VISIONS 2014 Film Conference

At the 2014 UNCW VISIONS Film Festival and Conference, I attended the one hour Video Race screening and the first Film Block, as well as some of the discussion section afterward. This was the first official film conference I had ever been to, and I realized soon that it was something I intend to attend a lot more.

            The one hour Video Race screening was silly and fun; while the audio was turned up a bit too loud in the theater, causing the air and birds and hands near the on-board camera microphone sound to blast into the large room, there were several solidly creative interpretations for their parameters. They were all based on the Mad Lib writings they had made, and one noteworthy minute film that comes to my mind typing this here was the one in which the group members in the shot did not say anything; they rather acted out or did things according to the Mad Lib, without speaking, which was funny and interesting to watch.

            The First Film block was particularly great to attend. The notable films that stick out to me are “Win or Lose” and “Caught.” Win or Lose was about North Carolina’s vote for Amendment One, which would outlaw same-sex marriage in the state. A gay professional family photographer ended up becoming a huge part of the Vote Against movement, and he took hundreds or mayhaps even thousands of photos of people of every background and walk of life wearing a Vote Against shirt. In the Q&A afterward, we found out that the director from Elon, seated at the front of the theater, had over 200 hours (or was it 200 GB?) of footage from the filming of that documentary. Caught was a very funny and energetic look at how teachers and authority in school treat things like Pokemon cards, and that got a lot of laughter in the theater. The makers of that film were based out of NYU and not there, but the Q&A did provide the interesting experience of meeting the directors and producers and heads of these films we had just seen. Impressive animation and cinematography was also present in the films, and the documentary about the end of 35mm projection was particularly interesting, as I’m friends with the current Head Projectionist in Lumina theater.  VISIONS was a great experience, and I intend to go next school year as well, and perhaps even show something there.

Blog 11 - Wild Card position

For the Wild Card final project in this FST201 class, I have the role of Sound designer. So far, members of our group have met up to discuss the story idea itself, as we are going with a Narrative-Experimental hybrid. Troy drew out some storyboards in collaboration with Kendrick, and Michael and I have met up to write out the script, which we did two days ago Now.

As the Sound Designer, I plan to get more practice in with the recording of sound, using H4N's and other mixers, and getting used to the equipment, etc. Some in our group have mentioned the possibility of recording most of the dialogue audio with ADR, and that would be very interesting to try; it will be a learning experience if we do so, and doing so would further our future abilities in film making!

Because of the creative and experimental nature of our short film, recording sound will be a bit unconventional, with the "trippy" and dream-like story elements. I intend to do all of these things and get better with them.

Blog 10 - Editing the Soundscape 3B

Editing the Soundscape 3B was a great experience, and a different one as well; I was the main editor for Assignment 3 in my group, and at first we weren't entirely sure how it was we wanted to go about editing together all the many different sound clips at our disposal. I made sure to ask for creative input from Brandon and Adrienne, as well as Jacob, but I ended up editing and arranging most of it into its final composition.

The idea of different sounds theming together was reinforced for me, and as I edited further and we got momentum going along for the Soundscape, it became apparent that using fewer sounds was sometimes necessary to maintain the theme that we were creating. And so we created.

Blog 9 - Sound Recording

Working on the Sound 3A project, I was reminded of how much we can do with little resources. Jacob in our group had his own sound equipment, using an H4N and his own larger shotgun microphone, and he and I gathered with Adrienne and Brandon to record sound in the Edit Lab. We essentially had already thought of several sound ideas in the class before that toward the end of it, as well as on the Facebook group page we made for the project. Adrienne had compiled a list of all the requirements for the different types of sounds required, and she wrote down many of them under each category. We then proceeded to record several of them, like typing on a keyboard, laughter, wheels rolling, footsteps, spinning a coin, etc.

I was reminded of how amazing sound can be; of course, music can be an incredible artistic entity of its own, but through this assignment I was reminded of how sound can create visual poetry, the way we did; different sounds can tie into different themes together. I was also reminded of how great a sound recording session and library can go with little to o budget; many sounds can also resemble the sound something else would make, like a slamming fist on a table resembling a gunshot, a soda can opening resembling a flashlight/lightswitch turning on, etc. Especially when the editing process begins, the possibilities are even more open. Simply reversing piano pieces and a long, drawn out chord can make for ambient greatness.

Editing the Master Shot Project

Because of our shooting conditions, editing the Master Shot short film wasn't very difficult except for the sound. Our director decided on a story that would take place outside and in a street in a city, so we ended up filming our short film chained to the "Bran and Park script" by the Boardwalk in downtown Wilmington. On the specific day we filmed, there was a St. Patrick's Day parade going on, and it was windy. So we constantly stopped to let cars pass by, and the wind was constantly affecting the audio quality. Otherwise things went well, and during the edit we got a rough cut done as soon as just a few days after the filming. Because the rough cut was done so early, we were securely able to make our own tweaks to the pacing and trimming of the clips, and while synching the audio was one of the more time-consuming parts, it was handled in a good amount of time. After that we trimmed things around some more and were ready.

Preparing Pre-vis Materials

For my role in the preparation of pre-visualization materials, I was assigned by the designated director to draw the storyboard. I have a decent bit of drawing experience, but fitting the subjects I drew to match the proportions ascribed by the certain types of shots (such as Medium Long shots, Close-ups, etc.) was a bit tricky at first. I also realized that, in order to save some time and not have to constantly re-draw similar frames, I could just use one storyboard shot for 2 or more of the same shot, such as for shot-reverse-shot and over-the-shoulder scenarios. The other pre-vis materials, such as the Overhead list, the shot list and other things, were all somewhat dependent on the Storyboard, which itself is dependent in most cases on the shooting script. So it's better to have that finished soon.

Master Shot Sequence - ideas for my role

For the Master Shot sequence, we have all more or less collaborated on what the scene’s story will be like. The assigned director had the idea of our scene ending with us preparing for a robbery, as we put on ski masks and pull out weapons (which may either be guns or baseball bats, the latter of which I think is less cheesy for a short film) and walk into a store or bank. I’ve been assigned the role of Producer in this short film, and so I will help manage the availability of what we can film and when. I’ve also been assigned the role of drawing the storyboard shots, and those have been interesting to sketch out and really help with visualizing what will be happening. Much of what we do when setting up the camera will visually be referencing the storyboard, so it’s important and convenient to make one.