As a student film maker, I often find myself wondering “What do I want to do as a career?” Whenever I tell someone what I am studying their immediate response is either “when are you moving to Los Angeles?” or “ What do you see yourself doing in Hollywood?” When this happens, I seem to always shrug my shoulders and make a “merp” noise under my breathe because- I don’t have a freakin’ clue! If I wanted to make “the big bucks,” it’s no doubt Southern California is where the jobs are but I find myself asking: do I really want to become a seed in The Biz?

Its no secret that mainstream media is owned by a few major corporations; in which their various subdivisions make nearly everything we see on television and at the box office. As a San Francisco native who was raised to be an activist, I’ll be honest when I say I don’t want to be a part of that. Perhaps I’m being naïve, but I fear if I did go to Hollywood- it would suck out everything I love about film. I would dread the stress and bitterness due to those large Hollywood egos I’ve heard so much about. That is not the life I’ want.

Now, I’m not saying tSan Francisco film makers do not have large egos, or that film making in the Bay Area is not stressful. I honestly think I’ve been lucky, or perhaps I’ve just met the right people but every single production I’ve worked on has been a BLAST. There is a distinct characteristic about Bay Area film makers that I am in love with; they are just “hella chill” as the kids would say.

Saltwater is definetely one of those productions that carry the essence of making a filmwith your friends. I can say, without hesitation, that the people I’ve met on this project have become really good friends as well as professional contacts for future projects. I love how whenever I have a production meeting with Lise Swenson, we giggle and gossip like 7^th grade BFFS and still be professional to get our tasks done. I’m also thankful to have made friends with a few of the interns, some who have really helped me when the times got rough. Taking the time to appreciate individuals for their particular talents, you open the doors to forming personal bonds that make the process of making a feature film really fun.

There is nothing finer than making films with your friends and I’m truly thankful to have met such humble and talented people who have been nothing but friendly. So when I think about what I want out of my film career, it’s that I just want to make movies with the talented people I trust and make enough money to live comfortably. There is nothing written in stone that if I want to make films, I must go to Hollywood. I don’t feel the need to become the next Micheal Bay and own prime real estate all over the world. I’d be perfectly content with a day job; perhaps shooting for public access, or editing for commericals, even teaching at a community college- utilzing my talents and still being able to tell my stories on the side. This dream is alive and well in San Francisco and I’m happy to be a part of it as it continues to bloom.

In solidarity,

Annalise Velazquez

In my last blog I explored some of my thoughts about the rather tricky relationship between authorship and the inherently communal aspects of film-making. Today, I’m going to dive back into that sea of conflicts and contradictions. As individuals who want to make films, we must first ask ourselves why we choose the medium of film. Does cinema have some essential property that differentiates it from other art-forms? It seems like a hopelessly broad question, and I don’t know how equipped I am to attempt to answer it, but hopefully my thoughts will provide some small morsel of food for thought.

At its core, film appears to be a uniquely naturalistic medium.  This naturalism is, of course, a false naturalism. Still, it is an essential, maybe the essential, characteristic of the medium that we happen to process what it offers as if were reality. The camera captures light and records a series of images onto film which is then threaded into a projector, but this is not what we actually experience. Instead, we experience film as something like a magic window. We sit in a dark room and we look through the screen into another world.

Early film was content to revel in this fact. We’ve all heard the stories of early film-goers screaming in terror as the train in the Lumiere brothers’ Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat barreled toward them from behind the screen. It seemed to simply capture and repeat the pure, visceral reality of human experience. For this reason, it was not uncommonly thought that moving pictures were a passing trend; it was certainly never speculated that film would grow into one of humanity’s most vital art forms.

The first phase in the evolution of film began when films realized they could use  their own naturalism to portray reality in a certain way and for certain ends.  The advent of the principles of classical editing began the transition of film from an reflectively naturalist mode to a didactic-naturalist mode. Filmmakers began to create prescriptive (rather than descriptive) realities within their films. Films became the manifestations of the subjective realities and artistic visions of their creators. They were the ultimate escapist media, allowing people to see through the magic window into worlds other than their own; worlds with natural laws that followed a familiar and comforting narrative pattern.

