Major Tom to Ground Control

September 21st, people.  Well into my mission.  Yes, the blog was on a bit of a reprieve there for a few days. It seems to be the consensus that this week was very draining for everyone.  I don’t feel like I had more work, but I felt like I was working harder… maybe?  Not sure.

Friday night it caught up with me just how tired I was.  Bobby had a bunch of people over but I wasn’t feeling up to it.  I went to Dan’s place instead and then more and more people starting showing up there.  It was nice to sit around and not be in class.  We are in so much class, it’s ridiculous.  All we talk about is class, though.  There is no escaping film school… it follows you!  Bru ha ha ha ha ha!!!

I know I haven’t reached “critical mass” yet, but I do feel better about completely being able to handle anything that has been thrown at me so far.  For these first few weeks, I was living under this guise that film school is so insane that I’ll barely be able to hold on.  Not so.  It’s been busy and it demands a lot of you, but I’m proud that I can confidently do my assignments knowing that I’m totally in control.  Certainly, come of the students in our group have had a slightly more difficult experience, but as far as I am concerned, I’m very pleased with my performance so far. I truly believe I’m on a path that was laid out for me.  With that in mind, it gives me peace to know I’m where I should be.

A few of us saw Burn After Reading yesterday afternoon.  Ehhhh, wasn’t feeling it.  it was Coen Brothers material for sure, but it wasn’t funny enough or dark enough or something.  Can’t put my finger on it.  I think all of us thought the same thing.  Later on, we went to watch the FSU game at this pizza place a little ways out from town. It’s only like a 15 minute drive but people were like, “OMG! Where IS this place?!”  I just laughed.  I’m from Atlanta guys, a 15 minute drive is a blessing.  But it was worth it.  Rummy’s Pizza, I think it was called.  I talked to our waitress before everyone got there and she mentioned that her Dad had just moved to Roswell with his new wife. “I live 5 minutes from Roswell!”  I’ve met a lot of people who sort of know about where I live or have family there.  Neato.

We’re steadily grinding toward being on set for our D1 projects.  I think everyone is a little concerned about actually being on set to film something for real with no guidance.  I just have this scenario in my head where we show up to whatever location we’re shooting and everyone just goes, “Uhhhhhhhh. I guess we need to, uh, set up some light and power… maybe.”  Hahaha, oh man, it’s going to be an experience.  

I broke down and got my hair cut yesterday.  I really was itching to, but I tried to convince my self to hold out.  For years I keep swearing to grow out my hair just to see how it would look or how long I could get it.  But yeah, Mom was right.  I just don’t look very good with long hair.  See, my hair doesn’t grow long, it grow OUT.  It gets huge and puffy.  The other night I was in the bathroom and I combed it out into a total whiteboy fro.  I couldn’t believe it.  I’m not that guy, either, you know, the whiteboy fro friend.  Nope, not at all.  So, I have always passed this place near my house called “Haute Heads Salon.”  It reminds me of 3-13 back home.  Seems trendy enough.  I don’t go to barbers, never have.  That sounds pretentious, I know.  My Mom has always taken me to salons to get my hair cut instead of a barber.  Truthfully, people know what they’re doing at salons.  I like the result.  Most of my life people have said I always look put together and clean cut. Well, spend a little more money and get a nice hair cut.  So, I called up Haute Heads and they got me an appointment.  Ashley was my “stylist.”  She’s from Cairo, GA.  Wayyyyyy south Georgia.  It’s like a 35 minute drive from Tallahassee, so she spends most of her time here.  She did a great job.  I was amazed at how much hair was falling off.  It felt SO MUCH BETTER.  GOSH.  Check out the results.

Nice... Nice

I’ve been writing this blog for a few days.  I can’t seem to find the time to finish it.  I’m in the middle of watching Heroes right now and it’s getting pretty crazy.  Of course.  I do think this show has a tough time trying to raise the stakes every season since they started out with the ENTIRE WORLD being at stake.  Come on.  Every time they try and act like the whole world is in danger I just don’t care.  

I need to finish this episode and go to bed. I promise to get back on blog schedule this week.  

Oh, we watched Back to the Future last night at Dan’s place.  It was like 13 of us there.  I can’t even explain how fun it was.  The atmosphere was just perfect for it.  That movie still holds up perfectly.  Every joke, every effect, every line was jut spot-on.  If you haven’t watched it recently, do it.  That is one of the movies that makes me want to make movies.  Period.  

Y’all behave.  I’m tired of typing.

It’d be nice…

…if everyone just sat back and listened for a while.

“A fool’s mouth is his ruin, And his lips are the snare of his soul.”~ Proverbs 18:7

4 weeks in, Already?

Yesterday, Friday, marked the fourth week since I left Marietta.  One month.  That’s crazy.  This new way of life has been so relentless, so constant, that it doesn’t even seem like I made a big change recently. I haven’t really had time to absorb the fact that I’m not in Marietta anymore.  That being said, I just finished my third week of film school and it’s certainly one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.  I’m glad it was FSU, too. I have a feeling that at any other film school, I would have felt alone and lost.  FSU takes a great deal of care in making sure you are not left out in the cold.  Your class is like your military unit.  I enjoy it, and these past three weeks of class have showed me that there are a great deal of talented and genuine people out there.

In our BTL (Below the Line) lab yesterday, Matt and I got to practive building the Arriflex SR-3 camera that we will be using on all the D1 projects.  It took us about 20-30 minutes or so because we were waiting on Reb to ok what we had done, but we pretty much got the hang of it.

Arriflex SR-3

These cameras have so many parts to them.  I’m still mystified as to how someone actually invented this thing.  Just the whole concept of light superimposing an image on film is strange to me.  We loaded up some scrap film and shot a few second to get a feel for it.  Felt pretty great, not gonna lie.

We also got to try out our hands are operating the dollies we will be using as well.  We use the Panther line, a German company.  The American companies make better dollies, apparently, but they also require you to lease them.  FSU does not like to lease anything.  But, the Panthers certainly serve their purpose.  They are fully electronic, though, which means you constantly havce to be aware of having batteries charged on stand by.  It has two seats and a boom in the middle the rises about 6 feet.  It’s pretty awesome.  They are extremely heavy.  They come with two sets of wheels: one set is kind of like what you’d see on a piece of equipment, inflated rubber.  They’re mainly used for transporting it.  The other kind are the studio wheels that look like the hard rubber wheels on the bottom of forklifts.  The Panther also has a set of dolly wheels that rest higher up on the assembly so you can roll it right on to the dolly track of you shot.  We laid track as well.  That process is easy too.  It takes a little bit of time because you have to really be careful on making the track level.  You don’t want the camera tilted forward or backward.  You shove little wedges of wood under each joint to make the track even.  It’s a pretty basic formula.

Panther dolly

I got my writing grade back for the re-write I did of my “dog” scene.  He thought I had improved a lot.  I swung a little too far the other way in shortening my descriptions and made everything a little too stream-of-consciousness.  It’s ok, at least I’m learning and adapting.  He has us continualy reading 5 articles a week from Wordplayer.com.  If you want to write screenplays or have an interst in how movies start, read these articles.  They’re not boring at all and they’re not long.  I had been emailing a few people about this class and decided to start an email class of my own.  Jon, Wagy, Mac, and Randall are all my students.  I essentially just told them to do the same things I had to do.  Read the articles and write a list of “10 films they wish they had written.”  Those lists were awesome.  Then, I told them to explain in 1-3 sentences what they liked about the STORY of each film.  These responses were good, everyone spent a lot of time on them.  Next, we’ll deal with story structure and such.  It’s pretty fun to have your friends go through the classes with you, in a sense.

In sound, we played around with the Sound Devices 744t digital field recorders.  These things were THE

Sound Devices 744t- aka AWESOME

BOMB.  I’ll be honest, I’m really glad I live in 2008 and not in decades past in terms of film.  Sound used to be the worst process ever.  You have to use these reel to reel tape machines, the Nagra, that could only record 14 minutes at a time.  Then you had to label those, and load them all in to you editing set-up in real time, sitting through every ounce of dialogue AGAIN.  It was brutal.  Our teacher, Chuck, gave us a whole history on what it was like and the horror stories that went along with sound problems.  These new digital recorders label things for you, divide it, buffer like 8 seconds of audio at a time so you can even press

Nagra

record late and it still picks up with you missed, and they save to an internal hard drive and a flash card.  RIDICULOUS.  You barely have to do anything.  The old stories of the reel to reel machines were funny, though.  These things are indestructible.  They’ve fallen off cars and been in the middle of staged train crashes and they still found these things on and rolling.  Crazy.  He talked about how when Jurassic Park started filmingin Hawaii, that the humidty completely killed the new “DAT” machines they were using, so they had to go straight back to using the tape.  Hialrious.  Analog will always prevail… but right now, these digital things are awesome.

