THE LOVE FOR FILM & IMAGES

By: Vert Wright

The good thing about giving up your day job is that you can now do what you love, full time. I didn’t retire from my day job to sit and watch TV all day. I retired to explore my fascination with filmmaking and photography, which I’ve had since I was 5 years old. I never tire of shooting or filming. Onset is where I am most at home, and I feel I was born to do it.

Isometimes think it is because I have watched so many movies and so much TV in my lifetime that I’ve been driven to learn the language from the side of a producer since I knew it so well as a consumer. Also, as a part introvert, I have come to feel really comfortable behind a camera.

If I look back on my journey, I remember knowing what I wanted at an early age. I wanted to be on TV, and I did everything I could to make that happen, including dragging my Mom to what I thought were casting opportunities. They were really just ways for people to promise kids fortune and fame to get their parents to shell out big bucks for training and pictures. We couldn’t afford that anyway, so nothing came of that.

So I spent the next few years involving myself in school plays whenever possible. The roles were few and far between, but I always jumped at the chance. It was in junior high school that the photography bug bit me.

Ieven began to develop my own black and white film. I used to break the old film cartridges open in the complete darkness of my Mom’s washroom and thread the film onto the reel of the closed, light-proof container and then pour the chemical in that would develop the film. I would then put the film in my enlarger and quickly shine the light by exposing the photographic paper. Then I would put the exposed paper in the three baths, the developer,

the stop bath, and the fixer, to complete the printing process. This was long before digital photography and wasn’t cheap for a teenager, but I did it as often as I could afford to.

High school was an exhilarating time for me because we actually had real drama classes and a very active drama club called the Scarlet Masque. This is where my first real exposure to training as an actor took place, and I loved it. We did musicals, Shakespeare, talent shows, and even performed some pieces that we had written ourselves. gain some stability. I hadn’t taken my Mom’s advice about getting a more useful degree, and I was paying for it. I was tired of working fast food and grocery part-time and figured I needed to get a marketable skill quickly. So I joined the Marine Corps Reserves. Best decision I ever made because it allowed me to land a good job at a major oil company where I would spend the next 32 years.

By the time I left high school, I was on top of the world, having been president of the Scarlet Masque and having received a few high school acting awards along the way. I knew I was destined to be a TV star. Or so I thought. I got a wake-up call in college, where I continued my studies, but now I was a small fish in a big pond. Everybody was good, and some were even great! I still see a few of my old college pals on TV or in movies. So I graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in theater, emphasizing television production and acting. Still, TV was in the doldrums, and acting jobs for Black actors were very scarce. Plus, honestly, there were plenty of better actors than me at the time, so I drifted away from it. I got married, had kids, and was fascinated with this new digital technology for video and still photography. Back in college, we used videotape and 16mm film, so we were pretty much limited to school-sponsored projects. This new technology would open things up in ways I had not imagined.

Ispent 10 years in a rough marriage before we decided to call it quits. During that time, I did a little community theater, but that was about it. Two years into my divorce, I met my soulmate and the love of my life, and we married. Around that time, I met a local realtor who was also a filmmaker, and little did I know, but things were about to change!

The next decade or so didn’t provide much time for exploring my passions. I had lost my footing, so I was trying to find myself again and During a conversation, he mentioned that he was a filmmaker, and I mentioned my acting background. He asked me to play the role of a cop in his latest low budget production called Blood Money. I said yes, and that was the beginning of my filmmaking journey.

He would give me little assignments, like editing, and quickly turn them around and get his feedback. I told my new wife that it was my goal to become an integral part of his I started studying and buying equipment to practice with, and before I knew it, I was involved in production, writing, editing, casting, and producing. At this point, we decided to

filmmaking machine. She told me to go for it, and she immediately went out and bought me books on digital photography and filmmaking. Her support has been an integral part of my journey. produce a web series called San Francisco Justice. It was a wacky court series that was a take-off on all the Judge Judy type shows. I was co-producer and starring in it as the judge. This was my first real exposure to crew work and lighting, and I learned quickly what I didn’t know.

Ihad recently bought my first lighting kit. It was a Lowell kit with 4 open-faced floodlights. Since we were filming the auditions, I decided to break out my lights and try them out. I set up a couple of lights, pointed them at the people auditioning, and to my surprise, it looked terrible! And these were professional-grade lights! I knew then I had a lot to learn.

So we cast our series and hired a crew, and shot it over a couple of weekends. I remember hearing the phrase “We’ll fix it in post.” a lot. Well, as it would turn out, I ended up editing it, so I posted! That’s why that phrase still infuriated me to this day. We paid a Director of Photography to make sure things went according to plan since my co-producer, and I acted in the series, but I realized things were not right in the post. Shots wouldn’t cut together, cameras didn’t match, and the angles were totally wrong. At that point, I knew what I had to do. I had to learn to work behind the camera. After all, there were plenty of better actors than me to put in front of the camera.

Idedicated myself to learning everything I could about cameras, lighting, and sound. I spent all my spare time working on or learning about filmmaking. I read everything I could get my hands on and even went to filmmaking seminars in L.A. I watched movies differently, gaining a new appreciation for them because I now knew how much had to go right to make a good one. I began studying cinematography and realized that working my highly technical day job for decades made it easier for me to learn the technical end of filmmaking, which is necessary to achieve the director’s creative vision. I was also able to work with cinematographers who were more experienced than I was, which allowed me to direct. I used my experience from college after all and realized how much I enjoyed working with good actors. Having acting experience myself, I instinctively know what they need from me to give their best performance, and I would even play small roles in the films I was working on. I started MLC Productions, a company dedicated to helping producers bring their projects to life.

Working on cinematography and filmmaking brought me so close to photography that I drifted back into it, and now I love both equally. I have always admired what a good photographer could create by capturing the beauty around us. Cinematography and photography are cousins in a way, and when I’m studying for one, I’m learning skills that can be applied to the other. Although I study many subjects involved with photography, camera settings, composition, posing, etc., I think my favorite topic is lighting. I read somewhere that when it comes to lighting, if you really want to learn it, you have to become obsessed with it, and I have. It is imperative in photography and cinematography; it is possibly the most important element for making your film look like a film.

As I got more and more into photography, I realized that most actors and actresses model, and many models act, which led me to work with and practice with on both fronts. I enjoy working with and coaching models and actors, and as they say, when you do what you love, you never work a day in your life. This love of photography led me to start my photography business, Moonlighting Images, specializing in Boudoir and Fashion photography, always keeping it sexy and classy.

I’ve been fortunate enough on my journey to have helped many people and businesses bring their visions to life. I have worked on short films, feature films, web series’, public access series’, pilots, music videos, and TV commercials. I’ve had the honor of working with seasoned Hollywood professionals and with people who were acting for their very first time. I’ve been able to see my work featured on outlets like Netflix and Amazon Prime. I’ve also tried many different photography types and have even been lucky enough to have been published a few times. Sometimes it’s hard work, but I realized a long time ago, if it doesn’t feel like work, you’re probably not doing it right. But it’s the work that I love and the thing that I love to do. If you are interested in filmmaking, acting, photography, or modeling, I will encourage you to reach out and go for it. Technology has led to filmmaking and photography’s democratization, so most of the barriers, real or perceived, have been removed. The equipment necessary has gotten better and cheaper. Hell, people are taking great pictures and making movies on their iPhones. So get out there and start your journey. And I sincerely hope to see you along the way.