Week 4 of Productions

This past week has been extremely hectic like the rest, but after it was over, I had a major sigh of relief and actually had time to relax and catch up on some much needed sleep. On monday, I finished shooting the apartment scenes in the Rose. This shoot actually went extremely smooth and we got out of there relatively early. We would've gotten out earlier if the ruger was delivered on time and if Keetin didn't forget her belt. But nonetheless, it went smoothly for the shooting. I looked over and captured the majority of the footage and it looks good. Only one more scene to go on this project and then its a wrap... at least production that is.

Wednesday we got together and started shooting the Watch (name to be changed later). Again, this shoot went extremely smooth. This was probably the most smooth shoot that I've had out of all of the shoots. I really enjoyed doing this project because we were flying through the shots and getting some really really nice jib shots. Also, we got extremely lucky with the weather (a nice cloudy day so we didnt have to deal with sun and continuity) and people in the park. We happen to have a random person walking their dog that we asked to film and people playing frisbee. So, overall the shoot went smooth and lucky. You cant really ask for much more.

On thurs, we met for The Pen. Sarah is doing a great job in producing the project. Everything is getting secured. Morgan is doing great directing so far, with coming up with a shot list. We are going to meet before the shoot to discuss the shots in more detail.

Lastly, I had a 13 hour shoot for a commercial that was extremely grueling but GREAT experience. All of the footage came out really nice and each shot was composed really well with blocking and lighting. So overall, it was a busy week, but in the end very worth it.

Week 3 of Productions

Another week passes by and more and more stress keeps building, but in the end its worth it. Along with trying to finish the Rose, I was doing audio for another project, "Rabid." We shot on Tuesday night and it went pretty well. I had to go late and leave early, but did as much as I could. On wednesday, we had a 7AM crew call, which was brutal, especially working until 2:30 and going to sleep at 3. However, the shoot went really well and the crew and cast were kept happy with donuts, bagels, and coffee. Furthermore, the last shoot which was scheduled for thursday got cancelled due to power outage at the location, but rescheduled for saturday. Again, the shoot went extremely smoothly and every that needed to get done, got done.

As for the Rose, I began capturing and editing on monday. Since then, I have completed the beginning two scenes, edited and done with the exception of fine tuning the isolated red look. However, everything looks really good. Some of the rest of the film is edited like the montage and flashback and final scene. Furthermore, I had to reshoot the Grazie bar scene on Tuesday because of audio failure like I stated before, but it went really smoothly since it was only a couple of dialogue scenes. Overall, the project is almost done, but we have another shoot on Monday to hopefully finish the apartment scenes. Also, we need to do voice overs.

Now that production and post production have been talked about, I've had to preproduce for like a billion other projects, really only 5, but its extremely stressful. Jake and I have been meeting almost every day to discuss the majority of the projects. We pitched 2 Juliets (a working title), but in essence its an all girl mafia lesbian love story. We are both SUPER excited for this project and banged out a treatment on Tuesday in which we pitched on wednesday and every one was excited for. Jim talked about combining the class into one big group for the project. Furthermore, we have secured a couple of locations and are in the process of getting actors. We want to build a dolly for the project, which is definitely possible after looking at plans online. We want to make this project as great as possible and professional looking.

Other than 2 Juliets, we came up with a shot list for The Watch which is shooting this week. Also, we came up with 2 potential story ideas for the week after: a story about the life of a pen (based on a concept by Jim) and the portrayal of chess as a metaphor for life. After discussing it with Jake and Sarah we've decided to go with the chess short. Other than these projects, Jake and I are working on a commercial for the Doritos competition and a project for a photographer in town. Long story short, these next couple weeks are going to be insane, but in the end it'll be worth it. Thats all I got for now.

Audio Fail

So revieweing the footage today, I discovered that there is no audio for the entire bar scene. What this means is either we have to reshoot the dialogue scenes, or record voice overs in post. What an annoyance. This adds to the huge pile of stress of this project and classes and everything. But on a lighter note, the footage looks really good. The shots look really amazing with the lighting and composition.

Week 2 of Productions

WOW! I am exhausted. We have had 2 days of shooting for The Rose and it has been grueling. Yesterday, we shot at Grazie for the bar scenes. First off, Grazie has been so incredible throughout the entire process. They are extremely kind and very welcoming to us. They let us use all of the bar and any objects that we needed. Also, the woman who was in charge stayed until the end of our shoot, we were there until 1 AM. She was awesome. But... it was extremely frustrating of a shoot. We definitely should have been out of there 2 hours before we did. First off, my actor never showed. I don't know what happened, but he never showed. We waited for an hour, but thankfully we were waiting for some jack asses at the bar to leave. The restaurant closed at 10 but people were staying there until 11. So we couldn't get moving until then. So, I have an entire room full of actors, extras, and crew waiting and getting impatient. But, although people were on edge, people were still very accepting to the fact that we had no control over the problem. Overall, the process of the shoot went extremely well though. Once we got going, we got our shots and finished ASAP. We ended up with some really awesome shots. Also, I am actually happy that Phil never showed, because Drew, the person that filled in for him, is doing an amazing job. Through the 2 shoots that we've had, he has been spectacular. He is a born natural. Not to mention Keetin, our seductress, is doing a phenomenal job as well. I am extremely pleased with how my talent is performing.

