Making Movies in Flyover Country

Editing Where We Started: The Trailer

2012-02-01T08:53:00.000-08:00

BK Garceau, a trailer editor in LA and a former student of mine, is working on the trailer for Where We Started. He has been trying to cull it down to a two minute preview that tells the story without revealing too much. Though it's not yet complete, I thought I'd share what the trailer for the movie looks like in post-it note form on BK's door:

The trailer edit itself should be done pretty soon, but then we still have to finish sound work and color correction on the film so that the look of the footage in the trailer will match what the final look of the film turns out to be. So I'm not sure precisely when it will be released for public consumption - but I will tell you that watching the trailer made me excited about this film all over again.

Editing Where We Started: Music

2011-12-13T14:33:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since I've blogged - had a busy semester as we've been trying to complete the picture cut of the movie. But as we move toward completion of that (and it's nearly done), I've been working with composer Mike Hogan on the score. Today, I spent the afternoon listening to his compositions and working with him on changes. It's terrific working with him - he's both flexible and precise. Nitpicky when he needs to be. We get along creatively because we're both similar - open to the ideas of others but also sure of what we want and what we like.

Anyway, here's a shot of Mike from today in his home office/studio.

Slacker 2011 (Dallas)

2011-09-26T08:04:00.000-07:00

This summer, I was asked to participate in the Dallas VideoFest's celebration of the 20th anniversary of Richard Linklater's Slacker by directing a remake of one of the segments.

This is my take on "Been to the Moon," starring Thomas Ward and Wes Cunningham, camera work by Brian Elliott, sound and post finishing by Andru Anderson, editing and color by Grant Hall.

Slacker 2011 (Dallas) from Chris Hansen on Vimeo.

Editing Where We Started: Screen Captures

2011-09-15T07:41:00.000-07:00

Last night, at the request of DP Taylor Rudd, I made some screencaps of the film. Since the rough cut is in, he wanted to see some frames. This morning, I thought I might share some of these terrific images with everyone else. These are taken right from my screen - you can even see the Quicktime window surrounding the images.

Editing Where We Started: Reviewing Rough Cuts

2011-09-14T20:03:00.000-07:00

So editor Simon Tondeur sent me the first rough cut of Where We Started a week ago. I was both excited and anxious. Excited for obvious reasons - this is my film! But I was nervous because I had to re-engage with what I had done (about which I've felt pretty good) and whether or not it was working.

In other words, I had to leave my positive memories of the shoot behind and focus on what we actually got and whether or not it was working.

I closed my office door and watched the film all the way through with few interruptions, which to my mind was an important part of the process. You can look at an individual scene to see if it works, but employing that method makes it hard to determine if the film as a whole is doing what you want it to do.

And I came to the end of the film and thought that were some good scenes, but as a whole it wasn't coming together yet.

Simon asked me later that night to articulate what my favorite scenes were and what my least favorite scenes were.

As I wrote out those thoughts to him, it occurred to me that what was lacking in some scenes was the inclusion of more shots that had both actors in the frame (as opposed to lots of close-ups).

That sounds like a trivial thing, but in a film that deals quite a bit with the intimacy between two people, I realized that not seeing them occupy the same space in the same frame might be a part of the problem.

Simon knows that as well but was struggling with continuity issues. That is, the actions of the actors in the wider shots didn't often match their actions in the closer shots, so it was hard to cut between them (because there is a mismatch that takes viewers out of the 'moment'). Nevertheless, he dug back in to make those changes and some others as well.

I watched most of the second rough cut today (I couldn't finish because I ran out of time at the end of the day after numerous interruptions). And I have to say that the cut seemed to really work, so far, with the changes that were made. I started to sense this connection between these two characters like I hadn't felt in the first cut.

So that's a long-winded way of saying that I really think this movie is coming together.

Editing Where We Started: Update from the Editor

2011-08-10T19:05:00.000-07:00

Postproduction on Where We Started was interrupted recently because our editor, Simon Tondeur, was in the middle of a move from apartment to home. He emailed the following photo to me tonight with the tagline "Finally, back up and running..."

That's his editing set-up in his new home office. I'm happy for him to have his own space for editing now, and I'm also pleased that editing can continue!

And that's footage from Where We Started up on his Final Cut Pro system. I'm looking forward (with fear and trembling?) to seeing the first cut.

Publication News: American Messiah screenplay

2011-07-28T09:12:00.000-07:00

Big news: Bad Lit Press has published the screenplay from my first film, The Proper Care & Feeding of an American Messiah, for Kindle. Now you can read the script from the hilarious film! Read the announcement here: http://www.badlit.com/?p=18158

And then go buy the script for your Kindle (or your Kindle app on your smartphone or computer!): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005EM2Q1U

Editing Where We Started: The Official Start of Post

2011-07-12T20:51:00.000-07:00

As you all know, we finished the production phase of the movie in late June. And with this photo, the post-production phase begins:

That's the hard drive containing all the synced footage of the film as it arrived on the doorstep of editor Simon Tondeur, in Los Angeles (thanks to Simon for taking the photo for me before grabbing the package and taking it inside).

For me, as a writer-director, postproduction is both a blessing and a curse. Part of me really enjoys the chance to let the film go for a bit and let someone else begin the process of putting it together. They say that a film is written three times: first, when the script is penned. Second, when that script is interpreted by the actors and director in the production process; and third, when the editor edits the film. And since the postproduction phase is the last phase, the editor in some ways has the final word. So while I am glad to have a break from the story and let someone else interpret it, I'm also hesitant and anxious about someone else taking charge of my story.

Fortunately, I have worked with Simon before. He edited my last film, Endings, and he brought a sharp eye for storytelling to the project. He corrected some narrative 'errors' I made that were not caught by any of the people who read the script, and he helped make it work in a way that it wouldn't have otherwise worked.

So I have great confidence in his ability, and I'm looking forward to seeing what he comes up with!

Wrapping "Where We Started": Actors and Acting

2011-06-30T20:18:00.000-07:00

I spent some time today with Matt and Cora, the lead actors from Where We Started. Cora departs for her next destination tomorrow, and Matt the next day, so I wanted to spend some more time with them.

I wanted to do this because, well, I had such a terrific time on this production. I was reflecting on this with Matt and Cora when we hung out today. I have known Matt for almost 20 years, so our reconnection on this film and my last one (Endings) is always a treat. And getting to know Cora was great. I felt a real connection with them as friends and creative people, and I'm hoping to work with them again soon.

I'm constantly in awe of great actors and how they do what they do. I wanted to act a little when I was in high school and college, so I've thought about this a bit, and I've acted a bit. But I never really trained in it after high school, hence my awe.

They are able to slip into these emotional states that defy my imagination. I wish I could do that! And to get two talented actors to work on my film? That's an great coincidence. To make a creative and personal connection with them? That's an honor.

So I'm dedicating this post, for whatever that's worth, to Matt and Cora and their incredible work on Where We Started. Thanks, both of you, for your commitment and your talent.

Goodbye 30s

2011-06-29T18:47:00.001-07:00

Well, the day is almost here when I must bid adieu to my 30s. It hasn't been a bad decade. In my 30s, the following things occurred:

we had two terrific children (we had the other two terrific children when I was in my 20s); (also, note that I didn't say that *I* had two children, since, well, I'm a man, and we're biologically incapable of that);

I made four films (three features and one short) that have played in 40+ film festivals, and the latest one isn't even out yet;

I got a job teaching film at Baylor University;

I earned tenure at that job, which essentially means I can keep it for life;

I was appointed head of the program in which I teach;

I edited a book of essays that was published by an academic publisher;

I contributed a chapter to another published book of essays.

So, that's not a bad decade of accomplishments, I suppose. I'm wondering if my 40s are going to be able to top that. Well 40s - are you up to the challenge?

Shooting Where We Started: Wrapping the Set

2011-06-28T21:10:00.000-07:00

Today, the crew had to tear down our set. What took over a month to build was gone in hours. A set is by definition a temporary structure, but it's still sad to see it go after so much work and money went into it. Producer Brian Elliott documented the process.

After an hour and a half:

After two and a half hours:

After three and a half hours:

And that's it. Poof - like it never existed. It's just scrap wood now.

Tonight we had a wrap party. Great food, and no worries about getting back to production after the meal. We settled in to watch a few videos - funny and serious - that the students had made behind the scenes. But before that, the crew surprised me with happy birthday wishes and a Boston Cream Pie (one of my favorites). Since I turn 40 on Friday, I'm bidding adieu to my youth - and I received plenty of ribbing.

The videos were good fun, and the company was great. I gave a few gifts to some of my collaborators - tokens, really, but just a way to say how much I appreciate them. And I received a nice album of production photos from my actors.

What a great experience. I certainly hope the film is good, but in the end, regardless of the outcome, I need to remember that this part of the experience has been terrific.

Shooting Where We Started: That's a Wrap!

2011-06-28T00:38:00.000-07:00

We finished. Principal photography on Where We Started is complete. I left the set at 2am, and tomorrow is equipment check-in and set breakdown.

I'm almost out of things to say. So maybe the blog will be brief tonight.

We managed to save probably the most difficult scene in the movie for the last day of shooting. We tried to schedule the production roughly in chronological order, and though that went awry at some points (I'm looking at you, motel in Marlin), we did manage to have large chunks in order, which helped the actors maintain and track their character arcs through the film. But it also meant that the emotional climax of the movie was shot today, the last day of production. It was a tough scene that required lead actress Cora Vander Broek to be more or less emotionally naked. For an actor to ramp up to that level of exposure on screen, it takes time and energy. And if you know anything about production, you know that you have to cover every scene from multiple angles, so Cora had to reach that level multiple times over several hours. Not easy. I have great respect for her talent and drive.

Like most nights on set, things just seem to drag on. People were getting giddy (with anticipation, I imagine). But we still had some serious stuff to shoot. In the end, we shot what will likely be the final image in the movie. And then we spent another 45 minutes or so picking up some insert shots of objects around the room to use as transition shots if necessary.

After that, I shouted, "That's a wrap!" Everyone cheered. There's a real sense of accomplishment. I opted not to try to make a speech - there was still much work to be done in cleaning up and loading the van. Plus we have a wrap party tomorrow night, and wrap parties are for speeches.

Somehow I managed not to take many photos today, so I leave you with just these last two.

On-Set Post Supervisor Grant Hall is at his station, capturing footage to an external drive while we also capture to the camera. He was also working on syncing picture and sound on his laptop.

And Nelsyn Hill, one of our undergraduate students who served in a variety of capacities on the set (including her gig tonight as boom operator) poked her head out through the set curtains, and I snapped a picture of it.

I'll probably take some time off from blogging - not much to say in the immediate aftermath. But I'll be posting updates as things happen, and perhaps reflecting on various aspects of the process.

And finally, because I think it needs to be said, I want to thank Brian Elliott for his work as Producer, Taylor Rudd for his beautiful images, Matthew Brumlow and Cora Vander Broek for their beautiful performances, and everyone else who was involved in the film for their hard work in helping translate this vision to the screen.

Shooting Where We Started: The Penultimate Day

2011-06-26T23:54:00.000-07:00

Before I compose my thoughts on today's shooting, let me just state this: tomorrow is the last day of principal photography on my third feature film.

And that, my friends, is a really nice feeling. The mushy middle of the shoot, when the days and nights have grown long and the shoot feels like it will never reach a conclusion, gave way to a countdown of days where I realized I was doing what I loved, day in and day out, and I didn't want it to end.

Now, to be sure, I am exhausted and couldn't go on doing this indefinitely. But I get to work with committed creative people all day. What's not to love? At one point tonight, while the DP was relighting for a new scene, I was sitting in the green room with the two lead actors talking about the ephemeral nature of theatrical performance, about how a performance on the stage is there for only a moment, captured only in memory, and is then gone forever. This is in contrast to the performance captured in the cinema - which is recorded for posterity and can be seen, always the same, forever and forever. It's an interesting difference, one which Stephen Tobolowsky was discussing on his podcast, The Tobolowsky Files (highly recommended, by the way; Tobo is an excellent storyteller and a really thoughtful guy).

Anyway - that's the kind of experience you get on the set just in the waiting between takes, if you're open to it, if you make yourself available. Like most other people in this day and age, I'm easily distracted by my iPhone, iPad, and other electronic devices. It's easy to waste the hours between shots and setups by focusing on those. But I love chatting with the actors, the director of photography, the producer. I'm a naturally quiet and introverted guy, but the opportunity to engage in these talks energizes me.

Today's shoot was longer than expected. We had to finished scene 27 (we shot about three-fifths of it the day before), and then also shoot scene 29 (which was very simple - a page of dialogue in one or two setup). I knew we would get through those quickly, so I also planned to do several of the next day's setups tonight, so that our final day of production, which features some challenging material, wouldn't be too rushed. But the setups that I thought would be simple were not, it turned out, so simple. I should know by know that everything takes three times longer than what I think it will take (and half the time that the DP wants to spend - no offense to my excellent DP, Taylor Rudd - he likes tweak, as does every DP I've ever met, but he's also respectful of the schedule).

The night dragged on, but since we were working with a skeleton crew today, we just pushed through. We did start to get 'punchy' at around midnight (early for us, but everyone's exhausted from the overnights last week). People were making silly jokes, the crew was tempting me with late night goldfish snacks, and the reading of the slate whenever we marked a shot was turning into an exercise in bizarre non-sequiturs. I'm amazed Matt (the actor) was able to perform his somber scenes amidst such cutting up. We were hardly professional tonight (my apologies to Matt - though I don't think he minded too much).

I made it home by about 1:30am and am once again too wired for sleep just yet. And tomorrow we wrap it all up.

Finally, some more pictures for you. Sorry about the color and quality on some.

As we were tweaking lighting on a shot, Matt decided to turn this into a very different type of movie. Cue the Psycho music...

The next two shots were my attempt to show the DP what the actors and I had decided on for their positions for the next scene. I posed them on the bed and took a few shots while Taylor was working on a different lighting setup in the other room.

To achieve the lighting Taylor and I wanted for this setup, he created what he termed "a Tweaker's Dream" - a maze of c-stands and flags around a light, so that it would only illuminate a very limited space.

Here, Taylor prepares to actually shoot that scene. I wanted a high angle/overhead and very wide shot, so we had a wide angle lens on the camera, and Taylor had to get a little higher on the ladder than he was comfortable doing.

In this shot, Matt and Cora are clearly happy with that shot - they are reviewing it on the monitor.

And the last shot of tonight - some of the diehard late nighters - from left to right: Grant Hall (Postproduction Supervisor), Brian Elliott (Producer), Heesung Song (2nd AC), Tyler Ellis (Production Designer), Rob Norman (First AD). Good work to them and all the others on set. One of the reasons I posted this picture - and one of the things I really like about it - is that there is a real sense of camaraderie on the set. People like each other and enjoy being together. In spite of the hard work, people are having fun. Making movies is hard work, no doubt, but it also can be really enjoyable. It's hard work in the service of art and entertainment.

