Free Film School by Steve Boman Page A

I’ve never done pictures. I’ve never been a photographer, and my drawings are pathetic, worse than a preschooler’s scribbling.
    I am obviously going to have to focus on my weaknesses. I desperately wish I had known these were the rules for the first semester. I had come to USC with dozens of ideas in my head for film. All of them were wordy—and, it turns out—all of them were overly complex and too difficult to produce. Had I known I would be doing essentially silent films my first semester, I would have been a lot better prepared. I’m a bit frustrated by my own ignorance. And now I need to come up with a plausible story for my next film.
    B
efore I left Chicago, the husband of my girlfriend’s pal asked if I was interested in joining him as a transplant coordinator. I thought he was joking.
    Two weeks later, I completed my morning anchor shift at the radio station and raced out to the Rochester airport. The husband of my girlfriend’s pal had chartered a plane to fly me to Chicago for the afternoon. I spent the day being interviewed by some of America’s most elite doctors for a position I knew nothing about. I was an English major in college and a radio reporter. I knew nothing of surgery. I was twenty-five years old.
    For reasons that remain inexplicable to me to this day, the University of Chicago hired me. They paid me much more than MPR ever had. I would live in Chicago. I would retrieve organs from dead people.
    M
y second 507 film presents me with a dilemma. Before I came to USC, I jotted down lots of film ideas, aided by friends and family who pitched me stories. In my time in newsrooms, I was never at a loss for ideas for stories. I was normally a one-man story-pitching machine. Now I have to make an eight-minute film that includes only one word, but every idea I have involves lots of chatter.
    I spend several days jotting new ideas down and then throwing all of them away.
    Finally, I come up with one that seems workable: A young man goes to a funeral for his father. Afterwards, he gets the will. The father’s handwritten scrawl claims he hid some treasure. The will includes a crude map. The letter and map look as if they were created by a crazy person. The son, a straitlaced young office worker, goes on a long journey to find the hidden treasure. By the time he reaches the map’s end, having overcome various obstacles, he’s a dirty mess and he finds . . . nothing. But he has become as insane as his father appears to have been. The one word the son will utter is “DAD!”
    It’s a dark comedy. I name it MY CRAZY DAD.
    Early in my shooting week, I find a funeral home willing to let me shoot inside their parlor. The funeral home director is even willing to drive his hearse for me.
    I discover a gorgeous Catholic cathedral just a few blocks from USC. With a few shots, I figure I can approximate a funeral.
    For the treasure hunt, I’ll shoot in the mountains above Malibu. The area has a gorgeous state park, filled with hiking trails I’ve taken my kids and Julie on many times. I know a site with an abandoned windmill—it looks like the remains of a farm. The park has a valley with uninterrupted vistas—no power lines, no houses, no roads on the horizon.
    For the son’s workplace, I have an office I can use at USC.
    I have everything I need . . . except an actor. My other classes are taking up more time than I planned, and the first few days of the week quickly pass as I start searching for talent. I need someone for a full-day shoot.
    Tuesday comes and I’m able to go to the funeral home and shoot some amazingly authentic scenes, just me and my camera and the tripod. A real dead guy is in a casket, awaiting a memorial service. The funeral home director discreetly closes the lid before I roll the camera, but otherwise he offers me the run of the funeral home. He says he appreciates I’m an older family man