pre-Production-Scene 2: Proverbs 10:7

Pre-Production-Scene 2: Proverbs 10:7

Proverbs 10:7 states Good people will be remembered as a blessing . . .

Kesha Afrika Oliver (pictured left) has been just that to our production, a blessing. As told in a previous post she was one of the first people we cast. She called me to tell me of a fantastic actor she knew who would be perfect for the role of Aisha. I said sure we would like to see her. The problem was she didn’t know if she could make it to our auditions on July 19th. Turns out she couldn’t and she didn’t know if she could make it up to Baltimore (from Virginia).

We saw a lot of good actors on the 19th that we cast in other roles, but none for the role of Aisha. We had ALL of our actors, but the starring role. How could we proceed with our shoot without our star?

It was getting to crunch time. It looked like we had to have another audition. I had a tentative date for a second audition for August 9th, TWENTY days before our shoot date. That didn’t leave a lot of time for rehearsals and such. The location where we had our last auditions was booked up for August 9th so I was about to schedule them for August 16th THIRTEEN days before our shoot date and ONE day before our scheduled rehearsals on August 17th.

I’ve read about other films where an actor was cast three to four days before shooting began, but I sure didn’t want that for my little production. During this time I also tried to arrange an audition with Kesha's friend, the actor from Virginia, but couldn’t narrow down a date. It was my co-producer Amy’s idea to get an “Internet audition”. I asked the actor to send me a video audition by email and she did. What I saw was great, but I wanted a second opinion. After Amy saw it she said “yes” offer her the role.

Serendipitously I got her audition on the tentative date I was going to have my second auditions August 9th. One day when I release The Part: Special Edition DVD you might just get to see that audition. LOL. So who is this "actor from Virginia"? Who is she? Well I gushed about her in another blog entry You can call her Miss Ross

Well now that we had our lead role everything was groovy right? (yeah I’m bringing groovy back) Not exactly. There is still more tell.

Previous “scenes” of Pre-Production:

Pre-Production-Scene 1

Pre-Production-Scene 1

I would have called this post “Part 1”, but with a film called “The Part” throwing “parts” around can be a little redundant and confusing. :-\

Pre-production should always start with a script. Sometimes they start with just an idea and an actor in mind, but the script is the skeleton that the body of the film is built upon.

I wrote this script in December 2007. Throughout my college days I studied screenwriting so I wrote several short scripts. Those scripts were about 20 to 25 minutes long and I wanted something shorter, i.e. cheaper to produce, I could shoot in one day. My other scripts were perfect of course (LOL) and I didn’t see a way to shorten them without losing the story.

I needed a new idea that could be told succinctly. The idea finally hit me and in December, dead of winter, I decided to write a story surrounding a cookout. As long as there wasn’t any snow on the ground we could fake a cookout right? Well maybe on a Hollywood multi-million dollar budget, but not on my film. I wrote it knowing I couldn’t film it until at least the spring.

Now that I had an idea where do I film it? Well that’s where being a writer/director and overall creative genius (LOL) comes into play. I could have staged this reveal (what exactly “the part” is) anywhere, but I know my u&a (uncle & aunt) always gives these big cookouts in their backyard so I wrote that into the script. Since my u&a have always supported my artistic endeavors I kinda knew they would let me film it there, but the question was when. I wanted to film it in June or July, but my u&a, both retired, were understandably busy. It was summer and they aren’t exactly in the “rocking chair” phase. It took me until about March 2008 to even narrow down our August 30th shoot date.

So after the script is done and the location has been booked, it was time to find some actors. I spoke about the casting process in these earlier blogs:
Cast Away
Cast Away 2 or How I Met Ms. Holley
Cast Away 3

It was also time to find my crew. I'm happy to say that I found most of my crew through personal contact. For the past few years I've been going to film/art events all over the area as well as working on cable public access shows. NETWORKING is the key ladies and gentlemen. :) I also found some great people after putting a position posting on the Internet. I’ll speak more about my crew in a future blog.

So I had a crew and most of my cast. Problem was I didn’t have the lead role yet. How did I find my lead role? You have to stay tuned (can you tune into a blog?) to find out.

What's the score?

You can hear one of my favorite scores below. After you click it you can read the rest of the blog while it plays...or you can just read. :-)

A film score is a broad term referring to the music in a film which is generally categorically separated from songs used within a film. The term film score is frequently synonymous with film soundtrack, though a soundtrack may also include the songs used in the film while the score does not. A score is sometimes written specifically to accompany a film, but may also be compiled from previously written musical compositions.
-Wikipedia.

Now that you have the technical term, a film score is basically background music used to accentuate the mood of the scene.

On the budget of this film (zero is a number right?) I can't afford to have music written specifically to accompany this film. I probably can scour the Internet to find a music composer willing to do it on my budget, (I did say zero right?) but at this point I will compile music from previously written musical compositions. How can I afford that? It's called "royalty free" music. You can buy or find royalty free music on the Internet that you can use in any form of media you wish as long as you provide credit to the artist.

I began the search about a week before principal photography (when we shot the film) and am still looking. I found some good selections, but since I want to finish editing the shots together before I add the score it will probably be the last thing that we do.

Director’s Cut-Edit 2

Gino and I just finished editing again. This was actually our third editing session. Our second session was actually spent re-editing the first scene with Andrea and Brittley. On second look we noticed a few things we wanted to change.

I know last time I said we were going to edit the “kitchen scene” next, but Gino decided he wanted to edit the “reveal scene” next. Who’s in the reveal scene? EVERYONE. All of the actors are in the scene. It’s explosions, helicopters, it’s an EXTRAVANGANZA! I know the actors are saying WOW I don’t remember, explosions and helicopters, but that’s the beauty of post production. I didn’t tell you that Gino is a special effects wiz.

Jus’ kidding. Besides the edits, everything is the way we shot it.

The scene isn’t finished, but most of it is done. Like the first scene, we’ll probably see some things we want to change the second time around.

At this point I don’t know what scene we’ll edit next, but I’ll tell you all…in vague terms of course. LOL.

Previous editing blog entries:
Director's Cut

Director's Cut

When you see this film, you'll see the "Director's Cut". Why? Because there is no studio involved fighting to make their cut. I am the EP (Executive Producer) so there is no need to worry about an EP's fight over what the final cut of the film should be. What you will see is what I feel is the best version of the film that I wrote.

I just finished the first "slash" in that cut a couple of hours ago.

I'm going to be intentionally vague about the scenes I'll talk about to keep the plot as secret as possible. The cast and crew will know what I'm talking about because they were there. Ain't it good to be "in the know"?

My editor Gino and I just finshed the FIRST scene. Andrea and Brittley were GREAT.

(From left to right Andrea Ross and Brittley Hardrick)

If I didn't know I'd swear they were related before (They play sisters in the film). They are "related" now since they are a part of the " 'Nother Brother family" :-)

There is no [music] score yet, we'll do that last (after the whole film is edited). There are some other sound issues we have to clean up, but the lighting looked great, the shots looked great and the performances were...well you know GREAT.

Very nice job Brittley and Andrea. Gino wants to edit "the kitchen scene" next. Stay tuned.