So tomorrow - did I mention that it's the last day of production?

Shooting Where We Started: The Final Push

2011-06-25T21:47:00.000-07:00

Today represents our final push on the production phase of the movie. We have three studio-bound days remaining. They are full days of emotional material, but we are very happy to be on the set again, away from the elements and in a location we can control. It feels more like "home" - and it's nice to have a home base.

It was a mostly uneventful day. The machinery of moviemaking marches on. Master shot, close up, next set up, etc. One bit of excitement occurred in the middle of a take when our boom operator, Lauren, began to pass out. She apparently got a bit overheated and/or dehydrated. In mid-take, those of us who couldn't see her wondered why the boom suddenly started making noise. Then Cora jumped up from her position on the bed to support Lauren. Everyone quickly rushed into the room to help.

Lauren recovered quickly and was probably embarrassed that we were all asking her if she was okay for the next hour. She was fine but light headed, but regardless, we sent her home for safety.

Never a dull moment...

A few photos for your enjoyment:

DP Taylor Rudd prepares to shoot an overhead shot from above the set. Note: this is, as Taylor said, a good example of how not to do this, but I didn't come up with this shot until this morning, so we just went with it. I have tried not to be overprepared on this shoot. It's easy to be a slave to your notes, and I've tried to practice what I preach on this film by letting the actors' natural blocking dictate the shots. And on occasion, like with this shot, it's just that you think of a different way to see something, and you roll with it. Taylor is more than happy to roll with it (in part because we often are rolling with ideas that he came up with).

Here, I caught Cora and Matthew in an unguarded moment between setups.

This is a shot taken from my monitor at Director's Camp.

And finally, just for fun, I captured this picture of Matt's foot. It came to our attention tonight that he has rather long toes - so long that it is a bit of an inside joke in his family. Here' Cora compares the size of her finger to Matt's toes. Impressive digits, Mr. Brumlow.

A New Title for An Affair

2011-06-23T19:59:00.000-07:00

Okay, so the title "An Affair" was always a bit of a placeholder. And now, after much effort testing titles and playing around with ideas, we have some up with the title for the movie.

An Affair is now titled: Where We Started.

Shooting An Affair: Day Thirteen (our last overnight)

2011-06-23T03:58:00.000-07:00

It's 6am as I sit down to write this. The sun is already rising, which means I should be trying to get to bed ASAP. We just finished our last overnight of the shoot. We will be back on a more sane schedule after a couple of days off.

It's funny - a shoot is such a difficult and tiring process. In the first third, adrenaline propels you. In the second third, you start to long for the finish line. And in the last third, you start to mourn the fact that you won't be able to do this much longer. Admittedly, I'm exhausted and looking forward to being done. But I'm making art with friends. It's fun even though it's hard.

I was reflecting tonight on what a great environment we have on our set. One night, DP Taylor Rudd's family dropped by while we were setting up. His father is a colleague of mine (in another department) at Baylor University, and Taylor's brothers were passing through town. So his entire family, including young niece and nephew, stopped by. The kids played on our swing set while we talked for a bit. Some people would think of this as an interruption. For me, this kind of work environment is exactly what I want. There are certain times when we need more focus and less people, but in many cases, I think it's great to have family stop by. I want family involved whenever possible. And the crew works such long hours together that they become a sort of family. I love seeing the bonding happen and getting to cut up with the students and have fun.

Tonight was a good and uneventful night. It was our second night at the Elite Circle Grille, and we concluded our restaurant scene in plenty of time for a planned 6:30am wrap. I really hit a wall at 2am. I was having a hard time keeping my eyes open in between setups. As the crew was working on lighting, I was just waiting, and waiting at 2am is hard to do. But I got through it. I know everyone is dragging, but the fact that this would be our last overnight shoot gave us all a boost, I think.

Finally, a few photos for you. Here, Taylor Rudd sets up a shot with actor Matt Brumlow.

In this photo, Matt awaits the next shot as he talks with producer Brian Elliott.

I was sitting right next to camera as we shot part of the scene, and this image struck me. It's a notice on the side of the matte box and rail system.

Finally, actors Matt and Cora prepare to shoot. This was my vantage point for watching the scene - right next to camera.

Two days off to get our bodies to adjust to normal schedules, and then we start back on Saturday.

Shooting An Affair: Day Twelve (Power is our friend)

2011-06-22T03:52:00.000-07:00

Just another crazy night on the set of "An Affair"...

I woke up around 2:30 this afternoon, still recovering from our long night in the vacant lot. I didn't feel well all day; my head was pounding, and I just couldn't seem to get it to stop no matter what I took. It finally started to clear after an ice pack, with only an hour to go before I had to leave the house.

I met with the actors before the shoot to go over a few things, including a title change for the film. We have been discussing this on and off since we started writing. "An Affair" was always intended as a bit of a placeholder. I think we've settled on a new title, but I'll make a bigger announcement of that soon.

So tonight began two nights in a restaurant shooting a long dinner scene. We were very fortunate to get permission to shoot in the Elite Circle Grille (so named because it is situated on Waco's only traffic circle). It's a great place with a long history in Waco. We had to wait til closing to start, of course, so we couldn't get in until about 9:30pm. This was also one of the nights when we needed a lot of extras to fill out the dining area and make it look like it wasn't just our two lead actors by themselves. These extras of course had to commit to being there all night with us - we were very fortunate to have some brave souls commit to this! One of them decided to be an extra as a way to write a piece about the film (and his experience of being an extra) for the local magazine, The Wacoan.

We knew there was going to be a thunderstorm tonight, but of course we were safe inside, so we weren't worried.

And then the storm rolled in at 2:00am or so. And got worse. And worse. The rain and thunder really weren't impacting us, and the power flickered a couple of times but wasn't a problem. That is, until 3am, when the whole area went dark. We were in the middle of a take when everything died. The restaurant was pitch black.

So we all sat quietly and waited to see what happened while the Asst Producer called our restaurant contact to see if he had any numbers at the city we could call.

3am turned into 3:20am. We were hoping it might come back on, so we took our meal break. Everyone sat in the one room with emergency lighting. I sat alone at the bar because I just didn't feel like talking.

After everyone had finished eating, and we had already discussed strategies since the lights were not coming back - and after I said, "Excuse me" to a potted plant because it was so dark in there - the lights flickered and came back on. 4am. We immediately got back to work.

Fortunately, the extras in this shot had stuck with us (and the extras we needed for later shots agreed to come back tomorrow!). We managed to finish a good bit of the scene and get out of there before dawn.

All of the craziness aside, we really are getting great footage. That's because our actors are ready to go all the time. Tonight, it was a wonder to watch Cora Vander Broek - we were shooting her medium shot when the power went out. When it came back, we picked up right where we left off, and she didn't miss a beat. And then we moved on to her close up, and as we were nearing 5am, she was still giving a great performance. I watched her bring this beautiful sadness to her scene, and Cora is not a sad person. She is sweet, funny, happy, and thoughtful - and then she clicks into character and just creates this awesome melancholy; it's a treat to watch. I am thankful they are so dedicated and committed. And I'm not leaving Matt Brumlow out; it's just that he gets his turn tomorrow when we shoot his coverage.

I'm also thrilled at the way the crew snapped back to attention after the lull of the power outage. We were back up and running in no time. Good work, Baylor FDM students!

Finally, I remembered to take some photos tonight so I could post them. Here, Keith Lindley (right, first AC) and Jordan Crumpler (left, second AC), prep the camera for our next shot.

Actors Cora and Matthew discuss their scene. It only looks like Matthew is eating a light bulb...

This is the setup for the food that is brought to their table in the scene. This has to be replicated for each shot, so continuity is important. And when the actors begin to eat it, we have to keep track of where things end up.

The next two shot show the "behind the scenes food" - the stuff that our props department has on standby to replenish the plates on the actors' table after each take. As you can see, it takes a lot of food to shoot one dinner scene (and this isn't all of it - just a sampling).

And finally - you get a look at something very few people get to see. This next shot shows you what producers look like when they "work." Look at how they lounge with such intensity.

I am kidding, of course. Brian Elliott (left, Producer) and Lauren Woodruff (right, Asst Producer) are the reasons that we are getting this done in spite of the bizarre and challenging occurrences. They are there to smooth things over when police drive up and challenge the fact that we have closed the street (with permission from the city, though the police say they should have been told, even though we were never instructed by the city to do so), or to call the restaurant contact when the power goes out at 3am, or whatever is needed at any time. I am so thankful for their hard work and commitment. Nothing ruffles them, and that is more valuable than you can imagine when chaos is all around you.

Shooting An Affair: Day Eleven (vacant lot = rocky terrain)

2011-06-21T03:28:00.000-07:00

I'll be honest: it's 5:30am, I'm tired, and I realize the post title is lacking in wit. But I'm just too tired to think of anything else.

We started shooting at around 6:30pm in a vacant lot where we had set up a swing set. This swing set was supposed to be on the property of the motel where we had previously shot. You might recall from previous blog posts that the motel decided they didn't want to honor their contract and allow us to finish shooting there. So we had to move this beast of a swing set out to Marlin, then move it back to West (where the studio is - because it's the only place we have to store it). Then it had to be brought back to Waco today and set up for the shoot. Did I mention that we were going to give it to the motel after the shoot was done. We bought it and were just going to let them have it. Yeah, that's not going to happen now. And it wasn't easy to make this look like it was taking place just at the edge of the motel parking lot, but DP Taylor Rudd did a really terrific job with that.

Anyway, we got two shots done before the sun went behind some buildings. That was what we needed to get, and we managed, but we were fighting the heavy winds the whole time. Not only does the wind make the actors look funny (hair and clothes blowing everywhere), but it really impacts the sound. Microphones with wind blowing into them don't yield good sound. A good sound person knows some tricks to counteract this, but they only work so well.

So as we waited on the sun to set for our night scene, we circled the taller vehicles of our crew members around the swing set to kill some of the wind. And that helped.

I could tell at the start of the night that people were just moving slow. Fatigue has really set in, and I include myself. I was moving at half speed, frustrated with the compromises and difficulties of this scene (which had moved location three times), and just not feeling well, to be honest. And I could see that others were having the same problem. A few people left early because they were feeling nauseated or unwell.

So once we started shooting the night scene, I was pleasantly surprised when it started going well. The shots looked nice, the scene played well, and we got our coverage rather quickly. I thought (knock on wood) that we would surely be done earlier than our planned 5:30am wrap.

Sigh - it was not to be. Our final shots were on the Steadicam, and between our inexperience with it and the heavily uneven terrain in the vacant lot, this became a really difficult shot to get. We reached take 20 on the main two-shot before we felt confident that we had a few solid options from which to choose. I had planned on doing some coverage in the form of close ups of each of the main actors in the conversation, but we simply couldn't achieve a desirable level of focus at the closeness I wanted. You need a certain amount of light to focus. We were working in low light conditions. We had more lighting instruments, but we were out of power options. We were so far from our power sources that we had run out of "stingers" (extension cords). So we didn't have enough light to maintain sharp focus on the close ups. So we just had to decide to live with the single shot coverage - which means the scene really can't be edited at all. That's frustrating, but it was all we could do.

At the end of the night, in addition to packing up all equipment, we had to take apart that darn swing set. I didn't want anyone to decide to play on it and get hurt. So while the crew was putting up lights, camera, and sound equipment, I hopped on top of the swing set with a wrench and started pulling out bolts from the crossbeam. That's harder than it sound at 5am in the dark. I just wanted that darn thing apart, and if I'd had an axe, I might have used that.

Got all the bolts out, then started in on the many screws holding it together as well. Power drill/screwdriver died, so me and several grips started working the remaining screws manually. Producer Brian Elliott jumped in as well. It was a team effort. We finally got it all apart and laid all the pieces down. No one on the crew has a truck large enough to haul it, so the engineer from my office (who has a trailer) has been helping us move it. Now we just have to determine what to do with the thing. If anyone wants a swing set for free, it's still in the vacant lot on 6th street. I have all the hardware.

With that done, I was more ready to go home than any other day or night on this shoot. Tomorrow night, we at least will be indoors. If you're going to spend the whole night out shooting a movie, it's at least better to be in a nice restaurant with air conditioning and bathrooms (did I mention we had to drive several miles to find a bathroom when shooting at the vacant lot? It being a vacant lot and all, we didn't have much access to bathroom facilities).

I didn't take any pictures because, well, I forgot to and I was tired. Or I forgot because I was tired. Five more shooting days.

Edited to add: I completely forgot that at about take 9 of the 20-take marathon Steadicam shot, some student crew members who were stationed at a corner to make sure our traffic barriers were obeyed came back to the set to report that they were completely freaked out by a homeless guy who came by their station and talked to them at length about killing a congressman who he claimed to have killed his wife. So - I don't have a whole lot in the way of details on that, but I owe it to those kids to include it. And, of course, as soon as it had been reported, the first words out of someone's mouth was, "Hey Chris, there's soemthing to blog about tonight!"

Shooting An Affair: Behind the Scenes prep

2011-06-20T12:37:00.000-07:00

We don't starting today until later (it's going to be another all-nighter, since it's an exterior night scene). But there's a lot of prep going on regardless.

We're closing some streets tonight - so that means we need to pick up the barriers from the city this afternoon before we set up.

We are using a swing set today, so someone had to go pick up the set where we were storing it and set it up on the property at which we're shooting.

We are 'borrowing' power (with permission) from a local merchant. He is allowing us to run some extension cords from his business so that we can use the power after hours. That means our Gaffer has to head over there this afternoon to run all the power cords. It also means that if we blow a breaker, we can't reset it. So our electrical planning has to be very precise.

Did I mention that the wind was blowing so hard that my hat blew off my head several times? I'm hoping the wind will die down before this evening.

Also, our prop/art direction folks are working on tomorrow night's shoot, which takes place at a tapas restaurant. I wrote the scene, but I've had tapas only once or twice in my life (and I let someone else order when I did). Translation: I know nothing about tapas except for what I looked up online. So my art director is having to prep the tapas for the scene tomorrow night.

A long day before a long night. As you can see, it requires a lot of coordination and a lot of people to pull this off.

Shooting An Affair: Day Ten (I want these snakes outta my studio!)

2011-06-17T21:52:00.000-07:00

Today's shoot was a more difficult and emotional scene. There was also some awkward moments to shoot, so we were working with a skeleton crew, just to make the actors more comfortable.

I find directing scenes like today's challenging - but I'll save that discussion for a later day because I really don't want to talk about some of the film's details yet.

The biggest event today was the arrival of a new mascot - a chicken snake slithered into the studio as we were loading equipment into the van. We actually didn't know what kind of snake it was then. So we called the studio owner, Ben Ranzinger, who was nearby with a friend who he considers his snake wrangler. So Ben and Paul came over and started moving stuff from where the snake had slithered. Soon enough, they found him, and Paul "wrangled" him quickly. Here he is - name suggestions?:

Some more photos...