Today, the 2nd day of shooting has been extremely taxing. We started setting up the studio at 2:30, when class ended. We got the studio set by 3:30 and were ready to shoot. All of the scene went smoothly. The first shot that we did took 20 min and about 20 different takes. We had a huge jib, a lighter that didnt work, and matches that wouldnt light. The combination of all of those, results in disaster! But, we got the shot that we wanted. After using 20 min of time, we needed to fly by with the rest of the shoot, and we did. The real tough part of today was shooting at Sarah's apartment. We had a bunch of complex set ups that needed to be figured out because of placements of lights, and camera movements, and blocking, and everything. The first shot took extremely long because of a small space and lighting issues. Also, we ran out of time to shoot at the location, so we only got about 50% of the things that we needed to get done. However, because we took our time on the lighting and everything, the shots should look pretty amazing. Some of the highlights of the shoot was using chromakey green (green screen green) liquid, putting a light above a fan to get the blades' shadows, having a real ruger (modeled after a luger) on set, seeing Ben have to climb up and down a 8 or 9 foot ledge to set up lights, and other things.

Like I said before, I am very pleased and happy with how my crew is performing. They are putting up with my snippiness and aggravation when things are taking longer than expected. And although everyone is on edge, there haven't been any fights. Lastly, Carrie was a great PA with driving around to all corners of Bloomington picking up last minute props that we needed or forgot or returning to the lab to check out more equipment, and did anything that we asked. Jacob is doing a SPECTACULAR job running the camera. The shots are exactly what I envisioned and he couldnt be doing a better job. Plus he's dealing with me the most when I get aggravated. Ben is a great gaffer. He has a good eye at what I want and when I tell him to do something, he gets it done and the way that I want it. I would name off everyone in my crew and say how great they are but you get the jist of it. They are doing a great job. But after shooting from 2:30-12:30, I must retire from the computer and go to sleep. I am extremely excited for the film and if you are reading this, you should be too.

Week 1 of Productions

So, I am nearing the end of the first week of production and its been a crazy one. I'm working on the pre production of my own project, The Rose, while working on the actual production of Happy Dance this week. It is definitely hectic trying to schedule time to do all of this, but I made it through the week. Furthermore, I have to do the majority of my producer's job such as contacting and getting actors, scouting and finding locations, and keeping the crew in the know. Juggling all of these acts is tough, but I got all of it done. The production of Happy Dance went pretty smooth. As a PA, I don't really do much. I got some real life experience though: I got coffee and picked up pizza. Overall, not that tough of a job. The real work this past week has been getting everything together for The Rose. We're shooting the bar scene at Grazie, office scene in the studio, Apartment scene in Sarah's apartment and other various locations. I met with Jacob to discuss a shot list for the film and we came up with a bunch of interesting and cool shots. I'm EXTREMELY excited to do this project.

For all of you that don't know the premise of the project, here it is. It is a private eye film shot in a film noir style. However, the catch is rather than the P.I narrating the story, the blonde bomb shell seductress tells the story. You go through her psychotic and deranged mind throughout the film with her dialogue, VOs and actions.

All in all, the work it tough, but this weeks work is going to be tougher. I have to juggle working late nights at my job, shooting 4 long shoots for the film, meet a client for an outside project, leave Friday for Wisconsin for a tournament, and not to mention at midterm on tuesday. FUN FUN FUN...

T436 Blog

Hey Everyone,

Haven't posted in a while and i'm sure theres pretty much noone realy checking the blog, but I'm back because of class mainly, but hopefully this will keep me posting for a while. It is a lot harder to keep a blog going than it looks. But oh well. I will be bloggin at least weekly about my adventures throughout the class. The class is TEL T436: Advanced Production - Cinematography. Pretty much, we're learning how to make our films look more cinematic and film looking. We're doing a project a week for 6 weeks. Its extremely hectic, but hey... a little hard work never killed anyone. So... I'll keep you posted on my whereabouts throughout the weeks.

Wasted: Write Up

**This post should have been up much sooner, but I started it one day and never finished it until now**

Wasted is finally done after a week full of production and work. The finishing of Wasted signifies the end of my class. It really is a great feeling to be done of all projects and stress for a while. Although I haven't posted it on youtube yet, it will be up hopefully by tomorrow. I'm just trying to compress is to a decent size where the quality isn't hindered too much. Now on to my write up:

Wasted was a great project to work on. The idea for it is kind of based on a personal story, yes a little scary but not to the degree that Justin in the film went through. If you want to hear more about my story, come ask me sometime, I will just leave it at that. I was eagerly waiting to do this project from the start. It all started with an idea when I was sleeping. I woke up and thought, what if I made a film that had someone dreaming really boring things like waking up everyday and going to work, but his real life was insane and crazy. This then evolved to the addition of drugs into the mix. I then had to refine this idea with how I was going to tell the story. While in the car ride up to Chicago, Jesse and I discussed possibilities to how the story would be told and what would be seen. The bouncing back and forth from flashback to reality was the best idea we came up with.

