Ike Ogosi, Screenwriter
Photo by Paul Neary
I met Shannon on a frigid February morn when I arrived, light on slumber and heavy on wonder, FOTB (Fresh Off The Bus) for the first day of principal photography on The Pharmacist, the first feature length film I was ever involved in. My assigned role – 3rd AD, Trainee – was one I’d only heard about in textbooks. To wit, I was greener than envy and well out of my depth.
Recognizing rather quickly that I was painfully shy and hopelessly overawed, she carefully showed me the ropes, even as the chaos of a film set swirled all about us.
What can I say about Shannon Blanchet that won’t sound like hyperbole? Like Clark Kent behind those ubiquitous spectacles, she was my own personal superhero in disguise.
Original Artwork by Paul Neary
It was quite the high wire act: a field marshal with the bedside manner of a field medic, she drilled my disinterest into laser focus, armed me with the tools of the trade and salved my creeping stage fright.
Through a combination of instruction and observation, she demonstrated to me the value of communicating with other departments and understanding how their duties meshed with ours.
They tell you drama is collaboration, but it’s hard to grasp the scope until you slot seamlessly like a cog into the machine. That said, there was nothing mechanical about Shannon’s approach. A key takeaway was people skills. Shannon put me immediately at ease, kept things chugging along without ever feeling like a chore and, most cherished, shielded me from the wrath – earned and unearned – of some of the more…volatile higher-ups.
So adept was she, it came as quite the shock to discover, two weeks in no less, that she wasn’t an Assistant Director by trade, but rather an actor, a fellow creative.
In that revelation she encouraged me to embrace a bigger picture of the creative process, and to fashion and hone versatility as a critical arrow in my burgeoning quiver.
Production Still Slip into Unconsciousness, (2009)
It is nigh on impossible to overstate the impact her guidance on that production has had on my subsequent career. Arguably most critical of all was how she subtly yet insistently nudged me to reevaluate my approach to the creative process.
She encouraged me to learn intimately what I was supposed to do, then dare to go off book: Pay attention, anticipate, and be ready to improvise. That year, book-ended as it was by The Pharmacist on one side and a providential screening of Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant on the other, triggered a seismic shift in my screenwriting. I used to be a by-the-book writer (as I’d been taught in classes), and the results were, I’m told, blasé at best. From Shannon I learned to trust my instincts and recognize how my strengths can work in different arenas and with different collaborators. (From Herzog I gleaned the value of rebelling against the rules – once you intimately understand them). I am a unique and prolific – and optioned – screenwriter today. It’s notable that the most important teacher I had never even had me in her class.