I was six years old when I learned my Mom was adopted, which is the same age she was when she came to this country as a refugee from Nazi Germany. Mom’s story is one I’ve known my entire life, but, I knew I didn’t know anything about it. She had so few memories. Even though I am a trained actor, I had no intention of putting myself in UnBroken. But one of my professors at UCLA, Kathy Huang, insisted I let myself get filmed. And it became clear, very quickly, that as a first-time filmmaker, if I didn’t allow myself to be filmed, I was going to make my job ten times harder. The first thing I did was I bought a C-100 camera, two lenses, and a shotgun mic. That’s it. I don’t know anything about cameras, so I’m kind of proud of the fact that on my crew’s day off, I had to grab this one shot of a wharf at sunrise, and it made it into the film. It’s even one of our marketing stills! My first principal photography shoot was a whopper. I had to capture the ceremony honoring our silent heroes, Arthur & Paula Schmidt, in the Gardens of the Righteous at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem. These ceremonies are punctual and work like clockwork. The place was crawling with press and their respective crews. I didn’t get to yell “rolling” or “cut.” My crew and I either caught what...
Published By: NoFilmSchool - Wednesday, 19 February