Learning the importance of management skills in 48 hours.
This past weekend I participated in the Baltimore 48 Hour Film Project. I’m posting this because after reflection, I realized there were some incredible lessons in management and business development that I had used innately without realizing it at the time.
We did this simply for fun and the creative challenge, the core members of my team were friends that like myself have been in the industry for 30+ years. The rules are you can not do any creative preparation work at all in advance. Last Friday at 7pm we reached into a hat and picked out a piece of paper with two genres – our team got a choice of musical or family film. We then had 48 hours to write, shoot, edit, post, and deliver a film 3-7 minutes long. In addition to the genre you pick out of a hat, they gave us a line of dialogue (And yet you carry on.), a prop you have to find (lawn ornament), a character and his occupation (Don Benway – exterminator), all of which have to be part of the film but not necessarily the center point. You are partially judged on how all these elements are integrated into the final film.
It’s important to note that our product, a short film of 3-7 minutes’ duration, has to be very succinct and simple in order to work, and especially to win the competition. It has to deliver on various things an audience (customer) wants; to laugh, to cry, to feel emotion, to have an ahhhh moment, all while being easily understood and particularly not be boring. Given the expectation of todays audience, the technical quality of the final product has to meet or exceed what they are used to seeing daily on television and in films. Also a judging point.
As mentioned we could not do any preliminary creative work but we are allowed to get our team, equipment, and other logistical things together prior to Friday night. So the week prior I engaged the help of a talent agent I had been working with and asked him for the best possible talent he knew. People who would be nutty enough like myself to give up time to try this. They needed to be talented enthusiastic actors and I wanted a diverse as group as possible.
I had a number of good friends who would perform primary duties, Writers, Director of Photography, a couple of technical people, I myself, a member of the DGA, would direct. I looked for other talented people with experience if possible or at least enthusiasm. We also got some interns and other friends to join us, and although some were young and inexperienced they would be great as we needed all kinds of help.
The script was the most important part of this exercise. For non-film people, the script is the blue print of what we were building. Where do you start especially since you didn’t know the genre? So I called a brainstorm with the actors and anyone else that could make it that Friday afternoon. I asked a series of questions centered on specific personal experiences they had gone through in their life, this also revealed who they were and their talents. This information would serve as the research and a database to draw from when creating the script. We ended up with eleven great actors showing up and our intent was to use them all in the film, if possible. I also had my daughter an enthusiastic 7-year old who had recently lost her teeth available.
Since this was a volunteer effort I wanted everyone to contribute and feel part of the process wherever possible to insure the team would work at maximum efficiency. But when some of the actors and technical guys wanted to be part of the writing process at first I panicked. I had myself, a documentary filmmaker and writer, a comedian who successfully wrote for the grind of daily television, and another friend who was a screenplay writer of quirky edgy comedies. It was going to be hard enough to write something collectively with the three diverse specialties. We had to include the others who had reflected such great interest otherwise it could effect the team later when the real crunch came. So as soon as we got the genre we went on a trek for locations. Now at first I thought this was one of my mistakes. I had not done enough preliminary work to find potential shooting locations. I had a bar-restaurant set up, and a barn with horses in case we got “western” but we had to find a place suitable to the genre we picked, which was “Family Film”. Although I’d loved to have made a musical it was way too complicated.
Randomly picking “Family Film” as a genre was a godsend and it was already writing itself before we left the starting venue. This was going to be a family reunion of some kind and everyone could be in it. Of course we were going to bring comedy into anything we did given our leanings, so all the actors black-white and otherwise would be members of the same family, and they’d have to come to some resolution. So first we had to find and secure a location and permission before we could write. Easier said than done. The restaurant came to mind but the one I had secured was not that big and not going to let us close them down for the whole of that Saturday. So we began driving around to find a place; a picnic area with a family pavilion (light changes every few minutes made shooting there problematic), the American Legion hall (white walls and minimal decoration made the set very boring), an Indian restaurant, funny, and they were in the process of building a separate family dining area, (looked good but it wasn’t finished, no tables, decorations etc. so too much time to get set ready), then the perfect restaurant, private room, large enough place to close it off and not effect their business but the owner was on vacation, yikes… Of course all through this process we were beginning to create the film with everyone traveling with us putting in their two cents. We listened to everything and couldn’t write even if we wanted to. I later realized that the four hours spent in driving around were not being wasted after all.
We were lucky enough to have one of the requirements for a prop be a lawn ornament. The idea was thrown out that we find a black “Lawn Jockey” one of those offensive, tasteless, and racist things people used to put on their front laws during Jim Crow days. That Lawn Jockey was imperative as it would be the center of our story. We settled on my personal home and a birthday party for my daughter as the primary shooting location and setting. In the end my home as the location was the perfect solution, and once decided, the story suddenly began to appear to us. I won’t say more about the content of the film, if you are interested you’ll be able to view it on a website soon. But continuous family arguments over Grandpa’s insistence on keeping his lawn ornament was a major part of it. I was able to give assignments to the non-professional writers, and allowed them to write some arguments and other conversational elements on their own. We would integrate that in the morning into the script. I had complete confidence that we could find the Lawn Jockey as I create historical documentaries and had seen them around, but the rest of my team was doubtful we could get one. I made the calculated decision to go with it regardless. We would worry about the lawn ornament in the morning and had till about 4pm Saturday to find one. So the actors and others went home and the three primary writers began at about 11PM to write and produce. My television writer had a friend who was a Broadway prop master and suddenly at 1AM we got a call back from him saying he had the perfect “Lawn Jockey” for us that could be picked up in the morning. Another miracle! By 4 am the script was complete and we couldn’t believe what we had come up with. It was current, very funny, and socially relevant, with the innocence of youth giving us the solution to a problem. A perfect short film script.
The next day we looked at the writing the others had done and integrated anything we could into the project. Everyone was fired up and enthusiastic. The first shot happened at 11am Saturday and we were finished shooting by 9pm. We had shot 37 set-ups and 119 takes (Set-up’s are separate places the camera was placed and each had to be separately lit and prepared.) After a good nights sleep I started editing about 5 AM. Oh, and did I mention we had another guy doing original music, a graphics and effects guy working, and a sound mixer in another state involved, but with all that we delivered the project on time with 20 seconds to spare.
Sunday night after delivery I had the opportunity to reflect and discuss quietly with my director of photography friend a review of the weekend’s events, and he conveyed to me why he thought that things went so well. I was flattered that he thought my management skills were the reason for our success. He said first that I was always very calm and patient with everyone, that I knew (from my experience) exactly where to put the camera and we moved from shot to shot quickly without delay. We were always open to suggestions but everyone was so confident in knowing they were in good hands with me, I was mostly able to do my job without hindrance. I realized that as a film director, or as any project leader or CEO for that matter in the end, confidence in one’s leader is the most important thing. You must first build the team and keep them enthusiastic and always make them feel connected and necessary throughout the business, but at critical points you must take control. You must lead. At those critical points and everything business has them, it all falls apart if decisions are not made quickly and decisively even if sometimes they are wrong. Trying to build and run a company completely through collective participation never works. You must have someone in a position that knows exactly when to lead and make the final judgments.
Our little film along with dozen's of others who participated screens at the 48 Hour Film Festival in Baltimore next Sunday at 3PM – Screenings continue the rest of the day! If you are in the area try to attend. But go to this website next Monday to see how we did and which films won a prize hopefully you can see our film online – https://www.48hourfilm.com/baltimore-md Tickets and other info there as well.