Last night a lot of people were really tired.  School seemed hard this week.  Dan had a few of us over to his place because Randall shipped me down Transformers on Blu-ray, which was awesome-o.  Totally awesome Friday night material.  It was nice to not do ANYTHING SCHOOL RELATED.  On the way over, I noticed that all the gas stations had taken their prices off the marquee and some had lines of cars in front of them. “Uh oh, hurricane time.”  I remember when things went nuts in Athens during Katrina.  I thought gas was crazy cause it was up over $4.00 a gallon.  Now, three years later, $4 is pretty normal.  Weird.  So yeah, no gas in Tallahassee.  Good thing I have half a tank.  BRU HA HA HA.

Today I did my writing HW all day.  I had to create a new scene with actual dialogue this time.  It had to be new characters and it had to be no longer than four pages and display a character’s flaw.  Not so bad.  I think I came up with something good.  Other than that, I hung out and actually got a chance to cook.  Didn’t watch the UGA game.  Shame on me.

Jamie emailed me a link to this little documenatry on North Korea.  It was CRAZY.  You guys have to watch this.  This country is like another universe.  It’s divided into 14 little 5 minute sections.  Really, watch this.  The other subsequent episodes are listed on the right.

http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=1438428757

It’s unreal.  Otherwise, I’ve got nothing else.  I’m going to shoot my second project tomorrow.  This one involves no more than three shots.  Without dialogue, you have to show a character in a space, then they leave, and then they have to return to imply that something happened, either through their wardrobe/make up changing of the actual set design changing.  So like, “Guy is in bedroom. Guy leaves.  Guy comes back, bedroom is ransacked.  He has ben robbed.”  This should be fairly easy, hopefully it won’t take all day.  I got all my writing out of the way just in case.  Tomorrow is also the second week of auditions, so I might stop by and give those a look.  I’m not required to work them, though.

Y’all behave.

Just simply simple

Man, the “weariness” is starting to catch up with everyone.  It seems that our assignments have kept us up later than we had hoped.  Yesterday, we had our second acting class, which should have been the third one, but last Monday was Labor Day.  It was fun.  We had worked out lilttle scenes in groups to perform using different action verbs to create the scene.  When you look at acting this way, it dawns on you how much of an art this is.  Some people are just naturally really good at it.  They engage you simply by acting human, and I think that is quite a concept.

I didn’t get to go because we ran out of time.  Next week, I’ll get my shot.  I have a lot of confidence on the little scene Matt and I have to perform.  I want to say the dialogue is taken right out of Sex in the City, which I think our teacher enjoys. Some people in our class did REALLY well with their executions.  Even though we might not all technically be actors, I think everyone inherently has a dramtic nerve they can hit if the right approach is given to them.  Jonthan and Smitha did an awesome job.  It wa s areally heavy scene, all simply by tweaking what verb you decided to use where.  Such as, “Hey how come you didn’t tell me about the club?”  can come across a million different ways just by assigning any number of verbs to it– “Plead, “Accuse,” “Mock,” “Patronize,” “Charm,” “Stalk,” or “Explode.”  Say that line to yourself with a different one of those in mind.  Kinda cool, right?  The exercise wasn’t so much about what you were saying but what your tone and demeanor was saying.  It’s incredibly fun when you hear it.

Beth and Chris did an awesome job too.  I was on the other side of the room, so Beth was facing me and I was able to read her eyes.  It was great.  It dealt with a couple having some sort of trouble and their handling of the conversation was awesome.

Speaking of acting, the FSU film school holds an open casting call in the fall for anyone around town who wants to come audition and get put into our database for the year.  We take your picture and get your contact info, then you go pick from a number of scripts based on your age and gender.  I was in charge of taking pictures.  Dude, this brought some RAISIN CAKES out of the woodwork, for real.  I mean, in dealing with “actors,” you’re always going to have some pinwheels, but good LORD.  Think Tobias x10, for all you Arrested Development fans.

Perhaps a student film I shall seek

Some thought they were brilliant, others were so self-concious that they ruined it from the get-go, and some I was surprised even knew how to tie their shoes.  Lots of stage moms bringing kids as young as three.  Lots of older people with probably a lot of free time, which is good, because casting people NOT IN THEIR 20′S is helpful in separated your film from a “student film.”  We had a pretty basic little form they had to fill out on the computers while they were getting their pictures taken by me.  Aside from the fact that they were Macs, people were taking like 20 minutes on something that should have taken five.  I had one guy walk in and say, “I’ve never been online before, what do I do.”  Well, sir, you don’t have to go online to do this.  What he meant was that he had never ever used a computer.  I know what you’re thinking, because I was thinking it, “He’s used it somewhere.”  No, TURST ME…NO WHERE.  This guy spent 30 minutes filling out this form.  When I looked over and realized he wasn’t making much progress, I walked over to help.  He had a pop-up window on the screen because he had clicked out of a field somewhere.  So, this prompt was saying he needed to continue on the previous form and it had a glowing blue “OK” button to close it and keep going.  I told him to click “OK,”…. he pressed the screen with his finger…. no lie.  “Yeah, but Mike, how old was this guy? 50? 60?”  Late 30’s MAYBE.  I was really befuddled.  How does even know how to use an ATM?  I know this sounds mean, but WOW.

I did get a chance to sit in on 2 auditions.  Both of them were older people, a man in his 70’s and a woman in her late 50’s/early 60’s.  They were good.  The dude had prepared monolgues and stuff.  He was kind of kooky, for sure.  I wished I could have been up there whole time!  That was a blast because one person got to read the other part of the script with them.  I love that process.

crickets

Sunday night came fast.  I went upstairs to finish my weekend project and edit together the still frames I had shot and, of course, someone from another class was using my “assigned” computer.  This is something that really makes me mad.  The lab has 15 G5’s, all loaded with the exact same version of Final Cut Pro and they’re all linked to the same server.  BUT, we’re not allowed to use any other computer but the one to which we’ve been assigned.  I can’t even save my project on a flash drive and move it somewhere else even though there ARE TWELVE COMPUTERS NOT BEING USED.  This is a really stupid rule, because, as roll of the dice would have it, I have people on my computer that want to use a lot of time outside of school.  Instead, I spent half of the lecture on Monday editing my project.  The editing part isn’t hard.  I’ve been using Final Cut for 5 years.  What’s hard is following the protocol they require everyone to use when they do a project.  Each project has to be labeled the exact same way, saved in very specfic places, and then the projects are turned in a graded.  These tiny little details add up to be extremely frustrating in an already rushed environment.  I was done editing in no time, but following the printouts to correctly organize things, even though I didn’t use 90% of the folders labeled is arduous.  I’ll stop ranting now.

My project turned out well.  I think I did what Reb wanted in terms of having shots that told a story when cut together in a particular way.  We’ll see how it goes when we watch it tomorrow.

Speaking of Reb, we had the strangest email encounter with him on Sunday night.  We all send out questions and comments through the MFA email list, and we were all wondering where this week’s schedule was, we had never received one.  We all made jokes about classes being canceled all week and going to Islands of Adventure, and then Reb emails us the schedule.  It was like when the teacher walks in and you’re like WAY off task.  I sent out an email, to Reb too, about how that was “sufficiently embarrassing,” and then Reb starts sending out existential emails, bating us to engage him in some sort of wordplay.  Keep in mind this is the super-intimidating assistant dean of the film school I had my interview with.  He’s obviously warmed up quite a bit.  We had started by complimenting out classmate, Chris, on taking the intitiative to alphabatize a list of verbs we had.  Then Track 1 started trying to make trade offers to take Chris away from us.  This quickly escalated into Lord of the Rings quotes about “words being poison” and “You SHALL NOT PASS!”  Anyway, NERDFEST 2008, I know, but then Reb emails us and starts trying to get involved.  His emails consisted of things like:

“In the midst of darkness
All things seems worth expressing
In the presence of light we second guess
Which is real
Which is truth
Neither light nor shadow
Can define
Only a leap of faith
Lands us on firm ground”

Uhhhhhhh, what?!  What leap of faith?  So a lot of us jumped in and started making up poems, which ended up sounding a lot like LOTR again.  This went on until about 1:00AM.  The next morning, everyone started yelling at Chris, Matt, and me about hwo they woke up with THIRTY FIVE EMAILS.  They were scared they missed something… and oh how they did.

