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Interview with Christopher Odom,
Digital Filmmaker Christopher Odom’s Filmography Production Notes:In 1994, Christopher Odom earned his Bachelor of Arts in
Film & Video from “I had already planned
out the next 25 years of my life with alternate scenarios, just in case
things didn’t go as planned. But the
one scenario I did not have was ‘not getting into graduate school’.”
Devastated, Chris began making plans to raise money to
produce an independent short film.
Within 7 days of the rejection letter from UCLA, UCLA sent another
letter offering Chris the opportunity to participate in a new program at UCLA
called The Professional Program in Screenwriting. It had only been in existence for a year
and was still very much experimental. Chris decided that the Professional Program in
Screenwriting was as good enough an excuse as any to move to “Yeah, Chris would go on to apply another 3 times for a total of 4
times to the UCLA Master of Fine Arts Program in Screenwriting before he was
finally admitted. “When the letter came,
I couldn’t believe it. I
screamed. I was so used to getting
rejected on scripts, not winning contests, and not getting into to UCLA, that
it really caught me by surprise – a pleasant surprise.” The Master of Fine Arts Program in Screenwriting at UCLA is
a 2-year program, but most screenwriting students, such as Chris, opt to stay
in school an extra year, some even 2 extra years. “Y’know, it’s like I
spent 4 years of my life trying to get into this program, so I certainly
wasn’t in hurry to get out.” During Chris’ last year in the UCLA MFA Program in
Screenwriting, he had hammered out a business proposal to produce 16 digital
films for $50 million, budgeted at $2.5 each with 1 or 2 recognizable names
or faces (a celebrity of some note) as cast.
Shortly after completing his business plan, Chris’ temp agency of
several years, Aquent Partners (formerly known as MacTemps), sent Chris on a
job to help a gentleman tweak a business plan created in PowerPoint. That person was Moshe Diamont, an
independent producer and filmmaker. “Proud of all my fancy
charts, graphs, and research, I remember showing Moshe my business plan, and
Moshe telling me, ‘What this business plan says is, yes, independent film can
make money.’ I had an actual business
plan, but I didn’t have an actual feature under my belt. Instead of $2.5 million per feature, Moshe
suggested that I make a film for a $100 thousand first, or even a $100 for
that fact. As long as I could prove
that I could take an idea from concept to completion - that was worth
something to an investor. And even
better yet, if I made a movie for a $100 and sold it for $300, I could still
say to an investor that my original investment on the $100 project had better
than a 40% return.” Flash forward to 2003.
“I’m rolling up on my
8th anniversary in Los Angeles and I’m still single, without a
girlfriend, no kids that I know of or claim, not making a living doing what I
love, and still answering phones for someone else doing what they love to
do.” At the time when Chris shot HOW TO MAKE IT IN HOLLYWOOD
BEFORE YOU MAKE IT, Chris was working for Dan Gordon (Screenwriter of THE
HURRICANE starring Denzel Washington, WYATT EARP starring Kevin Costner,
MURDER IN THE FIRST starring Christian Slater and PASSENGER 57 starring
Wesley Snipes, among others). During the past 7 years in “I was like so broke. I was always broke. At one time I had an agent, lawyer,
manager, accountant, and not enough money to pay full price for a movie
ticket in So in 2003, Chris was starting to feel like he was failing
when he suddenly realized that he had been focusing all of his energy on
attempts to get noticed, and he was in fact getting noticed. Therefore, he actually was succeeding. But getting noticed wasn’t really what he
wanted. He wanted to be Producing,
Directing and Writing for Film & Television. Instead of focusing on getting noticed, he
decided to direct all of his time and energy on Producing, Directing and
Writing product utilizing his own immediate resources. “I had gotten caught
up the notion that you couldn’t make a good movie or TV program without
millions of dollars, and it just wasn’t true.
