College offered me many opportunities to tap into my resourcefulness. Mostly at my friend’s college, but I’ll get to that shortly. If you haven’t read my second blog entry, I’ll summarize that my intent was to go to USC film school in California, but didn’t make it in and had no Plan B. In a time before the internet and not giving myself time to research other colleges, I defaulted to go where some of my high school friends attended: Queens College. They offered a “Communications” degree which I learned didn’t amount to much production wise with no portable video equipment, limited film equipment and a television studio with relic “Norelco” cameras from the 60’s. They even shut down the campus radio station that year (another area of interest for me).
A Norelco Studio camera from the 1960’s similar to the cameras in the Queens College TV Studio in 1989. Photo courtesy of intervideo.co
One of the two film production classes in the program started with (silent) Super 8 film and I felt our group tried to really push the limits with no reaction by the class’ two professors. Our group made an action spy film where I did my best with props and video playback simulating news reports, computer readouts (on an Apple IIc) and suspect sketches rolling out of a dot matrix printer. To put this into context, this was 1989. We even shot a chase scene with a car and a motorcycle and when our heroine jumps off the motorcycle and shoots at the car, it slides off screen and we cut to a model of that car going off road and filling with smoke (with firecrackers). It wasn’t the most convincing and could easily look very realistic done with today’s computer graphics or we could’ve played with the speed of the film if we were working in 16mm. But the fact that our efforts were met with no acknowledgement or encouragement left me very disappointed.
Fortunately, my good friend Mark and the College of Staten Island was there to lift me up again. It was a CUNY school, like Queens College, but they had a department with multiple VHS and S-VHS cameras, video editing bays and a 16mm film editing room. With Mark’s video production classes, I had many opportunities to be creative.
My closet was a prop and costume haven filled with items amassed from garage sales, the trash or just items that I thought might be of use one day. Since I used to haul all my stuff in a large duffel bag to shoots, Mark started calling it my “Bag o’ Tricks” because I always magically had exactly what we needed. With Mark having to be behind the camera for his class grades, I was always in front and my collection of wigs, mustaches, glasses, etc. earned me the title, “Man of 1,000 Faces.” From using the paper thin wood covering cases of grapes to have smashed over my head (safely) in fight sequences to a rubber hose that displayed the pipe bending strength of a bionic pimp, the challenge to make a scene work was always a joy.
Early demo reel intro showing the many characters Steve has portrayed.
Music: Fetchin Bones, “Spot” -from “Monster” 1989, Capitol Records
Back at Queens College, I finally had a (limited) opportunity to use my skills in the second of the two film production classes and Studio TV production. But the place that provided a true challenge for me was the theater. In my Experimental Theater Workshop class, my group produced a thirty minute play with nine scenes, three scenes taking place in an Orwellian type future and the rest, scenes from a book about early 1990’s culture read by the protagonist. The future had characters in similar clothing with colored arm bands ranking intelligence levels and all knowledge was obtained by disc readers plugged into the brain. The other scenes were all wildly different from homes to talk show stages, outrageous white rappers, a prop and costume cornucopia! The other groups in my class thought we were insane as they went about their (safe) one or two location plays usually in a living room or bar.
I’m still not sure how I was able to create a system with two standing racks for costumes and a long table back stage with all the props laid out by scene and direct my four classmates how to use this system . I had no training in this, never attempted a live situation with this complexity, but a need had to be fulfilled and I had to make this work.
I’ll never forget the expression of shock on my professor’s face when we rolled in the two racks and boxes and bags of props. After the performance (which went flawlessly), my professor, who was also the chair of the Drama department, said in his critique that when he saw us rolling in all those props and costumes to such a small space backstage, there was no way we were going to make this work in an efficient and timely manner and keep the flow of the play consistent. “I was pleasantly surprised and I commend you for your achievement.”
Besides the applause and accolades that night by my classmates, friends and family in the audience, which made my heart soar, my professor’s words, as positive encouragement always does, filled me with a pure confidence that I can and will deliver on any challenge put before me.
Next week: Analog to Digital Magic.
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