Day 19: Roadmap into the industry (Creating unforgettable moments)

In 2007, I took a documentary filmmaking course from Wendy Apple. Several of my classmates were working in the industry, and had traveled to California from several countries to take the course.

I'd invited a colleague to take the class, and when she showed a rough cut of her project the professor suggested that she edit it, making it several minutes shorter.

After spending hours gathering and sorting through information, spending time with very real characters, capturing thoughts, words, and/or images on computer or videotape, discarding anything can be heart wrenching. It's such an impossibility and is so difficult to do, that film students that summer likened it to drowning puppies.

My friend called me at about 10:00 p.m. the night before our projects were due. Her documentary would've been fine for our workplace; she had traveled out of state with the person whose story was captured in her documentary. Every moment seemed important; she was exhausted. Wasn't it OK? Should she make the cuts? I told her to drown the puppies.

Later that week, when the documentary was shown in a theater at USC, the audience was comprised of faculty and hundreds of summer program students. Something pretty incredible happened during the screening. Within seconds there was an electricity in the air that hadn't been there during previous screenings; the audience roared with laughter at the same spots, was quiet as they experienced compelling parts of the story; applauded, cheered. And the documentary went on to win a regional EMMY Award.

When she edited out details that didn't create unforgettable moments my colleague had accomplished something that Professor Uno highlighted during the first night of the Directing Actors course last week. He quoted Ron Howard (words taken from a seminar the director presented at USC):

"[Moviemaking is all about] moments, highlights. So many Directors talk about the fact that a great movie is a culmination of--some Directors say three; some will say five; some say seven, but it's all about really great, memorable moments in a movie that you can build a narrative around."

So here's to keeping it simple; to creating great moments.

NOTE: These entries are inspired by the final assignment for The Business of Writing for Screen and Television, a School of Cinematic Arts' course taught by Frank Wuliger. Hoping to help his students become working screenwriters, he asked us to create a personal, five-year road map into the industry.