Who holds the power in Features and TV

After posting the last blog about the differences between features and TV I realized that there's still more to say -- 

Who controls their medium, how they control it and why. 

Features, as I mentioned before, are the big guys on the block. They get more money and more serious attention and go back over a hundred years. While TV was working in the mid 30's it didn't really catch on until the early 1950's. Color came in the mid 1960's.

Features are primarily a director's medium. The director is king and believe me, you get taken with that power quite easily. Anything you want or need is there in seconds, a coffee, a new chair, anything. You get driven around and your every wish, albeit realistic (although sometimes...) is taken care of.


I experienced this the first time I directed a feature, the oft-mentioned Ghostkeeper. Once when I sat by a crewmember at the bar (we were on location in the Rocky Mtns) and talked to him he said he'd never had a director who actually spoke to him in a casual situation. Since I had directed and produced hundreds of commercials, I had no illusions as to my status, I was and am an ordinary guy who lucked into extraordinary jobs.

But there was someone on the crew who wasn't a big fan. He was the 1st Assistant Director, a position that is second only to the director and his job is primarily to keep the show moving. He deals with handling the crew according to the director's wishes and pacing and schedule is everything to him.

This 1st felt he should be directing the movie as he had far more experience than me. And each day he would put down little caustic remarks in his log; "lost 15 minutes due to director indecision" etc. What he forgot is that my company was producing the movie so at the end of the day, his remarks went directly to me. This situation is rarely worked out, as egos figure into the equation and we had a few good arguments in front of the crew. Ultimately, he backed off, as I had the power to fire him.

Features also have big budgets and schedules, a big movie can shoot for 6 months while one episode of a series is done in 5-8 days.


The director has the power on a movie as he is the train engineer, he's driving, the rest of us follow. That is until he screws up. Most important is making the day, staying on schedule, followed by shooting good scenes although a good DP can cover for them. And the budget is most important, you take too long or spend too much money, you can be out and replaced faster than you know. It's not uncommon to replace the director but rarely happens.

The writer is sometimes dismissed when the studio hires another writer to replace them. Sometimes a handful of writers will take a shot at a screenplay for a feature before it's made. And more than often, a battle for credits ensues resulting in a panel of peers who have to read each draft and decide who should get the credit. It's not unusual for the original writer to just have a "story by" credit. Credits are important to writers as they determine residuals as well as provide a credit to their resume.  Often these panel decisions are met with heated arguments.


Good directors will often have the writer on set or nearby should a change be required. Insecure directors often don't want the writer around and the joke is that some directors don't like the writer on set because he/she is the only one who knows the director is faking it.


WGA rules state that a director cannot change anything in a screenplay (or script, the words are interchangeable for both TV and features) without permission from the writer. This happened to me only once, on Gentle Ben, when the company was filming in Lake Tahoe and I was 300 miles away in Los Angeles.

In some cases, the Producer is the power on the set and everywhere. These are usually huge egos and since they find the money, they are on set and watching as the director directs. I've been lucky to not have that situation in the 3 films I directed although dealt with it directing commercials.

The basic difference between features and TV is summed up like this; features are what you saw and TV is what you heard. Putting it clearer, you watch feature movies (Lawrence of Arabia, Avatar) and you listen to TV (Grey's Anatomy, CSI, etc). One medium is visual and one is talking.


Television is where the the writers rule TV. This could be dramas like Law&Order, comedies like Two and a Half Men, action shows like the CSI franchise and others.

The director is usually a paid employee who comes in, has a week of prep, does the show and then goes home. Since consistency is the heart of episodic, all directors pretty much film the episodes the same way and they are really nothing more than a traffic cop.

Having worked for months on the show, The DP and crew know how to shoot it and the director occasionally has a few ideas... pending writer approval. I always wondered how TV directors get nominated for one specific episode as compared to the others, which all look the same. I think it's more about the script for that particular episode than the way it was directed.

How did the writers get this power?

One simple thing. 

