First Woman Director Wins Oscar

Aside from the fact that I once briefly worked with Kathryn Bigelow, I'm not sure why I feel so ecstatic with her big win at the Oscars last night. Truth be told, I rarely watch award shows. I've never watched an Oscar telecast from beginning to end. I'd rather get root canal. Should my significant other (s.o.) be nominated next year, I dread the thought of having to sit captive at the Kodak Theater for the many hours. Even watching him win will not take away from the fact that I find the whole thing...silly.

So, it took me by surprise to find my eyes tearing with joy and pride as this beautiful woman took the shiny gold statuette into her trembling hands and made history as the first woman director to win in its 82-year history. Not that this changes the dismal percentage of working women in the DGA. I also know that since Hattie McDaniel's win in 1939 for best supporting actress, there wasn't another African-American woman to win until Whoopie Goldberg for "Ghost" in 1990. Yet, I can't deny that last night was a history making moment. I even admit that about three hours into the telecast, I started to channel surf between it and "The Simpsons", hoping to catch a moment of film history in the making. Was I sure she'd win? I had a good feeling, especially when upon my arrival in London, I saw the newspapers headlining Kathryn's BAFTA win as the first woman director (and an American, no less!).

So why does her win mean so much to me? In 2010, are we women still such second class citizens that we need small victories like this? For the same reason that I remembered the names and accomplishments of women like Amelia Earhart, Valentina Tereshkova, and Dr. Sally Ride, I wanted to see another woman breaking the gender barrier and besting the big boys. Classic David v. Goliath, except David is a girl. Not since Lili Zanuck became only the second woman in Oscar history to win for Best Picture in 1989 ("Driving Miss Daisy") have I actually cared who walked away with the little gold guy. Since Lili's win, only two other women producers have walked away with Best Picture Oscar. Call me a sexist. However, I prefer to think of myself as a champion of the underdogs.

Last week at the London premiere of my s.o.'s project, I had the lucky fortune to meet Terry Gilliam. Since he had forgotten to bring his invitation/ticket, I had the honor of getting him into the party! It was a delightful conversation (who knew he was a fan of my s.o.'s work?) and I discovered we shared many of the same opinions about the state of the film industry. He, too, feels that the obscene amount of money that gets pumped into studio projects prevents smaller, lower-budget films from seeing the light of day. For every "Avatar" (budget $700M), there are 20-30 projects like "Sideways" ($25M) that don't get made. Ironically, the studios will hedge their bet with one large "tentpole" rather than risk losing money on films that they can't turn into sequels, video games, fast food tie-ins and other ancillary products.

My best Terry Gilliam moment was when he reiterated his earlier quote to a London newspaper. When asked if he plans on jumping on the 3D bandwagon he replied, "I'm still trying to create 3D characters in a 2D movie, not 2D characters in a 3D movie!" I nearly did a spit take on the man! But I digress...

So, Kathryn Bigelow's win against her ex-hubby's gigantically bloated studio film, is an even bigger victory! Produced independently for $12M, the producer Nicolas Chartier, (the producer whom the Academy banned from the awards for his email incident) sold foreign distribution rights to raise production financing. They took it on the film festival circuit to find a distributor. As is the common story of many films nominated for Best Picture category in the past decades ("My Left Foot", "The Crying Game", "The Piano", "Little Miss Sunshine", "Crash", etc), this film was made outside of the Hollywood production factory. Without 3D, without star actors, without spending the equivalent of a developing nation's GDP, she directed an award-winning film with a storyline not derivative of every comic book and children's tale.

So, dear Kathryn Bigelow, not only have you made history, but you've done it with a project that deserves it! As a fellow filmmaker, I applaud you. As a fellow woman, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Blind Faith

Work continues on delivering nearly 800 VFX shots for our summer release. We have 6 weeks remaining in our schedule and about 650 shots yet to deliver. This is the point in almost every project that requires us to rely on blind faith. Blind faith that a) delivery of the shots will not affect any other departments and b) that they look good enough to put into the film. It’s a race to the finish line!

I’ve been on this picture since December, yet most of the players have been involved at least 14 months. It’s interesting to see the levels of trust and comfort tested as difficult issues are presented almost daily. Our director is generally mild mannered and handles the amount of work with respectable knowledge and a keen memory. His patience is being tested and we are all holding our breath that the planets align and everything magically comes together in the final hour. He had to raise his concern to a higher level last week, which was completely warranted, yet knowing his generally stable demeanor, I felt for him, knowing what a drain it is to yell at people you generally like and are dependent upon.