Still, and this is key, films never simply lost their naturalistic character. Although the vision of reality they offered was immensely artificial and manipulated, the sense that they still, on some level, were real, remained an intrinsic structural element of the medium. Reality itself began to change over the course of first half of the twentieth century to better correspond to the reality of the cinema. People’s actions and personalities were based on those of Hollywood stars. People’s opinions about war, and love, and politics, were all influenced and influenced by the cinema.

It was only then, when cinema as a popular medium and as a way of changing reality had reached its peak, that a few directors began to realize it could be something more. A film also has the potential to subvert the naturalism at its core, not to imagine a world that plays by some obvious set of rules, but instead reveal the innate human capacity to change the rules, and see the world in a whole new way. This, film could only do by renouncing the Faustian pack earlier cinema had made, by which it gained the power to be taken seriously as reality at the price of its ability to provoke and be taken seriously as art.

I have been thinking a lot about our collective student intern rolls on Saltwater and how each team supports one-another.  Most people don’t think about things like grant writing and solicitation for donations when they imagine what working on a feature film may be like. (Despite the common scenario, filmmaking is much more than lights, camera, action). This got me thinking about how our various departments work. More importantly, it got me thinking about how each team supports each other.

The knee bone is connected to the hip bone, etcetera. That’s how we work. The Social Media Team, Grant Writing Team and Solicitations and Donations team are each in place to build the Saltwater production infrastructure. We are involved in seeking funding and additional resources while the Social Media Team creates a platform for everyone to share in our progress.

This is a unique opportunity for CCSF Cinema students. We are creating a living document of how filmmaking can be done with plenty of time for extensive preproduction planning. Please enjoy my drawing and check out the CCSF/Saltwater collaboration page.

The future of affordable education in San Francisco is at a constant risk due to the state’s budget cuts, and this has been heavily effecting the Cinema Department at City College. The majority of the students taking Cinema classes can not afford to enroll in the Academy of Art or the Art Institute, and chose CCSF for its accessibility and reputation. City College is a remarkable institution, and the people I’ve met in the Cinema Department have been some of the most driven and inspired independent filmmakers. Not only are they are passionate about their craft, but they truly want to see each other succeed.

When CCSF Professor and Director, Lise Swenson, chose to use CCSF students to make her upcoming feature film, Saltwater, I thought to myself- “ how innovative!” Not only would these students get the experience of creating a feature, but the deeper knowledge of how to create a low-budget business plan. Swenson would rather make her film with the help of the community rather than relying on private investors. This is truly unique in the film world. It is breaking down the barriers of traditional “Hollywood” filmmaking and creating a new “San Francisco Indie” style, which is distinct because of our small but mighty film community.

Projects like this are some of the phenomenal things that are coming out of City College and deserve to be recognized. Although there is a constant insecurity when it comes to funding, since the stock market crash, it is important to remember that when all else fails- it is up to the community to build what may lack. For example, the Cinema Department may have limited resources, but that has never stopped the students from banding together to make each other’s visions become realities. Saltwater decided not to rely on investors, but rather the community because it would form stronger connections and bonds within the city of San Francisco and Bay Area.

This is the main inspiration why Saltwater wishes to reach out to the Bay Area community. What we lack in our budget, someone out there will be willing to donate. Our Solicitation and Donations team have been working hard the last few months researching secure donated goods and services and they are just about ready start making cold calls. We really hope to inspire people with our project, because it is these partnerships that will truly help make this feature. All those who contribute will be listed on our Community Partnerships page, an ending a credit and the chance to say they helped a San Francisco community based film become a reality.

-Annalise Velazquez

Hello readers! I’m Alex D’Arata-Newby, one of the staff interns working for Saltwater. I’ve got a background ranging across the most liberal of arts, with particular attention paid to poetry, the classics, and women’s studies.  Despite my hilariously academic sensibilities, most of my actual work with Saltwater has been (and likely will continue to be) based on information technology, which is one of my few areas of practical skill. Anyway, that’s enough of about me.  Over the lifecycle of my contribution to this blog, I hope to offer a few meager meditations on the nature of cinematic narrative, as well as attempt to expound upon the amorphous identities of the “independent” and the “community-based” film.

