Oct. 17th: Editors, Assemble

WHAT HAPPENED TODAY

We went through the good clips and noted down which ones we needed to replace the dialogue of. This is concerning as we're doing this so late but it seems like we don't have a choice. Darren and Amarik continued to edit as well. It was strange because we did have good results, but like I said last time there were also bad scenes. Some of the good scenes that we shot were the car scenes (possibly the best shot in our whole collection of footage thus far) and the bar scene looked pretty good, only requiring an entire ADR overhaul. Treading the line was the rooftop scene, where we really felt the brunt of the wind problems during the shoot. And far away in the dankest corners of our all-nighter shoot was the seduction scene shot when the sun was coming up and we were exhausted, without any use of lighting beyond the actual lights on set. Needless to say this means we do need a reshoot ASAP, but as I've mentioned Project Week is tomorrow, and mid term break right after (both Darren and I are out of town), forcing us to rendezvous and film on our first day back at school.

IB LEARNER PROFILE

Today's lesson required us to be careful planners and yet at the same time taking measured risks- a combination of risk taking and being well balanced. We need to be able to test our limits as a fimmaking team, while keeping our goals realistic. It's going to be extremely difficult work for everyone, but hopefully the risk that we're taking pays off with a good end product. 

Oct 15th: aaaaaaAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH?!

Over the weekend we had a wonderful opportunity to film and finish filming, and we managed to get through all our footage together.

It was one part good, and two parts "never let these clips see the light of day" and our director insisted on a reshoot. When this will happen nobody is sure (Project Week and Midterm are in the way) but simply put it's going to have to happen since as DP I really have to agree. To be fair, the quality of work did start understandably going down as we started going through the clips taken from 3AM shooting, and got progressively worse, but it was an agreement that a reshoot was in order. We started assembling a few of our clips, too, but Darren is probably going to get the brunt of the work in his own time.

IB LEARNER PROFILE

Being reflective helped in this situation, especially finding inventive ways to get over the problems during our actual shoot. Some of them included me not being able to access the script (and thus appropriately storyboard and account for during the shoot) and my parents having to take us and our equipment around town. Mostly in the very early hours of the day, which was pretty awful for everyone. I guess ultimately these problems did help us realize how difficult shooting a film (especially crammed so tightly into a time frame) is, production preparation or no. 

Oct. 10th: since when did I become the producer this is an alarming turn of events

WHAT HAPPENED TODAY

Today was a busy day for me because I had to act as my group's producer. I set up all the locations for my scenes and organized a time and place with my parents and organized the entire shoot that we're planning in one night. I sent an email to the owner of the bar (I scouted for bars and other locations like parking lots and building roofs last night and managed to obtain a few business cards) detailing the shots that we were going to do.

http://puu.sh/59Qim.png

However, it wasn't a 100% guarantee that we would get it so I was sure to alert one other bar and to bear in mind the contact details of another. All of this took a surprisingly lengthy amount of time, although reflecting on it now I guess it makes sense as we want to get our entire film shot in one night + the morning, so it's going to need shipshape production. I created a template for our shotlist too, as we're shooting on sets in order of priority as opposed to chronological order.

IB LEARNER PROFILE

Communication plays a big role in production, I guess. I had to talk to (and probably negotiate afterwards) owners of the locations we didn't have permission for, set up shooting and such (being the DP as well). It is a bit tedious but a necessary role somebody needs to play. 

Oct. 8: storyboarding yay

WHAT HAPPENED TODAY

While the other guys in my group made progress on the script, I storyboarded what was there so far of it. That is, the intro sequence that had been written during the last class.

It was pretty difficult, though, and even employing the stuff I knew from all the previous experiences with storyboarding I found it tricky to imagine past maybe 20 different shots.

IB LEARNER PROFILE

Having to be knowledgeable like the last time I storyboarded was important, obviously. Previous experiences helped me think of the most appropriate shot angles and such. 

Oct. 4th- skills make kills in the editing room later

WHAT HAPPENED TODAY

While Amarik was still developing the script, the rest of us tried to improve our knowledge and understanding of our specific roles. Mine, being cinematography, involved quite a bit of research on a lot of lighting effects. This was because after watching a few film noir movies and a lot of clips, I've discovered that the shadows in many scenes are cast with very hard edges, no matter what the atmosphere is there are always hard lights and shadow. It's a fair assumption to make that these shadows come from harsh lighting. That is, with a proper set of lights (usually 3-point, I gather). Even if we weren't going to use a lot of lighting before (we were) this was the final push. I also took a few small notes about the sound and soundtrack.

IB LEARNER PROFILE

Today's lesson, since it was mostly a standalone for each of us to work on our own roles, was all about inquiry. Not just in the sense of asking questions about my topic but investigating and researching more, that's what inquiry is about I think. It's an important trait for research, taking in walls of text from Wikipedia isn't the only way to go.

NOTES

-dramatic moments have dramatic slow zooms to accompany them with harsh, harder light
-shadows cast are actually sharply outlined
-even when the scene is calm and 'relaxing' there are softer lights but COUPLED WITH HARD LIGHTS
-sOUNDTRACK NOTE: tangerine, used in the 1940s and 50s for film noir- popular choice- used in double indemnity and sorry, wrong number (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgavV9phYgM ?? LOOK AT SUGGESTIONS FOR MORE N VIDEO)
-LA noire???
-Royalty free music: Kevin Macleod?????

2nd oct

And thus began the horror filled maelstrom of criteria B. 

WHAT HAPPENED TODAY

Since we were briefed on what was going to go down in terms of graded assignments it was time to actually start doing them and the class was split into their groups for the biggest assignment of the unit- our Criteria B product, a 7 (approx.) minute film noir. 

The people in my group, Darren, Amarik and Joseph, and I started brainstorming the plot of our film. I feel like we probably should have been focusing on our individual roles, but we were still mixing around our roles today anyway (even now, I'm still not entirely clear cut on whether I'm DP or sound and hopefully this gets cleared up soon, but that aside) so it was probably good to get some headway on the script. 

IB LEARNER PROFILE

Being open minded today to each other helped a lot. There would have been no way that we could have made any progress without being able to listen to each other's ideas and taking that and adding onto it. Communication was also important here, obviously, going hand in hand today with open minded-ness.