Hollywood Lesson #1: Ain't easy making movie magic

Current gig as a coordinator for the School of Engineering has taken me to interesting places...oil refineries like ExxonMobil and Shell along the Houston Ship Channel; NASA space programs; high-tech labs for IBM, AMD, NI; and awesome locales such as Myrtle Beach, DisneyWorld and Portland for professional conferences. But it's my latest project that took me to an entirely different place. Hooray for Hollywood! well sorta....

For the past year I've been working with our technology innovation group to create some new media for our embarrassingly-antiquated website to market and educate folks about the program. Didn't realize what I was getting into when I simply stated, "Um, our website sucks." Here's a lesson from Tinseltown:


















Creator: primary creative force behind a movie, series, or group of characters
Ok, considering my knowledge and experience with all things film and theater is limited to a few junior high plays and a couple semesters of being a RTF major during undergrad, I really can't take all of the credit here. Major shout out to Juan G. and all the FIC folks for really making this happen and allowing me to be a part of the movie magic. But, I feel pretty confident in claiming the creator title since it was my genuine hatred of our website that was the impetus for this project. After a year of discussing and brainstorming and storyboarding, my original vision was taking shape.

Co-producer: performs substantial portion of creative producing function, primarily responsible for one or more managerial producing functions
Can't take "executive producer" or even "producer" - those titles should really go to Juan G. (media genius) and Michael (the big boss man who writes the checks). But I tend to enjoy juggling and turned out that I make a pretty good co-pilot.

Writer: general term for someone who creates a written work, be it a novel, script or screenplay
Once our idea was fleshed out - having professional actors play the role of an engineering student who talks about how awesome their work experience was - they all turned to me and said, "ok, now come up with a script" So that's what I did. And then watched my simple word document turn into a formal screenplay. Did you know that 1 page usually equals 1 minute of screen time and wide margins are included for note-taking space?

Casting Director: auditions and helps to select all of the speaking role actors in film
Juan sent out a casting call and we spent an entire day at the Austin School of Film to hold auditions. Being in the career counseling business, I'm pretty knowledgeable about what makes a good interview and what you can or can't ask someone. Yeah, all that goes out the window with movie auditions. height, weight, looks - you really are judging a book by its cover. After hearing 12 different 60-sec monologues, it was pretty obvious who was hired and I was getting used to being CD.

Costume Supervisor: in charge of costumes; preparing and handling them for use and making sure they are accurate to the design or script
Since I'm the one who decided that our actors should be filmed in their respective engineering industry, I had to come up with authentic garb. I'm pretty sure there are designers and actual costumers in Hollywood, but I'd say smoozing co-workers to secure some loaner pieces qualifies.

Production Assistant: responsible for various odd jobs such as fetching items and running errands
Budget approved, actors hired and rehearsed, wardrobe ready, film set a-go, cameras ready to roll. It was shoot day! In my head, I thought I would just sit back and watch the process, but I got called to duty as a PA. I prefer "slatemaster" since I was in charge of the slateboard and clapping between each shot. But, I also had to stand off on sides to play human-clothes-hangar for the actors and their wardrobe changes. Take after take. Quiet on set. Hold....and action. Oh, messed up a line. Oh, you could hear street noise. Why don't you try it like this. Let's just say I now have a little bit of empathy for Christian Bale. I mean it gets intense under all those lights and cameras. And all therepetitiveness and stop-and-go made me want to pack of smokes asap (and I don't even smoke!?!).

Well, it's in the can now as they say in showbiz and I certainly enjoyed the ride. If we could have gotten craft services or maybe a director's chair or a red-carpet premiere for the official launch (release date: Late Summer), I think my "Hollywood experience" would've been fully-realized. But one thing I now know for sure, it ain't easy making movie-magic!!