Wardrobe

Hello, is there anybody out there?

This weekend I went out with my wardrobe supervisor, Angie Vasquez, to a bunch of thrift stores to get some ideas, and some pieces for our film. 

The Salvation Army had a 10 for $10 sale going on, so we were able to get a lot of different choices for the Lisa character. More importantly, however, is that we both got a sense of the style and look that we are going for with these characters.

Thrift stores are great places to find cheap wardrobe for your film, and because it has all been worn before, you don’t have crisp, off the rack clothes that look like all your characters just went shopping the night before. Hollywood uses techniques to age and distress clothing to make it look used and worn. Already done for us!

Cheap filmmaking!

-Michael Kenyon Rosenberg

Meet the Writers (and the story)

smoking writers

Hey there anyone, someone, anyone:

“Shutterbug” is a short film adapted from a feature length film that I wrote a few years ago. I wanted to create a short film idea out of it, something easy to shoot, and something that we could shop to film festivals. The best case scenario would be what happened with the Wes Anderson film “Bottle Rocket,” which went to Sundance, was discovered by the “industry,” and Wes was given money to make the feature length Bottle Rocket, that started his ascent to movie millions (estimated).

Darth Schuhe and I are long time writing partners. We have written an animated pilot, a feature length screenplay, and several short screenplays, one of which was produced and directed by Patrick Clement. I got together with Darth, and together we adapted the 90 page feature length Shutterbug screenplay into the 12 page “Shutterbug” short film.

“Shutterbug,” the short film, is a story about a young photographer, Mason, who has a unique artistic viewpoint when he looks through his lens. He lives with his grandmother and is given an ultimatum: go to college or get a job and start paying rent. Mason was bullied in high school, so this isn’t as easy a choice as one would think.

On his grandmothers advice, Mason goes to the school to snap some photos of the interesting architecture on campus, when who does he run into, but a bully. But he also runs into a young lady painting a picture with the same skewed artistic viewpoint that Mason has. And then she calls him a pervert for taking a picture of her.

After that, hilarity ensues, and we have a twist at the end, which I don’t wish to spoil for all you eager viewers out nowhere. But for the one or two people who happen to be reading this, well, tough.

See you on the other side of tomorrow!

-Michael Kenyon Rosenberg

 

Location Scouting

Hey all you beautiful anybodies!

Yesterday, I went out with our director of photography (abbreviated DP), and we did some location scouting. Almost half of our film takes place outside during the day, so whenever you are shooting outside, your primary concern is the location of the sun. in order to give our film the best possible look, we want to make sure that the locations that we have chosen will provide us with ample sunlight to shoot, without having direct sunlight or sunlight pointing right into the lens of the camera.

We found three great locations for the three scenes that we want to shoot on campus, and we have organized them, so that we will have the optimum sunlight for those specific scenes.

Lighting fun!

-Michael Kenyon Rosenberg

Image

Meet the Producers

Meet the Producers

Clockwise, Michael Kenyon Rosenberg, Ryan T. Husk, and Darth Schuhe.

I met these guys almost 20 years ago in guitar class in high school. Ryan and I were in a band,  we have all made a bunch of films together, and all three of us have written, directed, produced, crewed, and acted in films to some varying degree.

It is always great to work with these guys. As you can tell by the picture, we have a lot of fun together.

-Michael Kenyon Rosenberg

SAG-AFTRA Short Film Agreement

Hello lonely readers,

In order to add legitimacy to our film, we are pursuing a SAG-AFTRA Short Film Agreement. To break it down into non-film terms, this means that we can legitimately use actors who are members of the union, and we don’t have to pay them (with exceptions). The Short Film Agreement is for narrative short films under 35 minutes, with a total budget of no more that $5000, shot entirely in the US, and no more than 30 days of principal photography (main shooting days).

We expect our film to have an total edited run time of about 12 minutes; our budget is $500; we are shooting the whole thing in the San Fernando Valley; and we only have 2 days of principal photography, so we more than qualify for this contract.

Furthermore, we are limited to how we can get away with not paying the actors. We can exhibit this film at film festivals, before the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, to non-paying, non-public, established entertainment industry members to showcase it, and on one public access channel for not more than one year from the first run date. If we want to put our film, say, on YouTube, we would then have to pay each union actor $100 per day of work, and we would have to fill out tax forms, and contribute to the SAG pension and health plans. No thanks!

I started off by submitting my request to the union: SAG-AFTRA website. It took them a week and a half to get back to me, and I just received an email today with the contract, a pre-production cast list, and a few letters telling me how to fill everything out. They also included a SAG-AFTRA logo, which I am to add to the credits of my film, along with “Special Thanks to SAG-AFTRA.”

There are a lot more hoops for me to jump through during and after production as well, and there are all sorts of reasons why I would have to pay the actors extra on the spot such as meal time violations, shooting longer that 12 hours, having less than 12 hours between wrapping a shoot on one day and calling the actors to set the next day, and the list goes on, none of which we plan to incur.

Legal fun!

-Michael Kenyon Rosenberg

The Die is Cast, and so is Our Film

Hello there somebody!

Well, the casting is complete for our film, and once I get signed releases from all of our cast members, I will post pictures and information about all of them. We got all of our first choices!

It is exciting to be done with the casting and get on to the next part of pre-production. 

Work, work, work.

-Michael Kenyon Rosenberg

SAG/AFTRA Short Film Agreement

Hey there anyone at all,

So, we want to use SAG/AFTRA actors in this short film that we are doing, so a couple weeks ago, I became SAG/AFTRA signatory, and I submitted our project for their approval. They emailed me a link, so that I could check on the progress of the contract, and just today it was updated to state that they had assigned a business representative to look over our submission.

SAG/AFTRA actors are usually of higher quality than non-union actors, and you really need this contract if you want to work with them, otherwise you could get your actors in trouble with the union for doing non-union work. Also, it makes your project look more professional, just to add the SAG/AFTRA bug in the credits.

For more information about the process of getting approved for a Short Film Agreement, check out this article I found: http://emilycallaway.com/tag/sag-aftra-short-film/.

Ciao for now!

-Michael Kenyon Rosenberg

Sorting Through Headshots

Hey there Internets!

Well, casting is over, and now we have the arduous job of sorting through all the headshots to pick out our actors.

We have a couple good choices for Grandma, Mason, and Papa Russell, but we are having a tough time pegging down our Lisa. We had some really good auditions for Lisa, so it’s tough to nail it down.

Wish us luck!

-Michael Kenyon Rosenberg