Ghost Tours is done!!!

I think you all know this, but just to make it official, Ghost Tours is done. The thank you gifts for the donors have been sent, and I've started work on the festival submissions. I haven't made a post on the film's blog because I haven't actually gotten final sign off from the committee. But Charles liked it and the others are unlikely to overrule him.

Now one of my rewards is catching up on all my movie watching.

That's a wrap, now I can rest. HA HA HA HA

Since film school isn't officially over until the finished film gets approved and they hand me the piece of paper I guess I'll keep this going for a while longer. But in terms of what I need to be in Boston for I'm pretty much done. I'm still working on Aaron's film, Move Immovable which shoots June 16-20, but that's because I can not because I have to. In terms of degree requirements I have finished all of my classes and I have directed my film. I'm done. Weird.

Waiting for the last shoot day to start

I'd go over now, but it's too early. No one would be there, including the person with the key. It's going to be a long day, I should be conserving my energy. We're likely to go 12 hours today because the rains earlier in the week wrecked the schedule and we're still trying to catch up. It has gone fast. I can't believe this is the last night. I keep thinking of things we should try to squeeze in. And also I've been closing browser tabs that I've had open for months that have been keeping track of things I no longer need to keep track of. Lists of extras, and stuff like that. It's strange. Tomorrow is going to be a day for tidying up: returning the rented lenses, returning all the school gear to FPS, returning the keys for the brownstone, returning Dan to the bus station in the afternoon. Tomorrow night I think I'm going to be at a total loss. Standing in my empty room thinking "Now what?" At least there's Aaron's film to turn my attention to. That's coming along quite nicely. We'll definitely be ready for that.

I love my team

I say that to them a lot. Whenever things click: beautiful lighting and a smooth camera move landing on just the right performance and it's all working and I can feel it, my response is always "I love you guys." I really mean it and I almost wonder if I'm saying it too often. I don't want it to lose its power. I don't want them to think that's just the thing I say. I really mean it.

This project has a certain importance for me personally, but also I like this story, I believe in this story. I believe in the message that the world is an amazing place, but if you're not paying attention you'll miss it. So to have everyone come together to help me tell that story, to really bring their A game to it, which they all have (the tech crew gave themselves a call time 2 hours earlier than mine and 5 hours earlier than they were originally slated for just so that they could play with some untested gear and be sure they could figure out all the lighting for the 4 days of night shoots that we're about to start), just makes my heart get all warm and fuzzy.

Sometimes you have to let go...

...and I'm a control freak and can find that very difficult. I have a good team for this film. They are all doing stuff. But not all of it is happening quite as quickly as I'd have wished. And the things that are getting done I still don't see in front of me. So I have to just show up on set and trust that everybody will have brought along everything that they were responsible for. To be honest, it's making me twitchy. They're a good team; it will all be fine. But it's the first time I've done a film and didn't have to pretty much do everything myself. It's very strange.

I am officially done

I just emailed in my final exam for lighting and my term paper about the Bond films for British Cinema. I need to go to one last class for Production 3 that I am a TA for this Wednesday, but it's not like I have any responsibilities other than showing up. Though there is some stuff I need to do for the Prod 3 final screening. But that's all TA stuff, which is to say, work. My student stuff is finished. All that's left is making the films. And there's plenty to do for that, but that's always been what I do for fun.

Two and a half weeks until we start shooting. There is plenty to do. Have to go to the SAG office today to start that paperwork. And tonight we're having a table read of Aaron's script. Wednesday we're having a table read/rehearsal of my script. There's a couple last locations to confirm. I fear we're going to end up using my apartment just because it's easy, but it's always so loud here.

And I need a boat load of extras. The tours, students in her class, people at the bar, people listening to the violinist on the street corner. I'm going to need extras almost every day. Sigh. I did myself no favors with that.

Ah well, onward. I might be done, but I'm never really done.

Esther's Front Step and a new Tim

I have had a very productive day. I met with two guys to be our new Tim because Adam had to back out. I liked them both. It would have been a much harder decision, but one of them had a conflict for one of the nights and the other was available for all 4. Done.