The scope of work has been distributed amongst several vendors. Our main vendor is finalizing look development and animation on many scenes. Once approved, the shots will begin rendering and soon we’ll be living in the screening room, with the director approving each shot, one by one. They have about 450 shots to go. The smaller vendors are in varying states of delivering VFX shots. Less concern about these, which is why it’s not a bad idea to spread the work around.

In addition to finishing the VFX shots for the movie, we get side tracked with requests from marketing to accelerate shots for trailers and previews. At a certain point, the shots just can’t be rushed any further. I refer to the analogy that “you can’t speed up the delivery of a baby”, although I’m sure many a mother would like to! So, in these final weeks of the project, in addition to operating on blind faith, we are tracking multiple versions of the shots, making sure that nothing has fallen through the cracks.

The film previewed last night, and we’re hoping it’s the last one before we deliver, yet I suspect we’ll have one more round of challenges! Ahhh, the glamour of filmmaking!

Should I Stay or Should I Go

Working in the film industry provides many opportunities to travel, and throughout my career, I’ve experienced wonderful cities that I might not have otherwise. On one level, I love it; first class accommodations, tech scouts with key crew, experiencing productions with a slightly foreign twist, as well as tasting the local fare. Yet as the years go by, the emphasis has shifted from desiring work in foreign locations, to balancing the lifestyle I’ve established at home, because going on location essentially requires us to put our existing life “on hold”. When I was younger, I didn’t think twice about it.

Initially motivated by a personal health issue, my life in LALA-Land has evolved into weekly trips to the organic farmer’s market, vegetable juicing three times a week, and exercising five days a week. Maintaining this lifestyle is impossible while working on location, yet I know this routine has effectively minimized my trips to the doctors over the years.

In addition to maintaining my personal schedule, I have a husband who really needs me in his life. We’ve made the long distance thing work in the past, yet over the years I’m less and less comfortable leaving for long periods of time. We make the daily calls, yet after about four weeks, the daily chit-chat is harder to sustain and we really need to see each other. Sometimes we can accommodate a visit at the 4-week point, sometimes we can’t.

So after years of traveling for work, I have to ask myself at what price can I afford to be away for so long? And do I have a choice? It’s rare to find feature films shooting exclusively in the States, let alone in LA. My last project was perfect, four weeks shooting in Morocco, and the rest in LA! More recently, I told my contact at a studio that I was open to producing the VFX for post-production only, and within weeks, I was offered a post position on a large show located very close to home!

The lesson I’m learning here is that it helps to define my priorities and not be afraid to express them. There is a project looming on my horizon that may require travel to Ireland. The studio exec knows of my travel weariness, yet really wants me on board. In the spirit of trying to make things work, we’re talking about what would be ideal and we’ll see if we can make it work. I’m very appreciative of my long-term work relationships as it’s easier to broach this subject honestly.

So when presented a project that will take me away, I have much to consider. In these economic times, the answer may be determined by what’s in my checking account, yet with my priorities defined, I will attempt to make it a workable situation. Ideally, my working trips abroad will be of a shorter duration, and once completed, my husband and I will travel to exciting places together, in between projects!

stealing time..

The last few weeks have been incredibly busy for me both personally and professionally. I am managing to steal a few minutes to catch my breath and update you on what is going on. In my last entry, I mentioned that I re-connected with an old friend who started up another visual effects company with foreign investors as partners. The company will be based in San Francisco and as well as India (which seems to be the trend in VFX these days) with the SF offices acting as the hub of the company. He’s been great about bringing me onboard and allowing me to maintain an office in Burbank! As of today, we are waiting for our funding to be completely in place so we can finalize the rest of our build out. It has been slow moving and frustrating at times but I can’t complain, I’m getting paid and I wrote a business plan for our investors, my first ever and it came out really well!! We are hoping the banks will finally approve the loan and we’ll be up and running shortly! The downtime has made me feel a little lethargic and out of touch with the business but then I hear from friends that things are slow out there, which I guess helps ease my guilty feelings! =)

On a more personal front, I am crazily getting ready for my upcoming wedding!! Yes, I know it’s all happening so fast since we just got engaged at the end of last year but we figured, why wait? We’re living together and practically married, all we need is to make it official. So we’re off to Maui in April to have a quiet and beautiful ceremony on the beach! Ahhhhhh.. can’t wait! Then we are throwing a party/reception two weeks later to celebrate with family and friends. It’s creeping up on me quickly. We found a great place for the party, ordered the invitations and just hired a DJ. Phew my list is getting shorter.. slowly!

Any Day Now

Well, it's been a busy few weeks. As I mentioned last time, my second child is due very soon. I actually thought I might already have him by the time I wrote this post. For various medical reasons, I will probably have the baby in the next few days, so we're now just waiting for his arrival. It's all very exciting. The past two weeks have been busy getting everything in order, packing our bags for the hospital, going to doctor's appointments, etc.

