Plane Pretend

A few months ago, I was able to take part in a study for Media, Diversity, & Social Change Initiative conducted by the University of Southern California and LUNAFEST​, a festival that played my last film in over 150 venues in the US and Canada a few years ago. Today I received the findings the study produced.

Key findings from the report include:

Of 3,933 short film directors at 10 top worldwide festivals, a full 68 percent were males and 32 percent were females, a gender ratio of 2.13 male directors to every 1 female director. 

Females were more likely to be directors of documentary shorts than narrative or animated shorts. 37 percent of documentary directors were women versus 31 percent of animated directors and 28 percent of narrative directors.

Female helmers of documentaries were more likely to have films based outside the U.S. (40%) than from the U.S. (30%).

There has been no significant change in the percentage of female short film directors over the last five years.

Interviews with female filmmakers identified several career barriers:  Work/family balance (64%), finance (61%), subject matter, cast, or crew of films (29%), and that the entertainment industry favors males (25%).

Interviews also illuminated potential ways to support female directors: Networking and mentorship (71%), encouragement or examples/role models (43%), increasing funding (46%), improving skills (32%), and others.

Across 115 short films screened at LUNAFEST across 15 years, a total of 63 percent of the 744 speaking or named characters evaluated were female and only 37 percent were male. In 2014, 28.1% of speaking characters across the 100 top-grossing movies were female.

81 percent of LUNAFEST shorts depicted a female lead/co lead driving the plot.

Of the 715 characters that could be evaluated, 38% were from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups.

37 percent of the short films’ leads or co leads were from an underrepresented racial/ethnic group.

Across the 179 characters coded 40-64 years of age, 54 percent were female and 46 percent were male. 

The study provides further evidence that

when we have diversity behind the camera, on-screen depictions better approximate the diversity we see around us off-screen.

The Media, Diversity, & Social Change Initiative at USC Annenberg and the LUNAFEST team are inspired by the work of the female LUNAFEST filmmakers and our hope is that these women—and all female filmmakers--garner the audience they deserve, and the caliber of their work is recognized by a broader, more mainstream audience.You can find additional results and the full report with infographics attached to this email or at: http://annenberg.usc.edu/mdsci

Here are posts you can share to spread awareness and encouragement for supporting women filmmakers:

Problematic pipeline. Female directors: 28% narr shorts, 18% indie narr features, 16% TV eps, & 4.1% top-grossing movies. #LUNAFEST15

Females almost 1/3 of directing pipeline. 32% of short/mid-length film dirs at 10 top fests are females. #LUNAFEST15 http://ow.ly/T56zM

Career barriers of female directors: 64% of interviewees say balancing work and family is a challenge. #LUNAFEST15 http://ow.ly/T56zM

Short films at #LUNAFEST are by, for, about girls & women: 63% of chars, 81% of leads/co leads female in 115 shorts. http://ow.ly/T56zM

We went into our rough cut screening a few weeks ago with a 25 minute film (including credits). Last week, we managed to get it down to 20 minutes.

As director, producer, and writer of most of my films, I have never liked editing my own narratives. I like the idea of having someone less bias than myself chopping away and adhering the story in the best way possible - someone who does not know how long it took to get that shot, who does not know the spatial logic (or illogic) of the set, who does not know how much it cost to accomplish a scene.

My good friend Mark has been this person for my last 3 films. Once, he cut out 9 of the 10 child extras that took me lots of time and coordinating for my film "When I Grow Up" (not to mention, the kids parents would be heartbroken to find out they had to break the news to their kid that they 'didn't make the cut.')

The other night, we sat together at the cutting board, proudly polishing up the handful of details we have narrowed down from bucketfuls of initial notes. A series of 4 shots stood out to us. We both looked at each other, excited to have pinpointed what can be cut out. I asked if we could just cut two of the shots out. He said, it would have to be all 4. I pleaded, "Maybe just 3 can be lost?????" He insisted it would have to be all.

