Our final class cut is ready!

Today we will be presenting our final cut for the fall semester class. Our group has been working very hard to get the film to this point. As an editor, I am very proud of some of the things we accomplished in this film. The format of our film is very free, that is, a first time viewer will not be able to expect what is coming next. The simulated aesthetic of flipping channels works well with this format and adds a sense of fun to what otherwise could be a dry topic. Hugh also shot some additional B-Roll these last couple of weeks. Some of the shots were quite impressive and worked well with the interviews.

I also worked on some music for the film. I am no musician, but I tend to know what sounds and instruments I like. With the help of software and some doodling around on a keyboard, I was able to compose a few tracks to accompany the film and improve the pacing. This was not too difficult since each track was only about 30 seconds to a minute long.

In the end, there may still be a few problems with this cut. For example, there are some children's faces in the foreground of our B-Roll that we didn't get permission from. We didn't think about this until Kebba brought it up. After class Monday, we will go back to edit around that as much as we can. We are not too worried about this, though.

I am excited to see how the other cuts have been coming along, too!

Preparing Image Lock and Sound / Fall Semester coming to a close

As the semester comes to a close, we are making more and more progress with the post production of the film. We are starting to overlay B-Roll and clean up our interviews more and more. Balancing all the elements of the film is still pretty difficult, but we are getting better and better at it. I think we are getting to the point where we are tired of watching the same thing over and over, but hopefully first-time audiences, especially at the student screenings, will be surprised and impressed by not only the content but the quality of our film. As we plan on extending the project in the spring, we believe the cut we have will make it easy to simply intercut the new interviews with the existing footage.

Overall, I am very proud of my team. We faced our fare share of disappointments and hardships but we stuck to our roles and responsibilities and pushed through to make a film we will be proud of.

Cucalorus Response

Who would have guessed that my first time at Cucalorus would be as a filmmaker in the festival? I'm not going to lie, saying that I was a filmmaker when picking up my badge felt pretty dang cool.

While at the festival, I got to see all sorts of different films. The first film I saw was a thriller about an Uber driver titled Fare. This entire film took place inside a car, yet it still technically impressive. The writing was also super, as I was kept on the edge of me seat as the film progressed.

On Friday, I had the pleasure of seeing my own film, "Bygone Barns" right before the screening of the feature-length documentary, Farmer/Veteran. It was an absolute honor to be paired with that film, as it was an honest look at the life of a war veteran with PTSD. Our films were also only filmed about 20 minutes apart, which made it even more special! 

The Q&A for "Bygone Barns" went much better than I thought it would. To start, our moderator was incredible. I could tell that she not only watched, but studied our film before hand. She asked very good questions about style, form, and the creative process. The audience was also interested in the methods in which we shot and edited. While discussing a film all about aesthetics, it was great to see an older audience so invested!

At the festival, I received tons of postcards like we talked about in class. These were effective in raising awareness. I will certainly hand out post cards for any of my future films. 

Other stand outs from the week include Hunter/Gatherer, Generation Startup, and From the River to the Ocean. Overall, I had a great time seeing films that I wouldn't have seen anywhere else. I also had a great time with my crew and fellow Visions staff members. If my first Cucalorus experience is a fair  representation of future film festivals to come, then its safe to say that I am very excited!

Progress on the "Circles" fine cut

This past week of post production has been focused on "mixing the lumps" of our film as Carson mentioned in class a couple of weeks ago. In order to blend our pieces more effectively, our crew has decided to go for a TV/VHS aesthetic for our narrative scenes. In order to transition between the narrative and documentary sections, the film simulates either a pause, play, or channel switch. It is difficult to describe in words, but I believe it will surprise our classmates and will be considered creative and visually interesting. This style of transition also breaks the 4th wall in a way, which I think is pretty cool and different.

Our next steps for the film include tightening up the interviews and adding B-Roll, Lower Thirds, and end credits.