They can write.

Unlike a movie where one script is needed TV requires a new show every week, or at least 13 episodes, usually 26 in a year. And so that means 26 scripts for the same actors for the entire season. Again, consistency is needed; writers learn the strengths and weaknesses of individual actors and tune them as the show goes on.

It wasn't long  until writers realized they were the most important thing in the entire production. Nobody else could deliver a new script every week. And without a script you have a crew and director unemployed.

How many times do TV actors thank writers in speeches? Always.

How many times do they thank TV directors? Not nearly as much but often in features. Cher thanked her hair dresser for her award to which director Norman Jewison was rumoured to have said "at least she didn't do it all by herself".

Today there can be around 10 to 15 writers on some shows and they almost all use the deceiving titles of "executive producer, creative consultant, co-producer, producer, co-executive producer" and finally" written by". Ironically, there were only one or two writers in the "golden days" from the 1950's to 1970's and more freelance writers were used. 

When shooting TV series on studio lots, the writers are there on set everyday or when required and the director quietly goes about his job. It's also becoming common for a handful of directors who also share in the production and also have producer credits. Watch an episode of CSI and count the number of producers sometime.

And somewhere in the group credits is the real producer, the one who actually handles the money and makes sure each show is brought in on time and on budget. Sometimes it's one person, sometimes two or more.

Making movies and TV is an inexact science at best. The only rule is that rules change.

Maybe that's why I like it so much.

Coming soon:  F.U. money

A Taste of Honey at The Spa Four Seasons Atlanta

If you’re seeking a little sweet relief from the hustle and grind of your daily life it could be time for a visit to the spa. I made a beeline to the Spa at the Four Seasons Hotel in Midtown Atlanta for a little shameless pampering. I was invited in to sample the new Honey Delight Body Treatment. Once inside, this urban sanctuary, life is good. My taste of honey began as soon as I entered my treatment room and the therapist began applying a mixture of honey, oatmeal and shea butter to my dehydrated skin. A gentle exfoliation removing dull, dry, dead skin was not only relaxing, but soothing.
The honey is harvested from the hotel’s very own apiary… and the oatmeal is locally sourced. After a quick shower… that I was forced to take because my skin felt so soft with the honey and shea butter lathered all over it, it was time for a rejuvenating honey body lotion massage. The lotion was a mixture of honey and Jasmine leaving my skin silky smooth.
Once the 50 minute treatment was over, I spent time in the relaxation room sipping a perfect blend of peach blossom tea, sweetened with a honey comb! I was also given another sweet treat… honey caramel wrapped in gold paper, both prepared in the hotel’s kitchen using the honey from the Chef Robert Gerstenecker’s private stock.

The Honey Delight treatment is available from now until February 1, 2010 at the Spa at Four Seasons Hotel Atlanta. Prices run $140.00 for 50 minutes and $165.00 for 80 minutes.

HAUTE Honey tips:
Honey is truly one of nature’s most gentle and effective beauty treatments. Some “buzz-worthy” benefits include:

• Being rich in vitamins, minerals and amino acids, which nourish and replenish the skin

• Containing powerful antioxidants that help reverse ageing

• Binding moisture to the skin to enhance hydration, smoothing dry and rough skin, plumping wrinkles and leaving skin soft and supple

• Helping to disinfect and speed the healing process of any scrapes, cuts or burns

Will you try the Spa at the Four Season's Atlanta for sweet relief?

Features vs TV

My friend Lynn Ival, actor and visual artist Lynn Ivall asked me about the difference between feature films and TV movies so while this might be old hat for some of you, let me offer my take on the whole thing.

First of all, feature films are those made for theatrical release and of course TV movies are made for what else... TV. And features end up on TV after their run is finished, usually a few weeks for average films, a month or two for more successful films, and of course, the Avatar audience will most likely keep it in theaters for maybe 6 months with one of those odd things like a theater in Toledo who plays it for the full year. 

