I teamed up with Maribeth Romslo and HelloSunshineFilms again to work on another short film. The film, titled Under One Roof, was written by Cristina Pippa and directed by Maribeth. My role for this project was Assistant Director. In pre-production I worked in tandem with Romslo and Producer Nina Sharma to help assemble the crew, find the film’s location, coordinate a three day schedule and dial in all the other details of the project. Pre-production really is the key to a successful shoot, and there was plenty to coordinate to make this shoot run flawlessly.
During the production, my job was to be the captain of the ship. The Assistant Director is the boss of the crew and the manager of the set — the Director is in charge of the creative vision, the AD is their right hand man and in charge of making all the pieces fall into place.
With Maribeth acting as both Director and Cinematographer, she was focused on those two very important roles. With her operating the camera, I spent most of my time in video village (a big monitor of what the camera is seeing) working with Maribeth on frame composition, suggesting changes in actor blocking and delivery as well as watching for crisp focus within the frame. With my role being focused on set, I delegated as much as I could to my Second Assistant Director (my right hand woman for the project) so she could keep the crew informed about what is now, what is next, what we’re shooting, she helped keep background tasks running while we worked through the shoot and she maintained an open dialogue between myself and the rest of the set.
This production was a lot of work and three long shoot days, but in the end we captured a wonderful story. The film is now finished and making its way through the small film circuits — the film was selected and featured in the 2017 Speechless Film Festival.
© Copyright 2021 Matthew Deery.