My hat atop the wave form monitor and my monitor at "Director's Camp":

Lead actor Matt Brumlow posing for my phone's contact picture. He wanted it to be iconic:

The slate from a shot from today:

DP Taylor Rudd setting up to shoot a slow dolly shot, with Dolly Grip Rob Norman to his left and 1st AC Keith Lindley to his right:

Lead actress Cora Vander Broek in a shot (taken from the monitor at Director's Camp):

A lighter moment - Cora trying to pose for a contact photo picture that would equal Matt's rather impressive one:

Not happy with that one, we tried another pose:

We have the weekend off, then we pick up with a few grueling days Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of next week.

Shooting An Affair: Day Nine

2011-06-16T23:43:00.000-07:00

Today was a studio day, which is always more relaxed. As I've said before, it feels more like 'home,' and everyone is able to settle in a bit.

It felt a bit today like we had turned a corner and were in the home stretch. That's not to say we don't have plenty more to do, of course. But we shot one of the more challenging scenes today, with another really heavy/emotional scene tomorrow. Once tomorrow's shoot is done, we have only one really difficult scene left.

The other positive today was that we got a little ahead of schedule. We finished scene 21 today (a really long scene), and then shot scene 25. We were scheduled to shoot 25 and 26 tomorrow, so this makes tomorrow's shoot of the emotional scene 26 much more relaxed. We can take our time. That is going to be really important tomorrow.

So - a short post tonight. I still like directing without shoes. I feel so relaxed.

A few pictures from today. First, the actors talk about the scene (Matt Brumlow on bed, Cora Vander Broek in foreground, DP Taylor Rudd with camera, Gaffer Stephanie Saathoff behind him):

And I took this photo from my monitor at "Director's camp" (where I sit to watch and listen when I'm not watching from the set). A really nice shot of Matt and Cora in a tense scene.

More tomorrow after the shoot.

Shooting An Affair: Day Eight

2011-06-14T23:45:00.000-07:00

Tonight's shoot was in a liquor store. You might be surprised, or perhaps not, that it's hard to find a liquor store in which to shoot a movie. Liquor store owners are not in love with people traipsing through their stores after hours. We actually had to call in a favor from a longtime friend of our productions and a former city manager. He still has a lot of friends in the city he used to manage, and he vouched for us, so we were able to work tonight in a terrific liquor store in Bellmead, TX.

One of the odd quirks - not surprising when you think about it: our entire crew tonight had to be 21 or older. Since we work with a largely student crew, that meant several people had to stay home.

This was a comparatively light shooting night - we had three very short scenes to get, a total of about a page of script at the most. We took our time and got some really nice shots. You know there's production value when the dolly comes off the truck.

I had the pleasure tonight, too, of involving another good friend in the film. Stan Denman is the chair of Baylor's Department of Theatre, and he has been a friend of mine since I arrived at Baylor. He graciously agreed to play a bit part in the film, and it's always fun for me to work my talented friends into my films. Stan played a surly liquor store clerk, and he played it well. I really love it when an actor with a single line asks me about his character's motivation. Some people might think that's silly, but I think of it as real dedication to craft. Stan knows that he has to make a choice about his character, even if there's only one line, and he spent time thinking about how to play it. That's dedication.

We had a couple of shots in the parking lot of the liquor store. Unfortunately, this liquor store is situated on a major trucking lane, so there was a good bit of loud traffic. In situations like this, the boom mic is somewhat useless, and the lavalier (lapel) microphones are what you're going to use. That means we'll have to EQ the sound later, but it was still pretty clean.

So - a comparatively easy night, and I'm thankful for that. Tomorrow is an off day for everyone. I plan to enjoy some family time after sleeping in late!

Finally - if you're reading my blog and haven't yet "liked" or visited the movie's facebook page, please click over there and check it out. We have added a bunch of preproduction, rehearsal, and production photos, and I think you'll enjoy checking those out! (Special thanks to lead actress Cora Vander Broek, who had the night off from acting tonight and spent the evening uploading and tagging a ton of photos! That's commitment!)

Shooting An Affair: Day Seven

2011-06-14T01:09:00.000-07:00

An uneventful day? I'll take it.

We were in the studio today, on our motel room set. I will take a shoot in the studio over an exterior location any day. It's so civilized. Restroom facilities are nearby. A kitchen and fridge, too. I can walk around in my socks. This isn't advisable, but my shoes just aren't comfortable for hours and hours on my feet, so this is how I like it. I can sit there watching the action in my socks, holding a hot cup of coffee. This must be how Hitchcock felt (except I bet he wore shoes) and why he was so reluctant to shoot on location.

We were shooting scene 21 tonight. We had started it on another day, and we still aren't finished. It's quite a long scene, actually, and it's helpful to think of it like a musical piece, with several movements. We were shooting the second and third movements tonight, and the start of the fourth. Matthew and Cora continue to put in fantastic performances. The third movement of the scene is quiet and intimate, and they were so good it made my skin tingle. Here's a picture of them on the set today:

They were not in character here. This shot is just two passionate actors discussing the scene. I love watching them argue about a moment in the script; they're so engaged and on top of things. I told them the other day that in most cases, a writer-director feels like he or she is the custodian of the ultimate meaning of the script and each character's intentions. But I feel like I've reached a new understanding of the process, wherein I realized that the actors and I must work together on their intentions. I have my ideas, and they have theirs, and neither of us is objectively the owner of that answer. It's only through our collaboration that we find the answer. I'll often start a conversation about a line with something like, "When I wrote that, thew character was trying to say (something). What do you think you're trying to say here?" My intention is a starting point. It's not that they would drastically change things. We're talking about fine tuning, about small modulations, but they're often important ones. I love agonizing over the delivery of a few words. I love being that engaged with it.

Another interesting thing tonight - a little more crew bonding. In a lull in the action, I had posted something on Facebook about having reached my "maximum allotment of human contact" for the day. It concerned that point in the day when you're just done talking to people and interacting. When you're directing a film, you can reach a saturation point with interaction pretty quickly, because everyone needs to talk to you. The DP, the actors, the producer, everyone. None of these are necessarily negative interactions, but every human interaction takes engagement an energy. Anyway, I was just tired of hearing myself talk, and I can be quite introverted at times. So, at one point, I was called to come off set and look at something on the monitor. As I exited set, the student crew mobbed around me and shouted "group hug!" They were giving me an additional overdose of human contact. I laughed out loud. As they dispersed laughing, I was struck by how quickly we bond with others on a set. I'd say that I had never met more than half the students on the crew before we started shooting. And now we're all friends and joking around with each other. The process of shooting creates fast relationships, and though professors often keep their students at arms' length, that somehow doesn't feel right in this context, when they're working so hard to fulfill my vision, and when the crew/set context creates such camaraderie. So in tribute to that realization, here's a picture of the crew chowing down at meal time (we provide a meal every day on set, no matter how late we're shooting; sometimes we're eating at 1am, but there's always one good meal provided through a caterer):

And finally, just because the day was a good one and people were in good spirits, here's a photo of lead actor Matt Brumlow doing his best little kid impersonation (which came about because we were "cheating" him higher in his chair by seating him on what we call in the industry an "apple box"):

And now it's 3:30am, which is early by my current standards. What will I do with the time?

Shooting an Affair: Photoblogging from the Set

2011-06-13T15:13:00.000-07:00

I'll give a full update after the shooting day is done (it's just starting now). But for now, here are some photos from the set...

First - Grip Heeseung Song prepares to mount a light on top of the set.

Below, First AC Keith Lindley is setting up the camera (a Panasonic AX100) for the day's shoot.

Here, Production Designer Tyler Ellis is cutting and preparing a print for framing on the wall of the motel room set.

Key Grip Rob Norman tells grip Heeseung Song where to place a light fixture.

Gaffer Stephanie Saathoff prepares to mount a light on top of the set.

That's it for now - more later if I have time. Which I probably won't, since we have 18 pages to shoot today.

Shooting An Affair: Day Seven (Goin' Back to Marlin)

2011-06-13T03:43:00.000-07:00

I just got home at about 5:35am. I can't believe how many all nighters this shoot has entailed, nor that I'm always wired and wide awake when I get home. Tonight, as I was throwing out some trash in the kitchen, I was scared out of my mind when two little arms reached around me from behind. I spun around to find a sleepy eight year old hugging me. Apparently, I'd woken her as i came in, and she wanted to see me. I gave her a hug and a kiss before sending her back to bed for some more sleep. It reminded me of the toll that filmmaking takes on my family...

Tonight, we were back at the inn that threw us out last week. We finagled one more day to wrap up some really critical scenes. It was a good night overall. The actors were "on," as they always are, the crew was working pretty well, and the night still seemed to drag on interminably, until the actors were pretty much out of steam.

Part of that was my fault. I chose, unwisely, to shoot a scene wildly out of sequence because we were already lit for certain angles. This was the more efficient choice, since it would enable us to get all the later shots in the scene in one spot, then go back and shoot the first part of the scene at the end of the night.

The problems came from the fact that the early part of the scene was some heavy emotional stuff, and also that we were finishing at almost 5am. The actors were spent, and they really had to turn it on for a long and fairly complicated take at the end of that long night.

I really should have just not worried so much about efficiency and worried first about the actors - so my apologies to you guys, if you're reading this. Mea culpa. That was my mistake, and I'll try not to make it again!

Regardless, they did great - I could just tell it was wearing on them. And I felt bad that I put efficiency before performance. I got lucky that they still did a great job, but it really wasn't fair to them.

One picture I took tonight: my shadow on the ground...

And I'll keep it short tonight, because I have a meeting at work tomorrow, and the sun is already coming up.

Shooting An Affair: Crew Bonding

2011-06-11T21:24:00.001-07:00

Tonight, the mostly-student crew of An Affair went as a group to see Super 8. It was an event intentionally designed for bonding.

I don't know why, but I'm very pleased by that. I have seen upper classmen (and women) take on teaching and mentoring roles, and grad students taking on significant leadership roles. I have seen students meet and make new friends.

In fact, a couple who met on the production of my last film married today.

There is something more here than the filmmaking, which in itself is important.

Shooting An Affair: Day Six (Is it only day six??)

2011-06-10T01:34:00.000-07:00

Back home from another day on the set. We were back on our standing motel set at the studio today, which was nice after all the location stuff we have been doing. This set feels like home. I joked to someone that I especially like directing when I can do it without wearing shoes.

We had a lot to cover, and were slow to get started after a really late night the previous evening, so the day went long. But Friday and Saturday are off days, so going late tonight was an option.

The crew, however, started to get giddy as we rounded 2am. We had cut several people and sent them home since there was no real reason everyone needed to be there til the bitter end. But the ones that remained were so tired that they just had the giggles. They were making strange jokes, having bizarre conversations, and the like. I'm not complaining - it's actually a wonderful form of bonding that reminds me of my college days (and I get to re-experience that a little by working on a film with students as crew). They're fun to be around, and I get to bond with them myself. We form close relationships with the students who crew our films, and I enjoy that. I see it as an extra perk of having them on board.

One thing was especially fun tonight. As we set up a shot of the two main characters chatting with each other through their adjoining motel room doors, I stood back and looked at the room, the layout, the shot. And it occurred to me that this was pretty much exactly how I had visualized it when I wrote the scene. That's a rare treat, so I took a picture.

In addition, tonight we had to put the 'false ceiling' on the set for the first time. One of the angles from which we were shooting was a slightly lower one, meaning we might have caught a bit of the ceiling (or, if it wasn't in place, we would have seen that there wasn't one!). The two pictures below show you the outside view and then the interior view.

The ceiling actually covers a lot more than what it's shown covering here. But some lights that were being used from above blocked it from going any further on this particular setup.

We really hit a wall around 1am. One of the actors was very tired and was having trouble with his lines in a scene he knew quite well. I was considering wrapping for the night, but he insisted on pushing through because we were already set up. After a few blown takes, he got his 'mojo' back, and we were able to finish, albeit two-and-a-half hours after our intended wrap time. Still, in spite of everyone's exhaustion, it's nice to know we made our day.

Drove the 35 minutes home, got stuck in a traffic jam (I think there was an accident on I-35 in addition to the nightly construction), took the trash out, washed some dishes, and sat down to write these thoughts before drifting off to sleep.

We are off for two days, so likely no blogging again til Sunday night or Monday, depending on how things go and how exhausted I am. Thanks for reading.

Shooting An Affair: Day Five (nothing bad happened!)

2011-06-09T03:32:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to start this blog off with the reassurance that all went well on tonight's shoot, given how many negative occurrences we've had thus far.

No, tonight yielded some good results. We started out shooting a walk-and-talk scene on 6th Street in Waco. We had gotten permission to block off several blocks of 6th, just adjacent to the downtown area (so you can see downtown in the distance).

So we had the entire street to ourselves, which is really very nice when you're shooting. You don't have to worry about cars messing up your shot, or even about having people work from the middle of the street. We can't close down streets every day, so this was nice.

We were using the Steadicam on the shoot for the first time today. Several of us on faculty had trained on it with Dan Ikeda, Tiffen's terrific trainer. He got us up to speed, but we all needed a lot of practice to become experts. I felt all along that Brian Elliott, my colleague and producer, would be best suited to shoot the Steadicam shot, and my faith was not unfounded. He is very particular and exacting, and he did a terrific job. Our Steadicam walk-and-talk scene looks great.

After wrapping on 6th Street and having a late night meal (fajitas), we headed over to Lake Shore Drive in Waco to shoot scenes of the two lead characters driving a motorcycle. I won't go into the plot or script specifics, but I was a bit worried about how well these shots would come off. The city wouldn't let us close the streets (though they did tell the Asst. Producer that we could shoot there without closing them). Not having it blocked off didn't matter much - we started shooting at about 3 or 4am, so there was virtually no traffic. The motorcycle stuff involved the DP (with a handheld rig) and sound recordist (with a boom mic) in the back of a pickup truck, with me in the front seat watching a monitor.

Sounds like a recipe for disaster, I know - but it went off without a hitch. We got really great footage, and everyone stayed safe.

So now I'm home and it's 5:40am. We have a short turnaround tomorrow - we start at 4pm, but we're on the main set, so things should go easier.

I was joking around with the students about pulling all-nighters, since we've been doing so for several nights now, and it occurred to me that, though I am tired, I don't feel like I'm about to succumb to sleep at any moment. Making films puts me on full alert. When I'm directing, I feel like I have this laser focus. It's as though, no matter the hour, I will be able to make it through. I'll be exhausted later, no doubt, but while we're doing it, I just love it.

And now some pictures from the set. First, me in my new production hat:

This one is of Matt and Cora (the lead actors) - with the production crew facing them. In this shot you can see Brian Elliott (Producer) on Steadicam and Taylor Rudd (Director of Photography) holding a lantern on a boom pole to provide light for the scene. This was a really complicated set up for us.