Distribution Project

The last couple of weeks we have focused on our distribution project. We are very satisfied with what we have! We have found a variety of festival, each with certain niches that we think our film can fit. My main part of the project was editing a trailer for our film. At a mere 35 seconds, our group is pleased with it, and so am I! The trailer cuts swiftly from the narrative and documentary parts while accompanied by a funky, playful beat. Honestly, editing this trailer helped Mariah and I visualize what the final film will be like. Not only was this trailer helpful for potential viewers, it was helpful for us!

Looking forward, our group is now focusing on post-production. We may shoot some additional b-roll, but for the most part, at least with our main nuggets, principal photography is done. We are very excited to see how it turns out!

Teenage Interview and Editing the Rough Cut

This weekend, our film crew FINALLY got to film our teenage interview. The subjects were not our first choice, but they were still everything we could have hoped for and more.

Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the shoot because of a huge commitment I made many months ago to take a group of high school kids to Carolina Point, a Young Life Camp in Brevard, NC. I was not able to get out of this commitment. Thankfully, our crew recruited Alex Matthews to do sound for the shoot.

Upon returning to town Sunday night, I met with our group to sync interview dailies and edit our 1st rough cut of Circles. Right now, our rough cut consists of the pieces we've filmed so far. As the editor, my main question going forward is deciding how we are going to combine our 6 separate segments into one coherant piece, especially because they are all so different stylistically. Right now, it seems strange because we have our Narrative scenes wrapped, but still a fair amount of work to do on interviews. Once our interviews are finished, I believe the stylistic consistency of our film will be enhanced.

This Tuesday evening, we will be filming our grandma interview. We are really excited to shoot this, because we believe this will have a lot in common with the teenage and mom interviews. This time, however, the answers will come from a wiser source.

Narrative Scenes Wrapped

And thats a wrap on all of our narrative scenes! This weekend we shot our grandma cooking scene and now we can focus solely on the documentary aspects of our film. The shoot was very fun and we got to do some things that we've never done before as filmmakers. For example, our crew doubled as extras within the scene itself, since it takes place behind the scenes of a cooking show. The actresses were also outstanding and very fun to shoot with.

We were also supposed to shoot our teenage interview Sunday, but once again Antonia fell through. Now we're at the point where we are just going to move on and find some other subjects. Thankfully we already have some more girls lined up in Raleigh. We are supposed to shoot that interview next Friday.

From a sound standpoint, we are really satisfied with all of the audio so far, which is great because this film is my first time being an on-set sound mixer. My past experience comes from being a post-production sound designer.

From an editing standpoint, the puzzle pieces are coming in place. It will be interesting to see how our 6+ pieces come together as one coherent film. This is something that might be aided by animated transitions, an original score, or some narration.

Fall Break, Edits, & Re-Shoots

Our group did not have any shoots scheduled over Fall break, so thankfully the hurricane did not mess us up logistically. Over break, we narrowed down our mom documentary footage and polished our mom telephone scene.

Shooting and editing that scene was challenging as well as entertaining. This was my first time dealing with lip-syncing, keyframe animations, and multi-track recording to this extent. Some of the actresses really struggled with dubbing their lines, but all of them were eventually able to get through it without too much frustration. Most of the mistakes were followed by laughing at them self. The entire shoot was very lighthearted and the spirit of disappointment was never present.

Storyboarding the frame animations throughout the scene was very helpful. Our hope was that the animations would not only be fun, but that they'd also have a purpose of highlighting the tensions of friend circles in a visible way.

This past weekend we re-shot our teenage narrative scene. Unfortunately the actresses didn't seem as excited as the first shoot, but they still pulled of their performances well. After a camera change and re-storyboarding, our visuals look much better, which will make the performances look even better. We had less extras this time, but that shouldn't make a big difference.

This upcoming week I will be editing the re-shoot of the teenage scene and preparing the sound logistics of our upcoming shoots.

Productivity at its Finest

I'm writing this blog within hours of our shoot today, so my thoughts may be scattered. In one weekend, we as a film crew successfully did the following:

• Meet with our grandma actors
• Photoshoot for our film poster
• Launch our Indiegogo campaign
• Interview our mothers
• Shoot our narrative mother scene

When shot our film poster. The concept for the poster was to shoot the grandma actors in the same setting as our high school scene to go along with our, "High School Never Ends" subtitle. This was a fun time and was a fun way to spend time with our grandma actors.

