The Semester is Done

To end off the year the capstone class once again ventured to the Titan Traverse. The classes original idea was that all we were going to be doing was coming down to Westminster’s intramural gym and climb the rock wall. Wow what a shock we were in for. It should of came as no surprise that the Traverse people had a lot more then that planned for us. Starting out we played a game that involves being able to communicate with a blindfolded partner to toss objects at other blindfolded people. I really did poorly at communicating with my partner because I could not stop laughing long enough.
Moving on we had a 40 yrd- dash seems simple enough, then they blindfolded us. The whole point was ‘how does one react when going into the unknown. Some just dove in and made it all the way without other problems, others not so much. Though incredibly comical to watch, and frightful to do, I think the message was somewhat lost.
Now for the real challenge, we had to cross an obstacle course of cinder blocks by using only planks of wood. We did not do to well. Once we started moving we worked all right with each other, but I think there was a lack of communication, and willingness to listen to each other to work efficiently. But with a bit of help we were able to get across the maze (after they gave us another piece of wood to help out).
We then proceeded to the climbing wall. Everybody made it up, and if someone fell they did not stop but just got back on the wall and climbed all the way to the top.
With wobbly limbs the group finished up and came together. The Traverse people discussed with us how ‘well we did,’ and that going into the world outside of college you just have to push threw, and any other saying you can think of that works. Personally I enjoy this kind of stuff, and I think it helps bring people together. But one more semester is done and I am ready to graduate.

Crossing Paths

Sky Yaple’s senior capstone project “On the Verge,” Delt with advertisement spanning across media: from the use of television to internet, and what not. Convergence is what this is called. And I thought to myself, “self how does, and can this relate to me?” Well it is simple really, advertisement is a way to create a buzz about a product. My product happens to be a film. The more people talk about a product well the more people know about it and in theory the more people that will want to use it.
With a lot of film festivals they require a media kit when you submit your film. Including stickers maybe t-shirts, rub on tattoos, anything. Also some require a website for the film. Film festivals are forcing convergence, which is not a bad thing. It once again creates outlets for others to view the product. The problem is being creative with this.
Every MAJOR BLOCKBUSTER MOVIE known to man has teamed up and advertised their film at a fast food restaurant. I remember when I was a kid I would beg my dad to take me to Burger King to get a “last action hero” whopper combo, just for the cool cup. Its old, I honestly think that people don’t care about what is on their cups just children. But watching nip/tuck during the attack of “the carver” (a character that would cut the corner of the mouths of his victims to disfigure them) the carver had a myspace website, that as soon as it was announced people jumped on that site like it the 70’s and polyester was going out of style. It was an instant success. So I need to take a step back and think of how this will help me. I have a website (its for class and there isn’t much on it but my endless rambling). But using my media packet in some creative way will help.

Call Me a Worrier

The biggest problem that I have noticed with student filmmakers, is money. There just isn’t any. And though a limitation on money can bread creativity it also has a lot of negative effects as well. These negative effects are scaring the living death out of me. My budget consist of maybe 20$ to shoot a 15 minute story. That means that I cannot pay anyone to help, act or for equipment. Which means that its time to beg borrow, and if necessary beg a lot more. I have noticed with trying to work with finding locations for shooting people are incredibly willing to work with you, same thing with businesses. It seems that smaller locally owned shops love to help as long as your not a inconvenience to them, but larger stores are all about the money and sometimes 30some odd phone calls still were not enough.
It one of the shots it calls for a delivery truck to drive by, I worked for Two men and a Truck on and off for about 2 years now figured it would not be a problem. Called, and called and called, and called some more, and finally spoke with someone. Though I have no money and it’s a student film and I was an employee there I still have to buy likeness rights and whatnot for them which was at an outrageous price.
Also talent and crew. Once again NO MONEY, begging people to help me. Its easier getting tech people then talent. But I’m not as scared at having a guy who is helping with lighting or sound or something show up because there is a way to get around and work with what we have. I’m scared to death of people not showing up. I can have all the tech people in the world and with no talent I have nothing to film. With no money the only thing that can be promised is an ego boost and hopefully that will be enough. All these what ifs are floating around in my mind and frankly they scare me. Partly it would be a lot different if it was something that I was just shooting, but I need this to graduate, and I want to be done so yeah. I think the biggest thing is that I need to figure out some type of incentive for everybody, and I am open for ideas.

