What I think

My senior broadcasting capstone is coming close to an end. This week I had to design a poster for my presentation for the Senior Art Show. This was very hard for me to do. I am not a graphic artist. I know the basics, but I am far from being an expert by any means. The posters turned out well, and overall I am happy with how they turned out.

The other thing that I have been working on is editing my film. Sifting through tons upon tons of video and audio tracks is a nightmare. But I am pushing through and it is coming together very well. I am 95% done editing. The next step is to add some sound effects and finalize all the video. It’s looking good. I am excited to see the final product.

I learned a valuable lesson, no matter how much footage you have you always want more. I have over 180 minutes of video and I still wish that I have more to work with.

Editing is a bit tricky, because this is the first time that any of us has ever acted on film we were not sure what to expect. There is a lot of motion before the take, and some scenes are very hard to edit because of that.

Mr. Weaver asked me the other day if another student wanted to do this project should he let them. YES! If the student is passionate about his/her project they are going to work a lot harder and willing to put in the extra effort. But I caution, keep dialog to a minimum, keep locations to a minimum, and work hard. There is a huge time constraint on working on a film during capstone, but where there is a will there is a way.

I have spent over12 hours of pre production over 20 hours of filming over 5 hours of voice tracking countless hours trying to think of topics to blog about, 30 minutes blogging , and another 20 hours editing the film.

This project has been a huge undertaking but I am glad I did it. The script is original, the music is original, everything about this is my own work, and I am extremely proud of what I have done.

The Death of Originality

There is a saying that anything that can be done has already been done. I would like to add that anything that can be done has been done and will be done over and over and over again. Lets face it, for simple reasons when something works there are thousands of copycats that are ready to dig their hand in the pot and see if they can pull anything from this. The thought is throughout every medium of media. Don’t get me wrong I am not saying that this is a bad thing or me standing on a soapbox preaching to be original because I just found out that my film is a DIRECT rip-off of a film that was made about three years ago (and I did not know that it was not done). Yet I suggest that if you are going to “be inspired by another work” then take it and make it your own.

This thought is no more prominent then in “sampling” in the R&B and rap scene. Using beats and loops from music in the 70’s 80’s and today are put into new music for their purpose. And to be honest most of them are done very well. The trend died down a bit but in the late 90’s and in early 2000 it was rampit. Sean Puffy Combs, Usher, and Biggie Smalls, were masters of this. They took something old and pumped their own thought into it.

Another example is with South Park. They did a whole episode that was dedicated that everything on T.V. has been done. Butters, a goofy sidekick of the show, exclaims that “the Simpsons did it” as another character tries to do something original that the viewers have not seen. Going as far as developing a Goldberg to extract frosting out of donuts, when much to his shock, Bart Simpson was developing the same thing for that week.

Film is not exempt from this field. But my generation is a bit more oblivious to this fact. Many people in their 20’s do not know that Mission Impossible was a television show long before Tom Cruise was the star of the franchise that was pumped out; or that House on Haunted Hill was a remake from 1958 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051744/).

None is more obvious then the Star Wars Trilogy. The films were first digitally re-mastered, but that feed fuel to the fire spawning a total remake of the first three films (which were the last three in the series) and then giving birth to the prequels to complete the series.

Recently the trend is continuing. The 1980 film Prom Night is being remade, this film was poor at best when it first came out, just remaking it does not make this film any better. I hold my optimism for a decent turn at the box office, setting no recorded, being torn apart by the critics, and disappointing anyone who spends the 8 dollars and up to see this.

But Prom Night is not the only film that is being remade. Get Smart is getting new breath blown into it, as Steve Carell takes on the roll of Maxwell Smart (a clueless spy). I do believe this will be done well. The show itself was Nominated for 2 Golden Globes. Another 9 wins & 7 nominations.

Overall there is nothing wrong with breathing new life in something old. It has been done millions of times, and ever William Shakespeare was not original. Take it and make it your own.

Apple vs. PC

There has always been a great debate and I find myself in the middle of it at this current moment. I am looking to get a new computer, because frankly my 5 yr old laptop is on its dying days. I have no internet, there is not a R key, the cd tray cover falls off and it’s now a separate attachment. It’s about time to do something about it.

The great debate that I am talking about is to go with a PC or a MAC. Mac has pushed their products and they are becoming better and better, while PC is much of the same just better equipment.

I want to use this computer for graphic images, editing and all sorts of things. So its making me really consider buying a MAC because they are very powerful and you don’t have to worry about the system crashing.

But we still live in a PC world (that is slowly changing away from that) and is everything compatible. So what I’m saying is am I going to be able to build something in my personal computer and then work on it on another. That is the biggest thing that is pushing me away from the MAC.

There are programs out there that allow MAC’s to run windows on them and it can change the operating system. But why would you buy a MAC to run windows… it’s a mute point to me then.

I am tossed between where to turn. On one hand a mass amount of graphic work is done on MAC. But is not an absolute and, in fact more people are moving back to PC, because any upgrade done to a MAC has to be external.

The problem is getting a non bias opinion because you have your PC lovers and your MAC lovers, and there is no wiggle room. In the PCL you are stupid for buying a MAC and the IMACL they can’t understand why you would ever want anything other then a MAC.

