Paige Blankenship

directed by Shayan Ebrahim

Handled paperwork for crew and actors, created and distributed call sheets each day, worked closely with Movie Magic to adjust the schedule & breakdowns when needed, and made sure actors were ready and through the works on set each day.

I work, alongside three business partners of mine, on the East Coast out of our production company: Lucid Visions Media, which is currently based out of Wilmington, NC. We will work on anything, from short/feature films (documentary, narrative), to commercial/ad video production, to stock footage, to recording live events! We are experienced, enthusiastic, and flexible with our main camera being the R3D EPIC-W (8K).

I coordinate with the other festival department heads in order to fully understand their volunteer needs, then I recruit and schedule volunteers within our community! This usually involves communicating with around 200 people at a time.

Since this is an independent film, with a skin & bones crew, my responsibilities as the 1st AD range from creating the shot breakdown, shot list, and call sheets for each day, catering and delegating responsibilities for the PA's, as well as a lot of communication and problem-solving on the spot.

My senior year of undergrad, I got involved at UNCW's CIE by creating a position for myself in the Fall (2015): Assistant Media Producer, which was not only a paid position, but it counted as internship credit (directed independent study) within my major. I made it my duty to help the Media Producer organize team events and shoots, network at events to market our services, meet with clients, and take care of equipment inventory and maintenance. By the Spring (2016), I was promoted to Media Producer, and was able to offer the DIS credit to a new Assistant Media Producer under me. We ran a team of 10 voluntary Film Studies students, working together to gain real world, hands-on experience creating promotional and commercial content for the CIE's tenants, members, and faculty/staff. Today, even though I am gone, the team is still running with new students in our place, all of which are now paid and receive class credit.

As part of my job as Media Producer for UNCW's Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, I got my team involved in our community's first ever TEDx event! I had to partner with the school's Communication Studies department to find (and then prep) the equipment necessary, while remaining within the TEDTalk brand/guidelines. This included working with JVC's, the Yamaha Sound board (which we plugged our H6 into), organizing lighting, as well as setting up microphones, the projector, and the livestreaming for the event. Simultaneously, I had to organize my media team to prep them for the event, since we were spread out all over the theatre (which included everything from workshops on how to use the equipment to organizing schedules, food, and parking to creating t-shirts). The night of the event, I mostly stayed backstage on the headset to communicate with the sound board upstairs as well as my team.

This was a crazy experience as this was an independent film with a skin & bones crew, shot in merely three days. I not only worked with the DP and 1st AC to manage media, operate the camera (SONY FS7), change lenses, slate, and take notes, but I also had to help the 1st AD in a lot of his responsibilities, which included communicating with the Sound Mixer, wrangling extras, and I even did quite a bit of gripping.

As part of my work as Assistant Media Producer at UNCW's CIE, I agreed to put together a team of Film Studies students to work as videographers during Cucalorus' 1st annual CONNECT event. As seminars, pitch competitions, and TED-style Talks were going on at multiple venues during the festival, my team and I had to make sure we were recording them (we were only given a few days notice). I had to pull some strings to find the right equipment (AF-100's, lenses, and H6's), create a quick training session for the team to understand how to use the equipment, and then create very detailed, customized schedules for each individual team member involved. This was to make sure there was enough equipment and labor at each event at a time, especially since some events overlapped. We were then responsible for editing all of the footage together later on.

Over the summer of 2015, before my senior year of undergrad, I decided I wanted to create a documentary about an eccentric little place called Walker World, 20 minutes outside of our town. The short documentary showcases Allen Walker, creator of Walker World, as well as his children and close friends. It was a fun passion project that soon made its way into four different festivals in the Southeastern Region, across the Carolinas, with its world premier taking place at Wilmington's 21st annual Cucalorus Film Festival.

I helped the 2nd AD with fundraising efforts, since this was a Professor-directed/Student-ran production at UNCW. I helped organize a benefit concert to raise the funds, and then, on set, I helped with catering (serving food in the green room, opening wine and trimming cigars), wrangling extras (in between takes, we gave out raffle prizes to keep things interesting), and then gripping at the end of the night when manpower as at a low.

It was a freezing, winter night and I not only was the stand-in for the lead actress during blocking and lighting, but I was also a stunt actor during a party scene. We were there from 4pm-4am, in a 35-degree pool: I had to play chicken with another girl, falling in and out of the water for hours, with no formal heat, dry towels, or a restroom. I do not regret it, though, because it was a great insight on low-budget filmmaking, and I met some great people.