People have hundreds of millions of dollars and it’s still challenging
to produce an engaging product, so clearly money was not necessarily the
golden ticket.” During Chris’ last year in the UCLA MFA Program in
Screenwriting, he had been kicking around the idea of a reality piece on
different types of people trying to make it in “In the end, I think
we came out with a product that was a happy medium between infomercial and
serious product. I’m proud I was able
to complete my first feature and eager to make another one.” - # # # - Interview with Christopher Odom,
Digital Filmmaker:
Question: What made you decide to make HOW TO MAKE IT IN Chris:
“Well, that’s a long story. I
remember telling my friend Chrystal Jordan, who crewed on the infamous BLAIR
WITCH PROJECT, that I was getting frustrated and felt like I was going in too
many directions. During my 7 years in
LA, in addition to earning my Masters in Screenwriting from UCLA, I had also
sang in three choirs and on the Praise Team at First A.M.E. Church, better
known as FAME, until I lost my voice from over-singing; performed as a professional Swing dancer,
once even performing for Bill Clinton at a Democratic Party fundraiser, and
pretty much swung my way into a SAG card, that is until I tore my hamstring
and adductor in two places; and went on meetings and pitches set-up by a
screenwriting agent who was essentially homeless and banned from the snack
bar in her office building because she had run up a $50 tab she could not
repay when she would come down there and watch soaps all day instead of
rolling calls. Getting back to the
story, Chrystal told me to pick one thing, just one thing, and just think
about it and only the next day for four hours straight. So, I did it, and what I picked was
directing. Meanwhile, a buddy of mine
who went to undergraduate film school with me at Georgia State University,
Michael Marks, invited me to a small gathering of ‘film artists’ as he called
them, at the Coffee Bean on Sunset Boulevard across the street from the
Directors Guild of America. There I
met Charles Alleyne, who had just moved here from New York and had already
directed one independent feature film and significantly helped produce
another. I told Charles I was
frustrated and Charles told me that if I really wanted to make a film, I need
to “just do it”. So I called Chrystal back and told her that I had picked
directing as my new focus and she told me that I now needed to find a
project. And I did, and that project
was HOW TO MAKE IT IN HOLLYWOOD BEFORE YOU MAKE IT. I chose that project because I thought it
would have the most potential for distribution. If I could not get a distribution deal, I
was planning on setting up a table on the Santa Monica 3rd Street
Promenade or the Venice Beach Boardwalk to DVDs that I burned at home direct
to the public. Question:
How did you finance HOW TO MAKE
IT IN HOLLYWOOD BEFORE YOU MAKE IT? Chris: Michael Marks and Charles Alleyne
were both members of IFP West and told me that I could rent a mini-dv camera
and a Final Cut Pro Editing Suite at IFP West dirt cheap if I was a
member. But I ended getting an Apple
Loan, with which I bought a G4, and a credit card, which became the operating
fund for the newly formed ODOM ENTERTAINMENT.
I did join IFP West, but ended up borrowing a GL-1 from my friend
LAnce Moseley, who also went to film school with me at Georgia State
University, and who also appears in the documentary. I used IFP West to rent a light kit and
HOLLYWOOD STUDIO RENTALS in Burbank to rent my mics and lens filters. On a sidebar, HOLLYWOOD STUDIO RENTALS
prides itself as the only rental house in town that does not require deposits
(which are usually upwards of $3,000 in Los Angeles) – just a driver’s
license and a credit card. HOLLYWOOD
STUDIO RENTALS is perhaps the single most important place in Hollywood for
mini-dv filmmakers. Question: How did your first day of shooting turn out? Chris: When the day to shoot came around, I picked up my light kit
at IFP West (a mistake, always pick up your equipment and test it the night
before), and as the equipment people were checking over equipment and I
looked at every little gizmo and attachment, and began to get nervous. I was already an hour behind schedule, an
hour away from the location, and I wasn’t really sure if I even remembered how
to put together a light kit. I had
been saying I was ‘going to make a movie’ for so long, I hadn’t realized that
9 years had gone by since I graduated from undergraduate film school ergo put
together a light kit. As I left IFP
West, by some miracle, I had Charles Alleyne’s business card on me. I called him from my SUV and asked him if
he could hang lights for me. Charles
was a good sport and obliged. Since
that day, and the time of this interview, Charles and I have already shot
more than 5 times together. As we
began to shoot HOW TO MAKE IT IN HOLLYWOOD BEFORE YOU MAKE IT, the fire I
once had 9 years ago when I first came out to LA had suddenly returned to
me. This is what I was supposed to be
doing. Question: What
was your vision for HOW TO MAKE IT IN HOLLYWOOD BEFORE YOU MAKE IT? Chris: Although I wouldn’t turn one down,
my goal for this project was never to win an Academy Award. Thinking of my production days back at
Georgia State University, I remembered the words of my film instructor Gary
Moss telling us to, “Keep it simple.”
So instead of having a B-roll, and several camera angles and quick
cuts, I opted to keep the camera in place and simply get a good picture and
clean sound. Rather than using quick
cuts and special effects to dazzle the audience, I wanted to let the artists
tell their stories, and let the stories sell themselves. Sound is the independent filmmaker’s worst
enemy, and I knew I needed good sound.
People will let a muddy picture slide.
But whether or not they can articulate it, they just plain old won’t
accept bad sound. So I used wired
lavalier mics on channel 1 and a shotgun mic on channel 2 as a backup and to
possibly mix in post for more realistic sound. After we got in post, it turned out that
the lavaliers sounded great and natural on their own, so I never ended using
shotgun track at all. Question:
Did anything ever go wrong while
you were shooting? Chris: We shot 6 interviews in one
location on the first day, and I had to shoot 3 by myself out in Lancaster on
the second day. Lisa Heile was the
final interview and I did that in my apartment on the fly with only the
camera and my green backdrop, without the mics and the lights. I had to turn on every light in the house
to see her and literally place the camera right in her face to try and get a
decent sound. In post, her footage was
dark, and the sound had a lot of hiss.