Here you can see a still from the footage we shot of Matt and Cora on the motorcycle. I shot this image of the monitor as it was sitting in my lap in the front of the truck.

This next photo shows several of the students where they had camped out, waiting for it to get completely dark so we could start shooting. The building to the left behind them is actually illuminated with one of our HMI lights from more than 100 yards away.

Another long day, but I feel less exhausted when we get such good results.

Well, the birds are starting to chirp and the sun is starting to rise. I guess I should get some sleep!

Shooting An Affair: Day Four (the craziness continues)

2011-06-07T01:39:00.001-07:00

Day four and the hits just keep on coming. We were shooting the “diner scene” in a local restaurant tonight. It was taking us some time, but we were getting terrific performances from the actors – really nuanced. Nice stuff.

Then we heard a loud BANG out back. Several of us went to see if there had been a car accident. We found instead that part of a dead tree had fallen, taking down cable lines and yanking a transformer off the building.

It hit a car owned by one of our student crew members, shattering her windshield.

Really – what the heck is going on?

You get a one of two “war stories” like this on every shoot. So far it’s four “events“ in four days. My normally skeptical self is starting to wonder why or how this is happening.

Figuring the power might be turned off at any moment when emergency services arrived, we rushed to get our next shot or two, managing in the chaos to get what we needed. (And it turned out our haste was unnecessary, as the only downed lines were cable, not power).

In spite of the craziness – or perhaps because of it – we continue to put together a good film. Tonight, after shooting interior stuff in the diner, we moved outside, intending to get one simple shot to serve as a bridge to a nicer long shot. But as we saw the actors move through the quick shot, the light hit just right, the flashing red light in the background and gas station lights in the foreground hit perfectly, and we had a little scene in that simple set-up that looked dead solid perfect. Add to that picture the great performances, and I feel as though we continue to make good progress.

Tomorrow is an off day for the film shoot (we need it!), but not an off day for me. I have a budget meeting with the dean’s office at 10am (why am I still up at 3:30am?), an afternoon meeting regarding architectural plans for our new facility, and a dinner at the university president’s house to welcome a foreign dignitary who is visiting.

As the Talking Heads sang: “And you may ask yourself, ‘Well, how did I get here?’”

Shooting An Affair: Day Three (Ugh)

2011-06-06T03:49:00.001-07:00

It's 6am, and I just returned from the third production day of my new film. I had no idea when this night's shooting started that it would turn out to be the most discouraging and frustrating experience of my filmmaking career.

We were out in Marlin, TX at a shoddy motel, shooting exterior scenes to go with the interiors we are shooting on the set we built. We were there the previous night, so we had shot a lot there already and were "committed" to the look of the motel that served as backdrop in those shots.

About 11pm on a night when we had one more scene to shoot and five hours to do it, we found out the owner had decided we needed to pay him "a lot more" if we wanted to come back after tonight. He had heard about Hollywood films and said we should be paying more because of all the power we were using. We also happened to learn that the chief complainant against us was the motel's pimp. Apparently we were cutting into his business and disturbing his peace and quiet.

I guess we picked the right place for the look we were going for.

Anyway, finding out that we were going to lose four days' worth of scenes we had intended to shoot there - or have to re-shoot everything we had already done - was disheartening in the extreme. I was so angry and frustrated that I couldn't think straight. I sat paging through my script, trying to see what else we absolutely had to have at this location, but my thoughts were swirling.

I owe a big debt to my producer, Brian Elliott, who calmly laid out several scenarios that we could choose from regarding how to proceed. He also pulled me aside and said a little prayer for me and the production.

I don't think I directed the next scene very well - I was too distracted and frustrated to focus. I'm afraid to see how it turned out, honestly, but after that, I started collating my scenes and figuring out how to make it work. It was going to make for a long night and some creative compromises about which the director of photography and I were not going to be happy. But I felt that if the acting was good, the rest could be excused.

By the end of the night, we had powered through several scenes (or parts of scenes) that we needed to have. The acting was great (and the actors were put in a difficult position by virtue of having to memorize lines they weren't ready for and project themselves into emotional places for which they hadn't yet prepared). The crew was great - they gelled and moved efficiently and effectively.

Truth be told, knocking down that much stuff in those hours was kind of exhilarating, even if I had to compromise my shot selection quite a bit.

So I guess my most frustrating and discouraging experience in filmmaking (thus far) turned out to be something of a triumph over adversity. I'm proud of how we worked together to get this done, especially with a largely student crew.

And I may never go to Marlin, TX again.

Shooting An Affair: Day Two

2011-06-05T02:38:00.001-07:00

Just got home at about 4:25am after day two of the shoot concluded. We ran late again - about two hours. But it was going to be a late night regardless, because we had to shoot several exterior night shots. Given that it's summer in Texas, and that it hence doesn't get dark until after 9pm, we couldn't do those exteriors until it was already late.

Everyone seems energetic enough to handle it. Brian (producer) and I are the two oldest people on set, after all.

Many of the exteriors we have to shoot involve the motel - the motel room interiors are a set, but the exterior had to be real. I found it pretty amusing that when we walked into the room at the motel tonight, the room looked almost exactly like our set. A little synchronicity that made my evening.

There are times during a shoot when you just feel like you get bogged down - like people are just moving in slow motion for some unknown reason. These are the hardest times, because you're not really sure why you're not going faster. People seem to be doing their jobs, but one hand doesn't know what the other is doing (because the audio people don't know the lightning people's job, etc. etc.). I'm at a loss to explain it, other than an energy sag.

We had a few times like that tonight - that's where you need your first AD (assistant director) to really get people going again.

It's all a learning process as a team gels. One thing I found interesting tonight is that the same old frustrations cropped up - getting bogged down, the boom mic is in the shot, the light doesn't look right, the actors don't quite nail it, etc. - but when those frustrations cropped up again, it didn't get to me as much. I had almost a sense memory of these things, recognized them for what they were (growing pains on a new shoot), and went about the business of making the film.

The other thing I have to say is that I still adore working with actors who are so committed to the project. They have no fear. I love it.

Shooting An Affair: Day One

2011-06-03T18:31:00.000-07:00

We officially began principal photography on An Affair today. The producer intentionally planned a light day of shooting today, because he knew it would take us some time to get going. And he was right.

The morning was two solid hours of people sort of wandering around and figuring everything out. A lot of people didn't know what they were doing or how set protocol works when you have a large-ish crew.

But by the time we finally got the first shot off and got going, we started moving much more efficiently.

A few other things slowed us down today - first, one of the lead actors, who had mildly strained his neck the other day, woke with a neck so stiff he couldn't move without pain. Second, because we had to adjust our schedule around his visit to a chiropractor, we ended up ping ponging around the set, re-lighting spaces that had already been lit.

But in the end, we finished only two hours behind schedule, which isn't terrible for a first day. (And don't think I'm griping here - the learning on the set the first day was significant, and that's part of why we make films the way we do; the students learn a ton, and by mid-shoot, we'll be as close to a well-oiled machine as we can get).

So - several scenes in the can (so to speak, since there's no film cans on this set), and we'll move outdoors tomorrow for a shoot day that's part daytime, part nighttime.

Production Eve

2011-06-02T22:00:00.000-07:00

I wasn't going to blog tonight because I'm exhausted - but it seems appropriate to comment right before I start production in my third feature film.

I spent the day today dealing with film-related stuff. The morning was for rehearsals with the lead actors. I was kind of laughing to myself that we spent the first hour of the session just talking about the characters and the story. That's not a complaint - I loved just spending an hour or so engaged with people about the film. It's such a treay to be able to talk so deeply about this.

Then, since the scenes we were rehearsing today were "walk-and-talk" scenes, we took a few long walks around the neighborhood while Matt and Cora acted out the scenes. They have developed a nice, natural rapport.

After rehearsals, which included lunch and rehearsal at the restaurant at which we're filming an early diner scene, I popped over to our designer's shop to pick up a few pillows for the motel room. Then I made the longish drive out to the set, and there was much work to do. I relieved the production designer, who had to go back into town to get some supplies (such as paint and other stuff); by "relieved" I mean that I started working on painting doors and working on other final touches.

I spent a few hours doing that before running home to have dinner and help with the kids. Then I felt the need to return to the set to check progress, so I drove back out (it's about 30-40 minutes from my house) and found several students volunteering their time to paint things and help out in general.

I helped mount the motel room set's a/c unit, checked over a few things, and then got home by about 10:30pm.

Production starts at 8am. I hope I sleep tonight.

That's a joke - I have great confidence in most people involved in this film - especially my Director of Photography, my producer, and my lead actors!

Day Two of Rehearsal on An Affair

2011-05-31T17:55:00.001-07:00

Today was another day of messy creative work. I mean that in the best way - we continued to slog through the script, playing with the emotions and the blocking, figuring out what was working and what felt false. I love it. Every moment is bliss. Matt and Cora are so completely committed to their roles - they're as determined as I am to get it right. There is joy to me in working with other committed artists.

And there, too, is DP Taylor Rudd wandering around us, snapping gorgeous still frames that will serve as ideas for he and I to consider shots. What I love about this is that we're creating the film around the characters and the blocking - not the other way around. I have too often worked where I storyboard my intention for a scene and then try to fit the actors into that (or adjust on the fly based on what the actors do that was different than my original ideas).

But I've always known that the proper way to do what I do on a character-based film is to let the actors create the scene, and then find the shots that tell the story from what we decide is natural and effective.

We are just building up a good head of steam - we got through all of the set-bound material today - and now I have to have a minor medical procedure on Wednesday morning that will put me out of commission for the day. I had planned on four solid days of rehearsal, and I am losing maybe a half-day, maybe the entire day, which angers me. But there's nothing I can do about it. I had to schedule this before the film so that I can physically endure the shoot...

First Rehearsal

2011-05-30T18:55:00.001-07:00

Today marked the first full rehearsal for An Affair. Actually, the day started with me showing the set to the two leads, and I was pleased that they were pleased by it. They seemed to really feel like the old motel feel we captured there.

We spent the first few hours just talking through some notes they had. I tend to be very collaborative once we reach this stage of production - the film can only be improved if the actors are fully engaged like this. Interestingly, they wanted to cut almost all of the final additions I made in the last rewrite (almost all of which were in response to several notes I received along the way).

After we talked through the changes, we began to work on getting a scene on its feet. By that I mean that the actors get up and start acting things out; we start working through the blocking, trying to make everything feel natural and motivated. Taylor Rudd, our Director of Photography, was on hand to observe. As we set the blocking, Taylor and I need to figure out what the shots will be. So it's an interesting dance of trying to make sure the acting is where it needs to be, that everything is coming across, while also trying to see if the blocking we've come up with presents any interesting shot possibilities.

Taylor had his Digital SLR and was snapping photos as we worked through the scenes. This was terrific - it allowed me to focus on the actors, and then he would just quietly walk up to me and show me a shot while they were performing. I can already tell he has a terrific eye. He was already finding interesting ways to see the scenes.

It was a full day, and then I took the actors to Chick-Fil-A for dinner. That may sound a little déclassé, but lead actor Matt Brumlow grew up on Chick-Fil-A and really misses it now that he lives in Chicago. So we've been planning to surprise him with the world's best chicken sandwich since I knew he was coming to town.

Tomorrow morning: production meeting at 8am, then on to the set again for continued rehearsal.

Finally, an update on An Affair

2011-05-29T18:46:00.000-07:00

I have been completely overwhelmed by the various professional and personal responsibilities in my life, which has left me little energy for blogging. Nevertheless, I'm forcing myself to write tonight to mark the start of my new film, An Affair.

Rehearsals begin tomorrow with the two excellent lead actors, Matthew Brumlow and Cora Vander Broek. I have never had the opportunity to spend time in extended rehearsal with actors on my projects, so I am looking forward to unpacking the script tomorrow with them without the pressure of the cameras and crew.

You might recall that this film is the one for which I was raising funds back in the fall on Kickstarter. Though that campaign did not reach its goal, many people who made pledges did honor them, and we raised an additional $6,200 for the film (if you're still looking to give, I'm not turning down late donations!).

I spent much of today wandering a store with the actors, trying to find just the right look for each of them. It was harder than I thought it would be! Things that I thought would look great didn't fit Cora's frame as I imagined they would, so we went through many different iterations and ideas. Finally, we found an outfit that I thought completely worked for her character.

So - Monday morning. Coffee and discussion of the script with the actors while sitting in the set constructed for the film. I am trying to cherish the moment - this is what I've been waiting for.

A podcast about me?

2011-04-30T23:20:00.000-07:00

So I happened across this podcast that amounts to 90 minutes or so of three people talking about something I wrote.

It's not one of my movies, though. It's actually a chapter I wrote for a book. Craig Detweiler's book, Halos & Avatars: Playing Video Games With God is about the intersection of video games and faith. I wrote a chapter for it - sort of the introductory chapter - that's a look at the similarities and differences in narrative in movies and video games.

Well, these theology students-slash-avid gamers have been doing a series of podcasts on the book, and apparently they dissected my chapter some time ago. I just came across it.

Interested in listening? Then check out The Cross and the Controller. Scroll down to episode 50.

I might be doing an interview with them in the near future.

a long overdue update

2011-03-28T19:21:00.000-07:00

So, it has been almost two months since I last posted. I actually thought it had been longer. The truth is that I have been busier than I have ever been at work. That's not a complaint, really. Just a fact that has complicated my blogging.

Endings has been picked up by two more festivals - the ReelHeART International Film Festival in Toronto, and the Myrtle Beach International Film Festival. Both have screened my previous films. ReelHeART screened both American Messiah and Clean Freak (with an Honorable Mention award to Clean Freak), and Myrtle Beach screened American Messiah.

It's always an honor for me to screen at a festival at which I'm an alum. That's no different in these cases.

I've been incredibly busy at my "day job" (using that term ironically) as Director of the Film and Digital Media program at Baylor. We are in serious talks to become a department of our own, which is huge for us. And we will soon be raising funds for an arts district with new film facilities. It's an exciting time to be in film (and the arts in general) at Baylor!

Trail Dance

2011-01-31T17:48:00.000-08:00

I went to the Trail Dance Film Festival in Duncan, OK this past weekend. It's only about a four hour drive from where I live, so it seemed like it was worth it to make the drive. And it was - Trail Dance is only five years old, but they've already developed the event really nicely. The local community is fully supportive of the festival, and many filmmakers were in attendance.

I met several filmmakers while there. I am not the networking type, even though it's good for me to network. I just go into a shell sometimes when I'm at a festival, not wanting to draw attention to myself for some reason. In spite of that natural inclination, I forced myself to chat with some folks and enjoyed getting to know them.

We stayed for the Sunday evening awards ceremony, knowing we would get home very late and that the kids had to go to school on Monday, because Endings was nominated for multiple awards (Best Feature Drama, Best Screenplay, and Best Actor/Actress in a Feature).

