0

Deborah S. Patz – Author

Author of film books for industry pros and youth

Mar112011

5 Great Sources for Call Sheet Jokes

How’s your call sheet joke file? Do you collect copies of comics, humour and interesting facts or solicit others to send you humour as they find it? I am a great believer of the call sheet joke.

When the next day’s call sheet is handed out at the end of the day – just watch – the crew typically takes note of their particular call time, and then turns the call sheet over to look for the call sheet joke. Often crew seek out the call sheet at the end of the day (motivated to read the latest call sheet joke) thereby making the A.D. job of distributing the call sheet a little easier.

Here’s your opportunity to match the tone of the production you’re on with the humour you supply. Go to doctor’s office, see medical humour. Go to a lawyer’s office, see legal humour. Film productions, however, visit many different locations and subject matter through the script. The are are many numerous genres and sub-genres. On a comedy, for example, you may want the call sheet humour to contribute to the light and playfulness of the story. A joke you would choose to share on the call sheet of a family film may not be the same one you would use on that of a horror film.

Luckily there are a host of sources from which to build your call sheet joke file. Here are five great ones:

1. Single frame jokes
This is the standard fare for call sheet jokes. Comics like The Far Side and Bizarro are great examples. Some folk re-caption the comic to more closely suit the production they’re on. You could even use Gladys Works In The Movies comics from this F.I.L.M. Blog.

2. Weird news (e.g. at: Canoe.ca/CNEWS/WeirdNews)
Amazing what shows up in the news! Fair warning, though: some items will make everyone laugh, whereas others will make some folk feel uncomfortable. Be selective.

3. Snopes.com
A site that researches and dispels urban myths. You can use these two days running, e.g. Day 1 = Myth #1; and then Day 2 = Answer #1 & Myth #2; etc.

4. User-submitted jokes (from the crew)
Open yourself up to contributions, and you could get a wide range of possibilities. At very least you will learn the humour style of some of the crew this way.

5. International weather
(e.g. at: World Weather Info Service or International Weather.com)
What? Weather for someplace you’re not shooting? This idea is useful when you’re shooting entirely in studio and the weather outside really doesn’t matter to you.

Keep in mind that humour can go too far. Jokes can be taken the wrong way. The call sheet joke lasts only a day, yes, but the document itself will be archived with the production paperwork for the life of the production’s files. The call sheet is still an official document. So make your final choice of joke wisely.

What are some the other call sheet joke sources you use?

Cheers & an enjoyable shoot to you,
Deb

Mar42011

Set Visit to the MIR Space Station

Deb visits MIR

How cool to be filming on the MIR Space Station in space! That was my first thought when I worked on the “Mission to MIR” IMAX film. Yet as a non-astronaut, what are the chances of going on a set visit to MIR? Not very likely. As a matter of fact: impossible.

Yes, here on Earth we tackled logistical challenges issues like: the camera goes into the Space Shuttle which is launched into space; the shuttle docks onto MIR and the camera taken into MIR for filming. The Space Shuttle then goes about its business… how do you get the camera and film back to Earth for processing and printing? In what country can you land the camera and how many time zones will it be from the lab? What about the customs documentation? Unique challenges indeed!

And yes, it was very clear I’d never visit MIR except how everyone else here on Earth has been able to see it: on the IMAX screen. The dream of visiting the MIR Space Station would have to remain a dream for the rest of my life, especially since it’s now been replaced by the International Space Station.

Or  maybe that dream COULD come true after all…?

I just visited Toulouse, France where the Cité de l’Espace has a MIR Space Station! The one used for tests on here on Earth! An exact duplicate! Awesome. I was able to walk around it, climb inside it and just plain explore it… the MIR Space Station itself! A set visit after the fact and conveniently here on Earth!

Sure, I could scoff and say the replica of MIR wasn’t the real experience because it wasn’t floating in space at the time. Gosh, I could have decided not to go see it. But sometimes dreams come true in a slightly different form than you originally thought possible. You just need to be open to recognize them in whatever form they present themselves to you as. And because I’m open to them, another of my life dreams just came true today. Now that’s very cool.

What dream are you going to make happen?

Cheers!
Deb

Feb252011

Popcorn Movie Seat

I went to a 1:30pm movie. First screening of the day in that theatre. Bought the popcorn and was first into the room. I had every seat to choose from. Great! I went for middle-middle. Yeah. Best seat in the house.

As I went to sit down, my purse slipped off my shoulder and landed heavily on my forearm. The impact triggered the reflex that makes the bicep instantly contract to prevent the purse from landing on the floor. But today, the hand was holding a full bag of popcorn.