Now, as for production... this was one HELL of a production considering the time I had to do it and the amount of work I needed to do. First off, I just got finished with Doors of Life on Monday the 8th and the project was due Wednesday the 17th. Although this may not look like a short period of time, I had to attend Poultry Days (an ultimate tournament) that weekend before it was due, so I was out of commission for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. But, during the production of Doors of Life, I had to write the script the week. So, immediately after, I have to scramble for actors and props and EVERYTHING! The child actor was the toughest person to find. I asked every person in Bloomington that I knew to ask their cousins, nephews, and just anyone if they knew a kid. Also, I didn't have a main actor until that Monday night. I convinced Luke to do it, even though he was helping my friend Alex to act in his project. Soooooo, on Tuesday the 9th, I had to start shooting a couple of scenes: The child flashback and teenager flashback. Thankfully, the teenagers that I used knew of a kid that was willing to do it, which was AWESOME. Everything during that shoot went really well, except that I forgot the shotgun mic and boom pole at the lab when I checked everything out. I go home, upload all of the footage and edit it until 4AM. This is when I decided that I wanted to have the film grainy look for the flashbacks and looked up a tutorial to do it. Here is what I used:

Creating that Old Film Look with Final Cut Studio 2

This article was EXTREMELY helpful and would recommend it to anyone that is wanting to do that look.

Next day, Wednesday the 10th. Another Party Scene... These are the scariest things to do when NOONE you know is in town. I contact people saying: Party scene, 10PM, then party afterwards. A total of 10 people showed up after calling people at 10PM. So, we don't shoot until 11-11:30ish. However, all of the shots went really fast and smoothly. The toughest part was trying to make the party seem like it was a party with 10 people. I think that it turned out pretty well considering the circumstances. So, another night up until 3AM editing.

Next day, Thursday the 11th. I scramble to get as many colorful things in my room such as the mushroom tapestry, all of the weird orange stuff I own (which if you know me is A LOT), the blue sequin jacket I wore for Halloween, etc. I had to shoot 5 scenes after 6:00 because thats when Luke got out of work. I told him that it would be around 3 hours to do. Boy was I wrong. It took a total of 5 hours shooting time with a 1 hour break for food. Again, this shoot went extremely smooth. No forgetting of the audio equipment. The toughest thing about these scenes was rearranging EVERY scene to look different. Thankfully the lighting helped with this. Also, doing this really helped me learn lighting scenes. Also, because of the little time I had to plan things out, I was thinking of shots on the fly. But oh well. I would just like to thank Luke at this time for putting on a GREAT show at the end of the movie with how CREEPY he was. Nick (the bunny) and I were amazed at how freaking CRAZY he looked and sounded. Yes, I go home, upload all 5 scenes and edit until 5AM.

Friday the 12th. This is when I went into the lab and recorded all of the Bunny voices for the movie. This was pretty fun considering I was in the lab by myself and tweaking all of the sounds.

So the weekend comes and nothing happens for the movie. But I have 8/10 of the movie done because of all of the work I put into the movie the previous week.

Monday the 15th. This day is the last day of shooting (or so I think). Because I was splitting my actor with Alex, I only had Luke from 3-6 because Luke had work at 6. I thought that this would be plenty of time, but I thought wrong. I was rushing around to 5 different locations for the graduation and tripping flashbacks. We went to a middle school, my house for 2 scenes, the arboretum, and a parking garage. Because I rushed through all of these scenes, I forgot that Luke had to change clothes for when he is on the phone because its supposed to be time passed, or else it would seem like he called Krysta right after the trip. Despite this, I edit again to 5AM. But I think the movie is completely done.

Tuesday the 16th. I bring my project into class and show Jim, my professor. He is blown away but has some very insightful comments. First, he suggests that the pacing in the graduation and party scenes were a little long. Second, the flashbacks should be gritty looking like in Saw. Third, he said the same thing that I was thinking with the phone call scene and that it seemed too soon that this would happen. Sooooo, although Jim said that it would be fine if I left that scene the way it was and after telling Luke that he was done, I decided to ask him to shoot the scene over. This was for the best though. It really does make much more sense this way. So, another night up until 4AM, but the project was finally done and looks AMAZING.

The last thing that I want to talk about is the audio in the movie. Without the audio, the movie would not nearly be as good as it is. I found music at Freeplaymusic.com and sound effects from the network library at the lab as well as freesound.org These sites are AMAZING for anyone looking for sounds and music. Editing the sound was just as time consuming as editing the video, but the overall mood and feel of the movie is set with the music and sounds.

Overall, despite the hours that I put into this project and my blood and sweat, the project turned out AMAZING and I couldn't have done anything better. I hope you all enjoyed this video as much as I have.

Lastly, if you can, try and spot the subliminal bunnies in each flashback scene. :) Also, try and find the two shadows that are in the film that arent supposed to be. (Hint: one is a boom mic and the other is a camera shadow)