And now we begin.

Week 2 is the first week that our group has the camera to actually film something. So Sam and I go film a bunch of stuff after we sign in. The film we get is actually really funny material. Out on this sweet cliff, perfect scenery, we have some sweet wide-shots. We film close to 30 minutes of improv and other shots. and then go meet up with the girls to get some more stuff done.

Unfortunately..................

There's no sound on the 30 minutes we just filmed. CRAP!
So we all get really pissed and are frustrated. we need to do something to get everyting done... soo... NEW PLAN for the film! This frustrates everyone. As it should.

The group starts to become split between guys and girls. I try to be a mediator. im not completely successful. We leave the group with a plan to film everything during the "make-up shot" time. Everyone is frustrated, but at least somewhat ok with the plan of things....

Our group is dysfunctional. haha. We are good at coming up with new plans on the whim though.

Week One of FILMING!!!

Week one. we find out that we have the genre "COMEDY". Crap.. comedy... in my eyes this is the hardest genre to pull off. There are so many things that i think are hilarious and other people think that i am dumb for laughing at stuff like it. We began in my group to brainstorm what ideas we wanted to do.

We thought about funny movies... will ferrell... superbad... pineapple express... etc... there are a lot of different movies to model our film off of (to some extent). There are a lot of ideas that we came up with...

First one was hangover themed. We love that movie!!! but we don't want to do something that has already been done...
Another idea: a film about the first days of college. With mom's and dad's running around... SOS people being annoying.. awkward moments with roommates... and mom and dad's speeches as they say goodbye to their baby. This film could be good. we all like this idea, it seems feasible to pull it off with no money and no time.

We leave all in good moods, as we feel like we know what we are doing.

Now we wait for the camera... muahahahaha

Adaptation

What a freaking weird slash good movie. Adaptation, featuring Nick Cage. An adaptation of a screen play.

It was a good movie that talked about how a book could never be formed into a movie because it lacked action and intensity. The movie was good though, it kept me watching throughout the movie.

I particularly liked how Nicholas Cage's character was going crazy trying to get it all to work and eventually ended up following his brother's advice and seeing a screenplay guru. When he finally starts writing everything he ended up changing everything from the original to make it into something viewable. Which was against everything he planned on doing at the beginning. He eventually went against everything he planned on doing. Instead of keeping the film of the book as it was written, he had to add action and everything to make it into a film people would go watch.

The poor writer had her book completely demolished. The sex and everything that started to creep into the movie also symbolizes how the book was changed. The action made the movie good though!!! at least in my book! A movie about flowers would suck. no doubt in my mind it would suck. But a movie about sex and affairs and deaths is always entertaining.

There should be more movies like this... o wait.

Commercial

Spring break has felt like a small commercial in my dramatic movie of a life.

But the last class we had, we started off by watching the film "The Last Summer" which was a thesis movie by Cory Womack. The film by Cory shed a little light on how much work goes into a small movie. He said that he has spent the past semester just on editing. I heard that and stepped back (figuratively). That was much more time than i actually expected that he put into it. I thought, only 16 minutes and it took a semester of editing??

In any case, if that was a lot of time (seeing how it is his thesis) it was still a little eye opening to see a peer go through everything.

After the short film, we looked into the effect that editing has on a movie. We watched videos on youtube that took a horror film and a family film and switched the genres completely in the trailer. "The Shining" a horror film, which i have watched in one sitting, is a terrifying movie. To turn this into a family film is a stretch, but the editing turned it to a believable family film. When someone next to me asked, "Is "The Shining" a scary movie?" I laughed, but then realized how effective the "happy trailer" actually was. I knew that editing was important, but it can make a film much scarier if it is a horror film.

To finish the class off, we split into our groups and talked about of film project. I won't go into detail here, so that it can be fresh when people actually view it, but i will say that our film has changed quite a bit from our first idea. We plan on having a small number of people actually on set during the filming as group 2 gave us advice on the amount of people that actually need to be present.

As the filming process of our short film project is getting closer, i am gaining confidence on how it is going to come together. Hopefully people will think that it is funnier than we try to make it and find something especially funny in it.

Until next week. Same website, same webtime, same yea...

This spring break really did go by fast too.

Iceland Schmiceland

"The Player" is the movie we watched in the Appreciating Film class this week. A movie about a screen-writer who has to judge every script that he sees on whether it is good enough to be one of the 12 movies his studio can do. The problem is that he is very rude most of the time, and for the thousands that he discards, the original writers are not happy. As the movie proceeds through, he slowly loses control of himself, and plunges into a kind of insanity.

The movie gave me completely mixed feelings... It is a noir film so that there isn't really a happy ending, but the ending just gave me the weirdest feeling. The woman i fell in love with, but the man... i wasn't very happy with. The man was a d-bag. Thats basically exactly how i feel about him. I feel like the woman has done nothing wrong, but the man is an aweful person. The contrast of the two love birds is the biggest reason as to why i feel that i am happy and upset at the same time with the ending. It is very wrong that he got away with the murder, and even though he wasn't married to his secretary girl - he still treated her like a dog.