We watched another interview with a screenwriter like the Paul Haggis one last week.  This time, it was David S Goyer (Blade I-III, Batman Begins) and it was awesome.

Goyer-- caught in the act

He seems like a totally cool Dude.  These little interviews are very informative and give you a strong sense of what day to day life is like in the industry.  I decided to just stay at school and finish up all my writing assignments before I went home.  This would save me from burning 45 minutes going home and screwing around before I got back to it. I felt like such a movie character, up late in the film school, lights out, TOILING AWAY on my laptop.  How lame.

Today it seemed like everyone was dragging. Lots of people are sick (I’m totally better, btw).  Producing this morning was lots o fun.  We learned how to break down a script and input it into a scheduling program used in the industry called EP Scheduling. Pretty simple program, but really really helpful.  It breaks everything down by scene, actors, props, fx, locations, etc.  Quite a resource, especially for someone like me who is not detailed oriented… like me.

Dave and I made a ruckus because we kept laughing about stupid stuff, mainly the fact that he named his Production company “Falcon Talon.”  That is the funniest crap ever.  I found a link and started playing it as loud as a could.  Check it out.

http://www.audiosparx.com/sa/archive/Ringtones/Animal-Tones/Falcon-Screech-RINGTONE/273085

So funny.

Then we laughed about that stupid SNL sketch where Will Farrell and Chris Kattan do a storytellers as “Air Supply” and they make up lyrics to that stupid “I’m All Out of Love” song.  Heck, here’s the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv140Qf7dFM

OH! So we actually lit and SHOT something today in cinematography class.  It was awesome.  We had a dolly set up and everything.  I think I’m starting to get this lighting thing down.  Beth stayed behind and re-spooled the exposed film, she must have been a rock star at it because she was done in no time.  Game Ball, Beth.  Game Ball.

So, lastly, I’ll talk about our “Genres” class for a second.  Obviously, this is the class where all the drama happens.  Each week, a hand full of people are scheduled to start a topic on the class blog for everyone to discuss, MFA’s and BFA’s alike.  I was one of the people this week.  I wrote a blog on how it’s a bit difficult for me to break things down into political motivations, left wing or right wing.  How, sometimes, movies are just as assembling of things meant for entertainment and a profit.  Yes, ideas are funneled through the medium.  Sure, but I was having trouble seeing the political motivations of some of the films we watched.  Apparently a lot of people either agreed or disagreed with me and I had quite a thread of responses.  Out teacher is a younger guy.  Super nice.  He just got his doctorate from USC in a film study of some kind.  He types up a little slip of paper with a grade and a response to our blogs.  WELL, mine was like 3/4 of a page, like 4x times longer than anyone elses.  He handed it to me and said

“I went on a little bit of a rant, nothing personal, but just some thoughts.”  I think I must have pissed him off.  His grade slip said the following–

That my “depoliticizing stance on entertainment is more of a refusal than a reasoned argument.  When you said ‘I don’t think motivations in the film are political at all, they are simply reflecting a mindset,’ I have to ask: is reflecting a mindset not political?…such statements seem to be rooted in dismissing the idea of probing of cultural/politcal dimension of these films; they are statements that seem designed to shut down debate by asserting that these films are just simply simple.”

Kiss Me Deadly-- overtly political

WOW, I KNOW, RIGHT?  That was pretty much politely calling me an asshole.  I really didn’t want to undermine his class or the cirriculum he decides to teach.  I was simply stating that, based on the discussions in class, I didn’t see how every movie was somehow a political stance on a particular issue.  Yes, we are influenced by everything around us, so of course films encompass an attitude or tone.  But, I also feel that film is a scavenger’s art, one that assembles thoughts, moods, ideals, puns, characters, jokes, and whatever else trickles in to the making of a movie.  It’s the most collaborative of art forms and the whole reason they exist is for…PROFIT.  It’s a business.  Yes, movies have messages, but in something like Film Noir and the movies from the 40’s and 50’s, our generation is so far removed from them, that I almost felt as though we were assigning meaning to things more than what the filmmakers even realized.  That was all.  I hope I didn’t offend him.  But I’m certainly hanging up this piece of paper on my bulleton board.  He gave me a B-, btw.

If you’re interested in reading some more of the post, then you can see it here on our class blog:

http://syder.org/filmculture/?p=107

I’m sure I lost about 90% of you somewhere up top, but here’s to you all who finished.  This is just as much a part of my film school journey as anything else.  I feel things starting to ramp up and I’m becoming attracted to the things I have a knack for, ie, Writing, directing, and editing.  We’ll see if this narrows.  Hope all is well in your land.  I guess I’ll try and catch up on some sleep since we got out of Genres really early tonight.

Ya’ll behave.

If my stomach was a stock market, then Jimmy John’s would be UP, UP, UP

I love Jimmy Jonn’s, I’ve said it before.  Wagy came down this weekend and had never experienced the magic for himself.  He ended up eating there 3 times in 36 hours.  I full-fledged Tim Wagy endorsement.  I love it.

This weekend was fun.  There wasn’t much in the way of HW so I was able to hang out with Tim the majority of the time he was here.  Friday night, he showed up a little after 11pm (I was falling asleep watching Speed on Blu-Ray).  We headed out to meet up with Matt, Dade, Dave, and some others out at the local hole in the wall, Leon’s.  They have a quite an

Ye Old Thumper

 assortment of beer.  It looks a little sketch at first glance, but then it kinda reminded me of good ole Johnny McCracken’s back in Marietta.  A good many Track 1 kids were out too.  Jacob, Corey (naturally), Zoila, Allison and Praheme.  Lots of fun had by all.  Tim got a chance to meet everyone and mingle.  He was REALLY excited that this bar had Old Thumper, a beer not seen by many.  Something Wagy found in his journeys in the misty mountains of Tennessee.  You can read more about the beer here:

 

http://www.ringwoodbrewery.co.uk/old-thumper.htm

Turns outs, they only had that one bottle of Thumper in stock and it wasn’t even cold.  Tim pretty much demanded that they give him the bottle and a glass of ice, but the bartender wasn’t having it.  Such a shame, Dave was excited about the Old Thumper.  So, instead, he ordered a Doggystyle.  My knowledge of beer officially ends…. here.

After that, Tim decided he wanted to try Jimmy John’s at 1:30 in the morning, so away we went.  Tim ordered the #9, The Italian, and I was able to make out muffled syllables of “delishthus” and “phenomimull” between bites.  Subsequently, after reading my blog, Jamie texted me from Marietta asking which sandwich I prefer at JJ’s.  Jamie had driven to downtown ATL to find the nearest JJ’s and was standing in line about to order.  I believe his follow up text said: “#9 DELICIOUS.”  

The following morning, Tim and I went out and about to find a place to go eat and hang out.  We were concerned with getting too close to campus due to the FSU/Western Carolina game happening later on that day.  That shouldn’t have been a concern.  No offense, FSU, but you’ve got NOTHING on Athens when it comes to game day.  We literally drove right next to campus, no traffic, and sat down at the Buffalo Wild Wings without a problem.  If that was Athens, it would have been Thursday.  People were tailgating, but I guess I’m used to North Campus in Athens looking like a refugee camp… with TV’s.

We watched Ohio State barely fight off Ohio, which was a little ridiculous.  Buffalo Wild Wings was good.  I always thought their name took about zero thought.  You can’t just combine two restaurants that already exist.  Regardless, their “Asian Zing” flavored wings are delicious.  Our waitress was really good too.  Attentive, but not overbearing.  She did her job well.  You could tell she was a pro… she was pretty good-looking too.  

Tim went to meet his friends for the game and tailgating.  Matt, Cindy, and I got together to rehearse our little acting assignment from two weeks ago.  We haven’t had that class since the first day.  Classes were cancelled last week, so it feels like this class was a year ago.  We have to assign different action verbs to each line of this scene our teacher printed out for us.  I want to say it’s a scene from Sex and the City with some of the names and places changed.  It’s a pretty fun exercise.  I’ve become really interested in performance lately and what all it entails. 

We didn’t work too hard and I ended dozing off on Matt’s couch while he watched the special features on the 1985 Ridley Scott film Legend.  Incredibly dorky, I know.  At least I was asleep.

