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(from left: Sherman, Me, Cris, Don)
In the car we have Cris Andrei (Executive Producer), Don Smith (Director of Photography), Sherman Ward (Line Producer and Assistant Director), and myself. A little background. Starting from the top is me, who is a bit of an anomaly. First, I’m the Creative Director from the agency, second I’m a Partner with the agency, and third, I’m the Director. This is a little unusual but in my opinion provides a serious benefit to production, the agency, the client, and the entire shoot. It gives me tremendous power to make decisions and be a conduit between the production company, the agency and the client. In essence, that amounts to being able to make decisions about a wide range of issues on the fly and creates an efficient exchange of useful information without the requisite politics usually involved.
Next is our Executive Producer, Cris Andrei, who is a literal wealth of information on everything and anything concerning film production. He’s worked as a production assistant, production coordinator, production manager, line producer, assistant producer and executive producer for everything from feature films, independent films, commercials, and IMAX films. He’s worked and lived in Romania (his birth place), much of Europe including Paris, Indonesia, and many parts of South Asia. To put it simply you’d have to work hard to find someone as knowledgeable and resourceful and Cris.
Cris’s job is Executive Producer and in a nutshell it’s his job to both make sure everyone is doing what they’re supposed to be doing as well as protecting the interests of the production company that he works for. And my interests as well, at which he’s very good at.
As I said, Cris was born in Romania, but left during the Soviet era and lived for awhile in various refugee camps before immigrating to the US at the age of 17. Suffice it say, Cris has more stories than Mother Goose. I’ve worked with him for years and on shoots we can spend some 10-15 hours a day together for weeks at a time and after all this time you’d think I’d heard all his stories, but so far it’s a rare occasion that he repeats a story.
Cris can be hard man to figure out. I think for most people, their initial reaction is a closed man who is all business and no funny stuff. Once you get to know him, you realize he has a wealth of dry humor that can leave you in tears. Not always intentional. He’s one of my favorite people in the world and invaluable when it comes to film production. I don’t even usually agree with him on creative issues, but you don’t discount anything he says with a light touch. You might not agree on the face of it, but you’d better listen carefully and make your decision accordingly.
Next is Don Smith, our Director of Photography or DP for short. It’s Don’s job to make sure that the visuals we capture on film are both technically correct, viable within the budget, and conform to my vision. His vision and technical capabilities bring together the artistic and the technical aspects of filmmaking.
Don is without the doubt the funniest DP I’ve ever met. It’s not just that he’s smart, well-read, experienced and just damn good at his job, he’s funny. Now, unless you’ve spent time with a lot of DP’s, you have no idea how unusual this is. It’s like finding a funny IT guy. Unless it’s obscure jokes about RAM and LAN, they’re usually not that funny. Don is a constant wealth of stories and quick witted retorts. He’s definitely worth the price of admission.
He told us the following story:
Don was in a hotel, having just finished a job and he had been talking to the concierge about a side trip to some ski resort. As he was standing there, he heard a voice say, “Are you Don?”
He turned around and who was standing there but Arnold Schwarzenegger, who wasn’t the governor then, just an aging action hero from the movies. Arnold stood there smoking a cigar and Don, pleased to be recognized, replied, “Yes” and put out his hand.
Arnold replied, “Well if you are done, then get out of the way.”
Having been kicked to the curb by the Terminator, Don meekly stepped aside and Arnold moved towards the concierge. The concierge very politely addressed him saying, “I’m sorry sir, but there’s no smoking here.”
Arnold, spun the cigar in his mouth and replied dryly, “Really.”
We worked that story for all it was worth. Whenever someone told you something had to be done, or there was some ultimatum, we would turn, pause and reply, “Really.”
Finally, out of our happy little family, is Sherman. Sherman is a character in every sense of the word. In fact, it’s as if he popped directly out of an adult cartoon somewhere, possibly a villain in Heavy Metal.
Sherman acts as our line producer, meaning he reports to Cris, but also as the Assistant Director, which means in many ways he has the hardest job on the set. He’s kind of responsible for making sure everything goes according to plan, and the plan according to me can change at any time.
On his days off, Sherman sings lead in a rock band. He’s suggested I come see him play and I think I’m going to this summer. Sherman has a summer home in Rehobeth Beach, Delaware, just a ferry ride away from Cape May and he’s said I can crash at his place. So, some weekend, I’m going to go see he and his band rock the house….or whatever it is that they do.
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The day went as planned for the most part. Nothing too scary. We started off going through film like water and were forced to rehearse more and shoot less, but other than that we had a pretty good shoot day. Almost too much to tell and then again, nothing happened. We worked hard. Had a few laughs. Then went home.
Tomorrow and the day after are still shoots.
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