OLUSALA pronounced OH-LOU-SAW-LA
Denise and Rossy (pronounced Rosey) Olusala are sisters, creative partners, a filmmaking duo and best friends.
Author: Olusala Sisters
Movie Review: Matters of the Heart (MOTH)
Written and directed by Nancy Vazquez
Tasha Cleaver (played by Alana Johnson) is a college student majoring in Psychology. One of Tasha’s professors gives Tasha and her classmates a case study to get acquainted with. Tasha’s case study is a woman named Linda Blake (played by Nancy Vazquez) who is in a psychiatric hospital for murdering several people whom she says hurt her.
The story touches on themes of sexual abuse, revenge, second chances and faith.
The locations and B roll for the film were all in New Jersey, which was cool! The film had six female producers (Khairah L. Walker, Melissa Grant, Khairaah Davis, Nancy Vazquez, Lakeesha Williams, Michele Frantzeskos)!
Nay Sayers to Our Filmmaking Dreams
Actual Nay Sayers Quotes from life….. The people who think me and my filmmaking dreams are total BS.
At Work
- “Seems like so much work for something so little”… my dreams are bigger than you could ever imagine
On the Internet
- “ I don’t get out of bed for ( insert the maximum amount of money I am able to pay at the moment)….. if I could pay more I would so I could get someone with less attitude than you
- “But do you have a following though?”… questioned a DP when I explained that I wanted to film a director’s cut for my own project
On Set
- “This is not how it’s done in the industry”……. Have you heard what the hell is going on in the industry?!!! I don’t want to be anything like them!
People always have all the reasons we should have done it differently or not at all. Screw ‘em. We have goals and dreams and we are going to make it big someday. Take that to the bank.
Movies I Would Have Wanted To Direct
Magic wand time…. Hollywood movies that I wish I could have directed. Some day I’ll make a list of Hollywood movies I HAVE directed….just have to get there first.
Lessons Learned: Working with a crew on a film set
We had production assistants, a gaffer, a boom operator, production sound mixer, director of photography, Assistant Camera, and 1st Assistant Director. It would have been great to have more help. More production assistants, assistant directors, assistant cameras, grips, actor wranglers, script supervisor, and probably a whole slew of jobs we don’t even know about. However, we hustled and made it work. Anyways, this was a big crew to us…. and our pocketbooks.
Sometimes things were moving too slow.
Sometimes it was chaotic.
But we made it through.
Production days are so stressful… so incredulously stressful.
2 lessons I’m taking on for future productions… build time into the schedule to check the quality of the work… all the work regardless of how tight the schedule. Sounds like a no brainer but with a million things going it is nice to feel you can trust certain people with certain tasks. I’m not there yet. I don’t think I have the budgets necessary for that yet. I have listened to audio before and lots of bad audio got past my ears so I decided to not waste my time listening as long as I had a professional to monitor it for me… bottom line like my sister says…. “trust.. but verify”
Second lesson.. trust my instincts… if I have to spend one iota of time thinking about whether or not someone is actually working it’s because they are not actually working. I had planned not to ask someone back because I hadn’t seen them working… after talking to other crew members they all pledged I was mistaken. Next day…. same stuff. Money leaving my pocket for somebody’s non-work… infuriating.
Olusala Sisters 