Martin Landau, Mark Rydell and Lyle Kessler Present “The Total Picture Seminar”

Written by Carrie Specht
ClassicFilmSchool.com

“The Total Picture Seminar” is a two day immersion into the collaborative experience of filmmaking with actor Martin Landau, director Mark Rydell, and screenwriter Lyle Kessler. This one-time special event geared toward filmmakers, actors, writers and anyone else involved in the creative process of filmmaking is a close up and personal look at the inter-relationship of the three critical disciplines of narrative filmmaking - writing, acting and directing.

This completely original seminar offers a unique opportunity to directly participate in the process required of all good filmmaking: collaboration. This is not just a show and tell, but a hands-on event that will include practical experience (how better to learn than by doing?). Unlike the usual class that instructs purely by lecture, “The Total Picture” is designed with interaction as a key element. Scenes will be selected from the writer participants and then acted by the actors who are selected by Mark, Martin and Lyle with the finished work presented and reviewed in class. In addition, Lyle Kessler will moderate what is surely to be a lively conversation between the attendees and the seasoned professionals as motion picture clips of the trio’s previous works will be deconstructed for acting, directing, and writing content.

Landau (Best Supporting Actor Oscar for “Ed Wood”), Rydell (nominated as Best Director for “On Golden Pond”) and Kessler (recipient of the New York State council on the Arts Playwriting Award) have been kicking around the concept of this seminar for many years, which is only natural given their collective background for sharing their crafts. Landau and Rydell have been co-directors of the Actors Studio West since the 1960s, and Kessler has run the Actors Studio West Playwright/Directors Unit for 10 years (he has even served as director of the Sundance Screenwriters Lab). What they now propose is to take what they have always done within the Actors Studio and take it outside to the general public.

At one point there was some thought to establishing a whole school around the concept, but a seminar presented itself as the ideal forum in which to launch their curriculum. As the three men like to emphasize, a person can be taught varied aspects of the skills of each discipline, but it’s a whole other kettle of fish when you live it. And since they themselves have experienced success by understanding the complex ways in which actors, writers and directors collaborate on the most artistically rewarding level, they want to help others learn how to achieve the same success: by literally demonstrating the challenge of working with people you are likely to have never met before with varying degrees of ability – just like your first day on any set.

This opportunity should not be under appreciated, especially at the incredibly reasonable price of $250 (purposely set low to accommodate the struggling artist). Over the course of two days, you would basically be paying each man minimum wage for what can only be described as their invaluable life’s work, including their industry know-how, prestige, personal success, teaching experience, and collaborations with the likes of Woody Allen, Alfred Hitchcock, Henry Fonda, John Wayne, Al Pacino, and Albert Finney. Let alone the awards and nominations for Oscars, Golden Globes, Emmys and Tonys. Now that’s a bargain!

The seminar will be held at he Haines Hall (Room 39) on the UCLA campus in Westwood on Saturday and Sunday, November 14th and 15th, from 10am – 6pm, with check-in beginning at 9am. For more details about the seminar, including instructions for writers to submit scenes to be considered, please visit: www.TheTotalPictureSeminar.com

Below is Mark Rydell with Vickie Sampson at the 30th Anniversary Screening of The Rose held in October 2009 at the Academy. Vickie and her award winning mother Kay Rose, (who received an Oscar for her work on Mark's film The River in 1985 ) did the sound editing on The Rose.


The second picture is Martin Landeau posing with Rabbi Janet Bieber at The Rose screening.

 

Have Women Directors Come A Long Way, Baby? By Victoria Sampson

[From The Caucus Journal/Summer 2006]

The short answer is, “No.” This article is an invitation to explore,“Why?”

In a 1990/1991 DGA News magazine article Nell Cox, a television director (L.A. Law, Konrad, M*A*S*H) recalled a question she posed ten years earlier regarding how few role models existed for women directors. It was the 1980s when the first statistics on women in key roles in Hollywood came out.They were grim. “We know how hard it is for men to become directors in Hollywood,”said Cox. “Do we dare plan a career hoping to be among the nine-tenths of one percent of the women? The answer is yes, because we expect these figures to change.” That was over 20 years ago and the figures haven’t changed. They’ve gotten worse.

Read Full Article click here.

Sundance Dispatch: A Celebration of Women Filmmakers

L to R: Julie Janata, Martha Richards, Jacqui Barcos, Julie Forbes, Maria Burton


Guest post from director Maria Burton:


The Alliance of Women Directors (AWD) and The Fund for Women Artists hosted their inaugural Sundance party celebrating Women Filmmakers Sunday night at the gorgeous Queer Lounge. The evening was a rousing success, with overflow attendance and the crowd partying down — though some were shocked to learn some of the shameful statistics about women directors (i.e. that of the 250 top grossing films of 2007, only 6% were directed by women - certainly not due to lack of interest and availability of women directors!) Attendees were inspired to work together to make more films with women at the helm, and happy to celebrate (helped along thanks to Absolut Vodka’s sponsorship!) the women filmmakers at Sundance, Slamdance and beyond!