It's also been the final few weeks for me to take care of work before I take a few weeks off. Just barely in time, my partner and I received the first draft of the script on one of our projects. The writer has done a fantastic job. We've spent the last week reading and doing notes, then we had a series of 3 marathon notes sessions, both alone and with the writer. These lasted about 8 hours each day, but they were such productive meetings. We've finally sent the writer off to work on the second draft of the script. He'll have a few weeks of work before giving it back to us for another round of notes. You never know what to expect when the first draft comes in. Sometimes there's so much work to be done, it's impossible to know where to start. Other times, the writer gives you so much to work with, it's a pleasure to jump in and make those changes necessary to make it a movie. Although time consuming, it's been a fantastic process on this one.

We're continuing with the usual on our other projects--checking in with writers who are working, meeting with studio executives, looking for writers on a new project, among many other things that I won't get into here.

At home, my two year old daughter is so excited to become a big sister. We've been busy trying to get her registered for preschool next fall and putting together Valentine's cards for her class. Our dog, a boxer named Winston, is wondering what's going on, but he's a good sport about the whole thing.

I'm keeping this short, as there are quite a few things to do as we get ready to potentially have our baby tomorrow. I'm actually jumping on a conference call for work right now before finishing up everything else.

More soon...

Ray Harryhausen, Grand Guru

Since my last posting, I’ve been to London and Paris, and am now home again. As with most of my trips to London, I’ve flown back with a nasty cold. It’s hard to escape since most everywhere you go in London, people seem to be coughing and hacking. I face each trip to London now with a mix of dread and worry for the inevitable cold I’m about to catch. (Yes, I’ve tried vitamins, Zicam, Airborne and Emergen-C).

Every few trips to London, my partner and I try to pay a visit to his childhood hero and inspiration, Ray Harryhausen. For thousands of visual effects artists, Ray Harryhausen’s work was the creative inspiration that got them into filmmaking. Ray influenced a generation of directors (among them Tim Burton, John Landis, Peter Jackson) and VFX Supervisors (Dennis Muren, Phil Tippett, Ken Ralston, just to name a few) with the fantastical worlds he created. At age 88, he still travels, writes books, goes on speaking tours to meet the legions of his fans around the world, and performs the role of emeritus effects guru.

I hate to admit that until I worked in visual effects, I had never heard of him. My film school education did not cover his brilliant work as most of his movies were not usually part of film school canon. Also, I was not a little girl who watched sci-fi or monster films. Without the benefit of having brothers or boy cousins, my exposure to Ray’s films were nil. So it wasn’t until a few years ago that I came to appreciate and admire the talents of this animation genius.

What is especially astounding is that Ray worked alone. All those frames of beautiful stop-motion were animated by his two hands. These days, it takes a team of 300 people to do what Ray did alone. So much for computers taking jobs away from humans! Ray built the armatures, sculpted, animated, lit and shot the models, while supervising the live action to work with his effects. Equal parts artist and technician, he also managed his own budget, thus adding VFX producer responsibilities to all of his other duties. So to call him a “guru” seems to be an understatement.

Ray seems amused by what the VFX field has become since the advent of computer technology. He’s also seen the landscape of filmmaking change drastically over the past five decades. A couple of hours with Ray, and I am graced with stories about what it was like to work with Bernie (that’s Bernard Herrmann to you and me), his experience shooting on location in The Alhambra in Granada, Spain (perhaps the last film production allowed within the citadel) and funny quips that illuminate what has (but also hasn’t) changed about the business. He is a living film history. As with all great professors, Ray is generous in sharing his passion and knowledge. I gain in two hours with Ray, what can be a whole semester’s worth of film history class. University Harryhausen is my favorite place in London.

As I’ve stated in an earlier blog, I never felt that my true calling was to work in visual effects. However, I am ever grateful for the detour. I’ve had a chance to work with some fantastically talented people who are passionate about their work. More importantly, I met the man who inspired them, the Grand Guru himself.

P.S. You can view highlights of Ray Harryhausen's work on YouTube.com.

Getting Ready For Baby

There's three weeks to go until our baby is born, so I've been cramming in the meetings. I know I'll want to take a little time off once he arrives, although I'm sure the phone calls and emails will continue straight through. I enjoy it, so it'll be an interesting challenge. Once again, just finding the balance.

My producing partner and I now have three writers working on scripts for us. The first draft of the first one is supposed to come in this week. We're thrilled to be able to sit down and start working on the rewrite with him. It's a very commercial idea that we're excited to take out to studios. It's definitely weird timing in this tough market (with the potential SAG strike and the economic situation). It'll take some time to get the script in order, so we'll strategize about the best way to sell it once it's ready. The other two scripts are in earlier stages.