Here's another point; features are the status movies, they are made by major studios like Paramount and Warner's and Universal. More money is spent on them (unless you count Paranormal Activity, but we know that as a "non-recurring phenomenon) and bigger stars and the prestige is greater, you could get nominated for an Academy Award vs the same nominations every year for the TV award Emmy.

Their poorer sibling, the TV movie began way back in the late 60's when TV networks  were starved for product and there were no HBO's or Showtimes that showed recent feature films. In the beginning, the movies were written by good writers and were actually very good, tackling controversial subjects and even action.

Steven Spielberg's first movie was a TV movie, called DUEL which became a cult feature film in Europe. If you haven't seen it you should. A car pursued by an evil truck on the highway, done in 12 days.

But it wasn't long until the TV movie fell into "disease of the week" as it became known as. You know, the woman who has to go to look after her dying mother or father, or the woman woman whose husband dies and she has to fend for herself. Or the woman with an incurable disease.

Notice something familiar. Yes, towards the end of the 70's they became female-orientated and stayed that way for the next 40 years until they became redundant as plots were redone and redone and re-imagined and re-thought. There were a few good TV movies but not many, not when you stick to the same formula for 40 years.

And yet today TV movies still exist. TV movie production by the major networks ceased in the early 2000's, and they were most of what I did with the exception of a few. Too much competition from pay-TV and videos pretty much killed that genre. But cable networks were quick to pick it up, the female-driven audience was new now, the GenXers with young families. And so the women's network Lifetime began producing and/or buying TV movies. One of my first projects, Betrayal of Silence, was aired by them. 

And Hallmark came along and went beyond their usual Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movies (they always had the best screenings with food and live music tied to the theme of the movie.). They had smaller budgeted family movies (my version of Gentle Ben) mostly. Their cost was in the $2 million range rather than the respected but incredibly slow-moving Hall of Fame movies at anywhere up to $9 million.

Then ABC launched it's ABC Family network to create product for their cable sibling. Then came Sci-Fi Channel which bought science-fiction themed movies with monsters and creatures from other worlds. 

And then the prices dropped in the late 2000's, some producers were making these movies for less than $1 million dollars. Most of my TV movies were in the $2.5 to $5 million mark. Suffice it to say these movies weren't very good at all, with B and C level talent and many done in Canada to help keep the costs low.

A friend of mine made one called Savage Planet, where giant bears populated a planet and he had only one day to shoot with a trained bear who waved his paws a few times. The result was fairly comical but it was supposed to be a sci-fi thriller.

Then something else was created.

There's yet another species of movie being made now and before. It's primarily aimed at the DVD market and just to make it confusing, is sometimes referred to as a feature film. But these films never see a big screen nor do they play on regular TV. They are simply made for DVD release and usually star Michael Madsen, Val Kilmer (who seems to have destroyed his feature career), Eric Roberts (did one for me) and a lot of other actors who have slid down the slippery slopes of mediocrity.

I recently read a casting ad for one name actor for $50,000 for one day's work. Thus his name could be put on the DVD box.  Seems the producer hired two other "name" actors, each at $50,000 a day and each in maybe 4 or 5 scenes.  The lead actors were people you never heard of.  The money's not great a once A-list actor, but everyone has bills to pay.  And these guys can get a lot of days like that.

I'm told these "straight to DVD" movies play in Europe and Asia, and this is confirmed as I get residuals from at least 2 movies that went to DVD from Great Britain and Europe with some in Asia and Russia. My best residual was from Turkey for 67 cents.

But, as I mentioned in a previous blog, things are changing. A new format will be released soon into the DVD market but it isn't a DVD, it's a memory card. Like the one in your digital point and shoot camera. Only bigger to fit the full-size video box. Some of you might have forgotten the major concern with DVDs when they came out: they would be easy to steal. So bigger boxes were created and sealed to prevent this.

And of course, the great DVD/BlueRay killer is on-demand video, which I have on Netflix. I can play movies on my computer when I want but those people with new TV sets will have internet jacks built into them and they can now watch some (not all, not yet) movies on big-screen TV straight from Netflix bypassing DVDS completely.