As the evening wore on and we did NOT win any early awards, I started to wonder if I was going to regret having to make a long drive late on Sunday night. But I won the Best Screenplay award for the film, and I was very pleased to walk away with one of the nicely designed and hefty "Golden Drover" statues (see the photo), complete with an engraved plaque indicating my award.

I'm grateful to the fest for inviting us to be a part and for giving us an award. I was disappointed for my daughter, Emma, who did not win for Best Actor/Actress in a Feature. But considering she was up against actors like Wes Studi (Avatar, Last of the Mohicans) and the eventual winner Muse Watson (a veteran actor of over 40 film roles), I'd say she was in good enough company that it really was just an honor to be nominated with such performers in her first screen role.

Sometimes...

2010-12-26T00:23:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I watch movies not because I want to have the filmmakers explain to me the characters' motivations and reasonings, but because I want to figure them out myself.

Mystery can be beautiful. I like not having an immediate answer to the question, "Why did he do that?"

Not because I don't care about the answer. Rather, because I like to think about it.

It really is an honor just to be nominated...

2010-12-02T20:27:00.001-08:00

So tonight I found out that Endings had been nominated for several awards at the Trail Dance Film Festival. It was nominated for Best Feature Drama and I was nominated for Best Screenplay. The real treat for me was that the star of the film, my 12 year old daughter Emma, was nominated for Best Actor/Actress in a Feature.

It made me wonder why I was so excited for her. In fact, I was more excited for her than I was for myself.

I guess there's the fact that an actor's nomination is, in part, a credit to the director of the film. But really, I'm just thrilled that my little girl got nominated for an award. And to see that one of the other people nominated in the same category is Wes Studi, who was in The Last of the Mohicans and Avatar? I was filled with an immense sense of pride for her accomplishment at such a young age, and I'm just thrilled that her work in the film - which was a risk for both of us, since I didn't know how well she'd do, and she was putting her trust in me - paid off with such an honor.

I still find it weird that I should be more proud of her than I am of myself. I guess that's what it is to be a parent, huh?

Fest Update: Trail Dance

2010-11-17T20:11:00.000-08:00

I have been a pretty lousy blogger of late. This semester has officially kicked my lame butt - I'm exhausted and we still have several weeks left. The art of juggling creative work, teaching, and administration is one that I have yet to master, but I'm learning.

So this is just another quick "news" update - I just found out yesterday that Endings will screen at the Trail Dance Film Festival in Duncan, OK in January. Trail Dance was named one of the "25 Coolest Film Festivals" by Moviemaker Magazine. So, you know, that's pretty cool.

2010-11-01T08:15:00.000-07:00

She's contemplating an affair... from Chris Hansen on Vimeo.

He's contemplating an affair... from Chris Hansen on Vimeo.

Kickstarter: Raising Funds for my New Film

2010-10-06T09:35:00.000-07:00

Friends and fans - I have launched a Kickstarter fundraiser project to raise money for my new feature film, tentatively titled “An Affair,” which I intend to shoot next summer.

PLEASE HELP in this endeavor. I sincerely believe that good indie films that deal with real people and real issues and problems are important for our culture as a whole. If you agree, or if you support work like this in general, please give.

Even if you don't plan to give money, I would be honored if you would post the link and your recommendation to your group of friends. Tweet about it, blog about it, email people - whatever you are willing to do, it is very much appreciated!

The fundraising effort lasts until December 1. If we don’t have ALL the money pledged by then, we don’t get ANY of it – so please help spread the word!

GO HERE, see the project, and help spread the word!

Recapping a Festival Weekend

2010-09-12T17:52:00.000-07:00

So, I was at the Southern Winds Film Festival this weekend with my film, Endings. The weekend started out lousy because I got two festival rejections for the film in a span of about 24 hours. And we hit an armadillo on the way to Oklahoma, which seemed to trigger a "Check Engine" light on the car.

So I wasn't in the best of moods.

But the screening went really well. A small-ish audience, but the people in attendance really seemed to "get" the movie, and they showered it with praise and asked lots of questions at the post-screening Q&A.

I also found out that I won "Best Director" for Endings at the Atlanta Underground Film Festival. The film had screened there two weeks ago, but awards info hadn't been released til the day of this Southern Winds screening. So that was a real boost!

And then I went to the Southern Winds award ceremony, and Endings won the "Seriously Good Movie - Feature" award (which is the Southern Winds name for Best Drama Feature).

And in the midst of all this happening, I also learned that the film had been selected to the Secret City Film Festival!

It was a good weekend, and I couldn't believe my good fortune and the odd timing of the events. Just one of those weekends when I really needed the boost after several rejections of late. Weird how these things come in groups!

Edited to add: I posted that in a hurry, and I forgot to include the main reason I posted this in the first place... namely, I wanted to talk about how gratifying it is to sit with an audience of people who really seem to understand your work and who respond to it in a major way. One filmmaker in the audience - someone I had never met before - approached me later in the evening to tell me that he thought the film was "flawless" and that he kept losing himself in the story and forgetting to mentally critique the lighting, camera work, etc. (he's also a director of photography, but regardless of what you do in film, it's often challenging to just let a film wash over you because we filmmakers are always looking at how things are done - so this was a major compliment). Of course, I know the film isn't flawless (and he said to me, "of course you'd say that; it's your film and you see every imperfection"), but it was incredible to hear another professional appreciate it at that level.

So - this is what you miss out on if you don't go to festival screenings. It's impossible to go to all of them (and I have screened films in two previous editions of Southern Winds before attending this time), but it's so worth it when you do. Festival-goers are usually filmmakers and people who just love smart movies. That's my best audience!

A new ENDINGS review

2010-08-11T18:52:00.000-07:00

KillingBoxx just posted Will Colby's review of Endings. It's a very positive review, so I'm happy to post it here and let people know about it.

But it also caused me to reflect on something. KillingBoxx contacted me to get a copy of the film a few weeks ago, and I found myself very nervous to send it to them. Making films is hard, but it's not the hardest part. The hardest part is being willing to put yourself out there for criticism. And, make no mistake, criticism will come. Not everyone will like your work (especially if you make films like mine - not exactly fit for the mass audience). So you have to be prepared for that, and so far, it doesn't get easier when a bad review comes in.

But I can take bad reviews. Some people really won't like or 'get' your work. It happens. As disappointing as that can be, what I really despise is the flippant attitude some people take when criticizing someone's work in online forums. There's something about posting a funny slam of someone's work online that bothers me.

We've all read funny slam-reviews by people like Roger Ebert (his review of the movie Milk Money stands out to me as one of the funniest negative reviews I've ever read), and I was asking myself why it's any different for me to appreciate a review like that and not when someone does the same to my work.

The answer is that I think there's a big difference between slamming a lousy film made within the Hollywood studio system and doing the same to no-budget indie films. There's something sort of scummy about taking such an attitude with filmmakers who are giving their all to a project for no money and with no real hope of "fame" from it. Indie filmmakers are trying to build word of mouth and garner attention with no budget for that purpose, as opposed to Hollywood films, which have massive marketing budgets even for the most insipid releases.

That doesn't mean that I think everyone should heap praise on indie films. Far from it. There are a lot of lousy indie films out there, and critics are entitled to their opinions, of course.

But it would be nice if people at least didn't blow off your effort by trying to be funny in those negative reviews. The Milk Money review I posted above is hilarious (really, it is. If you haven't read it, you should). But I don't think that sort of approach is appropriate for a sincere effort made by an indie filmmaker.

More ENDINGS Festival News

2010-07-25T20:23:00.000-07:00

Okay, the blog has been a bit boring of late - just the updates of news about Endings. And today's entry is no different. My excuse? I've been on vacation for a few weeks, and my brain was sort of "checked out" when it comes to film related stuff.

Anyway, another festival acceptance came through - the film will screen at the Southern Winds Film Festival in Shawnee, Oklahoma. Getting into SWFF is quite gratifying because the fest has now made each of my films an "official selection" (American Messiah won the Best Comedy Feature award a few years back).

I'm hoping to go since this one is in driving distance. And finally, to conclude this lackluster update, here's the current list of fests in which Endings has appeared or will appear:

Southern Winds Film Festival (Sept 2010)
Dallas VideoFest (Sept 2010)
Atlanta Underground Film Festival (Aug 2010)
ReelHeART International Film Festival (June 2011)
Seattle True Independent Film Festival (June 2010)

Endings Festival News and more...

2010-07-07T18:55:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged much of late - the end of the school year was quite busy, and I just haven't had the time for reflective thought of late.

I'm breaking my radio silence now only because Endings has finally started to 'take off' in terms of film festival acceptances, with three in the last couple of weeks. Endings will screen at the Atlanta Underground Film Festival in August, then in the Dallas VideoFest in September, and in the 2011 ReelHeART International Film Festival in Toronto (early acceptance there because they canceled the 2010 fest thanks to the economy).

I'm really pleased, naturally, to finally have Endings building up some screening opportunities. Atlanta Underground and ReelHeART are both nice because I've screened in them (and won awards) in the past - it's like being welcomed back into an old friend's house. Dallas VideoFest is nice precisely because I haven't screened there before (third try), and also because it's our first Texas festival screening (meaning a lot of our cast and crew can attend). I love screening in Texas because I can usually attend the festivals (though Texas is pretty large - you never know - but Dallas is only a few hours, so it's usually do-able). And because I'm a Texas filmmaker (at least a transplanted one), I'm very happy to support the Texas filmmaking community.

Other stuff I've been up to of late - I spoke at the World Council of Churches' International Consultation on Violence in Media in Boston in June. My presentation was on the realities of the business - basically, the economic realities behind violence in films.

Also traveling east to visit family and friends back home...

My Doctor Who book

2010-06-14T19:05:00.000-07:00

I had a nice little surprise in the mail today at the office - copies of the book I edited, Ruminations, Peregrinations, and Regenerations: A Critical Approach to Doctor Who.

I pause briefly here to ponder my obsession with long and unwieldy titles. Between this book, and my film, The Proper Care & Feeding of an American Messiah, it's becoming apparent that I have a thing for them. To be honest, I felt certain the publisher would demand a title change on the book. I'm shocked that they didn't, so now I'm stuck with that crazy title...

Anyway, there are very few things as satisfying as receiving the hard copies of such an endeavor. Seeing the book in print, putting it on the shelf - these are things that make the work seem like it was worth it. The cover looks great, especially now that I am seeing it as something more than a digital file on my computer screen!

Interview on DIY/Indie Filmmaking

2010-06-01T10:15:00.000-07:00

Film and media blogger Chuck Tryon, who teaches at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina, interviewed me recently for his blog and as part of the process of gathering information and content for his new book.

The subject matter is the business side of indie/DIY filmmaking, specifically with regard to distribution issues and the impact of online models of distribution on filmmakers like me.

You can read part one of the interview here. I'll update with a link to part two when he posts it.

Update: Part two is now posted. Read it here.

American Messiah now on Hulu

2010-05-19T19:59:00.000-07:00

My first feature, the long-titled The Proper Care & Feeding of an American Messiah is now available to watch for free (with ad-support, of course) on Hulu.

See it here:

American Messiah on Hulu

Or watch it below:

First ENDINGS Review

2010-05-12T20:39:00.000-07:00

Wow, two posts in two days from Hansen? Must be a record (at least by recent standards).

But it's worth raising posting expectations to post a link to a great review of Endings. Mike Everleth over at Bad Lit has been a fan of my work since my first film, and for that I'm grateful.

So - his review of Endings is up on Bad Lit now.

What's next?

2010-05-11T21:59:00.000-07:00

The problem is that I'm not really a multi-tasker. I've always fought the gender discrimination that tells me I am incapable of multi-tasking, but when it comes to my creative projects, I admit I struggle when it comes to juggling more than one at a time.

So now that Endings is in the festival and distribution phase, I'm finally turning to "what's next."

There's the documentary project that I really want to do, and that everyone who hears about it likes. But I can easily convince myself that I'm too inexperienced a documentarian to tackle such a project.

So I think I should write a new feature script and shoot that while also developing the documentary -- but I can't imagine myself working on both at the same time. Splitting my creative focus is tough, especially when balancing the demands of the regular full time work and my family (which, let's face it, when you have four kids, there's not a whole lot of time to spare).

I'm not really looking for any of my readers to give me any advice here (after all, you hardly know the details). I'm just talking to myself here. And tonight I spent trying to find a cheap enough airline ticket to Seattle to be able to go out for the premiere of Endings, so I'm not sure I'm even ready to make the decision right now anyway...

Waco director's film to debut at Seattle independent film fest | Wacotrib.com

2010-04-12T12:26:00.000-07:00

Just sharing some local publicity for Endings:

Waco director's film to debut at Seattle independent film fest | Wacotrib.com

A New York State of Mind

2010-03-28T20:25:00.001-07:00

Well, I'm in NYC right now, sitting in a room on the upper east side (the picture to the left is the view outside my window). Tomorrow morning, my colleague and friend Brian and I will meet with a producer who is interested in turning my first feature, The Proper Care & Feeding of an American Messiah, into a hybrid reality/mock doc TV show.

The whole thing is just weird on so many levels. Good-weird, but weird nonetheless.

I was born in New York, so visiting always feels like coming home in a way, but we left NY when I was eight year old, so I am completely lost in the city, no different than any other tourist.

I was reflecting today about the path my life has taken the past several years. Since I took the job teaching film at Baylor, I've been blessed in many ways. I was able to start making films regularly, for one thing, which yielded my first feature film. That film yielded several clips that I put online. Those clips were seen by a producer who thought the character in them was real. So impressed was he that he wanted to make a show out of him. That's a testament to the performer, Dustin Olson, as well.

And that's what has me sitting here in NYC right now.

That move to Texas also provided me the opportunity to meet Brian Elliott, who has become a close friend and trusted collaborator - he, too, is part of the reason I'm sitting here right now, because he produced the film and helped make it happen when I had been at Baylor for less than a year and knew nothing of the city and had no way to pull off the logistics of a feature.

This is all apropos of nothing, really. Nothing may come of this meeting tomorrow, though I hope something does. But really, I was just doing some thinking about the weird ways life works out, and how my move to Texas eventually led me here.

New and Final ENDINGS Trailer

2010-03-02T08:59:00.000-08:00

Here it is - the official trailer for ENDINGS:

Endings - the official trailer from Chris Hansen on Vimeo.

(I suggest you open it in a new window and watch it full screen!)

New Media and the Failure of (My) Imagination

2010-02-16T19:31:00.000-08:00

As I've mentioned previously, I'm currently participating in a New Media Faculty Seminar at Baylor, under the guidance of Gardner Campbell, who runs the Academy of Teaching and Learning here.