Later on, we met up with Dade, Dan, Dave, and anyone else’s name who starts with a D at Chili’s.  I know I know, it’s a like a suburban eating tour.  It’s the weekend, we have to de-stress somehow.  From there, we were headed to Dan’s house to watch Bladerunner: The Final Cut on Blu-Ray, one of the five versions I own on blu-ray (Props to Randall).  Tim calls, says his friends ditched him, the storm had postponed the game, and so I went to pick him up.  He was like a prodigal son.  He told Matt and I about how how awesome the Seminole was with a flaming spear on horseback.  Apparently this starts every FSU game.  Then he left the game and went to the local KA house and met some of the brothers.  All he had to do was walk in and say, “Yo, I’m a brother from Western Carolina.”  THREE separate guys had the exact same response.  ”Oh shit, man, yeah yeah yeah, come on in, Bud. Let me grab you beer.”  There was no beer to be found and each of them ended their search with an apology to Tim.  This made me laugh a lot.  I sort of understand fraternity culture, but it just amazes me that everyone sticks to the code that strictly.

We went to Dan’s and popped in Bladerunner, but not before a rousing game of HALO and then a viewing of the now-defunked Halo Movie project.  The movie was commissioned to be made and they built all these

Los Angeles, 2019

props, such as a working Warthog, machine gun, pistol, etc.  It was awesome!  After the project got canned, they put together a little mini 10 minute movie showing some Spartan soldiers in a battle against the Brutes.  Dude, I’m serious, if they ever made that movie right, it would be awesome.  People who don’t give two craps about Halo would totally’ dig that movie.  The universe is so well thought out and the game is so thoroughly made, all it would take is a director with some vision to make it work.  I volunteered Dan to be that very guy.  Dan, MAKE IT. and I want to be “Guy eaten by the Flood #12.”

 

Let’s take a minute to talk about Bladerunner on Blu-ray (Whitney, stop reading here).  The scan on this movie is GORGEOUS. You really couldn’t tell what year it was made, aside from a few special effects scenes.  The movie depended on miniatures and sets, NOT CGI.

 

Tyrell Corporation

 Gosh, if a movie ever proves that we shouldn’t depend on everything to be done in post, this IS IT.  The landscapes in this movie are simply stunning.  The score by Vangelis made the movie seem classic, but held that depiction of the future from the 80’s that I love so much.  I’ll be honest, I’m not entirely sure I understand the whole plot, even now, but it serves as a film that belongs whole heartedly to the director and the crew he hired.  The vision of the film is massive.  Ridley Scott proves that he is as much a visionary as any director has ever been.  I would like to see more movies made from the Bladerunner universe, to be honest.  The relationship human have with machines, particularly the human replicants in the movie, is a theme that few do well.  The implications of creating technology that surpasses our capabilities is a daunting thing to consider.  The story is rife with questions about humanity and what a checklist of humanity would entail.  Something like Battlestar Galactica does a wonderful job exploring these issues as well.  So if it’s a rainy night and you don’t have anything to do. Popl in Bladerunner and try and digest it all.  It’s confusing but it’s something you and your friends could have a thoughtful conversation about.   

It’s late, and I still have to talk about the open auditions we held today at the film school, so I’ll save that for tomorrow.  Hope everyone has a nice week.  

Y’all behave.

In a World… where one man must fight against Fatigue

Good Lord, have mercy, I am so tired.  I have been trying to fight off getting sick all week long.  It has worked, I’m not exactly sick.  But every morning I wake up in a new, watered-down stage of a cold.

The best way to fight disease

 First it was my throat, then my sinuses, then I coughed a little, and today I’m coughing, but it’s because my throat is completely dry.  It just itches.  Not infection.  So, thank God for that.  I’ve been using hand sanitizer like a heroine addict.  I rub it on my pen’s too.  Everyone in our class is kinda feeling crappy kinda not, so everyone is fighting really hard not to get sick.  The thought of something “going around” really grosses me out, too, btw.  

 

Otherwise, it’s Friday afternoon and class is OVER for the week.  Even though this week was a day shorter, it feels like it was longer than last week.. Maybe the newness has worn off.  Like that new car, but then you spill McDonald’s in it, and it just turns into your car again.  I won’t go through every one of my classes, I’m sure that gets boring.  I finished an editing exercise yesterday.  Turning in a project on a flashdrive is a new experience for me.  You just kinda plug it in to the main computer and then drag it to the folder… that’s it.  For the exercise, we were given some footage an MFA shot last summer.  The scene involved a man who just buried his wife out in the country sitting in front of a camp fire, wearing his suit.  I liked the footage ok, and there were five main shots.  The exercise was simply to edit a coherent sequence together and then write up an argument for why you chose to do what you did.  There was no dialogue to deal with in the scene.  I kept my cuts simple and just deleted all the background noise because it didn’t match up.  I liked the way it flowed, I probably spent a little too long on it.  After this, we are supposed to editing our still frame weekend projects we did last weekend.  Those are do Monday, this in-class exercise was due today.  They really stress a particular type of organization, and that’s where I get stressed.  I’m not great with minutia, so having every single little thing labeled the proper way took me longer than actually editing the thing.  We’ll see how that goes.

We got back back all 5 of our assignments in Screenwriting.  I really enjoy this class.  He made reference to a lot of our thoughts, myself included, in class so that was reassuring.  Tim Long, our teacher, has a very frank and pragmatic outlook on screenwriting.  Like our directing class with Reb, he kicks your ego to the curb and says that you’re going to have to follow rules and have to suck it and do things to make it in the business.  Tim has a consulting business for screen writers as well.  He gets calls from writers and former students and he guides them as to what they’ll have to tweak to make things work.  He talks about how you think this awesome screenplay you’ve been thinking of for years is probably pretty mediocre and that you need to keep writing and be prepared to abandon ideas that aren’t working.  He also says that you need to learn to write genre films, because that’s what gives you work.  Only 4-6% of the scripts that get “optioned” by a studio each year are from writers like you and me.  The other 90-something% are from known writers getting the studios to listen to them or from spec scripts that the studio hires other writers to make.  You and your little “amazing” screenplay are just a tuft of whip cream on the pie.

We read and had to do coverage on a script, the assignment I talked about in my previous blogs.  He really really liked my coverage.  He thought I had done it before, which was a nice compliment.  So that’s good, I’ve always been decent at summarizing and adding an analysis.  My script about the dog, however, needed some work.  I was way too wordy.  Using his comments, we have to rewrite our scripts to read better.  you want your screenplay to read “vertically,” meaning that you should keep the reader going down the page and not add to much description.  He gave an example on how a producer or script reader might take home 15 screenplays in a weekend.  Now, realistically, no one will sit down and genuinely read that many.  It takes a good 1 1/2- 2 hours for each one to do it correctly.  So, within the first 15 pages, you need to make sure that you make something happen and keep the reader moving so that the Dude doesn’t just start skimming your screenplay, or just put it down all together.

He got us to write things without being taught on purpose.  Once he pointed things out, it became quite clear what a script needed.  BTW, that horror script we did coverage on was actually optioned, sold, and made.  It comes out next week.  Here’s the trailer.

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809812662/trailer

 

  The writer got $300,000 for it to be re-written and sold, and then would get another $300K if it was made.  Well, it was.  A $600,000 payday, not bad.  Not bad at all.  Sure, we’re the asshole film school kids who railed it in our comments, but this dude has $600K I don’t have, so who’s the chump?  It’s that example that shows you how much of a business Hollywood is.  Matt worked on set for the movie The Hitcher and it was written by the same Dude.  There you go.  You start to realize that it’s probably not as cut and dry and you think it is.  This guy probably doesn’t think he’s writing a masterpiece.  He’s writing so that he can further his career.  One day in the future, he’s going to have enough freedom an clout to do a script he’s really proud of.