I’m going to start with one of the most essential quandaries of modern filmmaking, which is the paradox of authorship. I make no bones about my own personal belief in auteur theory. A John Ford film is a John Ford film; a Catherine Breillat film is a Catherine Breillat film. However, it would be a  piece of Ayn-Randian head-in-the-sand madness to ignore the inherent and undeniable marrow of collaboration supporting the bone structure of any film.  A film is built up from the collective sweat and under-slept nights of more people than you can functionally imagine.

On the other hand an authorless film would be some feverishly baroque manifestation of the Surrealist’s Exquisite Corpse. It’s less weird and creepy than it sounds. An Exquisite Corpse is simply a piece of prose generated without authorial oversight. It can be achieved by writing a short phrase on a piece of paper, folding that piece of paper to conceal some of that phrase, handing it to someone else who then continues the sentence, folds the paper again, and hands it to the next person, et cetera. The practice acquires its name from an early line in this play and practice by the Surrealists (“the exquisite/ corpse/ will drink/ the young/ wine”). It produces some interesting, maybe even thought-provoking, constructions, but it goes nowhere fast. It’s not a perfect analogy, but hopefully you can see where I’m coming from. The beast needs a head!

Community based filmmaking means many things to many people. From where I’m sitting, it appears to be something of a liberal democratic response to the necessary tyranny of the Author.  It forms something of a social contract between a film’s author and the community, in which the Author takes on a role analogous to that of an elected official. Now, I don’t know about you, but I have something of a knee-jerk reaction to politicization of the creative process (I’m not talking about art with political content, that’s a whole different kettle of fish), but I’m cautiously optimistic towards it in this particular instance. Making a film is fundamentally different than governing a given principality. It is a means to an end (that end being a two hour thing that people can watch), rather than a sustained attempt to maintain civillization in the face of nature’s yawning void. If a film’s Author has a vision that is, unshaped by the hands of pandering and artifice, representative of the spirit and interests of a community of people- then a social contract can be drawn up to provide for the creation of a film. At the very least, it’s worth looking in to as an alternative to the prevalent hyper-capitalist way of doing things.

Hello everyone. My name is Sarah Flores and welcome to my brain. I am a student, cinema freak, popcorn goddess, junior projectionist extraordinaire and your friendly box officer. I am also currently working as a staff intern on Saltwater. I have been working in film exhibition for the past decade, as well as studying Cinema history and production at San Francisco City College. I have worked on a few different projects, most recently as the Production Manager on a micro-budget feature entitled Cheated.

I used to think that there were only two ways to make a movie; either you are a slick Hollywood production with a row of talent trailers and a craft services table a mile long or… you are a low budget renegade, building sets in your mom’s backyard and feeding the crew with left over popcorn. The big questions here are what sacrifices are being made for these different productions? If you are backed by a mainstream production company is there a risk of loosing creative control? If you go it alone, and remain independent, do you risk loosing production value? I feel as if I have found the perfect balance between a streamlined production, and the renegade spirit, in my involvement with Saltwater. We are utilizing a wealth of community resources to make a film that reflects highly crafted production values without engaging in the mainstream production system.

With any project there is always a feeling of reflection, you know the after glow of having a project in the proverbial can. This reflection often leads to great realizations on the project just completed. In hindsight, the key to any successful film production is a well-orchestrated pre-production planning process. Though we always tell ourselves that we are as prepared as we can be, there will always be issues and much needed solutions that pop up and need to be dealt with on the spot. I am currently taking a class in the Cinema Department with  SF Film Commissioner and professional production manager  Debbie Brubaker, her main message being that you can endure anything with a solid  pre-production foundation. By this I mean a thoroughly planned project, with all of your I’s dotted ant T’s crossed. These precautions will ensure success because the initial foundation of a solid production is planned with meticulous precision.

