December 13, 2016

Amir Shehata

I started Turning Point as a lone gunman, holding the camera, operating the sound, doing the lighting. And that’s as close to impossible as you can get. Not only will you go crazy if you do that, you’ll drive your cast insane as well. Remember actors want to concentrate on acting, and that’s for a very good reason. If they don’t their performances will suffer and that’ll cause the quality of the show to go down drastically.

Luckily though, I was blessed with helpful cast members, who were invested in the success of this project as much as I am. Soon, they started suggesting other crew members they have met on other sets to help out on our set. I have to admit, that was a life saver.

I was introduced to three guys, who are totally awesome. And I mean totally awesome.  One of them, Andy Johnson, stuck with me till the bitter end. He was God sent. Now that I look back, having a crew you can depend on is the most important step to take before you start a project. I can’t emphasis enough how important that is. Don’t think you can do everything on your own. It’s crazy. Maybe you can for a while, but your sanity will soon go out of the window, not to mention your cast’s sanity.

Everyone will have a different take on this, but for my next project I'll make sure I have a director of photography, sound engineer, set designer and a grip. Another key member of the team is Makeup. If I can get a dedicated and talented group to fill these roles, then the project is already on its way to success.

Back to Turning Point, from there, people brought on more people. Some stuck in there, others helped whenever they could. Remember how I said before that at one point I had no hope of starting this project. Well at that time, there was no way for me to predict I’ll have that much interest, relatively speaking. The picture was starting to change. 

I have to highlight though that what really upped the game was when I was introduced to a guy by the name of Dudley Christian. Dudley if you’re reading this; you’re awesome man. I learnt a lot from this guy. He co-wrote and co-directed the 3rd episode with me. He opened my eyes to many new techniques and ideas I wasn't aware of. Together we analysed Steven Spielberg's techniques and films. We looked at how to film an effective action sequence. We developed templates for a compelling scene. It was great. This brings me to the importance of shadowing professionals, whether in real life or virtually. Look at how people who made it before you do things, and learn from them. I think by doing so, you get to learn the way they think, their habits, their approach to solving problems, and a ton of other things.

The 3rd episode turned out to be a longer episode, about 45 minutes. In this episode we attempted to wrap up all major plot points. I talked in a previous post about the challenges we faced in this episode. Continuous re-writes were taking place because of unexpected issues popping up during production, including the Sam actor breaking her foot, but the re-writes continued even after we wrapped up production. This brings me to a fact of film-making that I realised the necessity of; edit re-writes. I'll speak to that in the next post.