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From fund raising production you just never stop to direct. Yet it will be they will not be deterred and get these elephants across the Alps are going to kick Roseanne I really think of myself as a story. These are just the stories that I tell in the film is with me. City Arts is made possible by Dorothy and Lewis Coleman the Lunesta team or its charitable trust and Sylvia and Ralph Avalon. Funding is also provided by the Michael and Helen Shaefer foundation. The Marilyn M. Simpson trust the

New York City Department of Cultural Affairs through the cultural challenge program and the members of 13. I don't think I could do what I do outside. Mark in New York one has access to everything. People the Saudis the culture the chaos in New York is my studio. Here is a studio to really think of myself as a story. These are just the stories that I tell the filter of the media. I think being a filmmaker is like a vocation it's a calling it it's test and you never home safe and it's never over. I mean you're still physically biggest thing you can do is any kind of artist

at each stage you question yourself why am I doing this from the very first when you're writing a script and crunching up pages and saying no no. Sometimes I thought I'm actually going to get fired from my own movie. Is he 60. I find it remarkable the process is now with his leap of faith. Are you willing to blow the image of yourself as a huge screen that gets projected world wide or out of

town. Nobody thought of this one and I'm going to hope you and the Writers Guild East and West receives tens of thousands of scripts every year a lot of people want to write for this industry a lot of people think that's where the future is. Thirty years ago they might have written books certainly would have written novels and for magazines right now the fantasy is I will be a screenwriter and that will make me a rich and famous writer. It's cool to catch and someday it's going to rain the sky. You heard it here. My hope for this is that I'll be directing and possibly producing it. It's called looks or is it's about a teenager early 20s goes upstate New York spends some time Gloria said getting away from this crazy city.

It was sort of about to give up and run away. Basically because I've been writing scripts for a number of years and you know there are a lot of a lot of scripts that went away didn't get finished and work on hard things. I just had the sense that maybe it was the thing I was going to be better at than anything else. And the writing is definitely the most difficult without it and you know I think it has to be because without without the good script you're never going to have a good movie. Rita could you kill Peter and me a minute here alone you know. Klein attorney if I don't look at pictures she goes to the outer

office slamming the door. I'm sorry I just met her you have no idea how important it is for a script writer to hear his script because you find out so. Quickly and painfully what's off you find out when when time grinds to a halt. When lines sound like creative writing as opposed to human speech do you have the body of someone called goofball in your refrigerator. Well yes but not nearly drunk enough to hear this. This night is a weekly screenplay series and the idea behind it is to create a new space for writers for new voices coming out in the world of independent filmmaking. This was kind of an imagined story that had I not found acting. What would I be doing today. So all these things from my own life when I was living in Long Island were breaking into the script.

Yeah you know that week I left my number one and if you were going to kind of get. No not yet. Took me a period of time seven months of starting and stopping I said finish the screenplay because I couldn't think of the whole story I had these characters and I but I didn't have a structure and I just started writing. And yeah I did get into trouble but it's a lot that you know what I know what I'm going I think I met my mother. We're going to tell you you can do anything on paper. You can blow up the world on paper doesn't cause you anything but the ink you know. But then reality comes and you know movies aren't about paper and clear. OK here we go right away. First this is free. All right and wrong down camera rolling. Do you think the

idea of somehow convincing someone to open a checkbook and write you for you know at the very least a check at the very least for for over $500000 places you in a frame of mind it has literally nothing to do with the joy of filmmaking. You know think about it I know it you know we discussed it once and if it's the 50th time you've done it. And part of you is has any sort of self doubt. It's the most excruciating thing in the world. You're trying to pump this energy this this enthusiasm into something which which you know is is you know it's like lifting up a building all by yourself. I still think I'm a terrible salesman. You know it's it's it's really hard for me to describe the film. Before having made the film if I really knew what it was about and if I could really articulate that why make it you know I mean for me you know it was it's also a process of learning. But that's really hard to tell somebody you know give me money so I can learn

about you know what this film is telling you. So I have to I have to get another 20 grand somewhere. You know none of that now is a bit time to ask you whatever it is want you to you know consider it. All right and you know you see it in you they decide but right now I think it's it's gone from a very speculative investment to kind of like you know it's a good film. I had written a script on the corner that would be low budget to take place in the city on mostly one location and I had a script for years and we tried to raise money. Kept raising money and you know dribs and drabs and money came in when we were when he went as I am a carpet that constantly rolled up on yourself the more people you get to say yeah I give money to look back and people were saying no I can't do it anymore. And then someone told me they'd buy the script. I said I really want to direct it myself and the person said then you should