Though I treasure all of the low budget projects that I have had the pleasure to work on, I always leave feeling that there was something that I forgot. Though I have felt rushed and unprepared I have always left with a better understand of what needs to be done next time. As I learn both in and out of school, I gain a little more confidence in my abilities as a media maker (or whatever the kids are calling it these days) from every project I work on. Filmmaking is a process of trial and error. The more that I learn the more that I crave larger sets, casts and crews. You know, MANIFEST DESTINY or something like that.

In the course of my filmmaking I have experienced many different, and exciting productions. I have pumped colored corn syrup through a two foot tube while an actor has his heart ripped from his chest (no actors were harmed ), ran around in Zombie makeup for days on end, battled for locations and herded extras through the fifteenth take of a scene that probably won’t make the final cut. But the one thing that I have never done is write a grant or a business plan. I have never given myself enough time to properly plan my projects. This yearning for practical planning experience is one of the first things that attracted my to working on Saltwater.

The biggest conundrum is how to turn strapped resources into a heartbreaking tale of infinite recognition or adoration or… a 100 dollar check from your mom. Careful planning can solve this problem by providing a solid game plan for making a film project work. With Saltwater, we are giving ourselves plenty of time to gather funding, gear and a talented crew. Our recent visit to The Foundation Center was a real eye opener for me. I realized that even with the best of intentions and scripts, to gain grant resources you need to dig further and really analyze the project. This process allows the filmmaker to isolate the different points of interest in the screenplay and find out who is interested in funding or offering in-kind support for the main issues represented in the film.

The truth is filmmaking is a team sport. It takes an enormous amount of resources and manpower to execute a project of any size.  Going through the Saltwater process will prepare me as a stronger filmmaker because I will be walking away with a greater knowledge of how to seek out different resources and make the most of them.

Saltwater Blog #1

Have you ever wondered what it takes to make a feature-length film on a shoestring budget utilizing good old-fashioned elbow grease, community resources and pure determination? Well we are all about to find out.

This blog chronicles the production of a feature film called Saltwater. This isn’t your average film-making blog and Saltwater isn’t your typical film production. This project is collaboration between director, teacher and San Francisco based filmmaker Lise Swenson and her production team, San Francisco City College Cinema Department and the Bay Area filmmaking community at large.

Over the course of the next few months YOU, our dear readers, will have a front row seat to the in’s and out’s of Saltwater’s pre-production from our perspective, the staff interns from the CCSF Cinema Department. We invite you to learn with us what it takes to make a top-notch feature-length film on an ultra low budget utilizing community resources. You know the saying that it takes a village to raise a child… well the same is true in low budget, independent film production. We are so fortunate to live in a city with such an active and vibrant film-making community and we intend to use that to our advantage in order to bring you all the making of Saltwater.

This collaboration has created a unique environment where we have the opportunity to earn credit as staff interns for Saltwater. Over the course of this production we will participate in all aspects of feature film-making, gaining extensive experience working as a part of a professional film team that is being headed up by veterans. This semester marks the beginning of this collaboration, and it will last through the post-production of the film, which we expected to wrap up in Fall 2013. In addition to the hands on internship program, the project will also generate an archive of the film’s paper trail, from the shooting script, to production scheduling, to the editing notes for students to access and teachers to use as teaching aids.

Right now we are in the very beginning stages of pre-production. Teams are being formed and grants are being written. Just this week our group was lucky enough to be given an official tour of the Foundation Center in San Francisco, what an amazing resource! We are planning a lecture series for April and May and thinking about other ways to share this process and information with the rest of the CCSF student body.
Once again this blog, which will post once a week, will act as a chronicle and living and lasting archive from pre-production through getting Saltwater out into the world. We are proud to be forging a new collaborative model that emphasizes educational opportunity while we create a low budget, high production value film.

Please take a moment to check out our website and Facebook pages to get to know us all and find out more about our ongoing collaboration and the production of Saltwater.  We look forward to getting to know you!

Here we go!

Sarah Flores, Social Media Team Member

http://saltwaterthemovie.com/

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Saltwater-the-Movie/37806304845