How hard is art

Film is the most difficult medium of art to work with. With painting you just have a canvas and paint and its deigned to be seen, music its to be heard, but film crosses boundaries and encompassing sight and sound to tell a story. And with doing that there are so many things that can go wrong. But what makes a good film? I don’t think that question can be answered with just one answer; I think that it is collaboration on many different aspects.
First there needs to be a good story. Without a story people just simply don’t care. A film can’t look gorgeous and doesn’t say anything (Transformers). There has to be emotion and people need to be able to relate to what the characters are going threw. There has to be that bond.
Next I think that the next important aspect is the visual elements have to be entertaining. Transformers did a great job of making a great looking film. But its not enough, you have to be able to toss in a good story (Minority report).
Acting, cheesy acting just kills anything that can happen. Art is a reflection of life and so it needs to be done well. There are always exceptions to this thought though. In very stylistic films cheesy acting works. In the movie Secondhand Lion the main character is retelling of past events, the acting was corny but looked great.
The biggest thing is sound. Sound is so important to film. One screw up and it can kill great films. And it is so simple to mess up sound, if lips don’t match what people are saying. If there is a constant annoying hum, if the sound effects and music don’t fit, if the people are to soft and the audience has to strain to hear, or if its to loud. And the list goes on and on. Bad sound can kill a film instantly. But good sound can create moods and feelings and make the film that much better. Requiem for a Dream used sound to help create a sense of chaos and panic. To me those our (generally) the four major things that will make or break a movie. The most important is sound, talk to anyone in film and they will harp on sound. The hardest thing to get (with no money) is acting. Being able to mold all of the different aspects is what makes film such a hard art form.

Medium is the message

According to Marshall McLuhan, a communication theorist, the Medium is the message. What does that mean, simple, what is being said is not as important as how it is being said. Take it a step farther, ‘I love you’ If you plaster those words on a billboard it is a general statement for everybody to see. Those same words typed on a personal letter, it can seem cold. Again a personal handwritten letter with I love you, it shows time and caring. The message is the same but the Medium changes how we think about it.
Why am I talking about this? Again simple question to be answered film is shot at ‘wide screen’ format, television is not. Film works for wide battles and landscapes and huge action sequences, television works for close shots. I’m filming a movie, would my message be better served on television or film?
It depends on what I want my audience to take away from the film. Saving Private Ryan, was beat out by Shakespeare in Love for best picture. Booth well done movies, the difference is the Medium. Most academy judges view films at their home, or in an office and not a theater. Saving Private Ryan is a war epic that works well on a theater, Shakespeare is a love story and a more personal for of entertainment (television) works better for the film.

So where do I go from now

So my college days are coming to an end and everybody that I have talked to have two questions. A) when do I graduate, and B) what am I doing after I am done. Well I am done in May, and that day cannot come any sooner. But what am going to be doing when I am done with school? I have always wanted to go into the military but I am unable to because of medical reason (I have sports induced asthma. What a crock). So that takes that out of the picture. I want to be able to travel and help people and I have heavily looked into the Peace Corps, but I have made so many contacts over the last year and to disappear for three years I will most likely loose them. Well those are my non-degree options, but what about using that piece of paper I went for five years of college for. Maybe I can work in local news for a bit. On of my professors is Bob Hannon from WYTV in Youngstown, why not use that to my advantage. However, the problem is that I really do not care for many of the aspects of news. I like hard news and that is about the extent of it. Ideally, I want to move out to Los Angles and be able to work in film. I was lucky enough to spend a summer out in LA and I really love the city. I have also started to consider seriously getting my MFA. To a great deal of people including my mother when I mentioned I was considering getting a graduate degree they are totally shocked, because frankly I do not like school (though I understand the importance of it). I am looking at a few different schools, one is a film school and the others are schools with film programs.

