Eight month ‘P3’ film process wraps up

In April, Cory Stoken pitched a film script to his professors that he believed could become something great.

Now, with the film near completion, Stoken looks back at his first priority for the past eight months with a smile.

"There's going to be a void in my life," Stoken said, who is a junior cinema and digital arts major.

Stoken is one of 50 students working their way through their third year as a cinema student with the class known notoriously as the "make-it-or-break-it" cinema class: Production III.

Production III, commonly known around the Point Park University campus as "P3," begins the spring semester of the students' sophomore year. Scripts, written by students and chosen by faculty, are handed out in April. Each P3 student also pitches their preferred crew position, such as producer, director and editor, among other positions.

After producers are chosen, they pitch their preferred script to the faculty. Many producers pick their scripts by deciding how much they can relate to it or envision it in their heads. Junior cinema and digital arts major Derek Dysart, producer for the P3 film "Time Is On Her Side," pitched the script because he felt drawn to the darker tone of it, something that he has always been interested in pursuing in a film.

"Dark humor has kind of been the voice I've been searching for," Dysart said about the film, which is about death, personified as a young businesswoman.

When they get their scripts, the producers make a crucial decision: whom they want on their crew. This decision will not come lightly, as the primary crew does not change once solidified.

"[The producers], as a whole, sat down and we tried to create crews for every person that would make eight successful films," said Heidi Schlegel, one of nine producers in this semester's P3 class.

Each crew receives a $2,000 budget and typically has six primary members. In addition to the primary members, each crew also gets a secondary crew, another P3 group, as an extra set of helping hands to move equipment, help with lighting and sound.

Once crews are assembled in the spring, the producers set to work over the summer working with their scripts. Producers work with the writers and their professors to rewrite the scripts and make them as close to their vision as possible.

As final scripts are revised and polished towards the beginning of the fall semester, the crews start preparing for their four main shoot weekends, which start at the end of September and end the first weekend of November. Preparations include casting actors and finding all the right accessories for each scene, which, for the film "Crutch Brigade," meant making curtains that matched the natural colors of the room.

The most important part of preparations, however, weighed heavily on the shoulders of the producers: securing locations, a process that did not come without its challenges. Stoken played a tug-of-war with the owners of a mansion he wanted to use for a major scene of his film, "Crutch Brigade," while others had to find hospitals willing to let them use a room.

Above all of that, Schlegel had a different kind of problem when trying to secure a location for her film, "ChineseRestaurant." When she started scouting out Chinese restaurants to film in, she found herself hitting a language barrier.

"Trying to find a Chinese restaurant when you don't speak Chinese [is] really, really hard," said Schlegel, who noted that she and her director "must've scouted over 50 Chinese restaurants" as possible locations.

Once details are solidified, each crew has four weekends to shoot. First, they get a test weekend, where crews can go to their locations and look at lighting situations, camera movements within the space or even just record sounds they may need.

The next two shoot weekends, the primary shoot weekends for each crew, are when the majority of filming is done. Crews shoot for up to 12 hours for two or sometimes even three days in a row. Schlegel describes being on set as an "adrenaline rush," even though it may be 4 a.m. and the filming day is not quite over.

The last weekend of filming is designated as the "pick-up weekend," where crews can re-do something after presenting a first "cut" of the film, like a first draft of a project, and getting feedback from professors and fellow classmates. Stokenand his crew went to Schenley Park in Oakland in the hopes of picking up some bird sounds to use in their film, while other crews reshot entire scenes.

After the pick-up weekend, which, this semester, was the first weekend of November, the editors of each crew set to work putting together the final cut. Once the scenes are edited together, other crewmembers work on two of the most important aspects of the film: sound and color correction. On Dec. 9, all eight films, none of which will exceed 11 minutes from start to finish, will be handed in and the eight-month journey of P3 will be complete.

 Throughout the P3 process, cinema students learn about leadership, opportunity, discipline and working as a unified crew. Along with all of those things, the students learn a lot about themselves as filmmakers.

"P3 is your chance to prove to yourself and others that you can be successful in this career," said Schlegel, who learned, above all else, about having self-confidence in a field where "virtually all odds are against you."

For many cinema students, the end of P3 brings a sigh of relief, but after investing so much time, effort and emotion into filming, it also brings a feeling of sadness. As each crewmember dedicated themselves entirely to their production, they all bonded as they worked toward a common goal: a great film.

"I'm going to miss it," Stoken said. "Through all of the stress, struggles, hassles and frustrations, through all the complaining and everything else that goes along with that, it was a lot of fun and I would do it again."

Published: Monday, November 28, 2011

Updated: Tuesday, November 29, 2011 14:11

Article on Globe website

Posted in: cinema,COPA,Point Park University,The Globe