This week, our reading from the New Media Reader was "A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect" by Douglas Engelbart and William English, written in 1968. Englebart is one of the reasons we have the computer interfaces we have now. The man invented the mouse. So in reading these essays by people like him, I was struck by how imaginative and forward-thinking these people were.

The imagination these men had was staggering - to be able to see the form and structure of what we currently take for granted when nothing like it had ever existed boggles my mind.

And what I am referring to in the title of this post? Well, simply put, I was thinking that, if it had been left to me, we wouldn't have too much to work with now when it comes to imaginative computer interfaces. It makes me wonder what else we'll come up with if the modern Engelbarts out there are encouraged to do their work.

I Got Tenure

2010-02-10T13:27:00.000-08:00

I have been looking forward to this day for a long time - five-and-a-half years, to be precise. I was notified today that I have been granted tenure at Baylor University. What this means, for those of you unfamiliar with the world of academic employment, is that I have earned the right, according to Baylor, to have a job for life.

What an immense feeling of relief this brings. My family now knows that we will be here for the long term, and that I won't lose my job in a year (which, by the way, is the consequence of NOT being granted tenure; it's pretty much "up, or out").

I don't think the shock has yet worn off. The feeling of relief is all I can claim right now. Well, that plus a feeling of thanks and gratitude towards all those who supported me through this - family and friends who wanted nothing but the best, colleagues who were there with me as they too pursue tenure, and senior colleagues who supported me in so many ways. Thank you to all of you out there who have been with me through the past five-and-a-half years of working towards this goal.

A Good Teaching Day

2010-02-04T12:27:00.000-08:00

Have you ever had one of those days when you feel like everything just clicks? Today was one of those days in my two classes this semester.

(Incidentally, I'm not entirely sure I should tag this post with the new media tag, because I'm not sure there's any talk of new media, but since it's teaching-related, I decided it was relevant enough).

First up was my Directing class. For the next few weeks, we're partnered with the Theatre Department's Camera Acting class. The directors from my class have been given a scene with dialogue that could be taken a number of different ways. They are then assigned two actors to play the scene, and they must communicate to the actors their interpretation of the scene, rehearse it for 20-30 minutes (with me and my colleague, Prof Thomas Ward from the Theatre Department, observing the rehearsal process), and then perform it. After the performance, the entire class (or, rather, both classes -- actors and directors) critiques the scene and the process of getting to the end result.

I was a little skeptical and concerned that this wouldn't work, but I was wrong. This seemed to be a great learning experience in that we were able to challenge what the directors were asking the actors to do, how much information they were offering, and -- though it might not seem important to a novice -- what words they were using to communicate these things. We were also able to critique the actors' processes. In writing about it now, I'm not sure it sounds as interesting as it was, but it seemed to me that it worked well as a learning-by-doing experience. I could tell the directors in a lecture that they need to communicate in terms of the characters' objectives and what tactics they use to achieve them in the scene (and in fact we did a little of that in preparation earlier this week); but actually letting them direct and then critiquing the process that got them to their end result was a much more direct learning experience.

Later, I had my graduate Documentary seminar. The class has been good so far but also a little dry. Discussion hadn't yet gotten at some of the deeper issues. But today featured our first screening of short documentary projects done by groups of students. And wow -- what a difference "doing" makes in the process of learning.

I don't want to get into tons of detail because these were projects intended for the classroom and not for general distribution. But one of them featured a 'direct cinema' approach (which was part of the assignment) in which the filmmakers "lucked into" a dramatic situation in which one of the subjects in their documentary was put into an embarrassing situation. I won't be more detailed than that because it's not necessary, but let me just say that the person in question was in an awkward situation and ended up in tears, and of course all of this was caught on camera.

Now, when we finished watching this footage that turned out to be quite compelling regardless of the fact that it wasn't particularly well lit or shot (and the sound wasn't great either), we got into a fascinating discussion about the ethical boundaries presented by this situation.

Should they have showed this person's pain and embarrassment without their being some greater lesson for us? Or was that exploitative? Should they not have filmed it? Or not have edited the piece to make that embarrassing moment into the main feature?

It did happen 'just that way," so the student filmmakers did not manipulate the situation or the editing of it. One of them, in fact, said that in the four-plus hours that they taped, this awkward event constituted almost two hours - so it was, proportionally-speaking, a large part of the larger event.

So there was the ethical discussion of the appropriateness of actually exhibiting the footage and making it part of the film, but there was also the question of the objective nature of the direct cinema style. We have been talking about that style and how the proponents of it use it because they feel it is more "truthful" to present the events unvarnished by non-diegetic music, voice-over, or interviews. They just show the events as they occur, without anything getting in the way.

But one of the filmmakers said that he desperately wanted to include voice over narration or something that would place the whole occurrence in context. He felt that they were NOT showing "what occurred" because what occurred happened over four or more hours, and what they were showing comprised ten minutes of summary. In other words, it wasn't "objective" at all because they had to select footage (a very subjective process), and their belief was that the extra-diegetic stuff like voice over and interviews, rather than ruining the objectivity, would have allowed the filmmakers to put this ten minutes of footage into the larger context of the whole event.

Regardless of your opinions on these issues, I walked away from the class thrilled that we had had this shared learning experience centered around the making of this short documentary project. We learned more about balance, objectivity, and ethics in that one discussion than I could ever elicit from abstract conversations about these ideas.

Blogging about New Media

2010-02-01T13:32:00.000-08:00

I'm trying valiantly to blog more regularly in part because I'm taking a faculty seminar in New Media in the classroom, sponsored by Baylor's Academy of Teaching and Learning and taught (though I'm sure he'd prefer that I say "facilitated") by my friend Gardner Campbell.

I most often blog about my film work or my experiences in the film world, so this is a switch for me. I'm very interested in new media, especially where technology intersects with my field (which is, well, almost everywhere), but since this isn't a typical topic around here, I hope my regular readers won't find this too boring!

Right now, I'm a little unsure of what I want to blog about when it comes to this topic. The only thing on my mind at the moment, when it comes to new technology, is the Apple iPad and what it might represent.

It's interesting to see Apple moving away from the complexity of the standard computing interface and more towards the all-in-one solution. I love my iPhone and have quickly become a junkie who cannot live without the thing, a fact to which my wife will attest... but I'm not sold on the iPad as a device that will replace anything I currently use.

I can see it's usefulness as a media device - and especially insofar as sharing the media experience with someone would be a lot easier with the larger screen iPad than it is with the tiny iPhone. But I'm not sure it would work for me as a unified system because it doesn't, at this point, integrate all of the computing needs I have in one system, and I don't see the point of carrying around multiple devices.

I do, however, love the iPhone OS, and I think it's interesting to see that interface applied to a larger device. I'm curious to see how the iPad develops in the future and how such a device will be put to good use by filmmakers (previsualization devices?) and in the classroom.

@ Sundance

2010-01-24T22:43:00.001-08:00

I've been crazybusy while at Sundance - until you've done it, you have no idea how much time you'll spend in lines, either trying to get tickets or just waiting to get into films to which you already have tickets. Hours roll by. Then there's the waiting for bathrooms, waiting to get a seat in restaurants, waiting for your food. Park City is a small-ish town overrun by Sundancers. It's fun, but exhausting.

I have seen some terrific films this year, and one or two that were not so great. It's both inspiring and frustrating - inspiring because it makes you want to do great work, and frustrating because you see how many other people are out there doing great work already and competing with you to get your films out there into the wider world, whether at Sundance or elsewhere.

Ultimately, it doesn't make me want to give up. I'm ready to get back to work on new projects. So I guess that's a good thing. And, hey, it's Sundance.

Now Playing Online: Clean Freak!

2009-12-28T17:38:00.001-08:00

Well, I've finally made Clean Freak available online in its entirety. I had resisted doing this for quite a while because it was still screening in a fest or two here or there.

But now that the festival run is completely over and I'm submitting Endings to festivals, I thought I'd make it freely available for people to watch online.

It's embedded below.

Clean Freak from Chris Hansen on Vimeo.

Neglecting the Blog

2009-12-17T07:42:00.001-08:00

This semester, I must admit, has been my toughest since I started teaching. I remember feeling overwhelmed my first semester on the tenure track; that was primarily because I was starting more or less from scratch in terms of building all my classes, course materials, lectures, etc.

This fall was completely different. I managed to be doing all of the following this semester:

-Going up for tenure (which involves a lot of preparation of documents, writing the most important letter of my career (so far) to the university tenure committee (it turned into a 12-page magnum opus review of my career as a filmmaker and professor at Baylor); and various and sundry other tasks;

-finishing a major film project; you may have heard me mention a little film called Endings? Yes, well, I'm still trying to wrap the thing up, but we worked on the final cut, the animated sequences, and sound editing and mixing all semester;

-taking over as Director of the Film & Digital Media division within the Department of Communication Studies. I thought this wouldn't be that difficult. Ha. It was more or less like starting a whole new job, with all the concomitant learning curves on new responsibilities;

-finishing the edit on a book project; I'm editing a book of critical essays about the British sci-fi show Doctor Who.

So, yeah, this was a crazy-busy semester. It made teaching my classes an additional challenge, because I couldn't give them nearly as much time as I traditionally have. And if I've neglected my relationship with you, I apologize...

I'm glad the Christmas break has arrived so that my brain can get a little rest, though now I still have to finish the film and the book (they didn't get done before the holiday in spite of my attempts), and I have to make plans to travel to the Sundance Film Festival in January... the adventure continues...

The ENDINGS Poster

2009-11-21T21:44:00.000-08:00

Here it is - the final poster design for ENDINGS:

Documentary Seminar

2009-10-09T20:32:00.000-07:00

So, in the spring semester, I'm teaching a graduate seminar in documentary film. I was thinking about the course today because I had reached the deadline for selecting texts for the class.

The challenge for this particular seminar is the audience. It will likely be a mix of production-oriented grad students and those who have no production experience and are interested in documentary from a theoretical and analytical point of view.

I want to the class to be useful to both groups, and I think there are elements of both theory that are important to the production students and ideas about the actual practice of making a documentary film that will be interesting and useful to the non-production students.

But, of course, the non-production students will not have enough expertise (or interest) to support an entire course focused on the filmmaker aspects, and the production students should have the opportunity to practice the craft.

In light of all that, I'm thinking about ways to make the course useful for both audiences.

I plan to have the production students make short projects in a variety of documentary genres, and I was thinking of having the non-production students work with them on both the conceptualizing of the films and the actual shooting. And, assuming the films are any good, I was thinking the non-production students could engage in analysis and critique of the production students' efforts.

But - I want to go further than that. So, I'm not sure who all is reading my blog, but I'd be very interested in hearing any ideas my readers have about ways I can engage and teach both audiences in a cohesive and coherent manner.

Festivals and more Festivals

2009-10-08T12:14:00.000-07:00

I spent a good chunk of my early afternoon processing a bunch more festival entries for Endings. I had hoped to have it completely done by now -- but the sound and music processes are not yet complete, so I'm still sending out the "temp sound mix and some temp music" copies.

Festival entries have gotten easier in the age of Withoutabox (an online service that allows you to fill out ONE entry form and then send it out with payment via credit card to all subscribing festivals). But even with that, it's still a hassle and one of my least favorite parts of the process (PR is my other least favorite part, but I'll tackle that in another post).

There is some degree of satisfaction from just knowing a festival has your package in hand -- something that Withoutabox confirms for you via its Submission Status page:

But really, unless you get asked to screen, nothing else matters. In the wake of my first rejection for Endings, which arrived in my inbox earlier this week, I'm reminded of the emotional roller coaster that the festival circuit is. Here's to trying not to let every reaction to the film control my daily mood...

Out to Festivals

2009-09-17T19:13:00.000-07:00

Endings is finally out to festivals. I never imagined it would take this long. We began production in June 2008, and got a festival copy done on September 16, 2009. Longest post on any film I've done, and we're still not done (we have to finish some music and the sound mix).

I really wanted to be completely finished with the film by the Sundance deadline, but it just wasn't going to happen; there was too much to get done, but I'm really happy that the picture cut is done and that most of the music is complete.

So I sent it out to Sundance, Slamdance, Cinequest, Atlanta, Dallas International, and several more. The waiting game begins -- and postproduction continues.

Maybe I should start thinking about the next film at some point. But I think I might have to focus first on the whole "going up for tenure this semester" thing...

Endings - the screener DVD

2009-09-15T08:10:00.000-07:00

After a lot of work and a particularly grueling weekend for those working on the film (and a really lousy Monday for the editor), the screener DVD is finally on its way to me.

This weekend, we were trying to wrap up a temp sound mix and all the animated shots in order to put the whole thing together and get a copy of the film done that would be adequate to send to festivals (there's a deadline coming up for a little festival you may have heard of, something called "Sundance"). One can send a rough cut of the film to many festivals, but let's face facts here -- even though a festival is willing to take a look at your rough cut, there's no getting around the notion that an unfinished work still looks unfinished, even to people who know what that looks like.

I really wanted to be completely done by now so that we could send the final cut with completed sound mix, but we just weren't there yet, so Kelley Baker, my excellent sound designer, and Wayne Woods, our excellent mixer, put together a temporary mix of the entire film. This had the benefit, in addition to enabling me to enter fests with a reasonably complete product, of revealing problem areas in the soundscape of the film. We still have quite a bit of work to do to get the film sounding professional and to eliminate noise. And while most of the music in what I'm calling the "festival cut" is original and complete, we did have to throw a few temporary pieces in there because it just wasn't all done yet (composers have to sleep on occasion, I'm told).

Wayne, who mixes sound for Sonic Media in Portland, was working all weekend to get the temp mix done, and was uploading these large sound files for me. Of course, this process is fraught with complications. Wayne had to put together all the original sound, add effects, add music, and get everything just right lest the director come back at him with venom for ruining his film. Okay, that never happened, but when you're mixing a film without the director present to comment on things and without time to make changes for little things like a misplaced music cue, there are bound to be revisions. We didn't have time for much of that, so I just had to look for emergency level stuff to fix in the first half of the film. My theory (and Wayne's and Kelley's) is that the first half of the film better sound great, because festival screening personnel will find a reason not to finish watching, and crappy sound in the first half of the film is a pretty easy reason (in large part because it's all too common in the indie film world).

Simon Tondeur, the film's editor, then had the task of assembling the mix and all the animated shots into the edit. This is where the weekend's fun really began. Simon really didn't want to work on Sunday, his birthday, but that plan got scuttled pretty quickly when the sound mixing went well into Sunday afternoon. Then Simon had to track and fix some sync problems -- when you're working with sound and picture in different places, if one thing gets changed ever so slightly, the whole thing goes out of sync.

Then Simon had to make a few fixes that I pleaded for -- i.e., a piece of music that occurs at a really critical juncture of the film was left out, and I just couldn't send the film out with no music over the climax. So Simon agreed to do some temp mixing on top of the temp mixing.

Then he left the film to export from his editing system in order to burn to a DVD on Monday morning, with plans to Fed Ex it to me.