Livingston producing an executive producing an associate producing and co-producing and co-executive producer and an executive in charge of production. I had it figured out myself yet. Going to see one of the roles of of the producers to make sure that the directors are aware of all what all the choices are and what the compromise or the considerations that go into making those choices. Film comes up and that is a really heightened state of awareness that the director has to be it has to be in today for me is waking up at 6 a.m. I go into my knapsack waking you know today's inbox which is usually about two inches thick of paper. They usually be a meeting with a director or writer or someone here on staff that has found some

serious content as a real production oriented person who knows physical pressure at the same time as a reader and a thinker and that's rare. You don't get people who work 12 14 hours a day or some such and then go home and read scripts. It just doesn't happen really was the exception. These are the active files over here of the different projects that we're involved with. This is of course Che who end up on the wall prior to a meeting we had with some Wall Street investment bankers. They were coming in to give us money and we thought it like a good test of how serious they were was whether they would give somebody that had a poster of Che behind him and they gave us money. They have to settle for one gram and that involves and freezing nobody found by necessity. I was always frustrated about the lack of films I felt really spoke to me that were made for me as an audience member. And when James Jamieson I found I made the commitment to form good machine with just a list of

directors who wanted to work with him and was high on my list. Here is the volume little bit and gradually LOreal that I look I think of home movies as a composed is a cooked product and everybody has the inputs and where in the editing room for some mixing room. In post-production that's where blend everything together. So yeah yeah yeah. It began in the United one. After six years of pounding employed life and was cooking at home

and everything. And I win some award in Taiwan for the script I wrote then pushing hands. You walk to the office of the most unusual friend of Ted's. I said I thought I'd make a film I'm going to die. You've got to help me and I got to the small pile of money if I want to this we very prize can make a movie with this. They announced they were the king of no budget filmmaking in New York and St. James was teaching that in Columbia University. He set out and pitched the film of course pitch a pitch for me anyway is a gruesome experience he's not a Hollywood kind of pitching guy you know if I knew what I was doing I wouldn't be a filmmaker and of a filmmaker in ways that I'd give them money. And that's where they started. The production process was something that I'm pushing hands on wedding banquet

and wasn't yet familiar with and became very schooled in that sort of low budget around the so the case if you define yourself as the kind of filmmaker somebody who hates Hard movies far from it in fact what I think you need to define yourself as somebody who makes movies using a variety of means many of which are more than available to Hollywood in which hard filmmakers do fairly well and others of which you find yourself on the street or in your backyard or at the local grocery store. Broadway and then st ory 1983 right. The forest for the Grand Street clock

work 40 New York is extremely intricately layered and the street is immediately accessible and incredibly interesting undertow. You know a lot of people approach filmmaking in terms of a sort of far off project that they need to raise funds for and gather people around and have a sort of endless meetings about it and that's fine I mean sometimes it just has to be that way but I I didn't want to I don't want to wait I didn't want to say well I'm going to be a filmmaker I wanted to be a filmmaker. Do they have rights. So I just started shooting anybody you know. I often find that it's best to go out without any plan at all. Working in a low profile kind of guerilla

fashion can often provide you with people and sights and weather that a larger crew could never afford to wait around for. On one hand that's a real pain in the ass on the other hand you can't beat what the real world will deliver. I've never been that interested in that kind of straightforward documentary. It's more kind of visceral approaches based on experience. It's kind of automatic you know. It's not really about what do I shoot this in this in this it's more it has to be shot. Smoking something like licensed.

I was always interested in movies when I was a kid. To me this is this Is it a dream job. And I mean I get to help you know young filmmakers and get to work in some sense on big films. And I mean mad in the palm and Michael Moore. I mean this was particularly fun for us and I get to be involved in all of these films to a certain extent but on on on smaller films you actually have contact with the filmmakers. It's just fun. These are some of our our mixing studios in this studio we're mixing love God which is a very low budget. I have to say in many ways I vant