Feeling defeated, I admitted why I wanted the shots, "But that iron!!!!!"   It was very hard for me to part with the shots because it was the only chance to showcase the vintage iron that reminded me of my childhood. I had made a huge deal about getting it during preproduction. One of my best friends donated the prop to Plane Pretend, so that attached me to it, too. There may even have been some obsessing over it in last looks during filming. (Okay, there was.)

The iron got cut from the film.

Later that night, we were tightening up a different scene when i noticed a shot that was too long. Mark started trimming at it slowly and more meticulously than usual. What was he being so particular about?

I asked him to shorten it a few times and noticed he would trim, then adjust the clip elsewhere. I overheard words from under his breath. He was obsessing over a dash on the airport's runway that passed in a split second... through the window... in the background.

The dash made it to the film, but only by sheer luck. The timing was perfect.

 It has been one year since the emotional roller coaster that was our Kickstarter campaign ended in a great victory. Not only did we reach our funding goal, but in the last few hours, our 111th backer, Craig Wagener made a $1,000 donation that pushed us over into exceeding our goal.

There is so much to write about the 30 day campaign, and at this point, I can only remember some key points. A previous blog post talked about our launch party, and you can see pictures at our Facebook album here.

I called the campaign an emotional roller coaster because there were days when the $$Love$$ just kept coming in. Those days I felt invincibly hopeful and inspired. The thought in my head was, "People believe in this film, I love filmmaking, I can't wait to make this film with all my friends, etc."

...But then there were the lulls...

the silence...

the hours and sometimes days where noone was backing our kickstarter. These days my heart felt sunken, the thoughts in my head were irrational. "Noone cares about this film, what's the point, why can't you just find your own money, this film is never going to get made." (The way Kickstarter works is that if you do not meet your goal, you do not get any pledges. I had chosen that route as a way to "burn my ships" and not allow any escape plans.) But of course, the good moments far outweighed the bad!

These are some of the happy moments from the campaign: 1) Every time we received a contribution. Endorphins would shoot straight into my brain!

2) Receiving our first $1,000 backer - a woman who had seen my film while it toured on LUNAFEST and requested my email from the tour coordinators. She emailed me requesting that I keep her posted on my future work. I was on my bicycle when the message came in on the Kickstarter app, and I pedaled fast and happy for a looooong time - after stopping to call Miss Medrano, our co-producer.

3) Receiving encouraging FB messages from our backers Neil Dave and Miss Longoria (my 1st grade Gifted and Talented teacher.) Words went a long way in keeping my head above water during the lulls I mentioned earlier.

4) Our co-producer Miss Medrano attended an event for Hispanic Leaders, and we received a few checks in the mail from people she met at the event. That was awesome!!!!

5) Receiving a contribution from the other side of the world.

6) People I met at Austin Film Festival contributed to the campaign.

7) November 8, We still had a looooong way to go to get to our crowdfunding goal, but the McLeans saved the day, matching all contributions for up to $2000, on top of what they had already pledged.

8) November 15th, we really started to panic. It was the weekend, and once the work week would kick in, it would be hard to promote the campaign. We had a fun experience advertising ourselves at Formula 1s Fan Fest. Read about that here.

9) WE REACH OUR GOAL WITH 37 HOURS TO GO!!!

10) Craig Wagener makes a final contribution to Plane Pretend in the amount of $1,000, and we end our campaign at a glorious $9,319!!!

THANK YOU AGAIN TO ALL WHO MADE THIS JOURNEY INCREDIBLE FOR US!  There were so many other great moments including when my Tias and cousins logged onto Kickstarter. I just cannot include it all. Please be sure to visit our page of Kickstarter Backers, and if you see these people around, give them a big hug for us!!! 

I have so many lists of rewards I drafted for Plane Pretend. I had high hopes of giving out Pilot wings, making T-shirts, and giving everyone an opportunity for different rewards through way too many intervals of contributions.