I was able to color correct and remove enough hiss in Final Cut Pro
3.0 to point where I was satisfied enough not to re-shoot. Question:
How did you find your 10
emerging artists for the documentary? Chris: All the people interviewed in the
documentary, except for Brock Mitchel, had a previous relationship with
me. As a matter of fact, in
post-production, I had to cut out all references to me so I wouldn’t be
making the Six Degrees of Christopher Odom.
I specifically wanted to use people that I knew in the documentary
because I was focusing on building my network. I wanted to help people that would help
me. You can call it selfish, but I call
it smart. After 8 years of struggling
in Hollywood, there were actually quite of few people that I was once
friendly with who had become unimaginably successful, but were no longer
including me in their inner circles. I
didn’t want to be one of those people who forgot where they came from when I
shot my first feature, and I certainly don’t want to become one of those
people if I too am as fortunate to become unimaginably successful as well. Question: What was the cast’s reaction to the finished product? Chris: Beverly Neufeld was the very first
interview we shot and coincidentally the best lit. We did move the camera around a little and
tweak the setting for safety, but Beverly’s was exactly the look I was going
for. During Beverly’s interview there
was a pesky little fly that wouldn’t go away, and we were stuck with it in
post. Since we never change up the
framing, I figured that would at last give ‘em something else to look. When Beverly saw the final project, she
said, “Chris, you’re a genius. Not
just because the documentary was good, because you had an idea and turned it
into a reality.” LAnce, or shall I say Capital L, Capital A, lowercase
n-c-e. Was a blast. He wanted to
change shirts three times during his interview, and considering the fact that
we were shooting on his camera for free, I figured why not. Changing shirts really turned out to be a
hoot, and people loved it when I first screened it. When Nessa screened the DVD for the first time she said “It
was awesome!” Question:
What did you cut the documentary
on? We posted on Final Cut Pro 3.0. I had shot a couple music videos the
preceding fall on a 1-Chip and had edited on my PC Laptop with Adobe Premiere
6.5. That was my first foray into
non-linear editing and I had to learn from a book - the Visual Quickstart
Series Pro to be exact. I bought the
Final Cut Pro 3.0 version of that same series to cut HOW TO MAKE IT IN
HOLLYWOOD BEFORE YOU MAKE IT at home.
It took about a month of tweaking to cut it. We ended up finishing on DVD. Final Cut Pro is great, and rendering on my
G4 was literally 10 to 20 times faster than rendering on my old PC laptop
with Premiere. (www.christopherodom.com) - # # # - Christopher Odom’s Filmography:“Making The Cut”, Mini-DV Doc. Feature, Prod./Dir./Writer
(In Post-Production) - 2003 “How To Make It In Hollywood Before You Make It”, Mini-DV Doc. Feature, Prod./Dir./Writer (Seeking
Distribution) - 2003 “Majestic”,
Mini-DV Celebrity Interviews for the Internet, D.P. - 2003 “Spoken Warrior”, Mini-DV Music Video, Prod./Dir./Writer
(In Post-Production) - 2003 “My Friend”,
Mini-DV Music Video, Prod./Dir./Writer
- 2002 “Back To the Genesis”, Mini-DV Music Video, Prod./Dir./Writer
- 2002 “Tiger Beer”,
Mini-DV Spec Commercial, Dir. of
Photography - 2003 “The Pfhar Side”, S-VHS Sketch-Comedy Series, Writer/Technical
Consultant (GCTV) - 1993 - 1994 “A Living Nightmare”, ¾ SP Short, Prod./Dir./Writer -
1994 “Time After Time”, ¾ SP Short, Prod./Dir. - 1994 “Pressed Images”, 16mm Film Doc. Short, Co-Prod./Co-Dir./
Co-Writer - 1994 “Charles Drew”,
Beta SP Doc. Feature, Technical
Consultant - 1994 “Paul Robeson”,
Beta SP Doc. Feature, Technical
Consultant - 1994 “Rags & Bones”, ¾ SP Doc. Short, Co-Prod./Co-Dir./
Co-Writer - 1994 “Color Confrontation Theory”, 8mm Video Doc. Short, Prod./Dir./Writer
- 1994 “Jazz on Film”,
8mm Video Doc. Short, Prod./Dir./Writer
- 1994 “Grim Reaper”,
8mm B/W Film PSA, Prod./Dir./Writer - 1993 “The Birthday Bicycle”, 8mm B/W Film Short, Prod./Dir./Writer
- 1993 - # # # - |
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“Never Give In.
Never Give Up. Dreams Do Come
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