But technology had other plans. The system had crashed for some unknown reason overnight, and Simon spent the next nine hours on Monday morning and into the afternoon re-exporting and trying to figure out what was causing the problem.

Late in the day, he found the issue: an animated clip toward the end of the film had become corrupted and caused the export to fail every time.

So - problem solved, and Simon could now complete the export and DVD-burning process.

Or, at least, that's the hope. I haven't heard anything positive or negative since last night, so I'm posting this in an attempt to reassure myself that I'll have the screener DVD in my hot little hands only one day later than expected.

And I'll try very very hard to forget this part of the process when I start planning my next film...

Update: Simon has confirmed - the DVD is on its way today!

Soooooo close...

2009-09-09T07:00:00.000-07:00

I haven't been able to spend much time blogging lately. Life has gotten busy since I took over as Director of the Film & Digital Media program, not to mention I also go up for tenure this semester, and, hmmm... I think I was also working on a little film project, wasn't I?

Oh yes, that behemoth that is known as Endings... As the title of this post implies, we are quite close to completion on the film. So close that I'm actually starting to do things like make a list of festivals in deadline order...

Here's where things stand, in case people are interested:

The music is almost done. The composer might disagree with me on the phrasing here, of course, but my perception is that we lack only a few pieces of music, and there are a few others that we still have to tweak.
The animation is almost done. There are three shots left to animate. When you can count the remaining items on one hand, that's a good thing. Of course, two of those three are among the more important animated shots in the entire film, but I don't want to quibble about details.
The sound designer and mixer are already hard at work trying to get a "festival mix" done (that is, it won't be the complete and final sound mix, but it will be done enough for festival submission).

And that is it. Those are the last remaining steps.

Well, we do have to get all those things merged together. Animator has to send fully rendered high resolution clips to editor (they are both in L.A.) to put on the film timeline, replacing the temporary non-animated shots. Composer has to upload mastered tracks to me, which I then upload to sound designer and mixer with specific location and mix instructions.

They have to get the final mix (or the temp mix, in this case) to the editor to put on the timeline, replacing the original sound (which has not been 'cleaned up' and which has very few sound effects added).

Editor then has to take all of that and export a high quality video file and slap it on a DVD. (I say that as though it happens quickly; it does not. Exporting out 97 minute DVD-quality video file is a long process, as is burning a DVD made with that file).

Then editor will Fed Ex the DVD to me for approval. I will approve it (one hopes).

I will then make dubs of the DVD before sending it out to festivals.

Specifically to Sundance, whose deadline is fast approaching.

Can you tell I'm having a stressful week. Maybe I shouldn't have written all this out. It's stressing me out more.

Ups and Downs, or What Does a Burning Oracle Really Look Like?

2009-08-13T15:00:00.000-07:00

Endings is lurching toward the finish line. After weeks of very little happening (coinciding with the weeks when I was out of town), things are starting to move along now. The composer, Joseph Leggett, is churning out some really interesting pieces that nicely complement the film, and Kelley Baker and the sound crew are hard at work cleaning up dialogue and adding sounds (backgrounds, atmosphere, effects, etc.)

The process has its ups and downs. I have been very frustrated as of late, feeling like the film wasn't coming together fast enough or, well, good enough. That's not to place blame on any of the artists collaborating on it with me; I simply wasn't feeling like the film was working.

Of course, those ups and downs are a normal part of any artistic endeavor. Sometimes you're feeling it, and sometimes you're not. I wasn't feeling it, and some of that was probably connected to personnel difficulties with animation, technical difficulties with sound, and the slow movement of all the parts coming together.

At the forefront of my mind lately has been animation. As I may have mentioned previously, the several animated sequences play a key role in the finished film, and we've just begun getting to work on those. Our animator, Tom Whaley, is doing terrific work already.

Collaboration is always interesting. I can, for example, describe the fact that Emmy (the little girl in the film) sees a character "as though he is a burning oracle, on fire but not consumed by it" -- but that leaves a lot of room for interpretation, doesn't it? I mean, one man's burning oracle might be another man's nonsensical scribbles. So Tom's job is very creative here -- he has to interpret my words visually, but he also has to add in his own creative flair.

So far, he's doing a great job at it. I don't want to give away anything, but here's a little taste of what's to come in the film:

In Memoriam: John Hughes

2009-08-08T18:20:00.000-07:00

I am almost at a loss to explain why the death of filmmaker John Hughes has hit me somewhat hard, but it has. He was not one of my chief artistic influences, nor is he a filmmaker that I cite in my classes often when I am showing great examples of cinematic storytelling (though this might change).

But when I heard about his death, a rush of memories flooded in this week. I was reminded of how a number of his films had touched me or caused me to laugh riotously. Or both.

Many people point to The Breakfast Club, a seminal 80s teen angst film. And it's one of his best, and a favorite of mine as well. It's a brilliant attempt to show how the stereotypes we all know so well are a product of conformity and fear. Yes, I probably saw a little of myself in the nerd played by Anthony Michael Hall, but more than that, I saw a little of myself in every one of the well-drawn and well-acted characters.

Pretty in Pink is another one that worked well for me. Its story of a girl from the wrong side of the tracks who finds love with a rich classmate might have a trite ending (and the wrong one, a fact that was rectified when Hughes told essentially the same story, with the gender roles reversed, in Some Kind of Wonderful), but the character played by Molly Ringwald was wonderful for her strength of character. She thrived on being different and didn't necessarily feel alienated by it. This film is close to my heart, too, because one of my closest friends in high school was so much like Molly Ringwald's character that I can't think of the film without thinking of her (wait, does that make my Ducky? I hope not...)

I was only 18 when She's Having a Baby came out, but I liked the film nonetheless, and as I've rewatched it over the years, it has resonated more and more with me as a picture of the journey many married couples take from the intense infatuation of youth to the maturity. It is probably my favorite John Hughes film and is, in my opinion, an underrated gem.

And I can't write this without mentioning Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, the first film I ever saw that made me literally laugh until I cried.

I don't really know what to write about John Hughes. This post clearly doesn't have a lot to say. But I do know that many of his films touched me deeply, and that few filmmakers had or have his gift for depicting what young people really think about, even if his characters are far more erudite and articulate than the average teenager.

Thank you, Mr. Hughes, for your fine work. And my condolences to his family.

Clean Freak - translated

2009-07-26T14:55:00.000-07:00

Well, Clean Freak has popped up on an illegal download site. I have no idea if they are really streaming my film, and I'm not going to pay the site's registration fee to find out, but I love the synopsis they put up. It's clearly a translation of my own original synopsis. It apparently went into another language and back again, and came out like this:

Chris Hansen be a filmmaker, but he's also a neurotic brush freak. Here, he turn the camera next to himself, preparatory to see how his kinfolk see him, later to check the roots of his issues, and contained by the drawn out gallop to want rehabilitation.

Here's the original synopsis, in case you want to compare:

Chris Hansen is a filmmaker, but he's also a neurotic clean freak. Here, he turns the camera on himself, first to see how his family sees him, then to explore the roots of his issues, and finally to seek treatment. Clean Freak is a comedic documentary that straddles the line between fact and fiction.

Color Correction Comparison

2009-06-15T20:23:00.000-07:00

So, I was thinking more about my last post and how color correction changes the intent and meaning of a scene. And I thought a visual example might help here. Below I've posted a side-by-side comparison between the original footage and the color corrected version (keep in mind that these are taken from a low-res copy of the film, as the editor has been sending them to me; since he's based in L.A. and I'm in Texas, he's been sending me files via sendspace.com). Anyway, see the image below:

So, you'll notice that the footage on the left is significantly more colorful than the one on the left. Now, I will say that we're in the process of 'dialing back' the effect you see on the right, which is sort of a bleach-bypass look (not familiar with that term? Read about it here - though keep in mind that the link refers to the traditional way of doing it, on film). I think we just went a little too far with it.

Anyway, it was always my intention that this segment of the film would have this look, in part to keep it separate from other parts of the film, and in part because of the bleak nature of the character's outlook. What's interesting to me is how hard it is for me to let go of the original footage. It's too pretty for the character and the story -- but because it's so pretty, so pristine, it's kind of hard to let go of it. The color corrected version is more raw and, well, "ugly" isn't the right word, but it ain't pretty.

However, "not pretty" is right for the film. Sometimes you have to go through "pretty" to get there.

Color Correcting ENDINGS

2009-06-14T18:44:00.001-07:00

The editor, Simon Tondeur, is color correcting Endings at the moment, so I've been reviewing the film from that perspective this weekend. It's quite strange, in a way, because I'm so used to seeing the film the way it was shot (in terms of color). Color correcting via non-linear editing systems like Final Cut Pro is pretty powerful stuff -- if you have a clean image, you can pretty much do anything you want with it (there are some limitations, at least at my budget level).

So I'm trying to re-orient myself to see the film through new eyes, to determine if the color corrected version, with various filters applied and with contrast increased in a lot of scenes, will serve its purpose.

Just another step in the process...

When will Hansen lock picture on Endings? When?!

2009-05-29T21:44:00.000-07:00

I imagine you're probably getting tired of boring postproduction updates on Endings. There hasn't been too much to update about lately. We got the picture cut to a point that I was pretty happy with it, then I took a break from it. Actually, I thought about showing it to people and trying to see what's working... but I got so busy with a summer class I'm teaching that I never made a decision as to who I should ask to watch it.

So I let a couple of weeks slide by, and then today I decided I finally had to make some decisions on my own, without relying on any (more) input. Trusting your own instincts is always difficult.

But I think we're there. Simon, the editor, is making a few minor changes that I want, and then I believe we'll lock picture this weekend. Of course, visual effects work still needs to be done, and sound. But we're on our way...

As for sound, Sound Designer Kelley Baker has come aboard to supervise the postproduction sound work. Kelley, also known as 'the angry filmmaker,' is an indie filmmaker in his own right, but he also had a long history as a Hollywood sound designer on such films as Good Will Hunting, Psycho (the remake), Finding Forrester,and Far From Heaven. I'm thrilled to have him doing sound on my film, needless to say.

Kelley actually came aboard a while back -- but since his work hasn't really begun until now, I failed to mention it.

The Bathwater Scene: Getting to the Picture Lock

2009-05-07T17:17:00.000-07:00

The rough cut of Endings is down to a total running time of 96 minutes, which both pleases and amazes me, especially considering the fact that my mockumentary comedy American Messiah was 95 minutes long.

I'm pleased to be able to keep a challenging indie drama like Endings to a shorter running time, but I'm also pondering whether or not certain elements work, if it's paced too quickly now.

I don't really think there are pacing problems (or, at least, none that can be fixed based on what was shot) -- but when you're faced with locking picture soon, you start questioning everything. I'm a perfectionist and a realist at the same time. I want to get it right, even if it means going through every take to check what else we've got; but I also want to get it done. Finding the middle ground between these two extremes is, I suppose, what an indie filmmaker does.

Also, the editor of the film likely won't stick around if I started reviewing every cut. I'm nitpicking things enough as it is right now, and he and I are haggling back and forth over one scene that he has affectionately dubbed "the Bathwater scene" -- so named because he believes it holds more bathwater than baby and should just be thrown out.

I'm not sure I agree -- and therein lies the process. We're tweaking this one scene every which way, to emphasize various things, to avoid cheesiness, to trim bad acting, and to try to find a way to transition to the next scene (something I should have planned for better when we shot these two scenes)...

I just took a blog break to answer an email from the editor with his latest suggestion for transitioning. Today has mostly been dedicated to watching the film and working on these little details.

But sometimes I worry that I'm losing the bigger picture while we work on these details. On the other hand, I think I lost the big picture when I started shooting. I really can't see Endings in the way an audience member can, because I'm too close to it and too aware of all the details (of the story, of the shooting, of the post process).

It's kind of a sad thing, in a way. You're trying to create something transcendent, but you yourself can't experience that transcendence, because you created the thing and can only experience it with all your memories of its creation intact. The hard part is determining if other people can experience it as a transcendent experience, something that's hard to judge if you will never see it that way yourself.

I'm trying to determine at what point I'll ask some people unfamiliar with the story to watch it and comment. That's a nerve-wracking process, for me anyway...

In any case, the picture will likely be locked in the next couple of weeks. After that, color correction, visual effects, and sound work all need to be done. But picture lock always feels like the biggest step to me. That's not to diminish the others; the work involved in all of them is critical. But getting the picture cut itself right is critical in setting the stage for all those other steps.

The End of Spring

2009-04-30T11:07:00.000-07:00

Classes are ending here at Baylor on Monday, May 4th, though for me they end today (I don't have any MWF classes this term). It's always an interesting time. Spring fever has set in for students and for faculty, and everyone is exhausted. So it's not an unwelcome ending, but commencement means saying goodbye to some students who have been a more-or-less daily part of your life for several years. It can be strange. Their lives will change in new and exciting ways, and we remain here at their alma mater (that's not a complaint about my job; I love what I do).

My reflection on this event has been muted this year because the semester took a very busy turn when I was officially appointed director of the division. And since I'm teaching a mini-mester course that begins immediately after graduation, I'll barely have time to finish grading before I have to begin prepping lectures and figuring out how to cram a semester's worth of screenings and discussion into a three-week period...

American Mess Theatre Listing

2009-04-22T13:56:00.001-07:00

I just got a hold of the listing of theatres which will be showing my first feature, The Proper Care & Feeding of an American Mess, starting May 29th. Here it is:

Nova at Hartford
Hartford, Illinois

Hartford at Moline
Moline, Illinois

Nova Georgia
340 Tanger Drive
Commerce, Georgia 30529

Studio 10 Cinemas
1624 E. State Highway 44
Shelbyville, Indiana 46176
Movieline: 398-FLIX(3549)

Georgetown 14 Cinemas
3898 Lafayette Road
Indianapolis, Indiana 46254
(317) 291-3456

Nova 10
4353 Merle Hay Road
Des Moines, Iowa 50310

Theatres of Georgetown
401 Outlet Center Drive
Georgetown, Kentucky 40324

Branson Meadows Theatres
4740 Gretna Road
Branson, Missouri 65616
Branson Meadows Outlet Mall
Phone: 417-332-0464
Movie Hotline: 417-332-2884

The Amp Oxford Mississippi
206 Commonwealth Boulevard
Oxford, Mississippi 38655
Movie Hotline: 662-236-4080

Portsmouth Cinemas
1623 Chillicothe Street
Portsmouth, Ohio 45662
Movieline: 355-FILM(3456)

Lake Geneva 4
244 Broad Street
Lake Geneva, Wisconsin 53147

News on the Academic Front

2009-04-20T12:17:00.000-07:00

I'm watching the new cut of Endings today -- or trying to, between meetings and other interruptions -- but wanted to pause for a moment to relay some news. I was officially appointed Director of the Film & Digital Media program here at Baylor University today.

Well, the appointment is effective June 1, but the official notification came today.