It quickly became apparent that we would have to allocate too significant a portion of our raised funds back into rewarding contributors, defeating the purpose of their contributions. We thought of seeking people to donate services or goods that we could give away, but through all the brainstorming, we finally realized that we had our own services we could offer. I had password protected films I could share with people, and we were making a film that was going to produce many digital rewards for our contributors. We offered behind the scenes footage (Isaiah Mancha is our BTS documentarian), and for our executive producers, we offered an invitation to join us on set for a day.

Reward that hold lots of intangible power behind them are Recognition and the "Thank You". We gave these out in several ways:

Thank you's

1) We sent out what we called, "Happy Little thoughts." We thanked all our contributors with a link to Peter Pan's "You can fly" song as a way to show our contributors how their contribution was putting us in the air like a Happy Thought.

2) At the $300 reward level, thank you became a phone call from me and my mom. My mom is very expressive with her gratitude, so that was pretty valuable.

3) At $500, Thank you became a Skype Thank you/ Q&A after production. I ended up meeting in person with our $500 contributor, and had a great time saying thank you and talking about our film's adventures with Mr. Jackson.

Recognition

1) I love the feeling of being recognized for something I am a part of and was happy to be able to produce that feeling in others. We offered a name on our blog and a photo+shout out on Facebook as one way of recognizing our contributors.

2) After the $100 tier, we will recognize contributors in the Special Thanks credits of our film.

3) Associate Producers will be recognized on IMDB in addition to the other recognitions.

4) Executive Producers were recognized on set by our cast and crew, they will be on our movie poster, in a more prominent portion of our credits, and all the other recognition I have already listed. ADVICE: 1) Keep your rewards valuable, yet inexpensive

2) Do not create too many reward levels. Space out increments of reward levels.

3) Believe in the power of Thank You.

4) Believe in the value of your previous work. There was an original version of the campaign where we were handing out our films at a very low reward level, afraid that people would not want to contribute enough to watch or own a copy of our work. It actually helped the campaign to move those rewards up a level, and it will help our delivery of those items (i.e. printed versions of the film that will cost us $$) once we have completed our film.

5) It is a good idea to come up with thematic names for your reward tiers. Check out how we named ours and how we organized our rewards here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/planepretend/plane-pretend-a-short-film 

There are a few popular approaches to making a Kickstarter video. There is the little skit of the ways you have tried raising funds and failed to raise funds, and there is the basic, to the point video that explains the project and what is needed. I have seen both those approaches meet their goals and exceed them. Since it takes some work to make a video, and with how over-saturated the platform has become, it’s fun and advantageous to go an extra mile and use it as an opportunity to express your creativity. (Keeping it suited to you and your film/style.)

Kickstarter’s I admired while planning my own:

While I have only seen four handfuls of Kickstarter videos, one of my favorites is Jocelyn Towne’s video for I am I.Watch it here: https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/best-in-show-project-video

The feature raised over 100,000 in a record-breaking time which I forget.

I also really liked what my good friend Marshall made for one of his shorts: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mrim86/fishin-for-chickens?ref=nav_search

Another friend shared this video with me as I was trying to get ideas for my own. I really appreciate the way this video actually serves as a motivational video for other filmmakers - or at least it motivated me to put that “other” voice aside: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanbkoo/man-child-feature-film

Here is the first script to the Kickstarter video I had been planning a few years ago:

I slowly realized this was way too sharoncentric, and eventually sat down to write down why I thought people would even connect with my film. Here is the next script I wrote for it:

As you can tell by the watermark on the demo version of final draft, this filmmaker needed funding.

The talented filmmaker Austin Tolin filmed me saying the lines inside an airplane and took some Broll out at the airport. (Forest Lemur took stills and extra video for us). The video followed the classic explanation of project, but instead of being in an editing room, I knew a plane's interior would be a) more uniquely relevant b) proof that we had already overcome one of the film's challenges: FINDING A PLANE! I sat on the footage a few months. It is funny how fear can delay so much. At the time I was working at a post house where I met Luke Bedillion. One day, I was talking to Luke about how overwhelmed I was by having to make this video that was supposed to move people enough to help me raise $5000. (This later became an $8,000 goal once fear moved aside.) Luke offered to edit it, and that got the ball rolling. Sometimes, just knowing you are not hacking away at something alone helps. We added extra voiceover, a semi-reel of work I had already done and it's accolades, and a little bit of sharon humor, too. Taking the advice of I am I's video, I created a movie poster to include in the video. I added footage and pictures to the introduction of the video, and VERY IMPORTANT: I replaced the temp score Luke and I cut to with Public Domain music in order to avoid any trouble.