We recently teamed up with a director on another project. We found a writer who's interested in the idea. It's been a bit crazy trying to schedule a meeting, since the director spends weeks at a time out of the country. We're hoping to make this happen next week before he leaves again.

After meeting with quite a few agents this fall, we're now starting a round of meetings with studio executives. We're only going to be able to do a few before I have to take some time off, but it's been great to get out there and discuss our projects. Plus we have quite a few ideas that we still need to find writers for, so we've been reading tons of samples and reconnecting with writers we've worked with in the past.

At home, my two and half year old daughter just potty trained herself (woke up one day saying she wanted to wear her big girl panties). It's perfect timing just weeks before the new baby comes. I'm glad to have one out of diapers. Unfortunately, she's also getting in her last few teeth (2nd year molars), so it's been a very tough and fussy week. Between ballet class and preschool (2 mornings a week), we've been busy. My husband owns his own business, so he's been working hard through this tough economic time. We know the baby will bring big changes in the next few weeks, and we can't wait.

Between washing new baby clothes with fragrance-free detergent and decorating the nursery, I'm making business calls, setting lunches and reading scripts. There's never a dull moment. Right now, we only have a nanny one day a week, but my mother-in-law has been a good last minute babysitter when I need her. The two days my daughter is in preschool, I have time as well. I'm still lucky she takes a long afternoon nap, so it's work time every afternoon.

The day to day is lots of fun. I know it'll take some time to rework my schedule this spring, but we'll figure it out.

What's in a Title?

An old friend from college asked me what the difference is between my former job (VFX Producer) and my current title (VFX Consultant). Well, the former title implies a steadier paycheck. As a consultant, I’m hired on an “as needed” basis. Sometimes this can mean stretches of unemployment while the studios are in full production mode and no scripts are on deck.

Despite the lack of steady income, the advantages for someone like me are many. I’m afforded regular work hours; gone are the 105-hours work weeks (which never paid overtime). Even though I loved going on locations for months at a time in my earlier career, it wreaked havoc on having a social life. It was very difficult to maintain friendships, and relationships proved even more challenging. Although you formed instant families with fellow crew and cast members, only a handful lasted through the years.

In my current life, I meet with directors in the very beginning stages of the filmmaking process. They’ve just landed a new job, are excited by the possibilities, and haven’t had their first fight with the studio rank over budgets, schedules, casting, etc. Sometimes the challenge lies in trying to give structure to creative visions that are still forming in the minds of the directors. But I love their enthusiasm at this stage. Some are open to suggestions and give everyone a “committee voice” in their creative process. George Miller works like a college professor--opening up dialogue to discuss everything with everyone. You are encouraged to voice your opinions and your suggestions aren’t limited to just your field of expertise. Other directors provide a clear vision of their film from day one. Jean-Pierre Jeunet sent very detailed storyboards to help me visualize the film he proposed to make. With painstaking detail, a shot-by-shot storyboard was photographed with maquettes, showing me a previsualized version of the movie on paper. The storyboards themselves were such works of art that I have kept them as a memento.

Pre-production can feel a bit more harried. The studios usually expect a more detailed budget although it’s still too early to have a solid idea of what the work will entail. Based on very loose knowledge, I break down the script and provide methodologies that I’ve discussed with the director and other department keys (Director of Photography, Production Designer, Visual Effects Supervisor, Costume Designer, Special Effects, Stunts, etc). I send out this VFX “blueprint” to prospective visual effects companies to bid the work. My overall budget incorporates an average of these bids, my best guess of the total scope of work, and a small contingency to cover potential pitfalls which always crop up during the production process. This is where previous producing experience proves invaluable.

It’s taken me a few years to recognize the other reason why I prefer this role over producing. During this early phase, there is a sense of open possibilities that inspires optimism. It’s the honeymoon phase. Once production starts, the compromises begin. The division between the business and creative sides become more evident. The challenge lies in helping the filmmakers achieve their desired visions -which at times grow grander during production and post production process- while remaining fiscally responsible to the studio. Sometimes it’s a daunting responsibility. Just ask anyone who has worked with Jim Cameron or Baz Luhrmann!

I know for some, this political balancing act is part of the stimulation. They thrive on being the diplomat whose capable contributions shepherd the films through the difficult political waters. I am not one of those people! I love being in the middle of a creative storm, not a political one. I’m much more comfortable figuring out a character’s motivation (“What are Superhero X’s true fears?”) over those of my colleagues and friends. So, perhaps it all comes down to this: Like Rodney King, I just want everyone to get along.

So there you have it. Why a woman gave up a good steady paycheck for the unstable world of consulting.