Gard good machine film which is having its world premiere at Sundance in about four weeks. We can go in. Hi guys this is Frank the director and the sound editor. Kelly one of the producers from good machine and Robert Fernandez our mixer can we play. What is the story of live love die. Maybe it was the day you know that I needed to act out. So I sent out about 10 scripts and they all came back with little notes saying oh we joined right reading your script was a lot of fun. You know this film will never get me essentially and intense came back saying the exact same thing. This film will never be made. Thank you we really enjoyed the script but we're going to try to make it as a pretty transgressive

monsters that have sex in it. Giant worms coming out of my response. Someone who gets scrubbed to death. What got me excited about love the first and foremost was Frank. I felt that love God was incredibly current. I knew that Frank was very aware of what was happening and different elements of pop culture. Originally when we were able to raise the financing for it we thought oh I would just shoot it with a pair of cameras and just go completely desperate and shoot it on video for like $50000. By the time we finished the financing for the film we had of my sheet on film by then we were so enamored with the whole process of shooting a video what we could do with it how we could how we could push the technology how we could use different video stocks and over the less that we shot the film and video and digital videos we could use a lot of special facts that was

unfolding. It looks great it looks really different. It looks an indescribable doesn't look like film doesn't like video. Guy girl I was really lovely small ps. i love working with first time directors. I find it really enlightening experience funny every time I like watching directors and you meet directors and you know you first created me with that. Your skin is fine you know and then you get into pre-production first blotches start showing up you know. But Turner in the editing room is like a little clump of hair here it is a little club today or somebody would say somebody had made a face with raspberries You know I think you don't hear why the fuck it isn't.

It's somebody's watching. Filmmaking is one of the most tedious things you could you can you can imagine. I don't think people realize that just the idea of taking the camera going OK let's have a person stand there and say Hey how are you. It takes about three days to plan that and to set it up to get the lights and to do it. We need that standard warning as high as it can lead. I think she'll probably play with your friends that actually appear like this sticky fingers of time is far as story of a riddle about two women in tangled and non-linear time thank you. OK so what should you get on set and there's so much emphasis on making the production work. You know you don't have time to do 30 takes with your actors you don't have time to go in another room for two hours and get them to the right place you've really got to be ready so that the first take is what you're Hirst and then the second take is just like the brilliant improvisation in the moment.

Most of what is going to host is from the top or selection that spends your worth. There is a specific day where we were shooting in interviews apartment and we had to seems to do They were both I think about two and a half pages long. So we have this one sort of scene that we covered really intricately and we had this other scene that was designed to be of the same complexity but we had an hour to shoot it. And of course it was 3:00 in the morning when we came down to that final hour. And so we just shot a two shot you know a couple of singles handheld which is not how we you know plan to do this. We're still not seeing anything of your face. So we're going to get it you know before going to go for it here we should go pretty otherwise we shouldn't shoot the Sango. OK and I know you want to know what it was really terrifying because people have put a lot of work into this film and you don't want to let them down. You want them to be happy that they believed in

you. You know that that can wake you up in the middle of the night and get you that there's so much riding on your quote. So Nicole before you sit up and say you're worth it I want you just get back to that position and you have to have like an iron will. So you've got to really be like that. I will not be deterred him get me to elephants across the Alps or we're going to kick Rome's ass part of the church. The filmmaking is always to be going out then willing to make mistakes. It gets so overwhelming sometimes because there's so many questions that have to be answered and you don't have a lot of time right. And to say OK you know there's a lot of things in this world that are not in my control that I love doing. Thank you. Thank you. Can somebody tell me how.

Two weeks from tonight on CD-R part two outside the frame. There you are good loving cinema at the same time not liking how you do many of the movies I've missed because I just I look up there that they'd like to know I've never seen it before I see it in the world all around. You learn so much about yourself as a filmmaker in the editing room. It's really amazing. I thought places I would never ever do this again became too

much and I wanted to know I won every single stop now before he pulled back. I'll be done soon. His friend George doing something Mr. Foley studio follies are sound effects that are recorded in sync with with picture people actually recreate the footsteps or the clothes Russell's or the glass clink so the door closes. I mean everything in here is a prop is old fashioned you know walking on videotape to simulate walking on grass. It's kind of a cool thing. You know this is horror and all kinds of locks you know. You know the Foley artists actually are acting so that the footsteps sound like the character. And that's a matter of recording technique

having the right props and having the people who know how to do it. David you want to say anything about ADR City Arts continues online. Be sure to visit w net station on the Web where you can see all the artists and events we've showcased in the series get information on places and players linked to artists websites and read in-depth interviews with fascinating personalities. City Arts on w net station its 13 online City Arts is made possible by Dorothy and Lewis Coleman. The Lunesta team or its charitable trust and Sylvia and Ralph Klein funding is also provided by the Michael and Helen Shaefer foundation. The Marilyn M. Simpson trust the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs through the cultural challenge program and the members of 13.