Once I had my rewards set, I Sharon-phrased Marshall Rimmer's explanation and graphics of how Kickstarter and it's Rewards work. (I did this using motion keyframes in FCP7.)

THENNNNNN.... in order to reach our spanish speaking audience, came time to subtitle the video. It went through three different translators: Marisol Medrano (coproducer) did one chunk, Francisco Garcia (nopales productions) did a few paragraphs, and my parents took over and proofread/ translated over FaceTime. (With the help of our dog noodle, we made sure doggies could read both languages.)

Almost a year after having shot the Kickstarter, our video was ready to go!

This is what the final product was: 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/planepretend/plane-pretend-a-short-film

My advice: 1) Keep it short

2) Keep it relevant

Basic Elements to consider including: 1) what the film is about (although my favorite kickstarter video of all time does not address that) and why they should even care about it

2) who the heck you are/ what you've done

3) explanation how Kickstarter works

4) asking people to spread the word

5) connect them to your social media (and grandma)

My intention with this blog - like my past production blogs - was primarily to provide information that could be helpful to other filmmakers and secondarily to chronicle the journey of this little epic short film. Having been the largest scale production I have produced, I had high hopes for reporting on a continual basis on the film’s progress and lessons learned. Being spread thin before and during Principal photography, I have decided to instead do a retrospect during post-production. I hope to weave it in with updates from Post-Production, but I will be prioritizing talking about what has already happened.

The easiest thing for me to begin with is the subject of funding through Kickstarter Campaigns.

There is a lot of material to cover, so I am going to break it into a few parts.

It was the Kickstarter campaign that really made this journey feel like it had finally begun. The world was now aware of this little project that had been only been talked about to a handful of people. Be it pride in completing something people now know about or be it finally having the means to start pre-production, it is an advantageous time for creatives to GET THINGS DONE! Crowdfunding sites are making what used to seem far-fetched a greater possibility.

In this introduction, I want to give a little history of how I funded my short narratives- From my poor sounding, high-8 beginnings, to the post-film school trio of shorts I have made.

How I funded my short films:

  1) Oh Brother, Where’s my Cow - a donation jar at church that made enough money to make a cow suit + calling up other churches for sponsored parties, lunches, and i can’t remember who paid for gas to the 3 cities we travelled to.

2) hands. - I presented my idea and a camera test I cut into a promo to church congregations + this was my undergrad thesis, so nobody got paid, and equipment and insurance were FREE!!! (though I still have student loans i need to pay off) I raised about $500, and my mom cooked all the amazing meals at no cost. A local church did not charge us for the location, either.

3) When I Grow Up - paid for this out of pocket. It only cost me about $300 since my parents fed us breakfast at no charge. We also had sweet meal sponsorships from Jo Cotten’s Barbecue, Rod and Rolls, and Taqueria Los Altos de Jalisco in Robstown, TX, the town where I attended school and worked as a hairdresser a lifetime ago. We shot this film in my hometown, so lodging was free, nobody knew to ask us to show proof of location insurance, and our crew consisted of 5 people. My dear friend donated his camera to my next two films, so that cut a lot of costs. Our lighting department consisted of one compact fluorescent lamp, a clamp light I bought at home depot, and a pack of daylight-balanced bulbs from Olden Lighting. We also paid a man about $40 for letting us rent his van from craigslist. 100% of the cast and crew volunteered their time and talent.