One program that I found myself drawn to is New York Film Academy. This is a Two-year intensive program that all the students do is work on film. The school teaches how you use different types of film, and theories and whatnot. The school also allows students to use studio back lots. But the downside like all graduate programs it is an expensive school and to add on, it is nearly impossible for students to work so add on loans to live off of for two years and the price tag shoots way up

Another school that I have been looking at is both USC and UCLA. I like both of these schools but I don’t think that they have the hands on aspect that I am looking for with a school. At the same time they are big name schools and having a MFA from them will carry a lot of weight, well as far as teaching is concerned.

The schools that I have found on the east coast are surprisingly more expensive then out towards the west. I think I am kind of skewed to the west also because I do want to move and live there. Time will tell and unfortunately money will also.

Its all about the NETWORKING baby

Some guy keeps harping in my ear that connections and networking are the most important aspect of broadcasting. Then I sit in class and all I hear is more and more about how important it is to network. Then I go outside and meet people and ask for advice and all they harp on is networking and networking, and skill has a bit to do with it but network some more. So I thought to myself “self, there must be something up with this whole networking thing.” And by golly there is.

I am in a sports broadcasting class and by chance my professors is Bob Hannon from WYTV in Youngstown. He is the director of sports. Anyways I figured that this would be someone to meet and to know, and it has paid off. About two weeks into school he offered our class a chance to go down to work on an ESPN crew at an OHIO STATE FOOTBALL GAME. Well that was a double for me because I got to see OSU play and I’m a big fan and I was able to work for a network station.

I worked my butt off, I met every person I could, and was friendly polite and had a lot of fun. Well I guess that it worked because I was later called to help at an Akron vs. OU game, and the following week (which I was not able to attend) go to Miami of Ohio. I have been told that I did a really good job and to look for more jobs during basketball season.

Also Westminster hold concerts and Wayne Newton was at our school while he was on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars. Well they were looking for story assistants for the show, and my professor recommended me. It was weird to see how fast pace but how calm everything was. It was long day (from roughly 6 pm to 2 am) and we shot over 4 hrs of video. And they shot even more in the two days that followed for a minute thirty of air time. But after they left they called me to try and find a bag that was left there. I was fast asleep but NETWORK NETWORK NETWORK so I went on a goose hunt trying to find it. The guy I work for currently has my resume and helping me rewrite it and make it look impressive as possible, and hopefully can get me a job when I am out of school.

I feel wasteful and frustrated because I am making great contacts, but I am still in college and it is limiting what I am able to do with them. How much is the point were you are just bugging someone. And I’m not able to pick up and move until after May. So where do I go from there.

Research

I have been slowly taking steps away from my film project in the attempt to keep the idea fresh and not to drive the story into the ground. Last week was our fall break and I purposely did not write in my blog to give myself a chance to get away from my film. My blog is designed to keep up to day anyone involved in the film project.

I began my research paper for my broadcasting capstone. I feel that finding twentyfour sources about film festivals, “how to” manuals of filming, and what not is going to be a chore in itself. I will be honest and I am worried about having enough sources. I don’t think having enough information and knowledge will be an issue, it think finding different people saying the same thing over and over again is going to be the challenging aspect.

I was lucky and by chance got a hold of Mary Cardaras, from the New England Institute of Art. Mary freelances for CNN, Boston, and has worked for CNN, Atlanta, CNN London, and numerous other television stations in five other major markets over more than 25 years. She is the recipient of two EMMY awards for excellence in spot news producing and feature producing and has been nominated numerous times during her career in news. She continues to produce documentaries and is establishing a new non-profit organization to support the work of independent cinematic artists, The South End Cinema Foundation for the Arts. She is a member of the Radio and Television News Directors Association, the Association for Education in Journalism and Communication, and the Arab-U.S. Association for Communication Educators. She works with the Coolidge Corner Theatre Foundation, the American Repertory Theatre, and the Press & Information Office of the Permanent Mission of Greece to the United Nations.