The memory card described above is cute, but I think it'll go the way of Video discs. Remember them?

How quickly we forget.

And what about movies. They will continue to be made for those markets described above that still exist or will manage to keep their heads above water. But budgets will be lower as more people download movies illegally. A whole generation has grown up thinking it's their right to not pay for anything, movies and music included.

People say "it's not everyone", and no, it's not, but in a world of over 6 billion, even 1% can hurt the industry.  There are 6 million people in the U.S. who download illegal movies in 3 months with 60% being porno, and the rest being TV shows and movies.

I want my 67 cents!!

Coming Monday - who holds the power in features and TV

Escape the Winter Blues to Beautiful Cabo

Time to escape the winter blues… and while you’re at it—bury your blackberry, PDA, or Smart phone. Guests arriving at the Marquis Los Cabos Resort are invited to leave behind their electronic device with a symbolic “Blackberry Burial Ceremony.” The simulated burial also includes a 10-minute hand massage to help those weary fingers from too much texting and dialing also known as the “blackberry ache.” And while you’re at it, a cool drink and refreshing towel will help you forget all about your troubles from 2009.

This beautiful 237 all-suite ocean-front luxury hotel and resort, located on the southernmost tip of the Baja California peninsula, where the Sea of Cortex meets the Pacific Ocean, offers stunning mountain views with the ocean at your casita door. It really is an escape to your own little sanctuary equipped with a private pool facing the beach. This exotic retreat also features a 15,000 square foot holistic spa with a fitness center and an exclusive gourmet restaurant where the food is absolutely amazing.

But my favorite touch is the infinity pool because the water on this side of the ocean is too aggressive to swim. However,  a fruity drink and ocean view makes up for it. You can also participate in the resort’s “Astronomy Nights” series, introducing guests to the planets, stars and constellations guided by a local expert with fancy telescopes. You’ll love the crackling fire with specialty cocktails right there on the beach.

When you’re headed to Cabo be sure to check out the Marquis Los Cabos… it’s a wonderful property with exceptional customer service that’s just minutes away from Old World San Jose Del Cabo and party happy Cabo San Lucas. I love it! Marquis Los Cabos is a member of the prestigious Leading Hotels of the World and the only member of Leading Spas of the World in Los Cabos. www.marquisloscabos.com

Will you check into the Marquis Los Cabo?

A new year begins.

I'm back  home.  The arctic temperatures of Manitoba and Saskatchewan have slipped away and been replaced by our table at the Figtree Restaurant on the Venice Beach boardwalk where I join friends every Sunday for breakfast and a 12-mile bike ride. People ask me how I can fit into two such totally diverse cultures, frozen north and balmy Southern California.

It does take a few days going from one to another, they are truly universes of their own and about as far away from each other as is possible. They say the person you are at 7 is the person you are, and I guess I suffer from dual identities; the little kid on the prairie and the writer and producer in L.A. 

But oddly enough, they merge easily as I had already lived the Hollywood life as a 10-year old going to movies in my little village and being carried away by the images of Hollywood life where parents had great houses with sunken living rooms and they drank from decanters of liquor and always had ice ready. And parents who looked like Ward and June Cleaver, Ward even wore suits for dinner.  But that was long ago.


Now, it's 2010 and my new year's resolution.

Make Travel Day.

Where are we now? We have the Canadian producer finalizing his letters of commitment which are essential to convincing U.S. and any other investors that we are real. You would think my credits would be enough to convince the money people but they want to see someone else besides Shirley and I who are ready to put themselves on the line.

It's all about commitment. Who jumps in the pool first. Who leaps from the bridge with a bungee cord around their ankle.

So who is first to commit? It's probably looking like this:

• Shirley and me.

• Two actors, both Academy nominated who have read the screenplay.
  

• Manitoba producer Dane and his partner and company.
  

