And We are Digital.... Finally!

So, this past week in class we were finally, after weeks of miscommunication, missing cameras, missing cords to the missing cameras, group members being M.I.A., and many other mishaps, we were able to digitize our film! It was the first time I had seen all of the footage we had filmed, and it was very exciting to get to see all of of hard work thus far on screen, even if it was only on a tiny camera monitor. I had forgotten just how many takes we had shot of the same scenes. There was at least a full sixty seconds of just my legs walking down stairs over and over again. Watching that footage was... well, awkward would be putting it lightly. I told our editor Bryan to make sure to darken the footage a little bit to reduce the glare on my white legs.

Also, in reviewing the footage, I realized just how fortunate we were to have found such an amazing actor to star in our film. Justin was so willing to try anything and added so much life to the character and had us all rolling at all times and almost in tears a few. He willingly jumped over a moving vehicle, hurdled over several benches and small walls, as well as push past countless innocent bystanders across campus. He was more than happy to strip down to his boxers for the opening scene and was not hesitant to let a few choice words go every once in a while. Okay, maybe more than every once in a while. He even wore the same outfit for about five days straight during filming.

While watching the footage, I saw things that I hadn't noticed while filming. There were some shots that I had been skeptical of at first that turned out very impressively, and there were others that I had high hopes for that were kind of flops. I noticed when some one in the background was looking straight at the camera, or the same extra popped up in too different shots on two different locations. Oops. I suppose we didn't listen too closely to the lesson on having some one as the set designer to watch for some of these things. Luckily, we still have editing which can take care of many of these problems. I can't wait to see the film after Bryan has worked his magic on it.

So, funny story, as I am working on this blog I get a facebook message from Bryan that he has begun to try to edit the footage that we finally had gotten digitized and there in nothing there. Well, something is there, a white screen, but that is it. No dramatic race across campus, no awkward white legs marching down stairs, no hurdling over cars or benches, or cursing in boxers. Nothing. So, its back to Eric to try to get this problem fixed so Bryan can edit the visual part of our movie, so I can then go back and edit the audio part of it by adding dramatic music and sound effects as well as attempting figure out how to enhance our already recorded audio. Let's just hope we can get all of this done by next Thursday!

Teamwork

Filming this movie was an absolute blast! We all collaborated so well it was as if we had all worked together before. Our director Imran had a great vision for how he wanted the shots to look and what feel the movie should have. He had things well planned and storyboarded so we were able to utilize them as a valuable tool to guide our shots and keep us on track. We were also able to easily improvise and let our creativity flow with ideas that weren’t necessarily planned for, and I think this helped our film have a good balance of creative freedom and organization.
Jennie, the cameraman (woman rather) was also invaluable to the process. She was not only very knowledgeable of the camera and also very daring. She was willing to shoot take after take of the same scene or even the tiniest moment to get it just right. She climbed on top of desks, hung out of windows, and ran around after our actor chasing him down the side walk and walk and down stairs. She was a true trooper. She also worked very hard to work around everyone’s scheduling conflicts. Jennie made herself as available as a busy college student possibly could and sacrificed a lot for the sake of our team and our film.
Well, to this point , Bryan and I have not made our big contributions to this project—not for the sake of laziness, but rather the project simply has not reached the point at which our jobs kick in. Bryan should begin editing tonight or tomorrow and should finish sometime this weekend. Then the footage will come to me to add in the sound effects, music, and any voiceovers or rerecordings if needed. These next two steps will be what take the raw footage that contains our ideas and turn it into a finished work. over the next few days we will be working, under the creative supervision of our director, along with input and ideas of our entire team, to polish the rough scenes into a work of art for all to enjoy. I am excited to see what Bryan puts together. I know once I watch it a few times, the ideas will start flowing. I hope the finished product comes together like we envisioned. If the people watching it enjoy it half as much as I have enjoyed making it, it will be well worth the effort.

Editing

I could sucker punch technology right in the face at this moment. Let me tell you a cute little story of our incredible project that had so much time, planning, creativity, and effort turned into... well, a blank, white wall of nothing but a little blue spinning circle on my moniter. So, as you might have read in previous blog posts, just how excited I am... I was, for this film. Our team collaborted to come up with a great story line, we storyboarded shots well, found the perfect actor, and had great ethusiasm and work ethic for this project. Filming went off without a glich other than a few minor scheduling conflicts, tripods in the backgrounds of scenes, falling down the stairs once or twice, forgetting to turn the camera off, or back on, etc. When we watched all of the footage we had gather, we were all really pleased with the way our vision had translated to film, or at least I know I was. We knew with the right editing, it could be quite a little film. Brian and I were ready to get working right after spring break, as we were the first group finished with our footage. The only thing that stood in our way of achieving our vision of taking the labors of our team and translating them beautifully into a cinematic masterpiece was digitizing.


