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