Hollywood Deep

The final four contestants of On The Lot, went into last Tuesday’s episode with a chance for the million dollar Dreamworks deal. The genre for the week was, America’s Choice Logline. Different loglines were selected, and then America voted on them. The winner was, ‘a man wakes up wearing a dress’. So each of the final four, Sam, Adam, Will and Jason all had to start their short films, with a man waking up wearing a dress. All the films turned out interesting.
My team worked with Sam, on his film “Dress for Success”. It seemed that Sam, particularly had a hard time wrapping his head around the logline. We worked hard on developing his script all week in prep. Taking the opinions of the actors, we brought the script a long way in a few days. The film itself turned to be pretty good. Christian Seabolt, the DP that works with my team, is awesome. He can make any genre of film look good, and always interesting. We modeled a lot of shots after the movies “Saw” and “Nine to Five”. The story was sort of a cross between the two. It was a very good looking film, but the story was never really there. It’s a decent film, but certainly not Sam’s best.
I’m sorry to report, all the hard work wasn’t enough to keep Sam in the game. Just as he thought in the prep period, the chips were stacked against him. Adam’s film, “Army Guy” was very good, the best of the night for my money. Will and Jason remain the favorites to win it all, but Adam has crept right up on them, and has made it really tight. That left no room for Sam, who had a great run. He came a long way in the competition, and really got to show what he could do. Every week Sam hung in there, proving he totally belonged in the final four. It was time for him to go, it’s a game and someone had to go.
So we’re left with Will, Jason, and Adam, in a really close race for the money. I’ve worked with Adam and Jason and got to know them pretty well. I never worked with Will, but we spoke many times and he’s a great guy. They are all great guys and all very deserving. We’ll see Tuesday night on FOX 8PM, who goes home with the gold.
The really disappointing part for everyone was that the Producers (Mr. Burnett), cut the shorts production schedule by one week. The contestants were supposed to make one more movie. The talk was that the final films would have been a little longer- 5 minutes, and the scripts were to be directors choice, and the genre was whatever they wanted. We were all looking forward to that last week, and the contestants deserved to make one more for the money. The rug was pulled out from all of us, in what seems like a cost saving decision. We would not make the last films for the finale. The final 3 contestants would each pick their 2 favorite films of the season and would be judged on them. Then America would vote on the winner based on the 2 films. Films that they were already judged on! I mean come on… Is this any way to decide the winner of a million dollar prize? The contestants were not happy about it either, they really wanted one more showcase. So the show continued to get mishandled by the people making the decisions. They decided to put reruns on for the finale, I call Bullsh*t!
…Totally DEEP!

Adrianna Costa, On The Lot