My final blog.

Not a lot happened last class period (4/29). We sat around waiting for the film to get digitized. Looked up with Donna to see how many blogs or questions we had posted. It was anti-climactic. Our team dispersed pretty rapidly. As it was dead day eve. I am not positive how are film is going, but I am under the impression that its underway. I am eager to finally get to sound-editing. I feel like I haven’t contributed much. My team seems to all have off time to work on it when I am at work. This whole thing has been very complicated and difficult. I really hope that I get to do something. Of course its finals week and everyone is extremely busy. I hope I get time to work on it. One of our team members has taken control. I love that. The only thing about that is the fact that She just kinda does it instead of talking to the rest of the team about it. Our film is nearly done and I don’t know what changes have been made because nobody has told me when the editing is taking place. I started out so excited and now I feel like all of the work I did at the front end won’t be reflected in our movie because we changed our idea so many times.

I am worried about this 5-10 page production journal. I feel like it might be VERY similar to my blogs since, the blog assignment is to reflect on class and the movie is class right now. I think that most of us will be compiling ideas from our blogs to write on. Especially people like me, who used the blog as a diary-like reflection of each class period. Which unfortunately was the only time my team saw everyone at the same time, and most class periods that didn’t even happen. I think it would have gone a lot smoother had we had a smaller group, and more similar schedules. Maybe next year the groups can be decided that way. I am overall pleased with how are movie turned out. Especially despite all of the obstacles we encountered. Its very satisfying to know that we succeeded. And our movie isn’t all that bad. I only wish we had more time to perfect it, and perhaps insert some more funny situations. Next week we SHOW IT!!!

and the end is nearing.

Last class, (If you can call it that) Was everyone sitting around waiting for the footage t]o digitize. Our team was waiting on the stuff to digitize so that we could resume filming. This ended up taking an ungodly amount of time. I started studying for my chemistry test and waited for them to call me to start filming. This happened at almost nine and nobody had time to film apparently. This was aggravating because class time seems to be the only time we all have allotted out to where we don’t have conflicting plans. Our final footage is due on Thursday, and I am still unsure where everyone is as far as filming goes.

I hope that the editing team has enough to work with that we can get it done. Even if it doesn’t turn out as great as our original plan was. At this point I am just wanting to get it done. The novelty is definitely fading fast. Exactly what I was afraid of is happening. Our stuff is starting to interfere severely with all of my tests, and finals are next week. We are now at a place where we have to have everything done in order to be digitized by Thursday.

I feel obligated to take over, even my job is sound editor. Maybe they have a lot filmed and I just haven’t heard about it yet. Other members of my group are starting to get frustrated. This is the busiest time of the year and I feel like the film is not on any of our priority lists. We all have tests and finals and end of the semester projects and finals. So everyone feels like they need to be studying for their “major” classes. I really hope we pull through. I feel like it might end up being just 2 or three people taking over getting the filming done. They might be the same people who will be doing the editing, but at least it will get done.

The end of the semester is nearing, I am ready to not have any more huge stressors. I hope it’s okay if my production journal is going to almost identical to my blog posts. Whenever we meet for short periods of time, and don’t get a lot done its hard to think of much else to put in the blog. Oh well, I guess it should be easier to write, with all of my thoughts being vocalized.

this is a lot harder than i originally thought.

Last Thursday (4/15) We meet in the forum. None of the teachers were there so it was hard to stay focused. Sam refuses to write a script so we have nothing to do. His “directors image” is to just go with it. I really wish we had more structure. Because we have no camera, and apparently no need for a script we all leave after briefly discussing when we all can meet (of course there is no time where EVERYONE can meet) We decide that everyone shouldn’t be actors so that we can get it done without all of the headache of finding schedules that line up.