In the early afternoon we interviewed our mother subjects. The verbal content that was spoken was incredible! The answers and discussion they provided was more than we could have ever wished for. This will surely be a challenge to cut down.

Artistically and Conceptually, our mom scene was a challenge. Because we were dealing with 4 separate continuous takes all in frame at the same time - we had to get our audio synced first. This means that we mic'd up all our actors, recorded the dialogue first, and then shot the scenes while the actors lip-synced their lines. This process was very time-consuming when it was time for the actors to lip-sync, but we hope the aesthetic and style of the scene will all be worth it!

Now we have shot half of our material! (not including the teenage scene reshoots). Now we are exhausted, but hey, fall break could not have come at a better time.

1st Day of Production - Went well!

Yesterday we filmed our first narrative scene for Circles. When we arrived on set to set up, there was the surprising presence of blaring rap music from the amphitheater. This was a total surprise and had us all scared as a crew. We had no idea this would be happening! Thankfully, the event with the loud music ended at 3, which was right in time for us to start filming.

My first official day as a sound-mixer on set went really well in my opinion. Techniques that I've learned within the past month are already starting to make a difference. Instead of holding the boom myself, I was able to place it on a C-Stand and get it extremely close to the actors. Due to an impromptu alumni party close to our location, the background noise made us have to use a lavalier mic unexpectedly.  Thankfully, I was able to place it under her jacket and hide the wire successfully for good, clean audio!

I was also able to edit a rough cut of the scene, which we will show in class Monday.

Overall, it was a great first day of shooting! Now time to get started with the documentary elements.

Something about the Subjects

After shooting some b-roll in the early morning, our crew met with one of our interview subjects and two of teenage actors in the afternoon. All I can say is "wow!" these girls seem really excited about the project, and I can tell that they want to do a good job. I already knew these teenage girls through the youth ministry I lead called Young Life, but of course I don't know them well because our girl leaders work with them the most.

Antonia, our interview subject, has plenty of experience with female shaming, both on the offensive and defensive. She said she can find two friends by Wednesday to be interviewed with her, and she also volunteered her room as a filming location.

Our actresses are even more impressive. At only 15 years old, Mackenzie and Mary Catherine are more mature than some college freshman. I could tell they took performing seriously, but they also had plenty of fun rehearsing the roles. They also have very good chemistry, which should make the morale on set even better.

Our 3rd actress Amy is also good friends with the other 2 actresses. Originally she had to back out because her mom wanted her to 'focus on school,' but we think that we could convince her moom after we tell her it will only take a few hours on a saturday afternoon.

Over all, we are very encouraged by our actors and subjects involved in Circles! We hope we feel the same when we meet the middle-aged and elderly participants.

"Bye Week"

Even though we didn't have class this week, the pre-production for Circles has continued to move along! We are currently writing the screenplays for the dramatizations with the help of Michael N. Moore (No Relation). We got the 1st draft of the first scene from him, and we have already given him feedback on it. Michael is now writing the revisions for scene 1 as well as the first drafts of scene 2 and 3.

We are also getting closer to locking down all our actors and interviewees! All of the teenage actors are locked, and one teenage interviewee is locked. The interviewee is very popular, so we aren't too concerned with her bring along her friends.

The next step is finding locations. We have good ideas about where we want to shoot, but nothing is confirmed as of yet.

We are also one step closer to our tentative calendar! We have all sent our availability to Kebba, and she is now in the process of putting that together.

Overall, it was a very productive week. It is exciting to see our film become closer to production!

