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!