Oh, digitizing. I curse the day you were born... er, invented? So, for a month straight, that is the week we got from spring break to this past Thursday, we have been trying to digitize our footage so we can get to work and have our project finished before dreaded finals week. Well, guess what this week is, oh, just finals week-- the most feared week of any undergrad that sneaks up at the end of every semester. The week when you spend more time in Club Torreyson than you do your own room, you have not slept or showered in a time period that most would probably consider inappropriate, and you wish more than anything someone would invent a way to intervienously infuse your bloodstream with Starbucks. But, back on topic, it seemed as though every week when we would try to digitize, either other teams had the cameras, or a cord was missing, or Eric was missing, or something happened, or rather didn't happen to make our film digitized. SO finally, Last thursday, Eric spent forever digitizing our footage, because of course ours would have problems and be difficult after having such smooth sailing up until this point. ANyway, we got the footage, Brian edited it, and we found that there were roughly ten minutes worth of footage missing-- pretty vital footage such as our opening shot. Eric helped us out and got us the footage at midnight on Tuesday night.

Through a series of unfortunate events, I ended up becoming the editor for our film. Though I was on the irritated side that I had to stay up all night the night before working on it when I still had a final the next day and hadn't slept more than six hours this week, I actually enjoyed myself. I really liked the editing process, until I was going on about hour ten of editing when my computer started to go haywire! It had been slow all night and would freeze every ten minutes or so, and I would have to either just wait it out or restart it altogether, but about 5:00 this morning it stopped. Oh no, it didn't stop freezing up. It was kind enough to crash my computer, corrupting all of the film files, andrefusing to even play back the progress I had made thus far. Yes, yes. Twelve hours of editing (middle of the night editing, at that) down the virtual drain. Really? Really AVS, you want to quit on me when I am so close to finishing a project that my team and I have working on for about two months now? You are just such a sweetheart. I appreciate all of your cooperation. So... after numerous desperate attempts at salvaging anything we could, we salaged... nothing. Nothing. Wait, in case you just missed it, I said nothing. We have nothing to show for our work this semester other than our thoughts in these blogs. Oh, there's technology again for you. Let me guess, this blog would save or post either. That would be just my luck today, huh?

The Player

The Player was a definite improvement from the previous film. The Player was directed by Robert Altman in 1992, written by Micheal Tolkin. It stars Tim Robbins as Griffin Mill, a studio executive who is being blackmailed by a dejected writer. Mill ends up killing a writer, who is not the one blackmailing him as it turns out. He ends up meeting the dead writer's girlfriend and they fall for each other, as Mill somehow avoids charges for the murder. It is a thriller with many qualities that lend themselves to film noir, including the very dark plot, overall sense of hopelessness, and especially Griffin Mill himself as the antihero. The story leaves us as the audience feeling very confused and uncomfortable. We are torn between wanting what is right and wanting the protagonist (and considering Mill I use this term very loosely) to get away with it.

One thing about the film that I thought was particularly interesting was the cinematography. Robert Altman was incredibly creative and clever with the way in which he used the camera to portray his satire of the industry. The first shot of this film is a long shot, a very long shot, talking about long shots. Clever huh? It is following Griffin Mill through the Hollywood lot showing what he does and who he is. The shot ends through a window to his office with him hearing movie pitches. It gives the view the feeling that they are actually there walking through the lot and simply peeking in on a conversation. It is a very effective way to grab the audiences' attention and affection from the get go. Another shot that was noticeable was the extreme close up on Griffin Mill's eyes showing the intense fear he had. It was almost a very cliché shot, however, it was executed so well by Altman and used so strategically that is somehow worked quite well.

One thing we have been discussing all semester in class is the theme within movies. All of the films that we have watched have been about the movie making industry. The Player in particular says something very strong about the business. Altman uses this movie to highlight the predictability of the business. It will never stick to reality, but will always end up compromising to appeal to the masses. Altman seems to think that studio executives and directors will always cop out and make safe, predictable movies where the hero gets the girl and there is a happy ending, which is not only the case in the movie Griffin pitched, but also in The Player itself. Mill lives happily ever after with his stolen girlfriend in a house with a white picket fence and gets off scot-free for a murder, plus his movie is a hit. Altman made a movie about movies and the struggle of the writers who write them and the producers who produce them. He seems to almost mock the audience saying that we could not accept reality in a movie ending but our feelings must be handled with care.

This past week in class we had a workshop on how to plan for our film. We learned about different techniques that can easily and cheaply take our movies to the next level, from using a green scream to making a fake courpse, Eric showed it all. He also stressed the importance of planning. Planning out your shots, planning ahead for as many things that could possibly go wrong, getting permission to be filming on the property you are on, and dealing with your crew and actors are all intergral parts of the film making process if you want to do it successfully and legally. After we talked about all of these things and several other topics, we were able to break into our teams to discuss our films.