The AWD is a coalition of women directors which both provides a community of peers for mutual support, and furthers the art, craft and visibility of women directors in the film and television industry. Along with over 200 partiers (many of whom left excited to join AWD!), in attendance were AWD Board members Jacqui Barcos, Julie Janata and Maria Burton as was the Fund for Women Artists Julie Forbes and Executive Director Martha Richards.


Permalink: http://womenandhollywood.com/2009/01/sundance-dispatch-a-celebration-of-women-filmmakers/

AWD Panavision Event as observed by Vickie Sampson

On November 18, 2008, about 80 AWD members and guests were invited to Panavision in Woodland Hills for an evening of education, food and a hands-on demonstration with cameras and cranes.

The evening started with freshly popped popcorn in the lobby of the theater where famous Panavision cameras are on display – the underwater housed camera that was used for Jaws; a 65mm camera and the famous original Panaflex camera. Huge George Hurrell photographs of great actors and actresses from the 1940s lined the walls, reminding us of how a beautifully lit and designed image can affect us.

In the theater we were given a formal presentation on a variety of topics: frame size and the advantages and disadvantages between shooting film at 2, 3 or 4 perf; lenses: spherical or anamorphic, prime or zoom; and digital vs. film shooting. What impressed me with all the speakers was their constant referral back to the story. How do we choose between these options to best tell our story? What combination of elements will best realize our vision as filmmakers? And how can we make that work within our budget? Panavision made it clear they were there with a wide array of tools to help us best achieve our vision.

Phil Radin started the evening off introducing everyone and giving us a bit of Panavision history. Al Mayer Jr., whose father Albert Mayer Sr., invented the original Panaflex camera in 1972, and continues the family tradition of camera innovation, spoke about the various cameras, both film and digital and urged us to find the “right tool for the right application.”

With the advent of digital technology, most films today, whether shot on film or digitally, use a DI (Digital Intermediate) process. If originated on film, a DI is made by scanning the motion picture negative into a digital format. At this point, it can be manipulated and color timed digitally prior to outputting back to film, to create an IN (internegative).

Andrew Young talked about Panavision’s prime lenses and their break-through developments in zoom lenses which can match the primes now in ways never before possible. He let us know, however, that they still have thousands of the older lenses in their inventory available for use if one is going for an older look.

Lastly, we learned about the newest high definition digital cameras. Panavision prides itself on keeping the “filmic” aspect in the digital camera world so that a DP who is used to shooting with a film camera (especially a Panavision film camera) can easily shoot with a digital camera because it acts like a film camera. All the lenses have been designed to interchange with both film and digital cameras.

The quality is amazing -- we were shown a film versus Genesis (hi def) comparison shot by Allen Daviau, ASC (ET, Van Helsing) for Mazda in 2007 when Mazda was trying to decide whether to shoot on Hi Def or film, and it was difficult to tell which was which!

Another amazing Panavision development is the Phantom camera which can record 1000 frames per second which means that 4 seconds of real time translates to 2 ½ minutes of screen time! We saw some amazing footage of strawberries dropped into milk and chocolate which made me hungry! Some of us got to try that camera out in the “playpen.” The Phantom would be great for a visual fx heavy show or a shot where you want heightened reality. One of the Panavision guys tested it out by slapping himself in the face. When played back, you could see his lips wiggle back and forth at the point of impact. Another great feature of this camera is that it stays perpetually in record mode, keeping a loop in temporary memory. If you decide to record something that already happened, you can “film the past” – for example if you’re trying to film lightening, you keep the camera pointed at the sky, and when the lightening strikes, you press record. Even though the event has already happened, the camera has recorded it in its temporary memory, so it rewinds and captures that moment permanently by committing it to the larger hard drive.

For remote shooting, having an instant playback of filmed material is a great plus. Not having to wait for dailies to make sure the shots are good is a wonderful aspect of shooting digitally. Josh demonstrated a new piece of equipment Panavision is perfecting. A hot swappable docking station that can prepare shots for either editing or visual fx where frame by frame capture is done lickety split! The workflow all stays in uncompressed video.

We were given some DVDs to take home. “Going Tapeless,” “Product and Technical Information,” “Demystifying Digital Camera Specifications,” and “Allen Daviau’s film versus Hi Def comparisons.” I’m sure Panavision can give you some if you missed the meeting.

We then had a wonderful dinner of meat and meatless lasagna, salad, beer, wine brownies, chocolate chip cookies and coffee. The playroom loomed before us – rows of cameras mounted and ready for us to explore. They even had a 15’ techno crane! AWDers were busy asking questions, trying out the cameras and crane, feeling the weight of the hand-held camera used in Hancock. Nobody wanted to leave! Some were there until almost 11pm.

It was a very informative and friendly environment. Panavision is very open to helping filmmakers achieve their visions. We look forward to having another in-depth event at Panavision to explore some of these areas in more depth.

Kudos to Jacqui Barcos for arranging this event, to the AWD board and members who helped with all the checking in (Jan Reesman in particular!) And big thanks to Suzanne Lezotte, Director or Public Relations of Panavision.

To contact the new filmmaker program at Panavision, Ric Halpern is the one to talk to at 818 316-1600 ext 2202 or email ric_halpern@panavision.com.