Bon Voyage!

Last week for class...

Arrived early for class with Bryan so we could make sure and catch Eric and get missing clips. Then I talked to Tommy for a while. Mariam was the only member of my group who was present and we did not talk about the movie. I checked with Donna to make sure I had completed all blog entries. Check.

Next week is the film festival. Should be interesting.

Love,
Jo Beth

This Is So Over

I just finished writing my film journal for our final project. It was basically a recap of this blog. How interesting? Last week in class we waited around for a while to have our captured film digitized-whatever that means. Now I'm just waiting for Austin to finish up on the editing so I can go to town with the sound. I'm really not sure what has to be done with sound. I know i'll have to take sound out of a few parts, but there's really only one or two sounds that need to be plugged in. Easy enough. I need to find those sounds, though. Boo. Not much else to share, really. I'm ready to have all of this done and over.

So, Next Week, Then?

Today marks the third week of attempted filming for group 5. Hooray? Let's take a walk down film making dilemma memory lane shall we?

1) Where's the camera?
2) Where's the camera?!
3) You have to be where on Monday? I have class then. How about yesterday at 2pm?...scheduling...
4) Charge that battery
5) Hmm. No tape? No Eric? No filming?
6) Let's schedule again

Aaand tomorrow marks day one of (successful?) filming. I think I've passed the point of frantic stress into the realm of apathetic filmmaking. I really don't care anymore. I don't feel like our setbacks have really been our fault. I blame it on poor syllabus scheduling, lack of respect from other teams, and poor communication from authority. This is really a terrible time for any of us to be running around town filming each other. I should be locked in a study room soaking up physics formulas.

Also, now that we're not having lecture anymore I'm wondering what the heck I'm supposed to be writing about. Our "film journals" are practically asking the same thing of us as these blogs. It's so redundant. I think I might just copy and paste from my blog.

I'm really looking forward to sitting in the Ethnography lab on the Monday and Tuesday of finals week. Can't wait! NOT.

Also, I've been promoted (thanks?) from sound techy to light operator and prop master.

And Then We Left...

Last week we signed a piece of paper that was posted on the door in order to account for our presence at the non-existant class. I signed. I was there. I'm not even sure if we're supposed to post for last week, so this oughtta be quick...

Group five gathered and got down to the nitty gritty with our filming junk. We were supposed to have gotten the camera that night, but AMAZINGLY we didn't get it until six days later. And it was without a tape. Which means... no filming until NEXT week. Two of the past three days I've had to reschedule because of the mix up. I'm so ready to not think about this dumb project anymore.

I wish we'd been able to start this project at the beginning of the semester rather than 5 weeks before it ends. I have finals to study for. I don't need to be creating sounds for something that has no effect on my future except for one A.

Don't Disect It

This year is wrapping up, friends. Class from here on out isn't really even class. It's let's-get-together-and-pretend-to-talk-about-our-film-while-we-really-stare-at-our-watches-until-it's-close-enough-to-time-that-we-can-sneak-out-without-being-wiley-college-kids. Three hours is waaaaaaaaaay to long to do anything, let alone talk about our movie we're eventually going to make. I guess if we were one of the first groups it would be beneficial. We would be able to use our class time and time already alotted to being together to start editing things. That'd be really nice. I'm dreading taking extra time out of my schedule, especially so close to finals, to make a silly movie.

We watched Adaptation this week. I'm completely undecided about it. At first, I thought,"Wow. This is pretty good. A close second to Singin' in the Rain." But, by the end of it I wasn't so sure. It was fairly entertaining at points. Others, I once again felt really uncomfortable and grossed out. Why, OH WHY, does there have to be nudity/raunchy sex/masturbation in everything we watch? It does nothing for the film. Blow Out, Adaptation, and The Player would have expressed the exact same thing had they not had any obscenity.

Nicholas Cage did a good job. An acting job nothing close to that in National Treasure, but certainly better than that awful skeleton motorcycle movie. EEW. What a terrible mistake that was, Nick. Meryl Streep was as good as ever. I bet she's honors material. She seems too smart for her britches. The toothless guy was pretty legit too, it seems like he always manages to make me laugh.

We always talk about the geniuses behind these movies that we watch. We talk about all of this deep stuff that the directors/screenwriters plan far in advance that have some deeper meaning. For example, this week Camille (not knocking you, Camille) suggested that Nicholas Cage's constant fantasizing/masturbating was as outward expression of not being able to fulfill anything inwardly. Sure, it makes sense. But what if he just did it because it's part of his daily routine? My point is, I don't think everything has some secret meaning. Sometimes it drives me absolutely nuts when we try to find a point or a reason or an explanation for everything. Can't we just relax, be brainless, and enjoy?

