Jokes n' jokes n' jokes...

The time was upon me. That's right, I filmed another short. We filmed in three locations (The Dogpatch, Bernal Heights, and Sunset District) all in the span of one day. For what we had to accomplish, everything went really smoothly and we finished on time. Three actors and a crew of seven. Lots of equipment. Food. etc. Filmming is just a lot of work. Period.

My short is a comedy about superheroes. The rehearsal went well. Location scouting was okay... not overly happy with all the spots. Costumes were so so. I had to rent and borrow as I have no idea how to sew. I do believe next go 'round I will look online or craigslist or whatever for a costume designer. Essentially, what I am trying to say is that I wasn't 100 percent happy with my preproduction work which is insanely important and I don't think I performed as well as I should have this time.

Everyone worked really well together but we did have some speedbumps, mostly with sound. Faulty equipment and loud natural sound was the bane of my existence. It's just one of the things where you work your hardest and hope for the best. My final scene is on a rooftop and my opening scene is in a working elevator. not the best spots to get good sound. Will find out when I listen during editing. Before I can jump in the editing room , I have some more film work to do on my classmates' shoots.

The Sounds of Science...

Super short week for class as we are starting production on our next short. In fact we only had one night of lecture and that was devoted to sound. We spent time discussing booms, lavs, mixers, etc. Then we went out in the field and captured dialog in a few different settings. That was it. The rest of my time I was supposed to fill working on pre-production but I didn't as I always procrastinate. Like an idiot. Production on my next short is just a few days away...

Everything in its right place.

Writing Lab was scheduled for Monday so I spent a big chunk of the night working on my short story proposal. I am going the narrative route and my challenge to myself is dialog and to quit using the word myself more than one time in a sentence and also to cease the use of run-on sentences. The one-line and paragraph pitch was what I worked on. Not to sound like a total egomaniacal douche-bag, but I really like the idea I have for my next short. Should be fun...

Tuesday night we began our Camera 3 lecture. Details, details , details. Essentially we opened the hood on our cameras just to see what those babies could do. Achieving the "film-like look" was the goal of the night, or at least it was for me. We spent a lot of time looking at camera settings and lenses. Interesting lesson with Stephen.

James was up next on Wednesday with another look at storytelling through screenplays. We spent a huge chunk of the night discussing the 3 act format for screenplays and how essentially every movie ever made falls into this structure. A lot of this information wasn't new to me as I had read it before in books devoted to screenwriting, specifically Syd Field's, but it was excellent to go over it again.

Thursday was pitches with a dash of group critique. I pitched a comedy involving super-heroes and it went over really well. It's always exciting and interesting to hear people's reactions to your ideas.

The last school day of the week was all about Directing! In fact the lecture was titled Directing. This was our very first lesson that was specifically devoted to the art of directing. All day lecture as well. For this exercise, both my class and the day class met in the large studio out at school with James and two actors. James took a script and worked with the actors doing the following: script read-thru, blocking, acting, camera placement, directing.

All of this made me a happy lad. I am dead serious when I say that 99 percent of the time none of this ever feels like "school" to me, which just re-affirms I am where I need to be.