Life ain't nothing but pitches and lighting...

I met the beginning of week 2 with a bit of trepidation. You see, the first night of class we had a pitch session for our first short film. Up until two days prior I had nothing. Nada, nathan, zil, zilch... Then I read an article in the paper about some loud "booms" awakening people in a San Jose neighborhood and based a short story on that. I took the beginning and added a more sinister story and viola, my first pitch. I was still nervous about it. Little did I know but we green-light our own pitch as a group. The group was moderated by James. We would present our pitch, vote as a group whether or not it should get the green-light to be made into a short, and if it doesn't then we vote whether or not the idea of the story could be worked into a short.

Our pitch had to be presented in both sentence and paragraph form. Here is my sentence pitch:
In the middle of the night, a woman must fight for her life against a madman who just smashed his way into her bedroom.

Nice & simple right? 2 characters, 1 room. (notice the 2 girls 1 cup set-up I just left you...) So what did the group think? I got the green-light! Not without notes of course. As it was, there wasn't much character development, just a plot driven story. Woman wants to survive encounter.

This brings us to the next class which was Screenwriting. This was an excellent class which taught us the basics of a screenplay. We take that knowledge and couple it with our short-story and make magic happen. Sounds easy enough...

A writing lab here, a camera review there, then boom! Lighting lecture and lab gets dropped on our collective asses. I really don't think my pen left my pad for hours. I took 12 pages of notes over lighting for film then we took said knowledge and set up lighting 6 different ways: Rembrandt, Short Loop, Broad Loop, Split, Rim/Backlight, & Paramount/Glamour/Butterfly. But do you want to know what I really learned today? I have no desire to do lighting for a living.

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

Already behind...

(picture note: keep reading for an explanation)

No dear reader (all 1 of you), do not be worried. I am not falling behind in school, just this blog. I had intentions of posting every other day, if not daily after class.... bbbbuuuuutttt school has gotten busy. My new goal is now weekly which puts me behind still. By a couple of weeks. (I'll just back date this post and no one will know any different) Enough BS, on with the show :

The first Thursday of class was a lecture of "Shot Terminology." This covered both still and moving shots. Your perspectives, close-ups, zooms, pans, tilts, dolly, punch, OTS, POV, ROTS, Two-Shot, Three-Shot, 4-Shot, establishing shot, close-up, wide shot, roll focus, choker, dutch angle, etc. Ya' know... the normal stuff. I really liked the way this lecture was set up, because the instructor, Stephen, would teach us about the shot and then show us an example from a movie. Very effective way to learn.

Much to our surprise, when we hit the 90 minute mark from the end of class, Stephen stopped class. Told us to set up the camera, and editing in camera, to make a short film using as many shots as we could. This lil' film would be written, directed, acted, and shot as a group. First week of class and we are already filming. Granted, the finished product was the equivalent of a fresh steaming pile of dog poo, it was still very cool. Great little exercise. Our film was about how each of us arrive to class, very edgy Oscar worthy stuff. Once finished we were to hold on to the film until Saturday when Stephen would play it back for us and critique it....

...fast forward to Saturday. Stephen ripped it apart.

Post critique. we had a picture composition lecture. This was fantastic and it really helped me frame my shots. How we tackled this assignment was that we were given digital cameras, ran around for an hour taking pics, brought our best three and they were critiqued. Post critique, we jumped right into the lecture (Rule of Thirds rocks, straight-up yo) and then we were sent back into the field to find another three shots. Everyone drastically improved with their newly acquired knowledge. Unfortunately, my first three pics are lost in the ether or matrix or space. But I do have my final three. Enjoy your first glimpse at genius (please note the sarcasm).

Speaking of genius, I have no idea how to move the pics below the post, so they are at the top. Genius indeed.

100 monkeys locked in a room with 100 typewriters...

Wednesday night's class brought us a new topic and a new instructor. James Savoca. James is from New York and while he lived there, he transitioned from playwright to independent filmmaker which he is still active with and his next film is premiering at the Mill Valley Film Festival in October. The title of the film is Around June. You can see James' reel here. He will be our writing instructor for the year, and if our first class is any indication of what that will be like... it is going to be intense. We covered tons of ground and it was all interesting and helpful. It was a basic storytelling lecture that covered plot, action, characters, writer's tools, tension, etc. It was one on those classes where my pen never left my notebook. Always writing. We ended the class with James telling us that we will be pitching our first short film to him on Monday. This is the guideline for that film:

-3 pages maximum. 

-2 characters maximum. 

-1 major location, with 1 "B" location. 

-shot entirely on campus. 

-50% must use lights. 

Along with the pitch which he wants in both one sentence and one paragraph form we were also assigned a character sketch. 

Thursday nights class had us back Stephen and back with the camera. We covered Shot Terminology which included camera movements, perspectives, and angles. When there was about 2 hours left, Stephen surprised us an assignment. Starting right then the 5 of us were to write, film, and edit (in camera) a short film using as many of the ideas that we covered in class. This would be the only time we would do this as a group the whole year. It went off relatively smoothly but did have the usual speed bumps of everyone wanting their voice heard. We all worked together really well though. My shot was a "truck" shot. Being that we didn't have access to a truck, which allows the camera to move, I held the camera and sat in a rolling chair while two of my other classmates pulled me down a hallway. It came off okay all things considered. Stephen is going to critique our film on Saturday. That should be interesting...

In the beginning....

Two days into the program and I haven't been kicked out yet!

The first night of class involved the always pleasant round-robin meet and greet. This and the class following was led by Stephen Kopels who is the co-founder of the school. He got his start behind the camera as a war photographer in Vietnam. From there he went to work on a ton of different projects in many fields ranging anywhere from PBS to Sanford & Son to Boxing on HBO. There are five students in the evening program, which is evidently a small class. From what we were told this small size was due in part to the current financial crisis in America, particularly the problems in dealing with getting a loan.

After spending a little while talking about ourselves we were given an overview of the program and then took a brief look at the syllabus. It looks and feels as if we are starting off slow but will be building up to a full blown fever pitch right quick.

Our first official lesson started the first night in class and dealt with HDV Camera Basics 1. We built upon what we learned during our second night with a lecture called... can you guess it?? That's right, HDV Camera Basics 2. First we started off with the basics related to any and all cameras: focus, aperture, camera stands, etc. Then we moved into more film based cameras specifically digital cameras. Our first three projects will be filmed on the Sony HVR-Z1U. At the end of each lecture we had plenty of hands-on time where we had to set up the camera, stands, monitor, and then connect all three. After which we broke everything back down. The first night I felt just like baby Huey pushing buttons... and I pretty much felt that way the second night as well. Last night we did have some objectives that we were to complete on our own with the camera: setting the time code to a specific hour and correcting the white balance. Both of which were incredibly easy. Thankfully.

Some random things I learned:
-A clapper at the beginning of a shot is used to sync sound.
-Never say you will fix it in post. Fix it while filming.
-Always film 30 seconds of color bars at the beginning of every tape.