One more paper to write and my Fall semester coursework will be over. It's a little crazy to think about. I thought this semester would never end....
I've been really bad about keeping the blog up to date. As such, I've been relying a lot on Twitter to actually prove that I'm alive. What has been keeping me busy this semester?
I have not posted about the last few projects I've been working on, and I'm still waiting to get photos from one shoot, but I have some from the second to last project. I haven't really had time to take the film to get telecined either, and am rather reluctant to do it on campus, as I've heard way too many horror stories (and have had bad experiences myself) of people getting their stuff done there.
That being said, I do have photos of the second to last project we shot. The past three shoots (final included) I've shot with the same group, and I must say that by the end of the semester we had really gelled as a crew. I directed the final project and the one previous to the one in the photos below.
Now, the photos.
The beginning of a new day on set. This living room is actually almost this color, just a bit darker.
This film was the brainchild of one of our Japanese students, and I joked the whole time we were shooting a Japanese art film. I still have no idea what the story or concept was. I just know it looked cool.
Setting up a rather interesting set in a garage
In this photo (right to left), our DP, a PA who was drafted into acting, much to his dismay, and the director
Speaking of the director....
Explaining the shot setup to the camera operator
I call this "method directing"
Lining up the shot before attaching the film magazine
I'm going to take this opportunity to explain something: we were cursed with the crappiest equipment our department has to offer. For the previous three shoots, we were assigned two magazines, one of which was always broken in some fashion. This came to bite us on this particular shoot, and we had to reshoot the following week.
This photo was taken right before the director asked him to strip down to his boxers.
As far as I could understand, the concept of this film was to show someone who suffered from social anxiety, but the idea had to be molded due to our other curse of not being able to find actors, ever.
Second setup of the day
More method directing
I really like these for some reason
Yes, that is a blowfish. A real one. With a light inside.
It was at this point that our camera assistant announced that due to a mechanical failure in the film magazine, no film had actually gone through the camera, so we had to reshoot. We tore down the set and regrouped for shooting the following week.
Preparing the backup Bolex, in case the magazine decided to not cooperate again
Due to a lack of actors, our director decided to play the role himself
I haven't gotten the film back from the lab, but this is sort of what this shot is supposed to look like. Well that, and the below
At this point, I think I've gotten this photo of everyone in the group. Unfortunately I take all the photos, so there is no such photo of me.
That light is 1K watts
Our lone actual actor getting makeup
This picture basically captures the essence of this entire project
Woo! Look at me! I can play with depth of field!
This light setup we spent a lot of time on, and never actually used.
Horror movie texting
All in all, I really feel like I didn't get much out of this class. Sure, it allowed me to shoot film on something better than a Bolex, but aside from leaving a huge hole in my wallet (I don't even want to think about how much I spent this semester on just this one class), I didn't really learn much.
The problem is how the class is set up. We'd have lectures on Tuesdays, but there weren't really anything new, aside from talk on lighting ratios (ugh) and lab processing (double ugh). It really felt like our introduction to production class, only more expensive.
Ideally I would have like to have seen a class where we were shown specific lighting setups, and then shown how to do it on the soundstage. As it stands, we went to the soundstage maybe 4 times the whole semester, and never really did anything except talk about the soundstage and how it really sucks.
See her expression? Yeah, that's what class was like.
It's unfortunate that this was my last film production class at State. It was really disappointing. Oh well, I guess I'll have to make up for it once I'm out in the "real world".
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