4) Dirty Laundry - I paid for this out of pocket. I shot this inside my ex-boyfriends kitchen and laundry room, so we did not have to buy production insurance. Again, 2 of my friends let me use their cameras at no cost, lighting consisted of China balls that my mom got me at garage sales, dimmers my friend lent me, bulbs left from previous film, a $123 bill from mopac media, and a volunteer cast and crew. Crafty and Crew Meals were a good chunk of the budget. I made crew breakfast at the beginning of the day with my sweet boyfriend, sandwiches mid-day, and my sweet cousin, who was in catering, secured a food donation for dinner. We paid a few people with 6-packs of their favorite craft beer.

5) Plane Pretend - Step 1, I put aside $500 from an award for being a Lunafest winner, Step 2, Labor-intensive Tamale Sale by co-producer’s mom (raised about $700) Step 3, The Kickstarter Campaign (raised about $8500) we had some donations made to us outside of Kickstarter during the campaign, and we did some street fundraising as well.

Step 4, realizing we should have raised more money, I post something on Facebook, make a few phone calls, and negotiate just about everything I can. During all this time, I applied for 4-5 grants and will continue to do so. Now that we have footage to submit with our grants, our chances should increase. We are still trying to recoup costs.

A sneak peek at the visualization of a story... a STORYBOARD

After searching far and wide, we found her! Meet Emilce Trinidad, our lead for Plane Pretend:

We reached our goal with 37 hours left - Thank you for all your support and your encouragement!!!!

Thursday while paying a visit to the very helpful ladies at La Peña Latino Arts Organization, I saw Fan Fest being set up caddy corner to their building. One of the ladies said, "See... how come you cant project something on a sheet at our window when something like this happens?" I said, "Well can I do it this weekend?"

I walked around Fan Fest briefly that night and saw so many people there from around the world. I also some evangelists doing their thing, and I thought, Hey we can come here, too!

So, today, we did. I decided to skip the sheet at the window and go LARGE! We projected our film on the side of downtown Austin - I mean, why not!?

We made a few posterboards, grabbed a slate and a bucket, and went into the world of Formula 1 Fans.

Plane Pretend Kickstarter Launch Party

Our Kickstarter Launch Party was a very fun, motivating, and productive way to kick-off our 30 day campaign to raise $8,000 for Plane Pretend. Friends, new friends, and artists arrived to learn and show their support. You can find our campaign at this link: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1536577412/plane-pretend-a-short-film

PLEASE HELP US SPREAD THE WORD :) Share our video, talk about it, send us some good vibes.  Thank you! Special Thanks for those who helped plan the event:

Colleen McCarthy

Mandy Sloan

La Peña (Cynthia, Libby)

King Liquor

Mi Victoria Bakery

Esther Suket

Benjamin, Allison, and Abby Arteaga

Lauren Colangelo

Marisol Medrano

Church of God 7th Day

 Kirby Meador

Drew Millay

Amaris Rivas-Cook

Forest Croft

Daniel Treviño

Office Max

Ahora Si

I was told by a lady I had only telephonically known for 10 minutes, "You are on a journey, don't resist it."

There is something very frustrating about having to decide whether to postpone a plan due to weather (or due to anything, really). With an 85% chance of thunderstorms, we decided to postpone our Kickstarter Launch party. A few friends of ours were doing us a favor and letting us use their residential space for the event; but when we postponed the event, we had to consider a different space. Because of what followed, I must note that I was initially disappointed in having to rethink the event that I had been prepping for weeks.

The second phone call I made led me to a lady who owns an Latino Arts Organization in town. She filled the phone call with a whirlwind of information of people I should contact and places I should turn to, a little scolding, and a lot of motivation. She is the lady that told me, in all my disappointment, that I should not resist my journey. We agreed on me coming out to see the space the next day.

The next day...

I loved the space, but it took a while to be able to talk to the lady. A few hours later, she finally came down to meet me. Before I knew it, we were at her computer; and she was clicking away at the Texas Commission for the Arts webpage. She navigated me through their grant calendar while talking about resources available in town, in the state, and in the country. Any talk on the event was being put on the backburner.  I kept telling myself, "Don't resist the journey."