Looked at next Fall's honors junior seminar options....definitely NOT taking the film class that's being offered. I think I'll stick to organic things.

Sister of a Prodigy

Welllllllllllllllllll, I don't have a whole lot to tell that's new. This week was just another lecture class. A film/honors student came to class and showed us his film. He's been working on it for three semesters and finished two days ago. Maybe I'm just a rough and tough film critic, but I really wasn't very impressed. It was slow and so poorly lit that I couldn't tell what was going on. Maybe that was what he was going for? I admired the autobiographical efforts, but in my opinion....it just didn't quite cut it.

His results make me nervous... If he's been working on that for a year and a half, what the heck will I end up with after half of a semester? Call me a pessimist, but I think I'll just start hoping for a little better than the worst.

Last weekend I went home for the first time this semester. I talked with my brother, an elite member of Har-Ber High School's film program, about our projects. He started asking me all these questions about "plot point one" and character development and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. I just had to respond to him with a blank stare. He laughed condescendingly and proceeded to tell me how one of his films that he recently finished for the governor has been aired locally and entered in some sort of statewide competition. I can't lie, I'm impressed. Now if I could only get him to make my movie....

I also mentioned to him that my specific role was sound editing. At this, he turned up his nose and said, "Dang. That sucks. Sound is, no joke, the hardest part." My immediate response was, "Dang. That sucks. I shouldn't have been the nice guy and taken last pick." Oh, well.

We got in groups again and talked over our plans for our films. Here are my honest feelings in black and white about what we've got planned (sorry group, nothing against you). I don't like them. I think we've made everything much too complicated. I pictured a movie with very few cuts and very little sound-if any at all. I pictured a very dramatic, but boring movie with a bang at the end. I want simple, but powerful. That's not the way things are looking now. And it's killing me.

Conclusion: Movies are for watching, not making.

Entertain Me, Please

Last Thursday we watched The Player. It was... interesting. It's about a big wig in a movie production company, Griffin. He's potentially losing his job as the movie begins and we soon find out that he's being blackmailed by a rejected writer as well. There were a plethora of things that I found interesting and creative and well done in this movie, but overall I didn't care for it. And the redeeming qualities were:

1) The nine minute introductory scene- A long, sweeping scene without any cuts is one of the elements that I had entertained putting in the film that we are working on. It was enlightening to see a well made, and interesting example of such a thing. I loved the way the scene didn't focus on only a few characters. It showed so many different situations from so many different angles that I didn't even realize there had been no cuts. The overlapping sounds also affected my perception of this scene, which leads me to...

2) The director used some sort of new sound technology, an eight track something or other, that could lay sound on top of sound on top of sound. As a result, multiple lines of dialogue as well as sound effects could be distinguishably heard-with a little concentration-by the viewer. The sound made the movie realistic. I felt as if I were eavesdropping on people around me, all the while still emersed in the conversation at hand.

3) An affective use of symbolism- There are only three that I can think of off the top of my mind, but I kept seeing them over and over again throughout. The first was when our bad good guy drowned the writer in the puddle. Red neon light was cast onto the puddle from a sign above, making the situation a little creepier and more dramatically murderous. The second and third were the wardrobe choices for the man character and his love interest. As the movie progressed, the Griffin began wearing more and more black and taking less and less time to do his greasy, dissheveled hair. His lover, on the other hand, spent the entire film in all white and very little, if any, make-up. Griffin's wardrobe represented the progress of his "blackening heart" and her's represented natural purity.

4) Someone noted before the movie that there were very few big stars in this film. I'm not sure what the heck said person was talking about, because The Player seemed to be second to the Academy Awards as far as big star content was concerned. I saw Anjelica Huston, Burt Reynolds, John Cusack, Whoopi, Tommy Lee Jones, Gary Busey, CHER, Julia Roberts... and the list goes on. I've always loved movies that incorporate real life nouns, it makes things so much more interesting.

Things I didn't like? I didn't like the plot. I didn't like the raunchy sex scene. I didn't like not finding out who the blackmailer was. I didn't like that Griffin reproduced. I didn't like the pace of the movie. It was slow, and I was bored.

I'm ready to be entertained.