• One of the major banks in Canada.

• A presale to a broadcaster in Canada.
  

 With actual Letters of Commitment (LOI's), from the above we will have a strong package to present to the U.S. investors for their share, which is around $500,000 Cdn of the $1 million budget. Exchange rates now are not all that attractive to U.S. money which means it'll be a little harder to raise.

My potential U.S. investors and I always use the term "potential" until their checks have been deposited and cleared, are an eclectic mix of experienced executive producers, private investors, an attorney with connections, two distributors who might be persuaded to part with some of their funds.

What about timing?

As many of you know, we started this way back in summer of 2009 and you might wonder if there might be a loss of interest what with a new year beginning.

It doesn't help, but yet, in this constantly contradicting business, it doesn't hurt. Since it's rare for an indie film to get financed quickly, the fact that we've been at it for just about 8 months isn't a liability. As I've mentioned in previous blogs, it can take years to get funding, even with major stars attached.

It all comes down to never giving up. Who can last the longest. Or just plain stubborness.

Which is my strong suit.

And it goes back to the studio exec who once told me that it takes three things to make it in this business; craft, discipline and talent. And the least important is talent. His words, not mine. But I agree.

What happens when the LOI's arrive?

I estimate it will take anywhere from 30 to 60 days to actually get and bank the remaining $500k which means a potential production date in March, still do-able for snow and winter conditions. God bless Canada's winters!

So stick with us as I wait for Dane's LOI's.

Beauty on the Go is Haute!

One of my new favorite glow and go travel finds is the Colorescience Travel Puff. The beauty of this little puff—the pigment is inside. That’s right no more packing your bulky compact in those hard to reach places. This little item can fit into your coat or travel tote pocket for easy access when you need a quick touch up! It offers amazing coverage and protects from the sun for about 10 applications. It also comes in four colors… my pick, a taste of honey for darker olive complexions. The powder is also water-resistant. Plus, it’s infused with more than enough mineral powder for long-lasting wear. All that you have to do is gently pat the puff against your face to release the powder, blend for coverage and return to its pouch. The coverage is sheer but you can apply the pigment heavier if you desire. Once the powder is all gone… the puff can be cleaned and used again for other makeup applications. Colorescience has done it again… this is haute!
http://www.colorescience.com/1280x1024/flash/index.html

Yves Saint Laurent has solved my beauty travel problem when it comes to locating my lip gloss in a pinch with the lips luggage tag. Air travel can dehydrate the skin and leave my lips in need of gloss. But now all that I have to do is reach for my travel tote’s handles and violà my lip gloss is attached! The limited-edition collector make up palette is inspired by the luggage tag of YSL handbags. It contains two products for the lips, a lipstick and lip gloss. The palette also contains an applicator tucked inside a gold compact with engraved cover. $75

What's in your travel bag?

David Yurman's New Fragrance is Haute!

The David Yurman classic luxuries fragrance collection is one of my new indulgences. After a quick trip to Neiman Marcus, I decided to try the new fragrance, created by my fave jewelry designer. The collection features Eau de Parfum in a citrine-colored, faceted bottle with the iconic DY cable design band topped off with a brilliant cut black stone. Also included in my personal selection, the sensuous body cream in a beautiful square cut jar sealed with a faceted gold top also with a cable band. Just one application envelops my skin in a creamy, silky veil of richness.

The luxurious fragrance consists of mandarin, fresh green petals, cassis, peony, water lily, natural rose otto, patchouli, exotic woods and soft musk notes. But, it’s the woody-musk scent that stands out with my body chemistry along with vague hints of floral notes. Some call it “An elegant fusion of brilliance and depth, the fragrance intertwines exotic woods and patchouli with the fluidity of rose and water lily.” I love the body cream because the fragrance lingers ever so softly without being intrusive and “never losing its sensual aroma.”

My little luxuries came with an elegant black leather keep-sake box with the David Yurman logo embossed on the top.

Have you tried the new David Yurman fragrance?