Tuesday, January 22

The holiday Monday pushed back our Producing-Directing class to Tuesday this week and bumped Cinematography out of the schedule. The first shoots approach ever more rapidly it feels and Patrick cleared up a lot of our questions about location and casting in today’s lecture. With a few horror stories to illustrate his points, Patrick gave us a laundry list of what to think about while we hunt for the perfect location to film our booth scenes. Is there access to enough power outlets? Is there a secure space for the equipment to be stored? Are there clean bathrooms for the crew and cast? Do you have a backup location in case you run into problems (and you will)? A backup for the backup?
Peter Burns from the “big kids” (as the student senior to our class are sometimes referred) had prepared a guest lecture for the second half of class. He talked about the casting process and filled us in on some great secrets for how to get the most out of auditions. He talked about the reputation BDFI students have for being very respectful and appreciative of actors and wonderful to work with. He also elaborated on the roles each of us will play for each other during the casting process. There will be someone to be the Producer, another to tape the auditions for screen tests, another will usher the actors in and out of the audition room and help them to warm up for the audition, and another to greet them at the door and guide them to the audition room. I’m very much looking forward to casting and am certain that I will love working with whichever actors get the parts. I’m also looking forward to repeating the audition process (good practice) with my other classmates.

Wednesday, January 23

We began screenwriting class an hour early again this week. For the first hour, we discussed our Top Ten lists: our favorite films, the most important films. I kept a list of films to see based on what everyone was recommending and it filled an entire page by the end! I’ve got a lot of them all queued up in Netflix now!
My heart rate skyrocketed as I passed around the first draft of my script for everyone to read silently before I asked Joel, Margaux, and Nicholas to read it out loud. Happily, the tone seemed to flow nicely and there weren’t too many sentences that sounded out of character at this point. As we went around the table commenting on my script, one thing emerged. “The ending is a little trite,” said Joel. This was echoed by Fred, our teacher. I agreed but recognized that I will have a hard time parting from that original idea that I had. Maybe it is just a problem with how it is written? Maybe the story can stay the same and just the way it is written needs to change? I will mull over it during the weekend and find a better way to express my theme. I am determined!
We went on with reviewing other scripts: Shy’s, Valerie’s, Joel’s, Franco’s. There were some real gems in the ideas they had written into the page and of course, each of us have a different problem to work out for draft 2.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

I was so excited to see everyone’s first editing assignment. I hoped for a better-than-beginner-level of editing from everyone so that we could skip over the basics of how to operate Final Cut Pro and get right to the more interesting editing techniques, editing theory, and elaborate edits—the expressiveness of editing. I was not disappointed. Everyone seemed to a have a decent grasp on media management and a willingness to dive in and learn to cut up footage according to the principles of ballistics that we had been introduced to the week previous.
Interestingly, each of us already expressed a certain aesthetic and style. The challenge will be to develop perfect control over the edit suite so that what we create is not the product of what comes ‘naturally’ to us, our first instincts, but what we envision prior to any of the technology and tools that come into filmmaking.
Sharif is so entertaining. He just oozes his own personality and style. He is very humble too. And I get the sense that he is giving us nibbles of criticism and information so that we will digest well and won’t lose our confidence to try new things and really challenge ourselves in our edits. The work of my classmates also challenges me to “try harder” and really create things that I’m proud because of their technical level. That will be quite a few more editing assignments down the line, I’m sure.

Friday, January 25, 2008

Melissa started Improv Acting class by going around the table asking us what issues we were having with our respective scripts. She took notes of what problems we could use our class time and collective brainpower to work out. I was really excited to hear Melissa, “a real actress,” act out some of our scripts. I thought it would really help us get a sense of the possibilities our scripts held for our talent.
After working through Nikko’s script for tone and speakability, Melissa asked me what bothered me about mine. A read through and she was nodding her head agreeing. “I see what you mean,” she said. She had a few suggestions and then said, “I feel like you are happy with this and you don’t actually want to change it.” In a way she was right. I liked the way the characters were speaking and it felt genuine to me. However, Fred had made the excellent point that sometimes as a screenwriter you have to think seriously on altering something if multiple people raise it as a problem in your script. Many of my classmates had raised the same issue with my script. I thought hard about how to fix it.
Now, a few days later while I write this blog, I think I have come with a solution. I am rethinking my original ideas about the characters and I want them to be more quirky so that the words they say and the things they talk about feel authentic in their world, a world where I set the rules. Sharif talked a lot about this idea with regards to editing on Thursday but I see how it applies to filmmaking generally. The creators of the film make a universe with whatever rules they want. The only important thing about these rules is that once they are set, the film follows them.