I think it's going to be a good year

We got all our shoots done this weekend. Apart from mine they were rainy and cold and uncomfortable, but there was a lot of laughing and fun just the same. So it leaves me very hopeful for how the remainder of the semester and year will go. I don't know if any of these first films will have turned out watchable at all. Possibly, but also possibly not as we're all learning the camera. We didn't get a whole lot of instruction on this camera in particular, more a 5 minute overview and here go shoot before we did our tests. So I'm sure we all had our share of mistakes as we got used to the gear. But you've got to get used to it somehow and this is a much more realistic way to do it.

Regardless of how these films turned out though I think what was most important was that we worked well together. And we did.

Now I must read read read...

Look at me I'm a flimmaker, literally

How you know you're in the right program: when you feel like you "get to" do something that is in fact a homework assignment.

Am I old or am I experienced?

You know we have been watching films this week. Yesterday was Frankenstein and I was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (both 1931 and pre-code). Tomorrow we're watching Angels with Dirty Faces (1938, so post-code) and then talking about all three. They were interesting/entertaining enough. It was a little difficult to watch Frankenstein mostly because I've recently seen the National Theater Live broadcasted stage version of Frankenstein which was based on the original source material and not on the movie and so wildly different. And so I watched the whole thing constantly comparing the two. But if you think about the three eras - when the book was written, when the film was made, and when the stage play was made - it is an interesting comparison. You learn a lot about people by what they find horrific. Mostly though I'm falling farther and farther behind in my reading for that class because it's just not as interesting to me as trying to prep for tomorrow's shoot, or trying to work my head around new story ideas for screenwriting.

Feeling good today

As long as I don't look at the reading list that keeps getting longer on my little post-it note I'm feeling pretty good at the moment.

We did sound in production class this morning and it was interesting to see what he covered. He did a lot more physics that I ever did. But he's also spending a lot more time on sound than I ever had the luxury of. And I liked testing myself to see if I remembered all the physics. (I did.)

Then in screenwriting we reviewed little 1 paragraph story ideas that we'd written. We had to turn in 3 of them last week (see below) and I had an awful time coming up with new ideas. Especially since I'd just used what I considered one of my better ideas for my silent film treatment for our first production project. I ended up reusing that idea, though when I turned it in I admitted that it wasn't new but hadn't been scripted before. I also stole Will and May from Grandpa's Getaways and tried to come up with something for while they were just young. The scripts we'll end up writing for this class are meant to be short so I was trying to think of one sort of interaction between them. And I didn't want to use the Grandpa storyline. That defeats the purpose of the class. Then the last one came from a brainstorming idea with a friend. (Thanks Theres.)

What we've been watching lately

I've been neglecting the blog in an attempt to stay a step ahead on my homework. Today is the first day that I don't feel behind since classes started. You tend to start out a little behind just because everyone wants the readings done on the day they're listed on the syllabus and everyone had reading listed on the first day of class. I still have stuff to do, but I finally don't feel like I'm playing catch up.

My treatment got approved for my first film for Production 1 so on our walk this afternoon I was taking pictures of park benches trying to pick which one to use. It would probably be more realistic if I used one of the metro stations near the Commons and then used a bench there for the in the park scenes. I'm trying to avoid dragging everyone downtown. And if I shoot it right only people who live in Boston will notice that I've cheated.

And for those following along on the "important movies" list, I've watched 6 more since the last time I updated.

We shot film today

Actual film. Moving film even, which I haven't done before. Though it's not so much different from the still film shooting that I used to do. So in fact we were shooting in pairs and I let Jason do most of the shooting because he needed the experience more than I did. But it was so much fun getting my hands on a film camera.