 

I AM OPTIMUS BADASS

For this same reason, I hate it when people bitch about someone like Michael Bay and claim that he’s 
“destroying my childhood with his Transformers movie” or that he “is the most dangerous of directors, a hack who considers himself an auteur.”  What the fat, video store clerk user from Aintitcoolnews.com is missing is that Hollywood was around WAY before he ever put on his first Storm Trooper helmet.  The studios are fronting GOBS of money to produce something as creatively daunting as a motion picture.  When the Lumiere Brothers projected films or Dickson showed off his Kinetoscope, a lot of people saw it as a scientific breakthrough, something to be displayed at science fairs and used a research method.  People literally ran out of the theater when the Lumiere Brothers projected a sequence of a train pulling into the station because they had no idea how to respond to moving pictures.  You can see this video here:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dgLEDdFddk

Once artists got their hands on a film camera, they took off with them and never looked back.  Why?  To DAZZLE audiences.  Show the audience something they don’t normally see.  Bring them somewhere they can’t go.  Put them IN a story in a way that live theatre never could.  Theatre and film are two completely different mediums.  Theatre buffs will be the first to say that.  Many of them turn up their noses at film.  Fine, who cares.  Movies are movies.  Movies take places, sounds, songs, people, and chop up the film to create a nearly-tangible world that doesn’t even exist.  So, yes, when Michael Bay makes Transformers 2, I’ll be there with bells on.  Same as when Spielberg makes a biopic on Lincoln, I’ll be there.  When something is based on a true story, I’ll be there.  When someone turns a Delorean into a time machine, I’ll be there.  In my opinion, movies are the single most powerful artistic medium that exists.  Nothing affects us like movies do.  So, for that reason, we can critique and debate over what we like and it’s fun.  Those two critics I referenced above had made me laugh.  I don’t think anyone should condemn a director for making massively successful movies.  Somehow Michael Bay briefly came up in my directing class and Reb said he wouldn’t pick on Michael Bay because he knows what he’s doing and he has talent.  He actually hates Brett Ratner (Rush Hour 1-3, X-men 3).  I found that really funny.

Speaking of Transformers, check out this link.  I found it on AINTITCOOLNEWS.COM, I’m not sure how “plagiarism” works on the net.  Type in the code: AllSpark62609

http://instoresnow.walmart.com/enhancedrendercontent_ektid50686.aspx

As far as school goes, I don’t much other news.  We had a genres class last night and watched Kiss me Deadly, the strangest Film Noir I have ever seen.  I won’t go into it.  Afterward, though, the discussions ensued.  Sure enough, the rift between BFA and MFA is growing.  Emily TOTALLY gets the game ball for an incredible statement she made about the characters representing Eve and Jesus and some other allusions.  It was extremely insightful, researched, and factual.  I don’t know how she formed that AND watched the movie.  But after that, little conversations popped up.  Some of the more talkative BFA’s were talking and so were the MFA’s, all while the class was trying to have a discussion.  One BFA turned around and told the MFA’s to shut up which prompted an MFA to call him a pretty funny name and told him to turn around, but nonetheless, that didn’t sit well with any of them.  It was awkward.  After class, a girl friend of the BFA Dude chased the MFA out into the front walkway and exchanged words.  

THIS IS NOT WHAT WE NEED.  As the MFA’s, we need to exhibit some form of diplomacy.  Yes, there is obviously a huge divide between the attitudes of each group, but creating tension isn’t going to help anyone.  The BFA’s need to quiet down, sure, but if any BFA’s are reading this, I apologize for the MFA’s ganging up and laughing at you.  I apologize for using the word “diplomacy,” I never want to sound like a certain politician I won’t name, but seriously, we have make sure that EVERYONE in the film school is respectful.  No one is asking you to make friends.  Akil brought up a good point: Once we get out to LA or where ever, those people are in it with us.  It doesn’t matter who is who.  What happens if one of those kids is a script reader and they happen to get your screenplay?  

Anyway, that is my two cent shot at negotiations.  We had our Below the Line lab this morning. We learned how to set up and build the Arriflex SR-2 we’ll be using to shoot our D1’s.  I can’t explain how pretty that thing looks when it’s ready to roll.  We also practiced unloading and loading film in the black bags that we’ll use on set.  Doing that stuff blind is no easy task.  

Wagy is getting in tonight around 10-11.  Should be a blast.  I’m going to meet some MFA’s at On the Border here in a few.  Hope all is well where you are.  I’ll be updating tomorrow most likely.  Go see a movie.  Better yet, go make one.

On a side note, let’s remember Don LaFontaine (1940-2008), the “Movie trailer voice dude.”

In a world...without this guy

 He was only 68.  That’s crazy to think he won’t be around.  He was actually responsible for creating movie trailers the way we have all come to recognize them.  The whole “In a world…” schtick was his idea.  Here is a funny video I saw a few months ago about him:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QPMvj_xejg

Y’all behave.

You’re the Best Around

Back to the grind, people.  I woke up a little later today, around 7:00am or so.  I had to finish typing up a little observation for cine class laster in the day.  We were supposed to sit in a place and observe and comment on the lighting.  I enjoy the oak trees that surround the campus, so I sat near the film building and watched the sun rise from the east.  It was nice, the moss on the trees glows and the limbs make huge shadows, like arms.  That time of day is always golden.  Got a little transcendental there…

Producing was my morning class.  Today we learned how to break down a script, like in pre-production.  We were required to get erasable colored pencils, hence why I was at Wal Mart yesterday.  In a script breakdown, you read through the script, break the pages down into sections by scene, and then underline or mark anything of importance, such as: Characters speaking, props, stunts, set dressing, extras, make-up, fx, etc.  This helps you begin to gauge what all will go into the project.  The producer’s job is to nail down how much money it will take to make the film.  Ultimately, the responsibility falls on them.  We learned the hierarchy of the producing line: Executive Producer, Producer, Associate Producer, Line Producer, Unit Production Manager (UPM), and Production Coordinator.  Each of these people essentially answer to the person above them.  The executive producer heads up the entire project, like, primarily the financing end of it.  A major studio might even hire this person to be in charge of the project.  A Producer is like the project manager.  They stick with the project from beginning to end, hire/fire, and would be the one who accepts the Oscar.  Associate Producer is sometimes a “nebulous” credit.  Maybe they went above and beyond and aided the Producer in something, maybe the writer, or could be just a token title given to the Executive Producer’s son who hung around.  A Line Producer deals with the day to day set operation.  They are the Producer’s right hand man.  They keep things on schedule.  The UPM deals with paperwork, call sheets, contracts, releases and the daily production reports (no, thank you).  And a Production Coordinator is more like an office manager.  They deal with payroll, travel arrangements, etc.  

At lunch, Dade, Jonathan, Dave, Matt, and I all went to a Columbian restaurant on the way to the satellite center.  It was delicious!  I had a chicken burger.  They had an awesome combo of sauces too.  I tasted pineapple for sure.  

Cine was intense today.  Our track has a tendency to ask a lot of questions.  Keith, our teacher, was following rabbit trails all day trying to explain the concepts of lighting and how it works.  We got off into physics and everything.  He had to sit down when we took a break.  It was good, though, very informative.  That’s still the class I know the absolute least about.  We watched a clip from Bladerunner (one of my personal faves, and Keith’s too, he likes the cinematographer).  In the lab section of our class, we broke up into groups and tried out different lighting combos.  My group was assigned to do a 2:1 lighting,

25 year old virgin

which basically means you have twice the amount of “footcandles” worth of light on one side of the face as compared to the darker side.  I sat in as a model for a lot of it.  This was hard combo to nail down, and Keith told us that.  We actually did pretty well with it.  Since Matt has been on a real set before, he was able to estimate things.  He took some funny pictures on his iPhone.  

 

Don't mess with the best

 

 

 

 

I brought a red bandana to class, because I’m tough.

After cine, Dade, Dave, Matt, and I stopped by Jimmy John’s.  I’m going to have to buy stock in them I go there so much and because, well, they’re delicious.  We made it to Genres with time to spare.  My FSU ID finally started working.  Die to the fact that we have not had time to edit our weekend projects, they cancelled our schedules screening for tomorrow afternoon.  Fortunately, for all of us in Track 2, that means we get like 12:45-7:00 COMPLETELY OFF.  Sucks to be you, Track 1.  I feel bad, they always get the shaft.  Wait, no I don’t.  This will help give me time to edit my project and do some research in the library for “production design.”  He gave us a script and wants us to research the time period to show how we can accurately portray the setting in the script.  For some reason, we can’t use the internet.  What in the world am I supposed to do?  I don’t even know how to use a library, much less know where the one on campus is!!!  

Anyway, I have to get to bed.  I’m still making sure that I don’t get sick.  I feel much better today, though.  And I have a quiz in editing.  SHEESH.  No end… ever.

OK bye.

Looking Back at Sunsets on the Eastside

I’m listening to that Killers’ song right now, so the title jumped at me.