I believe that he got worked up over the death threats...(((((SPPOILLLERRR))))) i wonder what happened to the real writer of the death threats... I wouldn't have gotten as crazy as he became. I would freak out a little bit, but i would not go nuts. One thing i would like to say is that i thought the detective that was spying on him was actually the crazy writer who wanted to kill the script writer who discarded his story.

I would like to say again, that i love the icelandic goddess in this movie.
The plot line was very good through the movie, kept me very interested throughout. Quite a few turns to keep me focused. I would watch it again, not just to see my icelandic goddess, but to catch small things that i feel i missed. The house at the end was pretty awesome by the way

Is the movie business really heartless? (SPOILER!)

I am thinking about the final scene of the movie we watched this week. The movie was "Blow Out" and the scream that was used for making a movie was the controversial subject. I don't think that it was heartless for using the woman's scream in the movie after what happened to her. He obviously showed that he cared about her by his expression when watching the scene involving the scream play through. I don't exactly know what i would do if i were in his shoes, but i don't think that people should immediately say that he is heartless and wrong for using her scream in the film he was working on. Is it completely permissable to use her scream? no. Is it completely heartless? depends on his use of it, and his mindset when using it.

To the plotline. The basic theme for this movie (SPOILER!!!!) is about political corruption. The lengths that people go through to ruin a man's attempt at becoming a public official are gigantic. People also using other people to get what they want (money 99% of the time) is something chimed on throughout the movie. There are definitely heartless people out there in the world (and some mindless psychos). I would like to believe the world is a great and faultless place, but it's impossible to be that way with the way people think and act. Selfishness. That is the main catalyst for the actions of people who perform these type of acts... If people were not selfish, the world would be an amazing place. It's kind of depressing. People are selfish, but I don't think we should jump to assume that people are heartless. Selfishness and heartlessness (to me) are two different things. Selfishness comes first, but there is a gap between the two. Heartlessness is much worse than just being selfish, not to say that being selfish is ok by any means. This is getting me upset. I am gonna take a 15 min break to relax.

Ok i'm back. Selfishness is the root of the actions of almost every actor in the movie (part from John Travolta and the woman whose name is alluding me at the moment). This movie (Blow Out) does shine a light on how selfish people can be. Not only selfishness but also how naive people can be. People were walking 10 feet from a woman getting pushed around by a creepy man, yet didn't notice it.

I liked this movie. I get to the point where i can't focus on the worksheet in front of me, and get too into the plot and action of a movie to do the work and see the transitions and techniques used throughout the movie. One scene that i did take notice of, was when the main woman was being forced upon by what was her friend who was also her partner. The camera kept rolling from being eye level, to moving to be directly overhead the two actors, which then zoomed out to reveal the whole scene. I thought that the scene was really creative and i wouldn't mind trying to use that type of technique in our short film.


That's that. Peace people.

p.s. Don't be selfish. seriously, it's not cool.

I bet i can make you laugh

So here we go! We have officially been introduced to our short movie project. I have been assigned to a group that consists of four other people. Our project must be somewhere between three to five minutes long. We have also been assigned to do the genre "Comedy". I have offered to be the camera man for the film, which does not mean that i only do the camera but i also get to do acting and contribute to many other factors.

Personally i think comedy may be the hardest genre to pull off successfully. Suspense, romance, action, those are all easy to do with the right story. Comedy just feels different. Not everyone enjoys every comedy out there. I love Dumb and Dumber. I love any movie by Will Ferrell. but other people don't. I feel like these other people are in our class too.

When ideas were being thrown around the group, i unfortunately was outside playing with the camera. So now i am going to brainstorm on here, and hopefully some of my ideas can still be considered :). I think comedy and i think of stupid stuff. Seth Rogen is the first name that i think of. Followed by adam sandler. will ferrell also makes that list. I think that people who enjoy comedy are intereseted in vulgar and stupid scenes. For a major plot line, I think that we will have to do something towards a romantic comedy. As much as i don't know if that is something that i want to lean towards, i think it may be the only thing completely attainable. I think that the people that we have, 3 girls and 2 guys, the two guys have to act like fools for most of the movie, and the girls have to be completely out of the reach of the guys. I don't know how easy this will be, probably not easy at all. With comedy, its really easy to do things that aren't funny. Looking at different movies outtakes, improvisation is the biggest factor in making a movie hilarious. It will be hard to write a script that is funny.

Improvisation. I think it makes any movie great. The funniest actors don't just act funny, they have to be funny people outside of the movie screen. With our group we will have to improvisate (is that the word?) -do improvisation- a lot. It will come together eventually, and it will be either hilarious to everyone, hilarious to only our group, or embarrassing to watch.

In the end, i just want people to laugh at our movie while we still implement as many of the techniques we have learned in class over the past couple weeks. I think we have got this in the bag.