Overall I want a MAC but I’m just not comfortable to jump on the bandwagon. I think I am going to hold off and go with a PC still. I am far from loving the idea, but I think for me it’s the safe bet, but I’m still looking

Lights, Camera, Action

This week I filmed my capstone. I really don’t know what to say about it. It was a crazy experience. In all practicality I went from having a script last Sunday to filming 6 days later. It has been a marathon. But it is filmed!!!

There was a lot of different emotions that ran threw my mind while filming. Before I got to the locations we were working at there was a lot of stress and anxiety that people would show up. It worked out great. I always had just the right amount of people there. In all honesty I wish I could have had more, but it’s not a big deal.

Filming went smooth. There were no major issues with equipment, or any technical problems. The one thing that we did run into was while filming on a street the police stopped us. He wanted to know what we were doing, and wanted to make sure we were being safe. But not to worry because like a good camera man they kept filming during the interaction. So now there is video of me talking to the police with my co-star.

Using the locations that we used worked out great. The people there were more then willing to help us out in any way we needed. Including forcing one girl to be an extra for our film.

We have roughly 150 minutes of film. Majority of this was bloopers. It was very hard to keep a strait face threw most of the filming. So it took a lot longer, but was incredibly fun.

My friends and everybody who I asked to help out pulled through. If I didn’t have the support that I had, this would of fell flat on its face as well. A lot of people took a lot of stress off of my shoulders. But it is filmed and ready for post production.

The next step is to step into the audio studio and record some voiceover tracks. I am looking forward to that!

A new start

This post was suppose to be last weeks, but do to the fact the Westminster College is on spring break, and the school fails to recognize that students are still doing work, everything is locked up and did not give me the ability to get online.

Anyways

This week was “start from scratch week.” My original film script was not lifting off the ground at all. There was one road block after another, and I had to make a choice of cutting my losses and moving forward. Like I said before I did a great deal of pre planning and had a backup script with me.

I decided to keep my filming schedule and that gave me a week to do all of the preproduction. I dove head first into working on this script clawing away at it and trying to get all the preproduction done. Site location, talent, crew, story boars, music, the whole nine yards, and some how I managed to get it done.

The locations were a breeze. Every person that I talked to were more then willing to bend over backwards to help me out. The gave me the run of their stores and catered to any needs that I had. I cannot say how much of a stress relieve it was.

Music, my friend is a genius and after just giving him a basic rundown of the script he had an idea for music and already cut demos to most of the tracks.

Talent, well that was interesting. I don’t know how to piddle around this topic without giving the story away but let’s just say I had some very interesting phone calls with companies to try and borrow supplies.

Storyboards were worked out, shot and editing script, as well. I was just shocked of how well everything flowed together.

lessons I learned

Lessons I have learned from anything that I have done is always have a backup plan. That includes if a camera breaks, have another. Bring extra tapes, extra power cords and extra anything. Reading one of my books, it has an intire section on dealing with backup plans. And within that there is another section of advice geared towards low budget films. The idea is to make sure for everything that you have going on that there is a backup plan, including talent. My lead talent backed out and I have been having trouble with finding people that would be able to replace him. So what am I going to do?

Well Josh planed ahead and maybe to the enth degree. I did not plan on a backup for people but I did have a backup film incase this film did not work. After all I want to graduate. I was thinking that the film would turn out poorly, and I would not show something that was poorly done. So I always had another script and a film idea on the back burner.

Why did my film fail? First the time frame. The weather decided it was going to stay winter and destroyed any chance of me filming the scenes that are suppose to have a spring or summer look. The time frame that I have means that there is NO time to wait.

Second, I don’t want to say pre planning because I did a ton, but I might of focused on the wrong things. I don’t think I focused enough effort on gathering talent and assumed that they would be able to just fall into place, which was not the case.

But overall college and capstone is designed (in my eyes) to teach lessons for the “real world,” well I have learned a lot from this project. But I am not scared yet. I am still planning on filming over spring break and everything else is scheduled as planned.

Murphy's Law

It’s really funny to me that the main characters last names are Murphy. The name spawned from the famous Murphy’s Law, where what can go wrong will go wrong. Boy I should have picked a different last name like Mr. and Mrs. John “nothing is going to go wrong on my capstone film.” I know it’s a lengthy last name but maybe I jenksed myself, and well I wish that name was able to be used.

I have been hitting one road block after another with filming, and everything along with this, and I see right now why low budget films are such a pain in the butt. Frankly my budget is zero and that in itself is its own problem. I have to beg people to give up a TON of their time to help me out, and not everybody is willing to do that. Besides playing a juggling game with my talents schedule so that I can get this done, talent and locations and whatnot are a pain too.

I finally locked all my location shots and I called the cast members to give them dates. These, in all reality, are the only days that everybody is able to be there to shoot. Calling my lead to talk with him about dates, he is not able to work on the film anymore. Which this puts me in quite a pickle.

My options are as followed

I act in it as was planned from day one, and I find another person to run camera

I run camera and find another person that will work

I run camera just grab somebody and pray for the best.

Frankly I am trying to find the silver lining in the situation. Hell, Jack Nicholson was not even close to the top three picks for Randle P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, and look how that turned. I am really nervous about the situation considering that I am planning on shooting in 2 weeks and I do not have a lead. ANY IDEAS PLEASE!!!!!!