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.