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MANY TEENS find that the careers: dey

aspire to are not as glamorous as they ex-
pected. Others just don't know what the
future holds. What are your plans for after

graduation?

Do you have specific

ideas

about your future? What will you do with

the summer of °93?

firector: 1 nice e job if you can get it?

Dave Graham

Dave, 17, is in Grade ‘12 at
Carson Graham secondary schaol.
His interests include ‘model
railroading and he hopes to go to
film school. +

EVERYONE AT one time

or another has revelled at.

the thought of being a big-
time movie director, and
having his/her way with the
stars of Hollywood, the
power of controlling all the
little people, or telling their
favorite actors where to go
or what to do.

Sadly, the grim reality is that
being a director is a lot harder
than it appears from the outside.

in the career preparation course
that I’m taking this semester at
the Leo Marshall Curriculum
Centre, | am required, with a
group of others, to produce a
short video.

Somewhere in the bustle of
pre-production, I ended up with
the responsibility of director.

As the director, it. was my job
to divide up research and assign
people to making contacts. This
meant loading some of the work
on top of myself.

After weeks of storybearding
(the technique used to first script
the production) and pulling in
contracts for each of our shoots,
we were faced with our biggest
shoot.

The opening scene of the video
shows a group of teens walking
down an alley. When | had first
visualized this, it seemed so easy,
like nothing could possibly go
wrong.

The first course of action was
to find people who would be in-
terested in being in the shot.

Assuming that they would line up
to be involved, d put ao sign-up
sheet in the main office at the
school,

Announcements were run for
several days, but even after a
week, there were only four names
on that list. This wasn't even close
to enough,

I had pictured about 30 to 40
teens, and here | had only four.

I talked to teachers at almost all
the high schools, and finally | was
able to make contact’ with the
teachers from Carson Graham and
Argyle.

Again, things seemed so casy.
The teachers offered to get me
more than | needed, 20 to 39 from
each school, and things seemed
foolproof,

Spring break was over and J
had one day feft until shooting.
We had to cancel and reschedule
due to bad weather. After
rescheduling the shoot, we found
that on the new date (two days
after the original), a lot of stu-
dents from Argyle were away on a
drama trip.

This severely cut into the
number of students coming from
that school.

Shooting day finally came, the
weather was great, and things
seemed to be going swell. We got
down to where we had planned to
do the shooting and proceeded to
inform the store owners in the
area of our intent.

We were sadly turned away,
though, by a store owner who in-
formed us that although the peo-
ple at the city hall had told us that
all North Shore alleys were public,
the one behind his shop, the one
we had chosen, was not public.

With 45 minutes to shooting
time we were forced to look for
another suitable location.

We found another alley, and
after discussing things many times
over with the others on my team,
we set Up our equipment.

After 30 minutes of ruining
electrical cables, setting, up
lighting, positioning cameras,
making sure each camera operator
knew what kinds of shots he was
taking, and organizing things into
a coherent pattern, we were ready
to shoot. All that we needed now
were our actors,

One of my assistant directors
came running down to me at 3:55
p.m. (five minutes before we were
scheduled to begin shooting), and
told me they had a total of seven
students.

Photo submitted

MICHAEL MUSTARD, a graduate of West Vancouver second-
ary school, was one of 16 students named as winners of the
1992 Premier’ s Excellence Awards. Mustard (centre) received
the award from Advanced Education Minister Tom Perry and

Premier Mike Harcourt.

1 was devastated,
What had happened to the 40 to
60 kids [ was expecting?

We postponed the beginning of

the shoot for another half hour,
but still only five more people
showed and we were forced to go
ahead with a grand total of 12

We did the shooting, over and
over and aver again, Believe it or
not, the power (if you can call it
that) that I had over the crew and
actors wasn't what Thad ex-

pected.

I actually found it embarrassing
to be the same age as all these
people, yet | was standing there
telling them what to do, like some
sart of authority figure.

Somehow, as a little kid, I had
missed out on the reality of what
goes into productions. 1 had seen
those behind-the-scene type of
films, but somehow [ hadn't clued
in that the director has to be able
to cover all the points, take care

of all the details, and oversee the
production from beginning to end.

Not only that, but a director
has to be able to handle any
pressures that are thrown his or
her way. If you've ever thought
about being a big Hollywood
director, think about it really
hard.

If you ever do try, say to

yourself *['m the director!,"’ not
“I'm the director?”’

NEWS photo Mike Wakefield

CHILDREN'S ENTERTAINER Joey Hanlon tunes up his makeshift band of students chosen from
the audience during a periormance at the Kids for Kids Human Rights Forum heid last month at
the Centennial Theatre in North Vancouver. Students from across the province took part in the
two-day event that explored human rights issues concerning children worldwide.

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