Cancellations, Postponements & Other Unpredictabilities

“In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director.”

- Alfred Hitchcock

Bad guy, good quote.

At the time I’m writing this, I’ve directed and produced 4 documentaries of varying length, subject-matter, environments, etc. And the biggest challenges were things film school, or any other class, teacher, mentor, you name it, couldn’t prepare me for: the unpredictability of life.

The main one that affected us during the production of Firebird: Built to Burn was weather. We often don’t like to talk much about the ‘canceled/postponed’ day because it is probably the only ‘twist’ audience members can’t anticipate, but the impact it left on production was tremendous.

Unlike the hike, we were far more prepared for inclement weather during the 2021 burn. We stocked up on protective gear for our cameras and set up a tent next to our equipment van, so the crew could stay dry should it rain or snow. The Firebird team proudly told us that from time to time the festival does experience some weather outside the cold temperatures, but regardless, the festival goes on! So with our heavy coats, rain covers and hand warmers, we set out to capture our last and most spectacular day of production.

For some context, Charlie and I had planned for this day for several months. As anxious people, we played around with every scenario that could occur and designed solutions and work-arounds. We didn’t simply have a Plan B, C, and D. We had plans for every letter of the alphabet. Except for one particular outcome.

The shame of it all was before we got notified of the cancellation, all of our intricate plans were working perfectly. Teams were coming in on time, we were checking off everything on our shotlists, it was truly a feat in producing…until Charlie got a call from his father, who’s connected to the Fire Department, giving us a heads up that the festival would be cancelled. I won’t lie: this was devastating. There was only so much time to process the news before I was calling off the crew that hadn’t arrived yet and making last minute arrangements. 

It just so happened that the Firebird committee was able to reschedule it for the following weekend, which was great, but also partially put us through a tail-spin. The day we originally had months to plan, now Charlie and I only had 3 days. Stressed is an understatement.

3 years later, history repeats itself. The Chester County burn ban has caused the Firebird Festival to be rescheduled for February 1st, 2025. We must, again, readjust our expectations and embrace the reality of our situation.

This was probably the first time in production that we had to scramble and improvise, but it was definitely not the last. (I won’t even go into the time my car battery died with all our equipment.) Similar to the Firebird committee itself, we put on high production with very little people and resources. Throughout post-production and distribution, there have been several times we’ve had to drop everything to address unpredictable emergencies and things that we couldn’t control. We are first-time feature filmmakers, so there is a significant learning curve with that. But we were also fighting against our own expectations on how this whole process would work.

In short, we often pictured all-rights distributors being our knights-in-shining-armour, picking us out of squalor and sharing the film far and wide. This is more or less what you’re taught in school, and the realities of distribution are gatekept heavily. When we finally learned that this was not going to be our path forward, we had to be shaken out of expectations on how distribution would look like for us and make a sharp pivot towards what was possible. (There was also a lot of DIY-ing.)

Now, what was borne out of that was something we could’ve never predicted. Sure, we did not have a flashy Oscar-nomination and a worldwide theatrical run, but we had something more fitting and more rewarding. We had a wonderful year of festivals and screenings at communities much like Phoenixville, got more intimate feedback from people who really resonated with the film, and really learned the ins and outs of everything.

I could say a lot about how life’s full of twists and turns, but really, I’ll just put it like this: while the unpredictable bumps along the way have been frustrating and disappointing, they’ve also led us to some new paths that might have turned out to be even better.