Anyway, this is a big moment for me personally, and I hope it will mean big things for the future of the program here, as I look to expand upon the already great work that has been done to bring it to this point.

Voice Over Artists

2009-04-15T10:41:00.000-07:00

Well, my two oldest daughters become voice over artists last week. The local NPR affiliate, KWBU, broadcasts from about 20 feet from my office door, and the station manager, Brodie Bashaw, asked several people if their kids would be able to read some copy (or just repeat it back) for a promo she was recording. My oldest, Emma (who also stars in my new film, Endings, recorded one all by herself, and the other features several children edited together (Emma is on there as well, and Anna, my eight year old, is the one who says, "The Waco Cultural Arts Fest will be September 19th and 20th").

Download the promo mp3 files to hear my kids promote the Waco Cultural Arts Fest on KWBU:

KWBU Promo - Emma

KWBU Promo - Emma, Anna, and others

Doctor Who extravaganza

2009-04-15T07:11:00.000-07:00

Well, the deadline for the "call for proposals" for my edited volume about Doctor Who is today. Which means that I got a ton of proposals yesterday, and I'm expecting more to trickle in today.

I should have guessed that would happen. So now I'll be wading through a sea of Doctor Who scholarship over the next couple of weeks.

Twitter

2009-03-30T11:39:00.001-07:00

Okay, I caved and decided to start Twittering: www.twitter.com/Prof_Hansen.

ENDINGS - the first trailer

2009-03-23T12:19:00.000-07:00

Here it is, folks. The very first extended look at my new film, ENDINGS. Post-production continues, but we managed to get a promotional trailer done.

I should note -- editing is by B.K. Garceau, and original music is by Joseph Leggett.

I suggest watching this on a larger window than the one presented by my blog. Click over to vimeo directly to watch it there.

ENDINGS - first trailer from Chris Hansen on Vimeo.

ENDINGS Post-Production Update

2009-03-20T21:41:00.000-07:00

Another Endings post-production update: There hasn't been much progress of late, due in part to various levels of indecision on my part, but I have hired a new editor to take it from here, and I feel pretty good about that decision. There is a little bit of waiting now, while the new editor goes to work. And while I'm anxious, I feel a little relaxed now about the process now because I think the film is in good hands.

American Mess release plans

2009-03-06T19:17:00.000-08:00

I don't have full information yet, but it appears that a release date for The Proper Care & Feeding of an American Mess has been set. It's May 29th.

You can see that info here: Monogram Releasing.

I'm sure more complete info will be available eventually.

Just FYI...

2009-02-26T16:19:00.001-08:00

Created by Train Horn

ChizFilm Award for CLEAN FREAK

2009-02-26T10:36:00.001-08:00

Jonathan Chisdes over at ChizFilm has been an ardent supporter of my work since seeing my first feature at the Virginia Film Festival, and he has used his annual ChizFilm Awards to honor another film. He named Clean Freak his "Best Short" of 2008.

Thanks to Jonathan and ChizFilm for your continued support of my work.

CLEAN FREAK at Bare Bones

2009-02-24T14:23:00.000-08:00

Clean Freak was just invited to screen at the Bare Bones International Film Festival, in Muskogee, OK. Nice to pick up a few more screenings here at the end of the film's festival run.

It will be in Corvallis, OR in March, at the da Vinci Film Festival...

Poster- minor changes

2009-02-23T18:46:00.000-08:00

Okay, had to repost this. There were some minor changes to it (mostly with the festival laurels -- had to add "Official Selection" to them, and spell out what "STIFF" stands for).

The New Poster

2009-02-23T13:42:00.000-08:00

Below you will see the new poster for the theatrical release of American Messiah, titled The Proper Care & Feeding of an American Mess for this release.

Does Absence Make the Heart Grow Fonder?

2009-02-20T17:22:00.000-08:00

Or does it just make you forget me?

Sorry I've been mostly absent on the blog. Between post on Endings, beginning work on a new script, editing a scholarly work on Doctor Who, and my classes here at Baylor, I have barely had time to eat lunch most days. So blogging took a back seat. It takes a lot of energy to be witty and erudite in this blog -- cut me some slack.

All kidding aside, I really have been busy (I wasn't kidding about the items I mentioned above). So, stuff continues. I'll have a new update when my head is back in the blogging game.

Membership...

2009-01-31T20:02:00.000-08:00

Just found out today that I am now a member of the Independent Writers Caucus of the Writers Guild of America, west.

Which is kind of cool.

The Proper Care & Feeding of an American Mess

2009-01-23T12:35:00.000-08:00

It's official -- the theatrical release title of "American Messiah" will be The Proper Care & Feeding of an American Mess.

The producer and I feel like it's a good link to the original (for marketing purposes) and still has a draw to get people into the theatre.

I'll post the new poster here when we are done with it. And release details, too, of course.

My Sundance Experience

2009-01-20T19:16:00.000-08:00

I always said I wasn't going to go to Sundance until I had a film there, but when I was invited this year by Matson Duncan to attend his Cultural Leadership Summit, I really couldn't say no. I was, in fact, invited last year, but I couldn't make things work.

The purpose of the event was to bring together a bunch of like-minded filmmakers and those who think and write about film and culture in order to discuss how films can edify culture.

The event was a great success, for me at least. I met some terrific creative people and connected with them over morning sessions as well as in between films, over great meals (and rushed ones) on Main Street in Park City, UT. The weather was, on the whole, pretty decent, with temperatures staying in the high 30s during the day and only getting truly cold after dark. Crowds were down this year at Sundance, so while there were still lines aplenty, it was at least possible to move down the street (which, from what I've been told, hasn't always been easy in years past).

It was hard to get tickets to films. This is the kind of thing that makes you really want to have your film screen at Sundance -- there is no film that doesn't have a sold-out screening.

Here's what I saw:

Shorts Program IV: Shorts programs are always a mixed bag, and there are plenty of differing opinions on what a short should be. This program contained a little of everything (in my opinion, of course). The attack of the robots from Nebula was a quirky piece about an unbalanced fellow who believes the world will be destroyed soon (by the titular robots). It worked for me, but I could easily see why it might not work for others. Sparks, an Elmore Leonard adaptation by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, seemed like a good idea, I'm sure, but, in spite of its stylistic flourishes, it was essentially a story told in dialogue-heavy flashback by the two oh-so-clever main characters (Carla Gugino and Eric Stoltz). Elmore Leonard has been done much better in the past. Next Floor was a brilliantly realized take on gluttony, as a group of wealthy eaters pigs out on rare foods until they fall through the floor -- again and again. Completely visual (almost no dialogue at all), and really effective. Short Term 12 is a terrific emotional film about a psychiatric youth residential home, filled with screwed-up kids and damaged counselors. The worst of the bunch was Choices, a pointless piece wherein the audience watches a man make love to his girlfriend while he narrates the story of having to choose between his mother and his father when they divorced in his youth. Poorly shot and needlessly "edgy," it did nothing for me.

Amreeka
DIRECTOR/ SCREENWRITER: Cherien Dabis
U.S.A./Canada/Kuwait, 2009, 96 min., color
English and Arabic with English subtitles
Amreeka tells the story of a Palestinian single mother and her son when they move to America and live with her sister and her sister's family right after 9/11. It keeps the tone light throughout much of the film, focusing on her fish out of water status and her frustration at not being able to find a decent job in spite of years of experience and education. The acting is quite good, and the writer/director smartly doesn't try to make things too maudlin, even though the events are serious. By using the tropes of a typical film in this genre, the filmmaker manages to get the audience to identify with this woman, who is an outsider to U.S. audiences by virtue of her nationality. Her plight is universal, though, and her love and concern for her teenage son shine through.

The Maid
Chile, 2008, 95 mins., color
From the Sundance site: "After 23 years of service to the Valdes family, Raquel is comfortably ensconced in a vague existence between maid and her illusion that she is a family member. Her barely concealed bitterness and increased clashes with her employer's eldest daughter lead the family to think she is overworked. They hire more help, and, feeling usurped, Raquel begins to sabotage each new employee by resorting to childish antics, clinging to her ambiguous place within the family." There were some very solid moments in this film -- some real human emotion and redemptive ideas. Ultimately, it's bogged down by a repetitive first half and some not-so-great camera and sound. I remember thinking that the film should have been shorter, but when I checked the running time, it was only 95 minutes. That's never a good sign. The first two-thirds of the movie seemed to repeat the maid's war with other maids over and over, and though I'm sure this is "how it really happened" (the director explained the semi-autobiographical nature of the story), it makes for lazy and ineffective storytelling.

You Won't Miss Me
U.S.A., 2009, 81 mins., color & b/w
The title is accurate. I won't miss this film. Or, more accurately, I won't miss the second half, which I didn't bother watching. I am not one to walk out of a film. I even sat through Eddie Murphy in The Golden Child. But 45 minutes into this film, I couldn't bear any more. It was pretentious and boring, an "unscripted" attempt to capture an unbalanced woman's miserable life. I guess it succeeded, as it made me pretty miserable. The improvisational nature of the shooting was, I'm sure, thought to be pretty innovative, but I thought it made for a pretty shoddy end result, with actors looking around uncomfortably as they apparently ran out of things to say. I thought about articulating more about why I don't think this is a good film, but I feel as though I've wasted enough time on it. In answer to the director, who asked me from a distance, as I walked out of the theatre, "So you hated it that bad?" -- yes. Yes, I did. I would have answered you at the time, but I wasn't aware you were talking to me at first, and the moment passed.

If you want to read more about the film, read the description at the Sundance site.

All in all, it was a fantastic experience. I hope to be back next year, and I hope to continue some wonderful new friendships.

American Messiah on iTunes, and a Sundance Update

2009-01-19T13:58:00.000-08:00

Well, I returned last night from my brief Sundance experience, and I have stuff to report, but I'm not sure I feel like typing it all up right this minute. I saw several good features, one awful feature (it's not Sundance if you don't see one lousy film), and some interesting shorts. And I got to meet some really cool people, indie filmmakers like myself, and getting to connect with them -- and with the people who helped to make this trip possible (members of a Park City church) -- was both encouraging and humbling.

So, more on that later...

The other news I wanted to report is that my first feature film, The Proper Care & Feeding of an American Messiah is now available for download on iTunes. Which is, you know, pretty cool.

UPDATE: adding a link to American Messiah in the iTunes store: see the movie here.

Clean Freak screening at da Vinci Film Festival

2009-01-12T17:45:00.000-08:00

You haven't heard me mention any screenings for Clean Freak of late, and the reason for that is that there haven't been many. The film inexplicably hit a streak of rejections that I really don't even want to talk about.

Well, it's not really inexplicable. It's a 27 minute film that's part documentary and part mockumentary and also contains a wry and subtle commentary on the nature of documentary filmmaking in general. So, um, yeah, it's been a real crowdpleaser.

I'm being too hard on it, perhaps. In actuality, I think the running time is the largest factor in the film's many non-selections, because fests prefer their short films to be 10 minutes or under, as a general rule.

Anyway, I've completely buried the lede here -- Clean Freak has been selected to screen in the 1009 da Vinci Film Festival. The fest takes place March 6-8 in Corvallis, Oregon.

So Maybe I'm Controversial After All

2009-01-08T09:22:00.000-08:00

When my first feature, The Proper Care & Feeding of an American Messiah, was making the rounds at festivals, I had thought it might inspire some controversy because of the religious satire in it. Now, I should preface this all by saying that I am a very religious person, and the satire in the film was aimed squarely at people who abuse and misuse religion for their own purposes.

And since I sensed it might be controversial, I was almost disappointed that it wasn't. Most people took it as intended or just found it funny.

But today, someone was finally offended enough to do something about it.

I have been working with a distributor in the midwest on a small theatrical distribution for the film. I had intended to keep this quiet until I had all the details worked out. But I had a conversation with the distributor today during which he explained that he wasn't going to be able to release the film in the theatres that he deals with because of the title and the poster art -- specifically, the word "messiah" in the title and the images of Christ on the poster.

So, hmmm...

I was taken by surprise, only because the film hasn't inspired much controversy thus far. But this is a case of perception trumping reality -- it's not the content of the film that offends (apparently), but the fear that people who see the poster and hear the title will believe something about the film that isn't true.

Thus, if I want to see it get a theatrical release, I must change the title and the poster design. To end any speculation: I've decided to do just that, simply because I'd like to see the film released, and I don't feel that I'm compromising any principles. I'm not having to change the content or intent of the film, just the perceptions and concerns created by the title.

And, in any case, I suppose it's better to be controversial.

I'm also choosing to view this is as a positive. It's a chance to rethink something that's already been completed. I have lately had some misgivings about the title (I always wished I'd chosen to call it "Local Messiah" as I think that would have intrigued people more, and audiences always react positively when Brian calls himself a local messiah). But I can't use the word "messiah" at all now.

So, if you have any title suggestions (or poster design suggestions, for that matter), leave them in the comments below. And I'll share the new title choice and poster design when we have it complete...

Become a Fan of ENDINGS on Facebook

2009-01-05T09:45:00.000-08:00

If you're on Facebook, I encourage you to become a "fan" of my new film Endings on there. I just started the page for it...

Endings Facebook Page

First Clip from ENDINGS

2009-01-03T12:11:00.000-08:00

Well, for all three of you anticipating my new film, I decided it was about time to post some footage.

Below is a link to a scene from a longer sequence in which one of the main characters, an addict, is in a "forced rehab camp." The scene has very little sound work and only a basic "bleach bypass" color correction, so don't take it as complete.

The actors are: Matthew Brumlow as Chris (the drug addict) and Ka Beesler as Marlon (who runs the rehab camp).

http://www.vimeo.com/2708880

A scene from ENDINGS from Chris Hansen on Vimeo.

2009-01-02T17:06:00.000-08:00

Well, I haven't posted anything in forever, and I'm not just being lazy. The holidays are always pretty light around here, just because I tend to be consumed with stuff at home and don't have as much to say about film and etc.

So, a couple of quick updates:

Endings is still in post-production. The rough cut is complete and stands at about one hour forty-four minutes right now. I'm going to delve into it next week with the film's producer to see what still needs work.

Also, I finally had a chance to watch The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and I really enjoyed it. The slow pacing really worked for me, and I enjoyed seeing a film that allowed the story to play out so delicately and deliberately.

The music accentuated it quite well, and the performances were very solid (specifically Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck as the title characters, but Sam Rockwell as Bob Ford’s brother Charlie was also terrific). I especially enjoyed the last 20-30 minutes, which played out the aftermath of Bob Ford’s life as a result of the killing. Most studio films would have concluded soon after the killing, but this was not Jesse James’s story, so Robert Ford’s story deserved a chance to play out.

The meditation on celebrity and fandom really interested in me (in part because I've been thinking about a documentary on fandom of a particular thing for a while), and Pitt seems like a really interesting choice to play James, who was an uber-celebrity of his time, after all.