From location to location our small team of teachers, administrators, students, and filmmakers worked their way through every setup in the film. As we did, the line between filmmaker and educator was no longer distinct and in fact we completely forgot that they weren't filmmakers and had only the experience of the last few days to guide them.

We used and sometimes abused those workshop participants but in the end they learned a great deal about what it takes to make a movie. Each one of them told us by the end of the week that they would never watch a movie the same way again.

Many of the workshop participants are used as extras or actors in A Kiss Remembered. Several of them have some pretty large roles to fill in the story and they performed wonderfully.

"I was able to test my acting ability as a WWII soldier. In one particular scene, I was supposed to come running into a room and be riddled by bullets (blanks of course). Unfortunately, blanks still use real shells, which discharge from the gun quickly and are quite hot. One of these shells managed to strike me square in the forehead, leaving a nice black and blue battle wound."

Andy Atwell - Student

Pretty much everyone got in on the fun, even Brian Hennessy, our 1st Assistant Director, who donned a Nazi uniform and would call out, "Roll Camera," before finding his position in front of the lens.

That's a Wrap

By week's end we were finished with principal photography and began editing the film together. It was incredible how much these teachers and students had learned. The line between film professional and workshop participants was completely blurred. In the end it was a great deal of work but everyone involved thought it was a great deal of fun.

It would be several months before a screening would showcase to the teachers and students all the hard work they had done. It would be another year before we would start to see films from students who were taking a filmmaking class from the teachers who attended the Kiss Remembered Workshop. Trust us, it makes a huge difference in a student's work to have a teacher who's been in the ISM workshop trenches.

Chet Thomas' comments pretty much sum up this workshop: "'A Kiss Remembered' was a reoccurring confirmation to me that no matter the obstacle, teamwork, without fail, was the constant factor component, which resulted in triumph over the seemingly impossible task at hand."