Physics is your friend

We did a lot of the physics of cameras and lenses this morning. I struggled with physics in high school, mostly because I took it too early, before I had the proper math background. But in Oswego I did a semester of the physics of light and a semester of the physics of sound. I think what I like best about physics is that sort of by definition what you learn there doesn't change. In the TV and radio and photography classes only about half of what we learned still applies. Composition and aesthetics and storytelling is still applicable, but cutting sound using a grease pencil and a razor blade is a useless skill. Developing film isn't that useful anymore either, though we are going to be shooting film this month. But we send it to the lab to get developed. What really hasn't changed, what really won't ever change, is how a lens works and how a sound wave travels and that sort of stuff. I was probably pretty annoyed back in the day that I was getting a liberal arts degree and so had to take all these classes outside my major in an effort to be well rounded. But really physics has proven to be the most useful class over the course of my career.

Why study film history at all

They weren't working in a vacuum and neither are we. I am on a path whether I want to be or not. It's hard to go forward without knowing where you're coming from. All of the visual language that we understand today without even knowing that we know it was either developed or exploited by the people who came before.

The classes I have the most and the least experience in

On Wednesdays I have 2 classes. In the morning Film Production 1 and in the afternoon Acting for Directors. In both classes it's just the 5 of us. (#6, a guy named Brian, bailed at the last minute so really just the 5 of us.) One would think the production class will be the one we bond most in because film production is what we're here for. I don't think that's going to be true though. I think Acting is where we'll end up becoming friends (or not, but I think yes).

For production we're starting out with actual film, which is very cool as I've not shot film before. Not moving film anyway. Though so far my still film background is helping in that we were discussing how it works physically: emulsion and the chemical reaction of silver halide to the sun and that sort of stuff. It all made sense to me from what I already knew. Have to write a treatment for our first project to turn in on Monday. I think I have an idea so I just need to write it up. Will try to get that done before the weekend. I don't mind leaving myself reading to do on the plane, but I'd rather not have the pressure of getting writing done while I'm otherwise stressed.

And then acting. I'm not sure what to say about acting. We did exercises. He talked a lot, but he's kind of funny so that's all right. At the end we did a sort of scene. That would have been more painful if there was any expectation on me to be a good actor. But there's not so the fact that I sucked was fine. 10 years ago that would have been the most anxiety producing class ever, but now it's just fun. He was very surprised when there was only the 5 of us there. We really are the smallest class they've ever had. But after he thought about it he was pleased because we'll be able to do more things with a smaller group because you don't have to wait so long for everyone to have a turn at whatever.

Tonight for my Masterworks class I'll be watching Birth of a Nation by D.W.Griffith (1915). I understand why it's important; it's one of the first films to do narrative storytelling in the way we now understand it for film. Or probably more accurate to say we understand narrative storytelling because of this film. I don't anticipate enjoying the story though. It is at it's core a white supremacist propaganda film.

First Day of Class

I had my first class today: American Masterworks. It's not all of American film history, because you couldn't really fit that in one semester. So it's 1894 to the 1970s and even that "narrowing down" will still be a survey rather than in depth. I didn't really feel old until he started talking about the films of the 80s being historical but still probably seen by most of the people in the room, and likely we've even all seen Jaws and Star Wars, yes??? He and I might have been the only ones to see it in the theater though. His goal is to pick films we might not have seen or wouldn't necessarily know why they're significant. [So apparently Linda's new tee shirt of the sand people guy doing the John Cusak pose would go over the heads of all my classmates.]

We have 32 movies on our must watch list, most of them I either haven't seen or haven't seen recently enough to remember well. But as this was a class that several people wanted to know what we were going to watch and what we're talking about I figure I'll take it week by week.

Going to Boston

When I was a kid in my last year of high school my sister got a job downtown and my school was also downtown. It was tough to park downtown for her for work but at school we had a parking lot so we started commuting together. The way the highways are we'd get about 2/3 of the way to school and work and there was a split in the highway that said Albany one way and Boston the other. Particularly on nice days we'd get to that point in the split and look at each other and say, "We should go to Boston. Just play hooky and mess around." We'd both smile and laugh and then continue on our way to school and work because we were good kids and we did what you were supposed to do. We never played hooky.