The reason why I contacted her was totally different. During my first round of gazing for film festivals, I found a student festival called the Naked Eye College Film Festival, and she is an organizer of the event. Books can only tell you so much and I think that first hand knowledge from an expert is the best way to get information. Plus it allowed me to work on my interviewing skills. I contacted her and she agreed to interview with me. I learned a lot about how the film festivals are organized and ran. Mary is a source that I know if I run into a rut I will be able to contact her again.

I also been spending a lot of time in the Library and well frankly Akron’s public library was a pain in the but to find anything but they had a lot of information. I found a few books by Chris Gore. Chris seems to be a jack of all trades in the film industry. Reading his bio. he has a lot of experience in the entertainment and film industry. I picked up a good amount of his books and began to thumb threw them. I have been trying to set up an interview with him but so far no luck.

I am on the right track with my research. I have internet articles, magazines, books, and interviews. Next week will be back on track to getting the pre-production done.

Rain

I have been freaking out a bit about some scenes that will be shot in the film. There is one scene that is going to be shot at night, and it needs to be raining. This does not sound like it is a very big deal, but when your filming a movie with a 20$ budget everything that cost money you feel. If I had the money I would love to rent a rain machine, lighting rigs, the whole gamma. I have to find ways of being creative to get the effects that I need.

My teacher recommended watering everything down and then in Adobe After Effects to come in and put rain drops to give the allusion of rain. I am a big fan of realism in films, and if your able and safely to have an live effect then you should, so this sent me out to look for other ideas of how to get rain without the money for a machine. My first thought was to use a sprinkler connected to a hose, but sitting back from the drawing board I think that it would look bad and only cover a small area. I searched online and looked at rain machine pictures, and I came upon a “how to” for making a rain machine for cheap, using a gardening hose and some 2x4’s. By making a cross on the 2x4’s you spiral the hose around and drill holes into the hose. When the water is turned on gravity does the rest. I am excited to build one and test it. I feel that it would be wise to wait till closer to filming so that it would not get damaged. The other big concern is lighting at night, and lighting the water I feel will cause some problems. Hey that’s what screen testing is for!

as the film falls to the floor

And the final cut is finished. Over all for what I had to work with, I feel that the trailer turned out well. There is one scene that I wish that I wish I could reshoot and make it more confrontational. Over all editing, the film was fairly easy, and with little glitches. I did have a problem uploading my video with capturing sound onto the computer. During this episode I started to panic that a day of shooting was wasted. After checking the tape onto another editing station, the sound was there so I knew I just had a setting screwed up. After a bit of trouble shooting and some panic sweats the sound came through. The editing itself took a while to do because I constantly was giving up my editor to other students that were working on stories for The County Line. After elbowing my way back into the editing suite, the film came together and looked crisp. I laugh because if I filmed this for a news story it would fail. I broke so many rules with what I did, (including not white balancing the camera), but it was all done to create a look that I wanted. I wanted the film to have a tint to it. As I said, I am pleased of how the filming and everything came together. I hope that when I film the full film I have as little problems as I did for this

