What's Really Good?

So, I’m a film student and currently taking the required intro production class for my major. Let me give you a little background of my production class: there are 14 people in it: ten white students, four black, with nine guys and five girls. Given these ratios, you can see how it’s a little intimidating and may feel excluding.

There are four major projects for this class: montage, continuity, audio, and the final, which can be any kind of project we want. Currently, we’re done with montage, finishing up continuity, and now starting audio. The montage project was done the second day of class so there wasn’t a lot of planning/thought thrown into it. For continuity, however, we were given a scenario for a short sequence and needed to put together a pre-production folder with storyboards, a shot list, a shot sequence list, and a lot of other kinds of lists in order to shoot it. Basically, this required a lot of time and thought. Since we would be working in groups, our instructor (a young woman who was a TA for one of my classes this winter) told us that the director would be the person with the most storyboards. Being the director/overachiever I am in my head, I ended up doing 45 shots on my storyboard and lemme tell you, it took some time and thought.

I usually try not to build myself up too much over things I want to happen so when they don’t I won’t be too upset, but I really wanted to be the director of this project. I felt that I needed to gain more experience filming “professionally.” However, in spite of my 45 shots, another member of my group (me and four white guys) was made director even though he only had 41 shots. I was very shocked and a little upset.

I had so many because as I said, I really wanted to be director, but even with my 45, I was sure someone else had more. To have someone else chosen over me when he did less troubled me. I was left to wonder what had happened to influence her in that decision. Was mine too complicated? Was my camera diagram too convoluted? Did I do something wrong on one of my lists? But the guy she picked hadn’t even had his shot lists typed out. So what the hell happened?

I didn’t think race had anything to do with it, I’m pretty sure the instructor isn’t like that. Ultimately I reasoned that her decision was made in my best interest. I am a black woman working in a group of white men; maybe she felt they wouldn’t comply with my authority as director. And as much as I appreciate her considering this, if this is what she considered, I’m 19; I’m a grown woman and can handle myself. I am a quiet person and perhaps a little timid when it comes to talking to people I don’t know, but to be a director, you have to be a leader and a leader doesn’t necessarily mean being a ball-busting bitch. You can command attention and be authoritative with calm force.

I would later find out from one of my friends from production who had worked with the guy she picked, that that guy was kind of like “white trash”, (according to her, at least,) so maybe the decision was made to ensure there wouldn’t be any problems. Either the case, I was miffed, but I accepted her decision.

Cut to when we had to go shoot. Three of the guys, it was decided that they would be our actors, with the chosen guy as director, of course, then I was left to be the slate girl (as I had been for the montage project, in a group with two white men) and also left to note the production logs. The slate is something of an important tool when filming since it helps in editing. When you film, it will usually be out of sequence, so you put the slate with the shot number in front of the camera, begin filming, then snatch it out of frame when the director calls for action.

However, our director didn’t want to use a slate, (but he let me anyway, though I was getting the feeling midway through that he may have been recording after I moved the slate) or even the tripod. He shot scenes in such a rushed, “let’s get this shit done” way, not taking it seriously at all, saying how stupid it was. His shooting was very strange; he never got too close to the action, just from different angles (or rather corners of the room) and zoomed in. One of the guys asked then, why did he do so many storyboards. Apparently, he had BLOWN SOME TREES and went crazy on the storyboarding. While shooting, I don’t even think he followed his shot list. Also, the guys were talking and it came up that not one of them had passed the camera test, which is something you need to pass to check out equipment to shoot your final. I was the only one who passed in the group, one of the two who passed in the entire class.

We were given two hours to shoot, but with him, we were “done” in one. Since we had time, we watched our footage. Sure enough, watching the tape, I saw that for many shots, he did shoot over the slate, which led to some confusion when we had to capture clips from the tape onto the computer. #duh-duh, dummy#

The next day, I was helping the friend who had worked with him before, telling her how shoddy his work ethic and quality and how poorly composed his scenes were and how I felt gravely cheated since I was a little more qualified to be director. I passed the camera test, I had the most shots on my storyboard, and I would have taken this project seriously enough to not half-ass my way through. She went on to tell me that the instructor may have picked him since he was “always in her face,” he told her once that she was hot and smart. This led me to re-evaluate my original assessment of the instructor. Had she really sold me out because some guy told her she was hot and smart?

She didn’t strike me as the type of women to do that, but flattery does go a long way with most women, especially since she and he are probably very close in age. She strikes me as a smart, sophisticated woman, but she could be the kind of smart, sophisticated woman to get off on being called hot by some kind of rebellious stoner. Might be something like a fantasy for her. I don’t know, but again I was troubled.

Last Friday was the last day to capture/edit in class. Our director had to leave, so we were capturing without him when we noticed that in many scenes, the tripod, that he decided not to use, was left in the background. Since our project is based on continuity, this is kind of a bad thing, but we decided a way to work around this. Still, he fucked it up. Though we could all take some blame, as director, he was the one responsible for scene composition and the only one to look through the viewfinder, so he should have seen the tripod there, but since he didn’t really give a shit about the quality of his shots, I highly doubt it would matter much to him. He also had a shot of the top of my head in the frame. Why not tell me to move or do a reshoot?

About the tripod, he later apologized to me personally and I told him it was not really a big deal, since it was consistent, but it does burn my grits. I hate it when people don’t follow the rules, thinking their way is right, only to fuck it up. Fuck yourself up, not your group members. At least we got to edit our own cuts by ourselves.

As the project is in the can now, I would wonder if maybe I blew this incident out of proportion, maybe it’s my “black girl paranoia” flaring up, but I cannot understand how someone would ever make the conscious decision to pick someone with no work ethic over someone who values one.

It kicks into my fear of people openly accepting mediocrity as the new standard. My production friend would also tell me that the director of her group put little effort into his storyboards. Ergo, my instructor must be a “fuck effort” person. I wasn’t raised that way. Anything with your name on it deserves some pride put into it or what’s the point of doing it?

All the groups had white male directors, what the fuck is that about anyway? I can’t speak for the other group’s members, but I know the effort I put forth. The film industry is very racist and sexist; was this supposed to serve as some kind of foreshadowing to how my career will be? Some under-qualified white male director behind the camera while competently qualified me is stuck being slate girl?

It’s great that “minorities” are making grand advances in mathematics and science and medicine, it really is, but there should be a larger number representing in media because that is how we communicate. People go to the hospital only when they need to, but we watch tv every night and go to the movies on the weekends.

Think of all of the ignorance and frustration that could be eliminated if people of color would/could express themselves. And when I say “people”, I mean a variety of persons of color since one person from one race cannot represent everyone of their race. Same thing with gender. When only one person does represent one race or gender role, we usually call this a stereotype. The only reason writers use stereotypes is because it’s much easier to use an image or role everyone knows of rather than actually delve deep enough to develop a character of substance. Basically most writers, usually white in their early 30’s, are LAZY.

Bullshit on that bullshit. I won’t be denied or discouraged. Maybe I’ll never be as recognized as Spielberg or Scorsese, but as a black female, it is of the utmost importance that I try to mark my place in media and let my perspective be seen.

My mission is difficult, but it will be accomplished.

#miles to go before I sleep, miles to go before I sleep#