Labor Day seemed to go by very quickly, but I did absolutely nothing interesting.  I read the 106 page script I had to do coverage on.  That took about 1 1/2 hours.  The script was pretty bad.  It revolves around this girl being interrogated in a dank room.  The interrogation scenes don’t really do anything but break apart the three separate stories that are told.  Each story centers around a girl, one of them being the girl being interrogated.  Each one of them falls victim to a vicious attack.  One watches her boyfriend get killed by a terrible highway driver they decided to follow through a shortcut (DUH!), one is attacked by a dude dressed as a clown, and the other is sewn into a mattress along with her boyfriend and her best friend.  Typical nasty horror-thriller stuff.  The third act takes place after the girl in the interrogation room questions the psychiatrist.  Turns out, the dumbass psychiatrist was fooled into coming out here, thinking she was investigating three girls found in a warehouse.  She realizes her files have no official seal on them and then, oh wait, the crazy clown busts through the two-way mirror and kills here.  Wha whaaaaaaa.  The three girls find each other and find that they are childhood friends and that each of their attacks was orchestrated by a crazy kid who liked to kill squirrels and scare them.  Anyway, two get hacked, one makes it out alive.  The end. LAME.  

I’m sure our writing teacher gave it to us on purpose.  In my coverage I wrote about a 2 1/2 page summary and then a 1 1/2 page analysis.  I related the common devices of clowns, crazy nightgown girls, and villains who seem to know EVERY MOVE  character is going to make.  It’s just suspense for the sake of suspense.  No character comes out changed, no character reacts like a normal person, no character serves a purpose rather than to be bait.  I also wrote that youthful audiences would eat it up opening weekend because the script calls for three attractive female leads and, well, horror does well.  I recommended the script but not the writer…

Other than that, we had a screening for writing that we were going to have to watch today anyway, but classes were cancelled.  One of our fellow incoming MFA’s, Jaye (the one who kicked us out of her house, lol) was granted a teaching fellowship for our writing class.  She organized the screening just so we could get it out of the way.  I think that was a good idea.  It was a 90 minute interview with Paul Haggis (writer and sometimes director- Million Dollar Baby, Crash, Flags of Our Fathers, Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace).  It was actually pretty interesting, he has been in the business so long and just now became a big his in late 40’s/ early 50’s.  He worked on The Facts of Life, EZ Streets, Thirty Something, etc.  He has a very sarcastic view of himself and associates failure as being just as important as success.  He talks about how he thinks a lot of his tuff is garbage at first but then it turns out ok.  He’s a little off-kilter, like most writers.  We had a lot of groans in our group because apparently a lot of people hate Paul Haggis’ movies.  But, he did offer some good info.

After that, I find myself writing this blog and finishing up some HW, basically proofreading and printing out things.  Tomorrow starts another week.  Tim Wagy is coming down to visit me on Friday because Western Carolina and FSU are playing this weekend in Tallahassee.  That should be fun, no doubt.  My first friend visit.  I might even have some time to hang out!  Haha.  Actually school has not reached that “critical mass” stage yet.  

I went and picked up some supplies at Wal Mart.  I love getting school supplies- pencils, binders, paper, it’s all so awesome to me.  I guess it represents a blank canvas to me.  Of course, Wal Mart took FOREVER to get out of.  That place is one step away from the DMV.  

I need to get back to finishing up this stuff. It’s going to be midnight before I know it.  I spoke with Randall today and he mentioned that he and some of the guys were hanging out at Jamie’s, not really doing much.  It made me wish I could hang out with them spontaneously.  It’s those times that make you realize the weight of you decisions.  I like school, but not being at home is hard too.  

Talk to you later.

Y’all behave.

Days 13-15

Ok, so I’ve let the blog sit for a few days.  Projects and HW have occupied most of my time the past two nights, and I didn’t feel there was anything incredibly interesting happening.  Turns out, though, we got our classes cancelled tomorrow (Monday), which is apparently UNHEARD OF.  They didn’t explain why they were cancelled, just that it happened out of necessity.  I’m sort of wincing, though, because I feel like we’re going to GET IT on the back end of this in terms of schedule make-ups and such.  It did offer me a nice 3-day weekend to get my bearings and chill out.  

This past week was arduous, no doubt, but it was also entirely manageable.  The whole “film school” experience has begun to set in.  It will undoubtedly get harder from here, but the playing field in front of me isn’t the dark, terrifying jungle as I used to see it.  The classes are fun and interesting, the people are cool, the teachers are really helpful, and the project genuinely teach you something.  This weekend, we were assigned a project in groups of 3 to go out and shoot a series of stills on the XL-1 cameras.  We couldn’t use dialogue, exaggerated facial expressions, animals, or weapons.  It was simply an exercise to show the Eisensteinian theory of montage, letting the cuts tell the story because your mind fills in the blanks.  For instance, we don’t even think about it, but if I set up a shot of a diner, then a person sitting drinking coffee, and a juke box playing, those 3 shots are completely unrelated.  But we as the audience bridge them together to make a coherent scene in our heads.  

Sum and Smitha were in my group, like I mentioned a few days ago.  We met at the film school today around 1:30.  Sum and I started while we waited for Smitha.  I won’t reveal his story in case he cares.  My story consisted of Sum waiting next the big fountain we have in front of our school.  He checks his watch.  Smitha walks up and hands him a note.  Sum reads it.  We cut in to a close-up of the note. It reads, “Dear Sum, It’s over! I need change! Goodbye, Smitha.”  He seems despondent, but then gets an idea.  He reaches into the fountain with both hands (Mind you, this is a series of pictures).  Smitha is then seen walking on a sidewalk with Sum crossing the street behind her.  He has his hands cupped.  He catches up to her and gets down on knee.  She holds out her hands and he gives her the “change” he found in the fountain.  Smitha looks at the coins and has a slight smile.  The last shot is Smitha and Sum holding hands under a big oak tree.  The end.  Credits.  YAY!

It can’t be longer than about a minute or two and we’ll have ambient noise to superimpose behind the images.  I think mine will come across well.  It’s not meant to be a flashy type of project, they just want you to try and make a coherent scene, an exercise.  

Friday night my writing group got together to watch our assigned movie, Empire of the Sun.  I’ll be honest, it was LONG.  Way longer than I was expecting.  It’s one of Spielberg’s lesser-praised films.  I think a lot of people were a little confused and turned off by it.  It’s shot beautifully, of course, all his stuff is, but the story arc is just strange.  It sort of meanders its way around 4 years of this British child’s life.  He lives in Shanghai as a British settler in the early 1940’s, just as Japan attacks in WWII.  Christian Bale is the main kid, he was about 12 in the film.  It was his first major role.  Gosh, he must have been in every single scene.  That was a MASSIVE undertaking for a kid that age.  It’s a testament to just how strong of an actor Christian Bale is.  I remember Newsies as one of my favorite films.  I was about 8 when it came out and that was the first time I had ever seen Christian Bale.  He seemed to disappear in the 90’s and then, of course, has made an explosive comeback in the past 5 years.  

That got me in a mood to see more Christian Bale movies and I watched The Prestige on Blu-Ray last night.  I hadn’t watched it in about a year or so.  Man, I really love that movie.  A lot of people, and critics, called it gimmicky, but you could say that about all of Christopher Nolan’s films.  He’s a master at withholding things from the audience.  He really puts you at the mercy of the camera.  Wally Pfister is his Director of Photography on every one of his movies.  I particularly think that The Prestige is gorgeous.  Regardless of whether or not you think his films are gimmicky, he is a fantastic storyteller.  I’m always engaged from start to finish.  His pacing in The Prestige makes you aware that you’re building toward discovering something, like the show is about to begin.  David Julyan’s score doesn’t have sweeping string sections, but rather this ominous fog of mystery around them.  Some parts are so dissonant that you find your face tightening up and you don’t know why.  The whole things sounds like an orchestra warming up before a show.  Anyway,  that’s my two cents.  If you haven’t seen it, check it.  Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, and Michael Caine are all rock solid in it.

We also had a BTL or “Below the Line” lab on Friday at the Allman Brothers satellite location.  We basically ran down through the hierarchy of a set and explained what everyone’s job was.  This was very insightful because, well, I’ve never been on a real set.  Our lab consisted of loading 16mm film magazines.  That was fun and easy.  I think I’m more mechanically minded that I give myself credit for because some kids in our class were having serious trouble trying to figure out how it works.  The funny thing was, you have to get so good at it that you can do it in a dark tent on set so you don’t expose the film when you put it in, just like a 35mm camera.  That is going to be a serious skill to develop.  It was my first time touching 16mm too.  I can’t wait to shoot our D1’s on film.  Just to have something you shot that looks like a real movie will be exciting enough for me.  