The filming

Sunday was as interesting as can be. Over all the shooting went well. Minor delays and even less things that went wrong. The original plan was to start filming at 8 in the morning. Well after arriving back in Pa after 1:30 in the morning from working on Saturday, this was not happening, though I tried to get up my body said “NO!” We started setting up the locations around 9:30 in the morning. The after panicking for a good thirty minutes our final member of our team and the last one of the talent arrived to begin filming. The shots went quick everybody worked really well together. After shooting about three scenes Tom reminded me to check the audio (because like idiots the first have of the shoot we did not wear headphones), and good thing we did. After realizing a mistake on the audio settings we lost about an hour of shooting and had to re-shoot a few scene. Honestly I think it was for the best because I think that they turned out a lot better then that what they were (and had sound this time). We got out of shooting majority of the film around 12:30ish and took a long break to watch some Sunday NFL football and catch up on some sleep. Near night fall we began to set up for the next couple of shots. Me and three of my buddies (dressed in grungy clothing) ventured to Wal*Mart to buy a shovel, duck tape, and a spotlight, yeah that doesn’t look creepy at all. Filming at night was tricky. We had to deal with very low light. To combat this we gathered a bunch of cars and turned on the headlights to brighten everything up. Shooting about 10 seconds worth of film this way ended up taking over 1 ½ hrs. With using car headlights our shooting time was limited, we had only a few minutes to get as many takes as we could. Then to not kill the car battery we would have to start the car up let the engine run and recharge the battery. It was a long stressful and daunting process. But the film looked good.

Shot in 30 seconds

This week has been a true test of time management and organization for me this week. Finding that capstone has to do a comprehensive exam, which consist of writing filming and editing a project by the end of the month put me in quite a bind. Mr. Weaver suggested doing a 30-second teaser for my film, which I think is a great idea. But this coming up Sunday is the ONLY day that I have the ability to shoot anything. I will be out of town the rest of the weekend and I will be gone next weekend as well. So here comes the fun part. My film is being shot in Akron Ohio, the script is still being edited (and probable will until two days after shooting), and the talent is loosely casted, as well as the technical crew. I can’t ask people to give up an entire Sunday to drive to Akron and film so improvising. I am using Wiley Alumni House, the building that houses the Alumni Relations Office. The house is on campus which now I only have to ask people to walk too the shoot location. I struggled with pulling together a film crew, but luckily Tom Benoit agreed to help film at 7 in the morning on Sunday. Camera wise I’m debating on buying my own camera, but for this trailer I’m going to be using the schools DVC cameras. They are solid but not totally what I want with working on a film. Overall I was able to pull together all the preproduction for Sunday in about three days. The only thing left is just to film it.

ROPES

This week our senior capstone class went on Westminster College's Titan Traverse. Titan Traverse is a group on campus that is designed to build communication through teams and forces each other to work together. Our group did a exercise called "the spider web" it is a grouping of ropes that everybody has to be passed through the holes. The ropes course was a lot of fun. There wasn’t a leader that came out of our group but we were all willing to listen to everybody’s ideas and try them. We have all been together and worked together for over three years so we were use to how each other worked. Having worked with each other before i think it took away any weirdness and allowed us just to attack our obstacle. Over all it was a lot of fun, and the drills brought everybody together

BC Capstone & More: The BC 601 Titan Traverse VIdeo (Spider Pig Version)

Contacts

This week was all about getting contacts with people that would be able to help me out and lend me a guiding hand with their experience and expertise that they might have from their careers in film.

I think that my biggest go to guy will be Jimm Needle. I have worked with Jimm briefly during a filming of a music video for a local band out of Pittsburgh called Missing Pages. Jimm is a Westminster College graduate, where shortly after began working on short films commercials and local bands. Jimm has a great technical know-how and can be easily counted on for any advice.

Justin "Jumbo" Bryan is an alumni from Westminster College. Jumbo has worked in all aspects of film as well as theater. He has been on the Westminster stage countless times as well as local theater.

A chance meeting led me to another person that I will believe will be a great aspect and serve as a mentor, if you will. Matt Oates is the owner of Midtown Entertainment, a film company based out of California. Matt is a native of Sacramento, California. Matt has spent a number of years directing, writing and producing short films and videos. He has been an avid filmmaker since the age of six, when he shot his first video using his father’s hi-8 camcorder. He is currently shooting the feature film “Farewell Bender” as well as numerous other ideas and projects.