A Quote by Russell Mulcahy
I didn't go to film school. I just kept doing videos and whatever. So I guess I learned my education from just experience. Figuring out what worked and what didn't work.
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I went back to Jamaica after living in New York and started to work on experimental stuff and basically I grew as a filmmaker. I went to film school; I was a PA on a lot of projects and I worked so hard, you know, you're young and I learned from different mentors. And luck put me in the position to work with amazing people. One of my mentors by the name of Little X, who took me under his wing after I came out of film school and moved to New York. I worked in videos for Jay-Z, Pharrell to Busta Rhymes and Wyclef. I quickly realized how much I wanted to make films instead of music videos.
I'm not saying to the kids yo drop out of school, education is the most important thing first and foremost. You know, my circumstances were a little different. I needed to work to help out so I couldn't be in school. Not only that, it was getting into trouble and all that s**t. I was getting into trouble more in school than I was out of school, so I had to just go ahead and make that adjustment, so I mean realistically I always tell everybody, in my case I don't got a high school diploma, but I have two Grammys so it kinda worked out best for me.
I spent a year and a half working for an art fair. I worked as a post-production assistant for a documentary film company for a while. Then I worked at the Apple store because I wanted a discount to be able to buy new gear to edit things while I was figuring out whether or not I wanted to go to film school. Those were the main things.
Just to be in the locker room with the NHL players, go out to dinner with them, hang out with them. I feel like it was an invaluable experience and kind of like going to Harvard law school, I guess, because that's the best education you could get being around guys like that.
I was in school, but I wasn't into school. I wasn't doing what I wanted to be doing in school, which was film studies. That was what I intended on doing, but I didn't go away to a university because I wanted to stay in L.A. and audition while I took classes, so I elected to go to a community college and just take G.E. courses. It was terrible.
My friends and I often film videos when we get together and hang out, and they're usually just silly situational videos just for our own amusement.
I have an Honors Degree in Drama from the University of Alberta, but when it was done I knew a life in modern theatre was not for me. While figuring out what the hell I might do instead of theatre, I spent a couple of days on a horror film doing stunt work. I'd never been behind the camera before, and I loved everything about it. I joined the local film co-op - The Film and Video Arts Society of Alberta - because you could trade skills for experience. These indie filmmakers were making their own stuff their own way, all the time. Instant education.
This is a competitive business - there are a lot of women who want these jobs, but experience, education, and smarts go a long way. I'm still figuring it out - I learn new things every day. Once you stop learning, you should get out of the business. It's just really about being hungry for more.
I work with a group of actors, and whenever one of us has an audition, we all get together, and we all work together on it. I think it takes us back to our film school days, our drama school days, us just working together and figuring it out because somebody else is going to see something in the material that you won't see.
America is so special, everybody wants to go there. And there's not a thought given to how it got special. It's just assumed it was made that way, I guess. It's just assumed that it's just there. And it's also assumed that it's always going to be there. Call it the golden goose or whatever you want but everybody saying that we have no right to keep anybody out because nobody kept us out, we all had to get here. Nobody here now actually started here. Of course, that's no longer true.
When you're making a film you start living with it, and I find myself sitting down and figuring out a sound or melody that would go with a film, or a particular period. It's not brain surgery, you just kind of feel it along.
I learned from making a few of these low-budget videos early on that the best way to go about doing it is just to keep it honest and real.
In actor's career, I had a fair amount of denial, which I think is possibly in the genes, where I just couldn't go to, "Maybe this won't work out." I just couldn't do it. My mind just refused to go there. I don't mean there weren't low periods. There were plenty. But I remember arriving in New York and I was maybe 32, and I didn't have an agent. I came from Chicago, where I had gone to school and worked and got my sea legs, so to speak, and I remember walking out of the subway, walking the streets, standing in front of the theater and saying, "I will work in this theater."
I left Israel to work as a model, to just make money - I didn't care if I was doing an ad for toilet paper or diapers, I just really wanted to allow myself to go to school, to go to university without waitressing, because when I'm in a school environment I just really like to study and have the best grades and learn as much as I can.
Film team kept me very, very shielded when I was that young, because of course, I was seven years old. You know, you're still kind of reading. It's still kind of like, "Cat." "Dog." "Ann jumped over fence." So I guess in a way it helped me progress in school, too, because I was reading so much and memorizing so much. But they kept me very shielded from everything that was going on in the The Amityville Horror. I didn't know anything, basically, about the film. I just knew that it was a scary film. I wasn't allowed to watch it. I can watch it now, I'm just too scared.
Sometimes I would go home from work and just stare at the wall for a couple of hours. But, I can't complain. Whatever knocks you out working is the kind of work that I want to be doing because it's always those challenges that are the most exciting, and the things I hope to get to keep doing in my work.
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