My team made a lot of ground this week. We were able to talk through all of the storyboards and get on the same page as far as the sequence of events and the shots that we needed to protray our story effectively and creatively. We wrote out our script for the few portions of our film that include speaking parts. We discussed casting for the longest, talking about what we envisioned for our main character. We decided that he needed to be a very steriotypical college student. Who is slighly athletic and quite the slacker. Basically, he needs to be the typical dude. We each scrolled through our phone books and facebooks searching for someone who could not only fit the look, but also be willing to take time out of thier schedule to film, and could have some acting talent. This was a much more daunting task than it seemed. Finally we came up with several options, all of whom will be wonderful action heroes.

We also discussed some of the more experimental shots that we wanted to incorporate into our film.. One shot that we talked about was inspired by the movie we watched last week, Blow Out. At the beginning of our story, the action hero is frantically scrambling around his room getting ready and getting his things together after oversleeping and being late for his class. The shot will scan around the room around and around, showing his hysteria and the wreck his room and life are. I think it will be a very interesting shot to really grab the attention of the audience at the very beginning of our film. There are several other eye-grabbing shots in store for this film. I am looking forward to filming soon and have very high hopes for this movie. We have a lot of very good ideas and are taking care to plan it well, and I am hopeful that it will translate to film the way we hope.

This past week in class we watched the 1981 thriller "Blow Out", starring John Travolta and directed by Brian De Palma. It is about a sound operator who works in Hollywood on low budget horror films who inadvertently witnesses a murder. He investigates the murder and uncovers a conspiracy that goes much deeper than he could have ever imagined. While this movie was full of suspense, action-packed, and had a plethora of innovative camera techniques; it reminded me of why I absolutely hate 80's movies. I abhor 80's movies. I don't know whether it is the horrible jazz saxophone music that seems to be a staple of classic 80's movies, or the predictable, cheesy plots, or the dark, dreary colors in which these movies are set. Whatever it is, it makes for a downright depressing film.

I am much more drawn to the bright colors of Technicolor and upbeat musical numbers of the 1950'a. Even present day films that may be a little bit more serious and a tad dreary are more appealing to me then 80s movies. All of the Batman films are quite dark, both in color and in content, yet I enjoy those movies. Country for Old Men has no music whatsoever, yet I still like that movie as well. It is obviously not simply the dark feeling and horrid music of 80s movies that I dislike. I would say it is the phoniness of them, but early musicals caked on the cheesiness yet I still love them. I felt as though there was no real connection to the characters, no character development. I did not care out the characters, and there was never an reason for me to care about them.

One thing that both bothered and impressed me about Blow Out was the fact that I never forgot that it was indeed a movie. It always felt as though I was watching a movie, and at times it almost seemed as though the actors were aware that they had an audience. All of the showy camera techniques were impressive in themselves, however I feel as though they almost distracted from the story. Maybe, this is simply because I know that I am helping to plan our movie that we will be shooting very soon, that I was more aware of these elements. The cheesy and predictable slow motion running sequence was especially bothersome to me. De Palma has a nack for taking a story, turning it into a film, and the film into art. I can appreicate the art of this film, maybe just not the story.... or the horible saxaphone music.

Film Ideas

In our film class this semester, we have broken up into four teams to create short films. It should prove to be quite an exciting project that I am really looking forward to get the ball rolling on. Each team was assigned a certain genre and several components that must be included in the film. Every movie must include a mime or clown, a guitar, a cheese grater, and a skull. It must also include the lines "Why is this happening to me today of all days?" and "It would be better for us not to talk about that." There are four people to a team, as well as four specific jobs that must be done. There is the director, the camera operator, the editor, and the sound operator. The job in my group that I chose was the sound operator. The genre our group was assigned was action. We were all really excited to get this genre and were all bursting with ideas for elaborate chase scenes and intricate fight sequences.

One idea we had entailed using the huge stair cases in the new College of Business building for a scene in which the "bad guy" is being chased by the protagonist. We envision a wide shot from outside with the two tiny figures racing up either side of the stair case, then a cut to a shot of a fight sequence at the top of the stairs with a lot of quick cuts and fast camera motion. We could play with different interesting angles are on the stairs as well as from the top looking down. I think this could easily serve as the lead up to a very climactic fight scene for the film.

Another idea we bounced around was a chase scene through campus. I think another fight scene around the fountain could be really visually interesting especially with the added effect of the motion of the water and the circular structure of the perimeter of the fountain. One almost humorous idea that someone had was to have a "scooby doo-like" moment and have the antagonist disguised as a construction worker, waiting on the hero to run by then jumping out and chasing him. It could add not only an element of suspense, but also a humorous, light-hearted moment.

We have yet to come up with a definite plot, or even theme really, however we did decide that we thought we wanted a female action hero, maybe an undercover cop or secret agent type character. We thought that a female protagonist would be a refreshing change in a very traditionally male-dominated genre of film. As for the bad guy or many of the other details of the film, we have yet to come to a collective decision, however our team has a lot of energy and enthusiasm for this project, and I know that once we come up with an idea we will run full force with it. I am very excited to be working with my team and know the finished product will turn out well.