Alex's mentalmadness

Just last summer I was selected to join a team of ten other filmmakers in New York City to participate in America's leading teen filmmaking program; Samsung Mobile Fresh Films. Six thousand teenagers applied across the country for the program and ten were selected in nine cities nationwide to collaborate with professional actors and utlizie professional gear to create a Hollywood standard film. The week was a great experience and I truly learned a life time's worth concerning the film industry. Throughout our week we worked with Scott Cohen from Gilmore Girls and professional casting directors from the film "Freaky Friday." Check out photos, my recap of the production week and links to video blogs below.
We began our first day by checking into our New York City location provided to us by our sponsor Samsung Mobile. We were hosting our production week out of the board room for Samsung's headquarters in New York City. We promptly met our team and after some informal introductions we began to prepare for our first days task; casting for our short film. Only about an hour after our arrival, we were already working towards our first production task. Clearly the pacing for the week had been set in an instant. Prior to our scheduled casting times we began by preparing for the vast amount of New York City actors expected to try outfor our open casting call. Our crew of ten split into groups in order to properly manage the casting process. About four or five people were assigned to the casting room, where they would watch and judge the auditions and the rest of the crew were working at the sign up desk or on crowd control. Rotations took place throughout the day in order to allow a a vast range of input concerning the selection of actors. My first task of the day was working with the massive crowds of actors expected to show up for the call. Lines of new and already established actors were beginning to lineup outside prior to our casting start time. Prior to the beginning of casting we met with our casting director. She would be helping to guide us through the proccess of casting and help to aid us in our decisions concerning actors and their performances. Her experience included the casting for the film "Freaky Friday" among many other Hollywood productions. Our second day in the program was enveloped by final decisions concerning our cast. We ended up running into a brick wall debate when decicing on our final cast. The rest of our day was mainly spent on a process I found to be quite interesting; producing. This generally covered the managerial aspects of film, but involved creativity in more ways than one. Producing involved everything from location scouting to finding donations for catering on the set. We spent a good portion of the day calling local restaurants in New York City to find a food donation for our set. When we weren't busy phoning food services, were looking for donations for props. This meant, convincing bussinesses to lend us props for our short film in exchange for a "Special Thanks" credit. The producing process intrigued me greatly and I found that it involved much more than managerial skills. Social skills, a persuasive attitude and creativity were all major assets involved in this challenging aspect of production. When working in producing our team received tons of rejections from bussinesses and restaurants. The constant rejection challenged me to the point where I was driven to better my approach and methods. There was constantly a puzzle to solve when working with the job and cracking that puzzle fueled my interests. Towards the end of day two, we had finally come to terms concerning our cast for the film and we were ready to move into our official equipment training. Day three involved nothing but training and much more producing. We spent the better portion of the day practicing and learning how to operate the professional film equipment we would be shooting our film with, come day five of our production week. Day four was upon us and shoot day was only one short production day away. At about 10:30 AM we met with our cast for the first time. We then began rehersals with the actors that we would be working with in less than twenty four hours come shoot day. The rehersals really allowed our crew to familizire themselves with the equipment. I found it to be an efficient transition into shoot day. We simulated scenes from the film with our actors in the hallways of Samsung's offices. When shoot day was finally upon us we were prepared for what was expected to be a twelve hour shoot day. I loved the idea that we would be shooting for so long in one day considering that Hollywood productions often utilize days longer than twelve hours to shoot their films. We began our day in our first location on the upper east side of Manhattan. The first scene and a majority of them called for a New York City park. We set up equipment in Marcus Garvry Park where we would be filming for the better half of our day. Throughout the day the members of our crew rotated set postions. For example, for one scene I would be assigned to the Assisntant Director's job. A task that mainly involved calling the scene and watching for continuinty errors in the takes. However, for next scene I would find myself working the sound boom, capturing the actors dialogue. The rotation of crew positions provided a vast amount of experience in all fields of crew and also allowed for a great amount of observation. For exmaple, everyone on crew had to serve as the AD (Assistant Director) at least once for day. The job involved watching for errors in continuinity as the scene was being filled. The job did not involve much work at all. However, it allowed one to observe every aspect of the production, from the camera work to the direction of actors. The experience I gained in this position just from my observations was priceless and I carry much of what I learned into my own productions. The final two days of production were spent in editing. I've posted video blogs, our film and the link to Samsung Mobile Fresh Films website below.

YouTube Production Week Video Blogs
Day One Video Blog
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcpREJK7kRQ

Day Two Video Blog
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc1fxn95eLo

Day Three Video Blog
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s65U0ADB2hM

Day Four Video Blog
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq0edQ0JTm8

Day Five Video Blog Shoot Day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGxtQTNLs4g

Day Six and Seven Video Blog
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bre7kLfoh18

Months ago I was browsing the web when I came across an ad advertising a film program where teenagers replaced the professionals on a real Hollywood film set. If you have already read my "about me" you were probably able to accurately predict what I did next. No sooner did I find myself on Fresh Films website reading the program's rules and FAQ's. In order to be selected as one of ten filmmakers out of thousands to serve as crew on a short film produced and sponsored by Samsung I had to write responses to one question and one statement. Firstly, why did I want to participate in a program like this and secondly; write a 100 word essay describing a short film idea? After researching the program a bit more I decided this was an opportunity that I definitely wanted to take part in. I filled out the application at the last minute after a small amount of planning and no editing. However I do admit that this was most likely not the smartest thing to do when applying to anything that is extremely hard to gain acceptance to. At a time like this, my strong belief "some people can write, some can't and no one can do anything about it" comes into play. (I will elaborate further on this concept when I open my new blog titled Mental Madness). Anyway, I ended up clicking the submit button on the application at 11:59 at night, the day before it was due. Yet again this is not something I suggest trying. Well, weeks later I received a call from Fresh Films and my first thought was that I had been rejected, however I was not. I was also not accepted. Yes, I fell right into the neutral zone better known as the waiting list. So I was told to fill out some release forms and send them in as quickly as possible to determine my spot on the waiting list. All I could do now was wait and hope an accepted participant dropped out. So I waited a few weeks and still heard neh from Fresh Films. Just a few e-mails later I had inquired that two people were already bumped onto the New York team and I was now second on the list. Ouch, what were the chances that one two more people were going to drop from the New York team. So I began to cut this program out of my summer plans and I do admit that I just figured I would give the program another try next year. Mostly blaming my acceptance to the area of meritocracy on the careless attitude I had towards my application. Anyway, to shorten up this long story of my journey through the application process I will reveal the ending. Three days prior to the program starting I received a call from Fresh Films with the news that I had been bumped onto the New York team. I'm currently going on to my fifth day of the program and I will write more about each day in a new post coming soon.