Yesterday (Saturday), I did some more writing on the 3 page script I have to complete for my writing class.  I’m really happy with the result.  Like, I said, I’ll tell you about it when I get back my grade.  I also found some time in the afternoon to go see Babylon AD, that new Vin Diesel movie.  Yikes.  I know, I know.  Mattieu Kassovitz, the guy who did Gothika, did this one.  I thought it was the Dude who did Nightwatch, but I was wrong.  It was hokey, like I thought it would be.  It’s in the not-to-distant future of 2019.  The world is in turmoil, yada yada.  Vin Diesel lives in some shithole in Eastern Russia.  He’s a mercenary.  He gets hired to transport this “special” girl across the Bering Strait and into the U.S., where he’s a wanted fugitive, btw.  Michelle Yeoh is her guardian.  She’s actually a really solid actress.  Since being in school, I start watching for more performances out of movies, and she was compelling even in a silly movie like this.  The movie seemed to be juggling too many things at once and it cycled out of cliche lines like, “You think this is a joke?” or whatever.  Things hit the fan when they reach “future” NYC and two separate gangs of Prada models are out to get the girl.  Lots of special effects, lots of shooting, lots of Vin Diesel doing whatever it is he does.  I give it a C.  

Randall, being my personal entertainment widget that he is, happened to email me an article today about the disastrous production that resulted in Babylon AD.  Apparently Fox made the director cut at least 15 minutes out of the film and had lawyers on set every day to change things and make sure they did things by the book.  They apparently wanted to ensure a PG-13 rating.  In the interview, the director is FURIOUS.  The cast, the crew, the directors, and the producers at Fox all hate this movie now.  This goes to show that when Hollywood office-coke-monkeys try and micromanage everything, all they do is choke the movie to death.  Fox is notorious for pulling this stuff too.  I don’t ever want to deal with them.  But listen to me, who am I.  Talking like I’m going to start calling the shots with a major studio.  Don’t listen to me, anyone.

Last night, About 9 of us met up for dinner at Mellow Mushroom.  It was nice to relax and not think about school.  The two tracks compared opinions about how the week went, who asks questions, who doesn’t, who thinks this is hard, who doesn’t, etc.  We split up after that and Matt, Bobby, Stephen, Jacob, and David Spence all went to this bar in Tallahassee to hang out.  Now get this, it was 9 o’clock on a Saturday and we walked up to the dude checking ID’s on the sidewalk in front of the patio.  He charges us $5 to get in and says that things get bumping and that it’s “the place to go” for sure.  We get in there, literally, NO ONE IS IN THERE.  NO ONE.  NOT ONE PERSON.  What in the H did we just pay $5 for?  And who pays a cover in a college town?!  The 6 of us sat outside and hung out for about 2 hours.  It was really fun, we had an awesome time.  Some band was getting ready to go on and play for nobody but the bartender.  We all were making pretty low-brow jokes and laughed about anything and everything.  I found some serious common ground with Bobby and Stephen (whom I hadn’t really spoken to at all since we’ve been here) when we talked about 90’s music and how much we loved 90’s music videos and Blink-182.  Solid.  I like those guys a lot.  It was cool to meet Stephen.  Somehow there are still people I haven’t really spoken to.

After that, I went home and watched The Prestige.  My roommates were both out of town again, so I set up the ole Blu-Ray player in the den and watched it.  Other than that, this was my weekend.  Tomorrow we might head to the Final Cut lab to throw our little projects together, though I’m not even sure when they’re due since we don’t have school.  Who knows.  We have to watch a 90 minutes interview with Paul Haggis about Million Dollar Baby and Crash.  I actually just saw Crash for the first time a few weeks ago in Marietta with Jamie and Kit.  It was good, I like it.  Seems like anything Paul Haggis touches turns to gold.  

Ohhhhh yeah!  I watched The Hills for the first time ever and I had some very interesting thoughts on it.  I hate reality TV, but Bobby and I got started on The Hills last night at the bar.  His girlfriend was/is a big fan, like most girls are.  I have a pretty big list of thoughts on it which I might write out in a later blog.  So yeah, look forward to The Hills article.  

I’ve had a sore throat all day.  I decided to stay in tonight.  There was a party that the second year MFA’s were throwing to get to know all of us a little better, but I do not want to be sick this week at all.  This would be the hardest schedule to keep if you didn’t feel well.  I think I’m just going to go to bed.  I have to read a 110 page script and write the coverage on it by Tuesday.  Looks like I’ll be enjoying Labor Day in the most appropriate way possible.  Thanks for reading.  I’ll be updating tomorrow.

Y’all behave.

Day 12–

I apologize for my lethargic post last night.  Directing 1 didn’t get out until 10:35 and I was WIPED.  Everyone was.  I appreciate everyones’ enthusiasm for this forum, I’m having a lot of fun writing it.  I did get a very funny comment posted on yesterday’s topic by someone anonymously.  You can read it.  They seemed angry, but sarcastic.  I apologize, who ever you are.  I will try and stop the “losing of my audience one person at a time.”

Let’s see, let’s see.  Ok, so, yesterday with another class in the editing lab.  This time, instead of learning the dreadful art of script supervision, we opened up Final Cut and began to learn the proper way, or at least for school, to organize a project in the program.  We also briefly opened up DVD Studio Pro and learned the basic way to burn a dvd.  Not gonna lie, this took ALL 3 1/2 hours…PLUS like 15 minutes extra.  I pretty much know my way around FC, so this was long… long long.  I certainly don’t fault anyone for having questions, though.  At the pace we are moving, I could not imagine coming into this not knowing anything about how a non-linear editing system works.  Our teacher, Sandro (very cool Dude), said that our class seems to be doing well with it.  That’s good they think that, because between he and our post-production supervisor, Duane, they were talking NON-STOP for 4 hours.  That would be the most arduous process ever, trying to teach people a computer program like this… especially people who weren’t already doing it on their own.  Their patience was Guiness record worthy.  

All week, Matt and I had been wanting to go try this magical dining hall that is supposedly just around the corner from the film school behind the stadium.  A fellow MFA, Marie-Suzie, said she had eaten there on Monday.  A fairly large group of about 8 of us went to go check into it.  Turns out, it’s in the brand spanking new Athletic building.  Walking down the halls, I realized we might be on hallowed ground, but we ventured forth.  Akil and Dade were leading us and we walked up to the main entrance.  The Dude didn’t really pay us any attention, and me, like the scared Whiteboy I was, just kinda stood in the back.  Akil looked up and was like, “Come on, what are you guys doing?”  So, we paid our $7.50 and walked on in.  The place was fairly small, but chock full of football players, coaches, and other athletes.  I still felt a little out of place.  I could have sworn we were getting looks.  But, I mean, no one stopped us.  PLUS, the BFA’s were already in there eating, laughing, pontificating, all with full stomachs.  Those crafty BFA’s, always one step ahead.  This place is all you can eat too.  I mean, it’s a solid deal, for sure.  I wanted to check in to their maybe being some sort of one-meal a day plan for it, but who knows.  Even if not, $7.50 is about what you’d pay anywhere.  Shoot, I pay that at Taco Bell.  We’ll see about this.

After lunch came our little camera demonstration for the weekend projects we’re going to be filming.  Just for these first six weeks, we’re shooting little minute long exercises on the trusty Canon XL-1, a camera I have used before.  They’re old… like, old.  But they serve their purpose and the lenses always look nice.  Some kids had never even touched a camera before, especially this camera.  Our cine (cinematography) teach, Keith, just did like a 30 minute overview.  The exercise we have to shoot is actually for our Directing class that I’ll talk about in a second.  It involves using the “photo” feature on the cameras to snap a sequence of shots that will be edited together to tell a story.  All that is required is for someone to see something, create a desire, and then motivate the person to fulfill that desire.  It can’t be longer that 2 minutes.  We were randomly assigned into groups.  I’m with two people whom I haven’t mentioned on here, Smitha and Sum.  Both of them are really nice.  I think the key to any of these assignments is shear simplicity. Filmmaking in general is a very egotistical medium.  Everyone thinks they have a an awesome shot in mind, or a mind blowing script, or just basically think they’re the shit.  Well, you’re not the shit.  You’re in film school.

The workshop ended way early, like, 4:15, which was a blessing.  For the first time this week, I had a second to breathe.  I didn’t really even know what to do.  I eventually drove home and hung out in my room, not even sure why.  I had already done my reading for the Directing class later that night.  I decided to go back to school about an hour before class.  Directing is another on the of the classes we have with Track 1, so that’s always fun.  We had it on the big sound stage, sound stage A, with folding chairs, two cameras hooked up to TV’s, and a giant 50″ Samsung plasma.  Reb Braddock, our associate Dean, is the teacher.  Reb is quite an interesting guy.  He’s been in the industry for quite some time and doesn’t beat around the bush with things.  I like his philosophy on telling a story first, but through the language of film.  I also like how makes sure you know that you’re not the shit and will be constantly reminded that you’re not the shit. We do exercises just because he knows we’re no where near able to shoot anything worthwhile right now.  I like that attitude.  it’s funny to me, but it also rings true and makes sure they keep everyone hungry for it.  It also goes to show that FSU actually cares about their students as opposed to other schools that just leave you to deal with filmmaking and the curriculum on your own.

