What makes a good book?

The answer to this question is different for everyone of course. I like that I'm doing a lot of reading this term. And I don't even mind that I like some books better than others; that's inevitable. Right now I'm reading A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood. Once I get it done I'll watch the movie. I'm hoping I like the movie better than the book, but I'm frankly not holding out a lot of hope. In fact if someone plopped this book down on my desk and said, "We'll hire you to adapt it." I would have no idea where to begin. I'm just over half way through and I have to make myself keep reading.

Not a new thought, but well said

I should be moved on to A Single Man by now for my Adaptations class, but I'm still lingering on Shawshank Redemption because a) I like that movie a lot, and b) there is so much good bonus material. I'm listening to the director's commentary and he's talking about a scene in the mess hall about half way through the film. There are a lot of people talking, but he didn't have a lot of time to shoot it. So rather than shoot each individual who speaks they did a long drifting take that slowly moves in to just the two main characters.

"I thought that was such an elegant solution. And not just a great concession to the amount of time I had to shoot it, but also just a more positive creative solution. Sometimes when you have to make those decisions under duress you wind up doing more elegant things than you would have otherwise if you had all the time in the world to shoot it. And I have Roger Deakins [the DP] to thank for that lesson. It was a wonderful learning experience working with him." -- Frank Darabont (writer/director)

When casually watching you won't even notice that shot. If anything you'll notice that it starts with a lot of people talking, but when it gets to the heart of the matter and it's really just the two of them you will only see the two of them and you see them up close to really get into their eyes and their hearts. But probably most of you won't even notice that, you'll just be caught up in the story. Even I didn't notice it until it was pointed out. But once he said it I thought, oh, that was beautiful.

When you're shooting a film you have to sit down and make decisions for every image that people are going to see. To be so elegant that nobody sees the effort you put into it is really the goal.

Sound design and Production design

So this afternoon I'm watching Barton Fink for my sound design class. I get why this was on the list for that class, but what I'm really noticing - besides the fact that's it's 4x3 instead of 16x9, probably because it's set in 1941, because certainly in the 90s people were shooting widescreen - is the production design. The sets, the props, the costumes are all perfect. Once you've got that environment it practically shoots itself. At least from a visual standpoint. I'm finding the story a bit slow, to be honest.

It's for school, honest

I dropped a bit of money today on "school supplies." A new hard drive for editing class, some new camera and sound cards just because you never have enough and I was in the right store, and a set of surround sound speakers. I'm taking a sound design class, I have to have decent speakers. Yes? Seriously, yes. But I still feel like I'm getting away with something.

Two thumbs up

We showed our first editing assignments in class tonight. The teacher really liked mine. And as he's a very accomplished editor that meant a lot to me. Sadly I can't post it here for you because it's entirely copyrighted stuff. So it's fine for a class assignment, but not for showing. We took the animated film Metropolis and cut it against any piece of music that we wanted. He thought it was subtle and funny. It didn't feel all that subtle to me, but I'm happy he thought so. Anyway if you want to see it let me know and I'll put it someplace you can download it.

A good week in spite of the tooth

I mean really, when I spent Sunday reading the Stephen King novella Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption and then last night reading the screenplay for Shawshank Redemption you can't call homework a hardship. Lately I've been full of ideas for Adaptations. Part of that is Debbie being good at asking the right questions to get me excited about the ideas I have. I was talking to her about Dupin vs Holmes and she thought I'd have fun adapting a detective story. She also didn't discount Holmes just because it's been done a lot lately. Though she also liked the hook that makes me interested in The Mystery of Marie Roget. Then I told her about the Cape story I'm considering. She said, "That sounds perfect for you, but you should write it as a short so that you can actually shoot it." Except I'd been thinking I should write it as a feature and it could be the first feature I shoot. Too many ideas, not enough time. No, that's not true, all the time in the world. I won't stop shooting movies when I graduate. 

The good and bad of this week

I feel like I was really productive this week. I just pawed through all my syllabuses and updated my to do list for the next 10 days and I'm not behind on anything yet. Though there is plenty of reading and watching in my future.

So, good things that happened:

Some days I feel like a poser

Maybe I shouldn't admit that in a public place. It might be that no one but the family is reading this now, but it is still public. I don't think it's entirely bad to admit though. I signed up for the screenwriting class because I knew it would force me to stretch and grow, so it's not that unexpected for me to admit that I'm slightly out of my depth.

Sound Design might be the winner

Had my 4th class today, Sound Design. I think this is going to be my favorite class for the semester. It's a technical class, so slightly more suited to my temperament than the writing class. It's project based so it will involve a lot of fun stuff like running around with a mic and recorder to create sound effects. And for homework we'll be watching (listening to) films like the Lord of the Rings, and Wall-E. I should go to Best Buy and get myself a decent pair of speakers.

I think this class will just be fun, but also I think there's a lot to learn. It's a long time since I took Fritz's radio 1 and radio 2 classes. The physics of microphones hasn't changed, but all the digital tools are new. I'm really looking forward to this one.

The down side of being pathologically organized

I had my first editing class tonight, so that's 3 of the 4 so far. I think it will be a good class. He's clearly a knowledgable and experienced editor. And I even think he has a plan. He certainly has a syllabus, and he's been doing this particular class for a while. But his approach, this evening anyway, felt very random. I doubt it was actually random. Maybe I'm too used to taking (and giving) software training classes. Even when I've had trainers who weren't very good - which was rare, but has happened - they were organized. I suppose it's the difference of teaching 3-5 straight days vs 13 weeks in a semester. In a 5 day class of mine that ends up being about 30 hours of instruction, and our semester it's 39 hours so it's not that big a difference. But because it stretches over months instead of a week I think it will end up being much more laid back. Or at least this instructor feels rather laid back. And slightly rambling. I'll just have to get used to it. Maybe I'll even end up liking it. Just right now it is so against the grain.

He's treating this as an advanced class because we've all taken production courses already where we were required to edit with Avid. But those were production courses so there was only just enough editing instruction to get us through getting our projects done. We all can manage a rough assembly and he really shouldn't need to be doing things like teaching us how to make in and out points. And he didn't, and nobody needed him to. Yet I would still just once like for someone to do things like walk me through the interface and make sure I know what things are called so that when I'm trying to look things up I'm using Avid terms rather than Final Cut or Premiere terms. I suppose it won't kill me to just sit down and go through every page of the text instead of using it as a reference as the instructor suggested.

Life as a TA

I have 2 classes today, but in neither am I a student. When I went to Ithaca College most everyone was there with an assistantship so we all had teachers we were assigned to as soon as we arrived. At BU unless you get the Comm 100 TA job you don't TA until 2nd year. Is that better or worse? Well financially it's worse. But here, because they wait until they know you and what you can do, you get jobs that are a good fit. At IC I was doing data entry for a professor's research. That's a common thing, but so much less fun than helping out production classes. 

Now I'm doing the grad production 1 class and the undergrad cinematography. The first will let me get to know the new first year MFA students. The second lets me work for John Hoover. I loved taking the class from him in the spring. I am certain to keep learning from him. And he has worked in New England for 30 years so he's very well connected. He is someone I want to impress. 

Films we talked about this term

I want to keep a running list of films that get mentioned in classes this term that I want to remember to see either right away or eventually. Check back periodically if you're curious. I'll keep adding to it.

And We're Back

First day of school today. I had 2 classes: Screen Adaptations, and Line Producing. You probably have a good idea what the first is, and only sort of an idea of what the second is. I think I'm going to like them both though, so I'll blather a bit about each.