Film School by Steve Boman Page A

yearly revenue for CBS, the most successful broadcast network, is in the $13–14 billion range. By revenue, Cargill absolutely dwarfs CBS. It’s almost ten times bigger! But when was the last time you heard anyone talking about Cargill? Most people have no idea the company exists. Yes, it exports a quarter of the country’s grain and supplies a fifth of the country’s meat supply and shapes every single egg in every single Egg McMuffin. But Americans ignore it. They have food in their stomachs, so they can concentrate on more important matters, like Brad and Angelina.
    The biggest entertainment companies are Walt Disney, News Corp., and Time Warner. The ranks of these companies according to the Fortune 500 list in 2010 are fifty-seven, seventy-six, and eighty-two, respectively.
    Film and television punch far beyond their weight class. They are like professional sports. Millions of kids dream of being pro athletes, yet a nearly infinitesimal slice of them actually become pro athletes. And millions of people dream of being in the moving picture business. A few actually make a living at it. I know the odds when I start. They suck, almost as bad as the odds of making a living as a newspaper reporter.
    Saturday morning comes and my kids are thrilled. I’ve been away from home all week. I arrived home late Friday night, my stomach fully settled after my encounter with the apple juice. Julie and I live only fifty-five miles to the northwest of USC, in the suburb of Camarillo, which is in Ventura County, but it’s too far for me to commute in L.A. traffic. If I drive in rush hour, it can be a four-hour round-trip. So Monday night through Thursday night I sleep in a house in La Cañada, an upscale suburb located next to Pasadena that’s about seventeen miles from campus. When Carl and Irene Christensen heard I was accepted to USC, they called me and told me I could stay at their home. For free.
    It was a stunningly generous offer. I worried I’d be intruding on their lives and making too much of a ruckus, but my worries were overruled by the simple math of it: I saved serious time and lots of money. I soon realized their house offered much more than merely a place to sleep. Their neighborhood is an oasis of peace and quiet—so different from USC. Horse trails wind through the neighborhood. At night, I sometimes hear the plop of oranges falling off a nearby tree. And in the evenings and early mornings, I chat with Carl and Irene.
    Weekends, I’m home in Camarillo with Julie and the kids—and her mom, Jean, who is living with us while I go to school and taking care of the kids while Julie is at work. So I live a life in triplicate. There’s my USC life, my life in La Cañada, and my life in Camarillo.
    On Saturday morning, I explain that Maria, my four-year-old, will be the lead character. Lara, who is eight, thinks that is a great idea because she really isn’t interested in acting. I do warn Maria (with all my vast wisdom of film shoots) that acting for film can be pretty boring. She brushes off my warning. She wants to get going. Sophia, who is two, doesn’t understand what we’re doing. She just grins and races around the house.
    My first film shoot is a playful lark. The day is sunny and warm. My kids and Julie are excited to see my official USC camera and tripod. Julie is amused by the crudely drawn storyboards (all stick figures) I created in preparation for the shoot. I spend the morning in the house, carefully setting up shots. Then I call for Maria, the star. She looks wistfully at her big sister’s bike, right on command, and glumly pedals her tricycle in our suburban garage. It takes only an hour or so to shoot a minute of tape.
    When it comes time for the dream sequence, I direct Maria to act as if she’s asleep. She does a great job of not giggling. Then I pull out the special effects: I smear a little Vaseline on the edges of the screw-off lens dust