TNMC

Hey there TNMCers... Glad most of y'all still remember me.  I hope you guys have been doing very well.

Most of you will recall I was a steady presence on TNMC from 2000-2003ish, and then pretty much fell off the map. (save for my Peacekeeper Wars review, cuz some things just *have* to be reviewed)

So yeah, you have to start somewhere in Hollywood, and after being out here toiling away in 2001 and 2002 I  finally got a full-time gig working at American World Pictures, a production company headed up by Mark L. Lester (you may remember him as the director of such films like Commando, Firestarter, etc.) Basically, I'm his right-hand man, which has opened up many avenues for me, as he is very connected.

Shortly thereafter, Tom Vitale of SCI FI asked us to make a film for them. The upside - my first "real" credit, for SCI FI no less! The downside - how to make a movie about pterodactyls actually be good, and not just a Jurassic Park rip-off. That was the challenge. Sure, it's a B-movie at heart, so it's not gonna be high art, but I was gonna be damned if it wasn't gonna be fun.

My official position on the film was associate producer. What that basically means is of the three producers on this film, I was the novice. And boy was it a learning experience. As you can imagine, just like any industry, the novice does much, if not most of the work, so it's been an invaluable experience.

To give you a rough idea of what I actually did, and to answer the larger lingering question of “What does a producer actually do?,” (since I get that a lot ) here goes.

You already know what a director does. You know what a director of photography does. You know what an editor does, etc. etc.

The producer does everything that each individual job *doesn't* cover. The producer is the only person who is involved from day 1 of pre-production until day x of post-production. the producer is the one who hires all of the aforementioned people.

In pre-production, for example, I was in charge of hiring the CGI company and make-up FX company. I helped with the casting. I helped secure the financing by dealing with the bank and the bond company. I interviewed key crew personnel, ranging from the DP to the storyboard artist. I even fine-tuned the script to accommodate changes as production went on (uncredited, sadly).

In Prague, I had to get there two weeks before filming to make sure that the crew, vehicles, props, and lighting would actually show up on day 1. I scouted for locations and had to find a company in England that could ship us a bunch of realistic looking military helmets overnight since the ones in Prague weren't good enough.

During shooting, the producer is in charge of the entire set. I, along with the other two producers, made sure we started on time and finished on time. Or at least as close as possible, and that includes forcing the director to stop if he's costing the producer to pay overtime to 75 people. I made sure Coolio got to the set no more than two hours late, and about 1000 other little intangible things like making sure on-set changes to the script wouldn't screw up story continuity, or that we didn't leave out something crucial (e.g. in scene 74 Kate has a gun, but where did she get it from, she didn't have it in scene 69 - uh oh!). You also act act as an intermediary between the actors and the director a lot, making sure everyone is happy, or at least close to it. Also, I supervised much of the 2nd unit shooting. 2nd unit is where you're filming the actors doing non-speaking things and the director is not present. It ranges from simplistic things like insert shots to fairly complex green-screen work where your actors are doing some rudimentary stunts. 2nd unit is vital to making your schedule because there is just never enough time for the director to oversee everything.

In post-production, you have to coordinate actors' schedules so they can come in and do their ADR (additional dialog recording), and that's only after you've hired a sound design facility and a composer. You also work with the editor every step of the way to make sure it's working. In our case, we were also viewing and approving CGI for six months once post-production had begun. You have to submit all the necessary paperwork to the bank and bond and insurance companies so that they don't take the movie away from you. You have to actually type up the end credits (not fun, FYI). You have to cut a trailer, design your key artwork, and seek distribution for the film. (SCI FI only has the US TV rights - it stills needs distribution on DVD, in Spain, in Italy, in Indonesia, etc.). You have to oversee the creation of all the deliverable film elements to these countries like NTSC masters (16x9 and 4x3), PAL (16x9, 4x3), sound elements like M&E tracks, the telecine of the 35mm print, etc etc.

And I didn't even mention the coordination of shipping all the camera gear and puppet parts from the US to Czech customs and back, for which you have to file with both governments.

And that was two years of my life, give or take.

So finally, five years after leaving Virginia I've got something tangible to show for my efforts. Obviously, I hope to achieve much more than just this, but in Hollywood, everything takes a long time. Right now, it's looking like my next small step towards my ultimate goal of directing is that I'll be writing (and again producing) our next film for SCI FI, another creature feature.

With any luck, we'll shoot that movie in the summer of 2006 and it'll air summer of 2007. Like I said, this shit takes time. But it's fun and that's the idea, right?

I'm certainly not asking that you guys drop everything this Saturday and watch all of Pterodactyl. But if you wanna check out a few minutes of it (or even all of it - aren't you just dying to know how the hot blonde is gonna get it?!), that'd be cool (My name is in the opening credits - in 3rd to last position!).

Oh, and yeah, my real name is Rafael Pujals, but I dropped the Pujals and use my middle name, Jordan. From this point forward though, i won't acknowledge this again. Pujals has ceased to exist! (but Ultra Magnus will never die.  )

Sorry I'm not around more, but if you guys ever want to ask me anything film or Hollywood related, I'll do my best to shed some light. It's really eye-opening to actually work in this industry, because everything is difficult. I did my absolute best to influence the outcome of Pterodactyl towards the positive. Sometimes I succeeded, other times I failed. I view movies in such a different way now, because now I know just how damn hard it is just make a damn movie.

Oh, as an aside, when the DVD comes out later this year, I will technically be making my directorial debut... with "Terror in the Sky: the Making of Pterodactyl"... but we all know that doesn't really count. (but it's another IMDB credit, baby!)

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Pterodactyls premieres Saturday, August 27 on SCI FI.