Interviewable Expert and their questions - Antonia

Interviewable Expert and Interview Questions

Name: Antonia

Bio:  Antonia Saladino is a Senior at Ashley High School in Wilmington, NC. She is a cheerleader and desired by most of the young men in the school. During her time at Ashley, she has been the center of a lot of drama. Some of this drama has involved boys, but most of it has been girl-focused. While Antonia is often viewed as the starter of drama, she has been on the receiving end more than her fair share of times. Antonia's circle of friends has changed through the years, but she is always able to count on her best friend, Allie.

Questions:

1. What comes to mind when you hear the word, 'Drama'
2. Describe a time when you have been involved in drama?
3. Why do you think friends talk behind each others' backs
4. Describe a time someone talked behind your back.
5. When was a time that you have talked behind someone's back?
6. In your opinion, what makes a true friend?
7. How can you tell if someone is a true friend?
8. Who are some of your true friends?
9. Describe a time when they proved to you that they were a true friend?
10. Who do you hope considers you a 'true friend'?

Documentary Research: Catty Women

Documentary Research: Catty Women

To kick off my research, I first wanted to look at mere public opinion. This led me to finding a Yahoo Answers page entitled, "Why are women so catty?" The forum was filled with a variety of answers from men and women, but the overwhelming majority had to do with jealousy.

One respondent said, "Some women are so insecure that a woman with a better figure or who is younger or prettier or even just a nicer person will make them so mean and jealous, because they feel selfish and angry and that big green eyed monster jealousy!" She also added, "If they will talk to you about someone else, then they will probably talk about you too. 

A woman commenter also said, "I think for some reason we feel in competition with each other. Whether its for men, jobs, or on some kind of self image/body image issue we are quick to tear apart another woman to feel better about ourselves."

This idea of a "competition" gives an opportunity for creative presentation in our documentary. One inspiration of mine is the use of animal sound effects in Mean Girls (2004). The roar of a lion or the screech of a monkey effectively dramatized the tension between girls in the film. The sounds also gave the conflicts a primal feeling, which is exactly what our documentary is going for. We are trying to show how female catiness transcends generations, implying that women have been like this forever in their social circles.

One way that I've assisted in the production of the film is helping seek out talent and subjects. As a leader in a youth ministry called Young Life, I come into contact with a lot of high school students. There are currently 3 young girls I know at New Hanover that act, so they could possibly be our female actors playing high schoolers. I have sent one of our female leaders to ask them if they'd be interested, and if they are we will get their contact info to our producer, Rebecca.

I also know of a clique of girls at Ashley High School that constantly have drama between them. If we could land a couple of those girls for our expert interviews, then that would be great. I have sent another female leader to inquire with them.

Sources:

• askyahoo post: https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=1006040418543
• My friends and fellow Young Life Leaders: Karen Myers and Hannah Smedley 

Week 1 Class Blog

Walking into the classroom of my senior capstone class was an odd feeling. One one hand, there was a lot of excitement. "This is it," I was thinking, "my college career is coming to close." But at the same time, there was some uneasiness in my heart. I knew that the class would be a lot of work combined with a great deal of team coordination. Working on a team is not a foreign idea to me, but this semester I have more on my plate than ever before. On one hand, I am under the pressure to finish strong as a college student. On the other hand, I am just starting some other big things in my life. I am now the marketing director for Visions film festival, which is huge. I have also been promoted to team leader on my Young Life team at New Hanover, which is another big responsibility. Last, but definitely not least, I was recently hired as a Media Intern at Christ Community Church. These new responsibilities combined with finishing my old ones made me realize that I would not have the mental or creative capacity to direct my own film this semester. Thankfully, I was assigned with only being the sound guy! 

Don't get me wrong, this is no easy way out, but I am looking forward to contributing to an idea in any way that I can, while also letting the leaders lead, themselves. I am especially comfortable with this because the leaders on my crew are very strong; Mariah as director and Kebba as producer, respectively. I am very excited about Mariah's idea. I think it will be a playful and entertaining look at something that has been a foundation in western civilization for so long. That 'something' is how women so easily go behind their friends' backs.

I was intrigued by the other ideas in class, as well. Whether it be the space animation, the credit card film, or witches, our classes' films should very greatly in style, tone, and affect. This should be a fun and exciting semester.