In Directing, we basically got into the language of film and what shots can help you convey as a story teller.  We also discussed the “180 Rule,” which for those of you who don’t know, deals with the concept of “eye line matching.”  This means that if two characters are talking to one another, an imaginary line is drawn from one face to the other.  When setting up shots, you can never go BEHIND the line during a scene, because then it won’ make sense visually, they’ll start to look like the same direction.  For instance, if you’re filming my profile on my left side and I’m talking to, say, my wife Adriana Lima, and she is facing me so that her incredibly ridiculously Brazlian hottie right side of her face is facing the camera, you would never want to suddenly film me from my right profile, because in the editing it would look like we’re facing the same direction (and the right side of my face is no match for hers).  Reb had Akil and I stand facing each other while he illustrated this point with the cameras and the TV monitors.  It was very effective.

We also watched some clips from a few movies that broke the rule and some that obeyed it.  One of the movies was that In Good Company movie with Topher Grace and Scar-Jo…man, she just doesn’t do it for me anymore.  

After that, I cam DIRECTLY home and went to bed.  I was pretty tired.  6:30AM came about the time it always does and I woke up fairly easily this morning.  For some reason I was extra early today.  I left my hour around 7:10am and went to pick up a Vitamin Water at the ole gas station.  For those of you who don’t know, I am a gas station food junkie.  An embarrassing habit, yes, but one that offers me the convenience of having a consistent menu, no matter where I am.  I have actually cut out a lot of junk food recently, and that is a very good thing.  I got to school at 7:30am and knocked out a huge chunk of reading.  My first class was Sound.  I LOVE sound.  I always have.  The teacher was awesome too, exactly like what you would think.  He had been in live music and recording for years and made the switch to film about 20 years ago.  (Doesn’t it seem like everything happened as a result of “the 80’s” in like everyone’s life story?)

This guy had a story for everything.  I was able to talk shop with him about Pro Tools, mics, compression, etc because of my experience with recording and being in a band during my Better Luck Next Time days (R.I.P. 2002-2003).  To me, sound is what differentiates anything you shoot from seeming amateur or being well done.  Think about it, how many times have you been watching your friends crappy video he cut together and every time a scene changes, you hear the hum of the florescent lights at a different volume, or people’s voices are too low, or he decided to throw his favorite Linkin Park song on there to make it “cool?”  Sound is something that moves you unconsciously.  One of the articles we had to read for the class was by Walter Murch, a man who is wildly talented.  He edits and does sound depending on the movie.  He spoke of the good ole days when movies were recorded live and the sound guy sat waaaaaaay up behind a glass window at the top of the sound stage and called the shots, even more so than the director.  Everyone cowered in fear.  The other article discussed how, as fetuses, sound is our first sense to develop.  We hear our mother’s body and hear the outside world to some degree.  

Good sound isn’t about how loud the movie is, it’s about bringing you into a world that you feel is real.  The images are totally worthless without sound.  Otherwise, it’s a music video.  Sound makes you believe that it’s real.   SO MUCH goes into sound for movies, but a lot of times, the director and producers have no time to think about it.  It usually gets crammed at the back of the schedule and takes a frantic ant bed of engineers and artists to work around the clock to get the soundtrack done.  What you want to do with sound is take time to plan the environment.  What would this place sound like?  What would the sounds do to the character?  How can you bring something completely artificial to life?  For instance, when George Lucas was working on the first three Star Wars, there wasn’t a go-to bank for light saber or laser gun sounds… at least, not ones that wouldn’t be completely lame.  The sound designers went out into the desert and hit the anchor cables for telephone poles with rocks and wrenches.  The rock made that crashing sound for the light sabers hitting, the wrench sent a metallic “chooooooo” for the lasers coming from the AT-AT walkers on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back.  

We watched the rough tracks from that crappy Adam Sandler movie Bulletproof because our teacher had the master sound tapes.  It was amazing to see just how many tracks went into making a movie come alive.  It’s hard to explain, but EVERY SINGLE THING  you hear in a movie has been put there.  Even something as simple as a beer bottle being set on a coaster.  

For lunch I had to make a phone call and then I sat in my car and listened to the radio while I ate.  Writing was my next class.  This was the class I had to do all my HW assignments for this summer.  The movies I was required to watch were Fargo, Leaving Las Vegas, Se7en, and THE ROCK.  Pretty sweet selection.  Our teacher has been writing screenplays and reading them for years.  We learned about writing “coverage” for a script.  Basically, producers get inundated with hundred, if not thousands, of screenplays a year.  Interns are hired to read through the scripts and write coverage on them.  That is, to write a 2 page synopsis and an analytical page on what the strong and weak points were.  If it gets past these gate keepers, then the producer will genuinely take a look.  I know what you’re thinking, cause I was thinking it: “You mean some LA douchebag wanna be is thumbing through my script and deciding whether or not it’s good enough?!”  The truth is, yes, that’s exactly what’s happening, but if your script is so “awesome” like you think it is, it won’t be long before someone notices.  One brosef named Fade skimming your script between organic sushi shots isn’t going to stall your career forever.  If you have real talent, get an agent.  

We discussed the forms of narrative and why characters need to have they have in order to drive the story.  We compared the blatantly obvious motivations in something like The Rock (Must stop Ed Harris from launching VX gas warheads on San Fran because my pregnant girlfriend is in town) to the more subtle, beneath the surface themes of Fargo (William H. Macy’s character spiraling deeper and deeper into bad decision making).  

… Then came the homework.  FIVE ASSIGNMENTS.  All due Tuesday, the same day that Track 1’s are due, but they’ve had a 2 day head start.  In actuality, they aren’t awful.  I’m pretty much done with three of them.  1) Name 10 of your favorite movies that your would hope to write a screenplay like one day. 2) Read 5 short articles on www.wordplayer.com and review what you got out of them (these articles were awesome, btw, I highly recommend you check that website out).  3) Write a 3 page script about someone trying to get their dog outside, but with no dialogue. 4) Watch an assigned movie (Empire of the Sun) write down the character motivations and such like we talked about in class.  5) Read thru this GIANT ASS screenplay and write coverage for it.  It’s like 110 pages, normal length, but geez.  We already have like 2 other projects this weekend.  WELCOME TO FILM SCHOOL!  

He let us go really early, so I stayed on campus and busted almost 3 of them out.  I’m pretty pleased with my script about the person trying to get their dog outside.  I’ll tell you about it after I get my grade.  I enjoyed staying the school and working by myself, even though we get better internet in the effing parking lot.  Somehow, the film school doesn’t have a wireless router anywhere.  Ridiculous.  I brought a CAT5 and just plugged into a jack.  Always have to be nerdily prepared for these situations (Mac). As everyone came back in for Genres, two of the Asians, Ryan and Cindy, came into the class where I was and started a seemingly intense conversation in Mandarin. I for them to slow down because I couldn’t understand them.  They got the joke and thought it was funny.  They are extremely nice, and very funny.  

Genres was cool.  The BFA’s announced that they were having a party and wanted all the MFA’s to come, you know, to sort of close the gap.  The thing is, it started at 11:00 tonight.  To an undergrad, that’s pre-gaming.  But to a grad, that’s bed time.  Man, we’re so old.  Oh yeah, and we also have THIRTEEN HOURS OF CLASS A DAY, GUYS.  Sorry.  I would have gone… truthfully… no really… everyone in my class kept giving me that same look too.  WHAT? I’m not being sarcastic.  

We watched a movie called Thieves’ Highway.  It was WAYYYYYYYYYYYY better than the movie we watched on Tuesday.  It was by a French director named Jules Dessin.  It was quite well done for its time.  We all genuinely laughed had some good conversation sparked.  Our teacher let us go early early so we could go home to watch the Obama speech if we wanted to…. … … yep.

Otherwise, I’ve been writing this for a while now.  You a-holes kept me up past midnight.  I don’t have time to proofread, so sift through the mistakes.  Thanks again for all the support!  I really love writing this and getting feedback from everyone.  Let’s hope this hurricane in the gulf turns around.  We can’t afford that right now.  IT’S FRIDAY! THANKS GOD.  

Man, my hand it cramping.

Y’all behave.