I feel like my team is just having awful luck with this assignment. We have a group with an extra person, which makes probabilities of getting together super small. We got our camera late the night before our footage was due; and had to give it to the next team on time to prevent what happened to us, happening to another team. Which left us with a day. A day where our footage had no sound. I really wish there was some way we could start over, and actually have a script. To be completely honest, I don’t like any of the footage we have right now because it is too chaotic. It’s NOT funny. We are suppose to be comedy. I think with a little guidance it could be hysterical. Without a script, or at least broad outline its just ridiculous and loud. Everyone just talks at the same time and yells. Making it impossible for the viewer to pick out what is going on.

I hope that the team decides to reshoot what we have. I have decided not to be an actress because I just get frustrated. I am still excited about the editing process, and hope I can let my artistic talents shine through that and the sound. I am sure it will come together, I am just good at stressing myself out. I am the sound editor, not the director. Perhaps, if I did this again that might change. Sam is super excited though, so I am sure it will be great. The other teams are beginning to talk about their films. The final viewing night should be really really great. I am still praying we are not gonna be stressing over finals week with this stuff. WISH US LUCK!!

really? no sound. really?

This past class was our first workshop day. It was also our first day with the camera. It was also day our footage was due. Tensions ran high as Sam called everyone at four o clock trying to get them to find some mountain to go and film at. I had work till 4:30 and needed to eat before class. Destiny and Lynn had their similar justifiable excuses. I was too angry to care. I had been trying to get everyone organized from the beginning so we wouldn’t have to be stressed out about this. So much for that.

We go to class and sign in. Destiny Lynn and I decide to go meet up with Sam and Tommy to see what has been done and still needs to be done before we give the camera to the next team. We finally meet up with everyone. The actors all have to leave at this point so everyone but Tommy and Sam are starting to get frustrated and nervous about how to shoot the rest of the film without the actors. Sam ensures us that we have enough for a film and we go off to his room to see what footage we will be working with.

After a few minutes of fumbling around with the camera we manage to hook it up to the tv to start to view the footage.

We can’t get the sound to work and call on my handy sibling Jenny to come help us. She promptly comes over and starts fumbling around to help us figure it out. We finally realize that Tommy has forgotten to turn the sound on and have filmed all of our footage in mute. DAMN IT!!! We are all just frustrated and tensions are running high. Mind you our footage is due in about an hour, and everything we have filmed wont work. We swiftly decide to AGAIN change the script and start from scratch. (This is the reason we still don’t have a script) I get really angry and choice words are exchanged between Sam and I. We love each other as friends, but we do NOT work together in a group.

We start a film about making our film. With the hope it will turn out something like Adaptation. I really really really hope this works out. The LAST thing I want is to be stressing about this when I have finals to worry about. We’ll see.

Adaptation

Last week in class we watched the Movie Adaptation it was a really unique movie. I enjoyed it even though it wasn’t really my cup of tea. The movie is about a screenplay writer who is tasked with writing a script for a book about orchids. This proved to be a struggle because there was no real plot devices in the novel. Charlie Kaufman, the main character wants to stick to the book as closely as possible. He believes that nothing big happens in real life and therefore the book shouldn’t have anything too crazy in it. This is ironic because he goes to a writing workshop that his brother Donald, recommended and is taught that movies must have all of these elements such as sex violence drugs and life or death situations. The movie then starts to have crazy scenarios happening that were just kind of dropped in. Which is exactly what the writer didn’t want in his movie.

All of the characters in the movie except the twin brother Donald were real people. The author and the book was real. This is a really interesting phenomenon in the movie because it seems as if the movie is being written as it is being played out. I think this is an interesting technique because it allows the viewer to watch critically the parts that the writer was critical about. I think that the writer was very intentional in using this as an avenue to critic the film industry, or more specifically the writers. This is also evident in Charlie’s disdain to Donald using words like “pitch” and “industry”. He was constantly telling him to stop using those words.

The over sensationalized ending was really ridiculous. The Charlie and his brother get into this whole scenario where drug trafficking and violence was happening. They had a car wreck and the brother dies. All of this stuff is just kind of thrown into the plot with hardly any relation to the stuff happening earlier in the movie. This makes the ending incredibly hard to watch, especially after hearing all of the criticism about this sort of stuff earlier in the movie.