Wow, what a shower of popcorn that was. At least half the bag was liberated in that split second and distributed strangely evenly in the nine seats around me. White popcorn. Dark room. Dark seats. Only if the popcorn were glowing or on fire might my faux pas be more obvious.

Sure I could move to another seat, but to whoever came into the theatre next it would be eminently obvious that it was me who had done the redecorating. So I smiled at the incident, brushed my head, shoulders and seat clear, and then sat down amid the mess and ate the remainder of the popcorn in the bag while I watched the movie – okay, the remainder of the popcorn didn’t even last through the trailers. And perhaps not so predictably, no one sat in the eight popcorn seats around me… though I don’t recommend using this story as a strategy of saving extras seats in a movie theatre.

Cheers & a good shoot to you,
Deb

Feb182011

Ciné-Surfer: Pacific Exchange’s Currency Plotter

 Working on coproductions, you care deeply about what the exchange rate is doing between the two or three currencies you are using (in order to maximize money making it to the screen instead of to exchange rate loss).

UBC’s Sauder School of Business has the the ability to plot exchange rates at the Pacific Exchange Rate Service… in effect a “Currency Plotter“.

There is nothing like looking at a graph of the currency exchange rate to give you a big picture look at the exchange rate related to your production and over time. I’m not saying you can predict the exchange rate, but… well… just make the choices, “make a chart” and see what I mean. It’ll be a tool I know you’ll want to use again and again:

http://fx.sauder.ubc.ca/plot.html

Cheers & happy exchange rate plotting!
Deb

Feb112011

Inspiration at the Movies: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“Soon we must all face the choice between what is is right and what is easy.”
– Dumbledore (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, 2005)

These words ring so true when I think of eating: choosing between what is healthy and what is fast-n-easy. Whoah… that’s a hard one!

Yet, I’m not sure that our choices are always “easy” vs “right.” Indeed, doing the right thing in many cases takes enormous effort. When faced with a difficult choice such as “easy” vs “right” we need to find the belief in ourselves – the bravery – to choose the right path.

Step one is recognizing the choice and listening to the inner voice to know which path is the right one. That choice may not be clearly visible until you’ve taken time to consider the situation. “Easy” choices tend to be about “doing nothing,” “doing what you’re told,” “doing what’s expected of you.” And yet, I cannot say that’s even true all the time. If you’ve ever watched a chicken hatch from an egg: it appears to be an impossibly hard task, and yet you cannot and should not help. If you do, the baby chick will not be strong enough to survive in the world. You must do the right thing by “doing nothing” and let the baby chick work it out.

Step two is then finding the bravery to then act on the right choice (for even “doing nothing” is taking action!). Call it inner confidence if you must, but I prefer to call it bravery. For in bravery there is fear and uncertainty… yet you act anyway. And typically, that’s how I feel inside when taking the right-but-not-easy path. Don’t you?

Step three is having faith as the events roll out. Tense times, but they pass and eventually you will see the outcome of your choices, helping you to make more educated choices in the future (notice I didn’t say “better”?). And new choices will indeed present themselves soon enough, won’t they?

Cheers… to the bravery in you and me,
Deb

Feb42011

Shooting With the Year of the Rabbit

This Chinese new year reminds me of a film shoot I was on where we were filming rabbits. And trying to capture animals acting on set is always entertaining… no matter what happens.

The script called for the heroes (people) to liberate the many rabbits from their cages in the lab and for the rabbits to run, hop and skedaddle down the hallway and out of the building. It would be even better if they looked a little panicked as they made their escape to freedom, but hopping quickly would be sufficient. Sounds straightforward, doesn’t it? Dozens of rabbits running in one direction on cue. Uh-huh.

So we brought in a ferret to chase the rabbits. Everyone knows that rabbits and ferrets are natural enemies. I mean ferrets were raised to chase rabbits out of rabbit holes. What could go wrong?

On the day, what we didn’t foresee was… that both the rabbits and the ferret were raised in captivity. We may have known they were natural enemies of each other, but they didn’t. On set they merely padded up to each other nose-to-nose and sniffed a gentle “hello.” There was mild interest to indifference between them. Now what do we do?

In the end, we had someone just off-screen and around the hallway corridor push the rabbits around the corner into the hallway and into shot. Yes, if you really looked, you could see some of the rabbits sliding along the floor while a few others hopped around them like they were on a pleasant afternoon stroll.

The Year of the Rabbit is supposed to be more calm after the ferocious Year of the Tiger… and I know what they mean by calm rabbits, so I don’t doubt it!

Cheers & Gung Hay Fat Choy!
Deb