This semester has been amazing! I have never enjoyed being in school so much! Everyday when I walk through the beautiful gardens I think how lucky I am to be going to BDFI. I have learned so much this semester and I still have so much further to go, I can’t wait.

I finished my first project a couple of weeks ago and I am just finishing up the editing. I had so much fun with it. At first I was stressed that I couldn’t get it done the way I envisioned it and I was having difficulty with people’s schedules and I wasn’t sure if I could really pull it off. Then I realized that even if my idea failed I would still learn from it and it was supposed to be fun. I wanted to make sure everyone on my set had a good time and felt valued and that was what was most important. Everyone on my shoot said they had so much fun and we all worked really well together. I couldn’t have been happier because that’s exactly what I wanted.

I am in the script development and casting process of my 2nd project now. For some reason I am having a harder time with this project and I know it’s going to be a challenge until the end. I am having a harder time writing for the characters than I did with my last one. The idea is solid in my head and on script, but getting inside the characters heads and writing for them has been more difficult than I anticipated. The other thing that is harder for me is my location is outdoors in a park. This offers up many more obstacles than shooting indoor. The first is lighting, outdoors you cannot control the lighting other than with bounce cards and screens. Sound is another big issue since I am shooting in a park and most parks have a lot of noise and people. There are many more challenges to outdoor that I’m not even going to go into, the list goes on. At the same time I am very excited about this next one. I am auditioning Thursday and I’ve gotten a lot of responses now I will just see if I can juggle their schedules so I can try to audition as many of them as I can. I must say casting is probably my least favorite part of the process. I feel like I’m buying horses and checking their teeth and hooves. I don’t like having to judge people. I don’t know maybe I’ll get used to it. I do like it when you got an awesome performance and you know you’ve found the best person for the role and you can move to the next step.

Last week I was part of a script reading focus group with our screenwriting teacher Fred. I learned so much from reading the script. It was a beautiful script and it was written in a way where the writer did the work of the director, editor and the actors and he did it in very few words. Any director reading that script would know exactly how to shoot that scene and exactly what it looks like. The editor would know just where to cut by the way he would parallel visuals to make the perfect transition of scenes. He did the work of the actors in the way he wrote the character and the action lines to where the reader could see the performance and how the characters would react emotionally. It made me realize how much more there is to screenwriting. I am going to try to adopt some of those techniques as I go and strive to get to that level.

One of the things I love most about BDFI is the students and instructors. Our school is made up of such talented and genuinely nice people I feel so lucky to have met and worked with. All of the students are so nice and will help you whenever they can. Whether it’s in the editing suites or on your shoot people are down to help. Our instructors are awesome and really fun. I have learned so much from each and I look forward to what’s in store for next semester.

This week I will be shooting my first project! I am very excited and I hope I can get it all done in time. Last week I finished casting and my actors are great! I really lucked out and got two amazing actors that are exactly what I was looking for. This next week is going to be a lot of rushing around and getting everything ready for rehearsals, location, costumes and all the other little details. We are also going to be pitching our ideas for our next project this week, so we are jumping right into the next one before we are finished shooting. It’s good that they keep us busy, I know it will make me better at multi- tasking and organizing my time.

Last week was amazing we had two guest speakers. First we had Debbie Brubaker, who was awesome. She is one of the most prolific women producers in the bay area and she had a lot of great advice and wonderful stories to share. It made me realize how much producers have to be responsible for, it’s so much work! It really gave me a lot of respect for her and the work she does to learn how much she has to know and go through to see a project through until completion. Then we also had Randy Quaid and his wife come to our school with their movie project they have been working on with a few of our Senior students. It was a very experimental film and was unlike anything I had ever seen before. It was interesting to see people’s different styles of filmmaking and learn about their process.

We are already in week four of our first semester. The time is flying by! We have been working on getting our first project together. All of our instructors have been preparing us for location scouting, casting calls and auditions, lighting, cameras, editing and screenwriting. It’s going to get crazy here pretty soon, but every moment I’m learning and having fun with it.

In the past two weeks we have been working on our ballistics editing project. This project is so much fun! We take scenes from a movie of our choice then splice it together with a song and create our own music video. We have to keep the music video in line with the same style of editing used by Walter Murch and many other great editors. It is a style of editing that has a unique pacing that keeps in time with the story. I describe it as continuity within continuity ( even though there is way more to it than that.)

This week I am focused mostly on casting, auditions and securing my location. I am also going to be fine tuning my script as much as possible so it is golden when my actors read for their audition. I am looking forward to what the actors will bring to this project and what improv. they can add to it. My project has so much freedom with improv. that I think if the actor is into it they could really have fun with that role. My other big thing this week is securing my crew for this shoot. It’s crazy because everything is up in the air as far as location, actors, schedules and equipment it makes it hard to secure a crew when you don’t have everything concrete. I guess nothing is ever concrete, you just work with what you got.

We started our first week at Berkeley Digital Film Institute and it was a blast! Every class is so much fun and it just keeps getting better. The instructors are so experienced in the filmmaking industry that you really feel like you are getting the best advice and guidance for your projects and for the big world of directing. Every instructor has their own style of teaching, so it’s really interesting to be a part of and to learn from each person in a different way.

I’m so glad to be at the BDFI, every morning I wake up so excited for class and come home and can’t stop talking about how awesome my day was. Just being in the building makes me happy because I know this is where I am supposed to be. The instructors and people that work there are all so nice they feel like old friends. When I first discovered BDFI I already had it in my head that I couldn’t afford it, but wanted to see the school anyway. Once I saw the resources and the equipment that the students are given and the experience the instructors have, I realized I couldn’t afford not to go. It is actually an incredibly good deal!

Last week we started by dissecting scenes from movies and looking at positive and negative space, head room and framing. I have taken some Film production and Film studies classes before, but it was nice to hear it from the true professionals. Everyone has a different way of explaining the same thing. At BDFI they really try to tell you in a clear and simple way even if it’s something complicated it makes it much easier to grasp than some of the other classes I’ve taken. We went over the basics of the cameras we are using and filmed our classmates for practice. There is definitely a lot I have to learn about all the settings, but it gets easier every time I mess with it.

I pitched my idea on Wednesday and again today and I was very happy with the response I got. I am really excited about this project and I know my next biggest challenge is finding great actors for it. This project is really going to depend on the performance and the writing or it will fall flat on its face ( which I am not about to let happen.) My script is finished I just need to format it in the proper Hollywood style. I think the script is pretty solid so my next real challenge is the casting. It’s going to be intense auditioning and doing that whole process, but I am really looking forward to it.

We ended last week with our Improv. class which was so much fun! Our teacher Melissa is hilarious and brings great energy to the class. We learned to let go of our fear and inner censorship buttons. At first I was nervous and totally choked on the spot, then I let go and just had fun with it. Once you don’t care what people think of you, you can truly express yourself and be impulsive. I thought it was a good way to end the week doing playful improv. exercises, just letting go and getting crazy. I know this week is going to be even more fun as we get into our projects and start diving in.