This past weekend was the big shoot for Brian Paulson: Tree Dropper. It marked the second full film crew I’ve directed while here at SCAD, and I feel as though I’m definitely improving, much in part because of my graduate directing class, for which Brian Paulson was the final project.
Brian Paulson: Tree Dropper was considerably more complex than the last piece I directed: Planting Friends. The latter had only one location and no dialogue, whereas Brian Paulson had three major locations and a whole slew of comedic dialogue, all penned by me. (Yeah, we wrote our own scripts — I brought this on myself!) To add another degree of challenge, we were fighting the rainiest weather Savannah has seen in half a decade, and filmed a lot of scenes as fast as we could in between rain showers. (Even the best cut will show inconsistent weather conditions.)
But some things you can control. In the past two years of producing films, I’ve come to discover that the success of a film is largely dependent on how well it lives up to its initial goals, and adjusting those goals realistically from the beginning is crucial to a project’s relative success. In that sense, Brian Paulson was a success. I wasn’t trying to get Hollywood-grade cinematics or Oscar-winning performances, but did want to make something that helped me learn how to direct and made people laugh. Based on the response of the rough cut in class on Tuesday, mission accomplished!
Once the rough cut is groomed a bit more, we’ll be putting Brian Paulson online for all to enjoy. (Now falling from a tree near you?)
Photos by Jennifer Sparkman
[…] class, entitled Brian Paulson: Tree Dropper, has finally been released online. This project was created entirely during Spring semester, which includes all pre-production, filming and post-production. Okay, most post-production. The […]