Sean Talbott leads his group of six into the welcomed green shade of nine-foot-high corn stalks. The mid-90 degree blistering heat of August does nothing to deter the filmmaker when he knows exactly what he wants to shoot.
Sean, a second-year Master of Fine Arts student in the school of film, has spent the past year planning, budgeting, writing and shooting his film, The Bees. Today, however, it’s just the director himself, Eric, his sound man, two actors, Stefan and Emily, and his girlfriend-turned-production assistant Gina.
Eric starts by strapping a harness around his waist and prepping the microphone on the boom as Sean pulls his camera, the formidable Canon EOS 5D Mark II, out of a huge black case (scorching hot in the heat, of course). Stefan and Emily review the script.
The scene is short: about a minute in length, with one line of dialogue and a lot of running. Gina writes the necessary info on the slate, or clapperboard, as Sean climbs up a ladder with his camera, prepping for his first shot with an aerial flair.
“Mark it,” Sean yells.
“Scene 3, Shot 1, Take 1,” Gina responds, just before clacking shut the slate.
“Action!” Sean shouts, loud enough so Stefan and Emily can hear him from across the field. Emily comes into view, chased by Stefan. Just before he reaches her, he darts to the side. She turns, confused, searching the corn. He sneaks behind her.
“Think it’ll always be this easy?” Stefan, now in character as Scott, whispers. Emily, now Kailey, dashes away.
End scene.
Except it’s not over. There’s more. For every scene, there are dozens of shots, varying widely in length and lens type, used to frame each moment in the most cinematographic, aesthetic and emotional way possible. Sean has planned 12 shots of this scene, and each shot requires several takes. That’s why an average student film shoot, according to Sean, lasts for roughly eight hours. Sean changes positions. He films the same one-minute scene, first from on top of the ladder, then from behind a row of corn. And every time, Stefan repeats that same line.
“Think it’ll always be this easy?”
It starts with the inception of a story: a conversation overheard, or perhaps a story a friend tells you—a small little anecdote that plants itself like a seed in the filmmaker’s mind and grows of its own volition.
“It’s like a tree,” Sean explains. “You get more detail, you get more branches, whether it be through a treatment or a step outline. … I tend to think that film is about small moments in life. It’s how someone turns their head and flashes a smile and the reaction that that sort of brings about.”
That idea falls to paper soon enough. For Sean, his story began in class with the assignment to produce a short film. And Sean, a man who cherishes the carefree days of adolescence, had the origin of his story in an idea of young love and uninhibited life.
“It’s a simple movie about the disparity between what you think and what really is important for survival: making choices and finding out who your real friends are,” Sean explains. “It’s as much about geography as it is about sex, desire and risk.
“This is all sort of pre-production,” Sean says, “which is actually, in my opinion, the most important phase of any sort of filmmaking venture because the more you plan a film going into it the less likely you are to run into problems going into it.”
Planning is everything with film, especially given that student filmmakers, in addition to professionals, work on a tight budget. Funding can be gained through scholarship or fundraising, but many student filmmakers, such as Sean, pay out-of-pocket. Sean worked two summers at a moving company in Columbus to build the necessary funds that are needed for all kinds of expenses, such as equipment and lodging for the cast and crew.
Emily Williams, a junior in the school of theater, and her boyfriend, Stefan Kumor, a senior graduating this fall, were both cast to act opposite each other. Emily plays Kailey, a malcontent teenager who leaves home to explore life in the big city. Stefan portrays Scott, the man whose life she is tied to. Several other student actors participated as well.
“Sean’s a cool director in the fact that he lets you sort of do your own thing,” Stefan says. “Before we started filming I came up to him and we started talking about the character and what … was good for the character and how he would act and interact with Kailey, that’s Emily, and he was very open and let me do whatever I wanted unless it was completely wrong.”
The crew is chosen based on a system of traded labor. Most film students know how to handle lighting and sound in addition to the actual filming. Filmmakers help their friends out and are helped in return. Sean himself counts 12 sets, other than his own, that he’s worked on. He’s currently working on assembling a reel of his personal specialty, cinematography, in order to sell himself in L.A. in the coming years.
Once pre-production is finished, the shooting begins.
“Think it’ll always be this easy?”
Post-production is a nightmare for the average filmmaker. On a professional set, directors have editors. Students aren’t always so lucky.
“I got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of clips that you have to go through and watch and label,” Sean says, “whether it be Scene 28, Shot 6, Take 3 or medium shot of Emily leaving the room.”
Sean estimated roughly 500 clips that he had to watch and label before moving on to actual editing.
Currently, he is working on choosing which shots to use in each scene and putting them all together—a job which he mentions is made significantly easier with the advent of digital video.
“It’s just a lot of hard work,” Emily says. “This made me realize how many different shots there are. It’s crazy how much time goes into it, how much thought. It’s crazy.”
Hard work is definitely a common theme when it comes to filmmaking, and when asked when he expected his film to be done, Sean responded that for him, a film is never done. If it weren’t for deadlines, there would always be something to work on. His film is indicative of many student projects: the talent is there, the resources are there. All it takes is the work ethic and energy to make a film happen.
“Think it’ll always be this easy?”
“I think a lot of people seem to believe [filmmaking] is sort of more of a hobby than a career path or a job,” Sean says. “I just get the general sense that a lot of people believe it’s as easy as just setting up a camera and just pointing and shooting and asking your friends to come over and you’ll give them a case of beer. But it’s really a lot more complicated than that. … It takes a lot of skill to create an elegant, poignant film that is remembered through the ages. |
