On the Set at Northstar Studios with Steve Gilreath (an NFI Field Trip)

My name is Allen Smith. I'm an instructor here at The NFI. Recently, I had the pleasure of accompanying our students on a film school field trip to Northstar Studios here in Nashville.

This is not an everyday experience for film students. Northstar Studios is a full-service, one-stop, state-of-the-art... pick your adjectival poison. This place is grand. It's a 16-acre production campus, and it's where all the magic happens. As I pulled up to the security gate Paramount-style, I debated whether I should've been wearing some hip Wayfarers and a fancy hat.

Really, I was just praying my name was on the list.

I'm relatively new to Nashville, so this was my first visit to Northstar. Now, I have been inside production studios and worked on large film sets but never anything of this magnitude.

And never as a film student.

I got there half an hour early, and some of the students had beaten me to the set. After a briefing from our host, Steve Gilreath, we got a tour of the set. Steve is producing and directing a series of educational videos designed to teach students about music. The set consisted of three different setups, each elaborate and functional in its own way.

Our students had signed up to shadow certain professionals in their roles on set. Steve had other ideas for the students though. He rallied everyone up to give a pre-shoot pep talk where he allowed us to introduce ourselves to the crew and then instructed the crew to help the students out in any way they could. He asked them to teach, guide and assist any students who wished to find out about a new role.

Before long, Steve had eight new sets of hands working on his show. One student, immediately jumped in to assist the art department. Normally these guys spend their days assembling extravagant hats constructed from cupcakes, candles and various types of adhesive. Today, it looked like Jessica was making props out of pizza boxes to demonstrate different musical tempos.

Another student, Shayne, began the day shadowing the video editors as they tried to catch up on dailies from the previous days of shooting. It wasn't long before he had hopped over to the camera jib operator. Shayne told me that he had offered to stay till the crew wrapped at 9:00 p.m. if it meant being able to learn how to assemble and break down a jib. I didn't have the heart to tell him we were set to leave at four.

When the crew broke for lunch, we learned that this was the final day of shooting for the month. This meant that a handful of crew would be moving on to new projects and wouldn't be coming back. In a gesture of solidarity, the crew opted out of craft services for the day and instead contributed a homemade potluck of sorts. The series' lead actor, Graham, topped off the crew's last supper with a folksy, British serenade of a song he had written to the crew. It was the perfect end to our day at Northstar.

But Steve, again, had other ideas for the students. Four o'clock came and went. The students continued on in their roles, free to stay, learn and work till it was time for crew to say goodbye. They were, after all, part of the crew.

Jimmie Jones and the lost footage (how a student lost and found his project)

Well, this being my first project, I wanted it to be a good one.

So I went back to Mississippi, and rounded up two friends and we headed for Downtown Memphis. We got all the things out of my trunk that I needed and set our journey for the top of a building we explore. I needed that to be my location, because I like being up there.

We went through hell, going up.

Both days.

The first day, we got close to being to the top and in the stairwell a big pigeon was flying around trying to scare us off. We got lucky and got passed it.

Minutes later, we made it to the top. Finally, fresh air.

I looked around for perfect battle spots, which you see in the pictures. We begin the project. Me giving every detail of how I wanted things done, and I also worked out the choreographing, which was a little hard memory wise, but it all turned out good the first day, which took 3 and a half hours.

The next day heading into the building we encountered a sleeping homeless, we ran off and found a different way up.

This day was tough, I had to re-do a lot of things and we were already tired from the day before. Also in the middle of the shoot the Sith[red] lightsaber prop broke on us, we had to fix it, and it was not in good condition. So pretty much towards the ending after they jump the brick ( if you have seen the project) we had to fake the hits, and instead of the fight being longer I had to end it quickly.

Before the pictures had the saber effects added, you can clearly see the prop break in mid-air.

But that's the shoot in a nutshell.

Now, two weeks of my brother adding the saber effects to the pictures the project due date was coming up.

On a saturday night I turned off my mac.

I went to sleep, woke up the next morning and it was gone, all of my pictures and everything.

Hard drive died.

Then on top of that I got sick.

I took mac to mac authority. They fixed it.

I went back to mississippi to start a new project.

And after first day of shooting, my brother tells me that he found the pictures before the fight, so I figured I could have a smaller story with those, so I put those onto a disc and thats when I started feeling better about the project.

I reinstalled Final Cut that week before thanks giving. And edited my project the whole break.

It's not how I wanted it to be, but it's better than nothing.

There's two versions, a fast, see how it really was version. And a slower more long version. Epic journey of the photostill project.