There is also an underlying theme of “adaptation” which can be defined ad moving away from the essence of who you are. Not only does Charlie adapt the film into a movie, but he adapts himself in order to make the film industry happy with his end product. It is a very well thought out movie, and it was fun to watch in class. A very good end to our movie nights.

Scary Mary

Last class period began with a guest. Corey Womack made a video for his senior thesis project. It was really helpful to see a movie already made. I think it put into perspective how much work we were going to have to put into our own projects. He worked on his movie The Last Summer for 2 years and it was only about 15 minutes long. Ours only have to be five minutes, but we don’t have NEARLY as much time. It should be really neat to see what everyone puts together. I liked seeing Corey’s work, but I think it intimidated me because of all the work he put into it.

So far our group has been having a dreadful time trying to get schedules to match up. We have yet to meet with everyone outside of class even once. I’m sure it will be easier once it’s all shot, and I only have to work with a few other people with sound and editing.

We also watched a lot of short little films on youtube. These gave me a lot of ideas that we could have used in our film. I really wish we could have seen more before we did all of the screenwriting. I think that It would have been more helpful at the front end. We saw how important editing can be when making a movie. We saw Scary Mary where clips from a children's movie where edited to look like a horror movie. We also saw an advertisement for The Shining which is a horror film based on a Steven King novel it was changed to seem like a heartwarming family film. It also demonstrated how music can affect a movie. As the sound person for my group, It was exciting and intimidating to see how big of a difference sound made.

My films footage is due next week, I am getting really nervous that we all haven’t met together yet. I hope it works out and we can agree on the direction to take our ideas. I think that it will be a challenge, but a god one. I just hope everyone has been doing their part. I’m excited about having another movie night this week. Hopefully we will get out early enough to catch part of Livestock which is a fundraiser the Honors College is doing to support Heifer Ranch. A lot of local UCA bands will be playing.

Bonnie deserves better.

Last class period we watched The Player (1992) by Robert Altman. The movie is about a studio script screener executive who gets threatening postcards sent to him by a writer whose script he rejected. The executive, Griffin Mill sets off to figure out who is sending the post cards and ends up murdering a writer who he believes to be the one. The postcards continue to be sent, meanwhile he falls in love with the dead writers girlfriend. In the end he is blackmailed to use the writers story in order to keep his secret quiet. The story is the story of the executive murdering the writer, and getting away with it. He wants to name the movie The Player. This is how it ends, and it kind of pokes fun at the viewer for believing it was all real.

The cinematography in the movie was excellent. I really enjoyed the beginning scene. It was one very long shot that would zoom in and out from behind blinds in order to show what the business had to put up with as far as writers. He also transitions with sound and overlays tracks to help direct you who is talking and transition into the next conversation. I think that this was fascinating. This is a trademark of Altman. Altman also uses sound to perpetuate a film noir feel. He uses strange beats to make seemingly normal scenes feel extremely uncomfortable. An example of this is in the sex \ scene with Jane Gudmundsdottir (the dead writers girlfriend). The entire time there is a strange drum beat which makes the viewer incredibly uncomfortable.

The movie has a distinct criticism on the movie making business (as most of our class movies do). The ending is fake and unrealistic, Griffin gets away with murder and lives happily ever after. There is also a scene where the company is giving away some kind of award. Nobody in the audience is paying attention. The guy who spoke first didn’t even listen to the following speaker. I think this is Altman’s criticism of the entire hollywood culture.

Griffin Mills himself is a dynamic character. He is a lot more compassionate in the beginning. He gets more and more sucked into the “jerk”ness of the corporate world. His hair also gets more and more disheveled. You never really see him feel guilty. This is interesting because of what June said about how crimes shouldn't necessarily be punished because the guilt can sometimes be enough. She also said that if you don’t feel bad maybe what you did wasn’t wrong. I think that is an interesting thought.