The journey led to tacos at the bar in her venue. I got a sentence or two in about the event while pouring salsa onto my taco when suddenly she told me to wrap my taco and follow her out the door because we were going to the Hogg Library. We ran out and jumped into a car that was at a red light and drove off in time for the green light.

At the Hogg Library - an Austin Library where you can research philanthropists, associations, scholarships, and grants - the lady introduced me to the staff. They sat and gave me undivided attention, printouts, advice, and a reassurance that this delay or detour to my party was leading me to people and places I would not have otherwise encountered this soon in the journey.

That is what continued to happen throughout the day, from exploring local businesses on the East Side of Austin (like Spots, an office supply surprise, and Re-Store, a home improvement store that benefits the community while fighting poverty) to meeting two amazing women invited to sit with us at  our lunch table at Mr. Natural on Cesar Chavez. It was a day of detours and never getting an answer on the venue. It was actually barely tonight that we finalized the details of the event.

It did not rain the night our event had originally been set for - the weather was actually perfect. I stood in the beautiful breeze, feeling upset, confused, and unaccomplished. I imagined how the night could have been going. In the same phone call I had with the lady the day before, she had also told me that every morning you wake up is a new chance to try again. To thank God that you are alive to give whatever you are doing another shot.

When I woke up, I thought of all the new discoveries that the detours and delay  -- or let's call it "the time the rain bought me" -- had given me. With the new space, with the new contacts, with the new knowledge, we are ready to take this Kickstarter party and campaign to a further level than we originally conceived.

I have a little down time right now during my 3rd round of auditions for this film, so I am going to take this time to talk about the things I do when planning an audition.

Finding a Location (The No-Budget Way)

DO NOT HOLD AUDITIONS IN A HOME OR APARTMENT

After graduating from film school, one of the first hurdles I encountered was not having access to the studios to hold my auditions. I held my first post-school auditions at a local public library, and quickly learned to scout the libraries before the audition to make sure they meet the following requirements - actually this is true of any place where you will be holding auditions:

1. You want a large enough room with at least one table and 1-3 chairs

2. Make sure there is a waiting area (preferably with seating) for auditionees and those who may accompany them. I tend to do this in the hallway right outside the audition room. If there is no room for a table to have snacks and sign up sheets out, bring a clipboard and have your greeter offer them something from inside the auditioning room.

3. If there will be screaming parts in the audition, you want to make sure the room is removed from the library section, or that it at least has complete walls to not distract or worry those that have no idea what is happening in the room. (Sensor yelled curse words in the library.)

****You want to book your room far in advance because people use the library for a million things. This week, Early Voting made me resort to another option which has turned out to be my favorite of all the spots I have held auditions: A Rec Center.

Look into the free resources your city has available. In Austin, The Dougherty Arts Center is a great place to hold auditions because it is set up for Theater groups, but it is hard to book - especially on weekends.

Other Free Places to Consider:

- churches

- rec centers

- offices

- community centers

- schools

- if you know someone with an establishment that is closed during reasonable hours

The People You Will Need  (Don't Do it on your Own)

1. A reader - Make sure they get to read the script or sides ahead of time and that they are proper readers. (Having someone else read lets you focus on the performance.)

2. A greeter - Have someone sitting outside the room, ready to welcome the auditions, making them and the people with them feel comfortable. They will set the tone for what they will expect from the film. ( I like to get my smiliest, nicest friends for this. )

3. Yourself ( who can be the reader, but is typically not a good idea unless you want to interact one on one with your actors for some good reason.)

4. Camera person (I like to record my auditions, but I always ask the actor for permission)

Checklist

1. I like to take snacks and refreshments that are weather appropriate and presentable.

2. Print out signs that will guide your auditionees to your room/waiting area.

3. Print out a sign in sheet.

4. Print enough scripts for you, a reader and as many actors as will be auditioning at one time.

5. Give instructions to all who will be helping you.

6. Leave the place clean - you do not want to burn bridges for yourself or others!