I also did a bunch of location scouting. I met with the guy from BU who is going to get us Esther's Front Step. He showed me half a dozen places. Two weren't right. Any of the other 4 could have worked, but I had a definite favorite and when I showed the picture to Scully she liked it a lot. So yea! I also took some pictures of the classroom and hallway while I was out. I'll get some pictures of the professor's office on Tuesday. Then the only things left to find are Sarah's apartment/study and the bar.

Dolly and Jib tests

Has everyone heard by now my news about Killer getting picked up by WMHT for their program TvFILM? Very exciting.

Busy Busy

I've been trying to think about what I've been up to in the past week that has kept me from thinky thoughts for the blog. Here's a bullet list.

Camera Tests

Scully and I went out with the camera that we'd like to use for Ghost Tours and ran some tests. In the daylight part of the video we had a 24mm lens on. I was wanting to see what it would look like if we attempted to stay on the building's path and off the public sidewalk. If we're not blocking the sidewalk the city won't care about us.

Then in the night time shots we switched to a 50mm lens. We had to jack the ISO to 3200 (which is tons, we're wanting to really shoot at about 800) and open up to f/2.0. One would expect that to be tough to keep in focus, and also grainy as hell. Actually, I'm quite happy with how it looks. If this is what we can get with just the existing light then once we bring in some lights of our own, and also find out what the color temperature is with that weird mix of light, it's going to look very cool.

Take Out and Ghost Tours both at SENE

Last year Killer played at the South East New England (SENE) Music Film and Art Festival. That's where it won the jury prize for best short short. When they were doing their call for submissions for this year I entered Take Out. Seemed like the best odds for getting Take Out a screening. And that worked. I think I've said it here already that we got in and are screening on Sunday April 27.

But I noticed when I was putting together the paperwork for it that they were also running a screen play competition this year, so I entered Ghost Tours in that. Got an email last night that there are 5 finalists in the short screenplay competition and Ghost Tours is one of them. They'll announce the winner at the awards ceremony on Saturday the 26th. So I guess I should go to the awards thing this time as I've got two things in competition and last time I didn't go at all and Killer actually won something.

Sarah's University

Ok, I need a fake name for Sarah's University. Help me brainstorm a list and then I'll pick my favorites and make a poll. If your fake school wins you get the satisfaction of seeing a bunch of extras in Sarah's classes wearing your school's gear, and after the shoot you can have one of the shirts that we make.

The location at night

I went back to the location from the last post because I wanted to do some sound tests checking for noise from the nearby highway. While I was there I shot a couple of night photos just to see what the existing light is.

Location Scouting

I'll put something more formal on the official film blog, but I have a bunch of photos and thoughts and figured this audience would want the raw materials.

I don't know about this whole social media thing

I just realized I haven't updated the blog in a while. Then I realized it's because I updated the other blog, and facebook, and now twitter, and a new facebook page just for the film, and and and. I feel like I'm constantly shouting out to the world. Aaron is coaching me on the whole social media thing. He's very patient and didn't laugh at me when I had questions like what's the difference between # @ and RT in twitter. Frankly I don't understand the point of twitter. But generating buzz is how projects get done and distributed these days. Not just getting money to make a film, but getting people to want to see it after it's made.

There are kids these days who will graduate from COM whose first jobs will have titles like "Social Media Manager". It's all a bit cyclical, isn't it? Because that generation is on all the time they're catering to themselves. Hey, if they can get people to pay them for it, more power to them. But I just think there's so much noise in the system these days. I'm shouting into the world from every platform I can find. Everyone else is similarly shouting and it all just becomes meaningless. Or rather, the work it takes to find meaningful communication is more than I want to put into it.

But I did make my fundraising video for Ghost Tours, so that was a big deal for the week.

Endless auditions

Sometimes the process feels like it takes forever, but it's worth it because then when you find the right people it feels fantastic. This afternoon we auditioned someone for Bates for Aaron's movie that we both liked a lot. There are still a couple of other people to meet, but it was so nice to finally meet someone who really could work.

For me, I've got the first set of callbacks tonight. Here's my problem, the guy for tonight, who I've worked with before and really like, has been sick all week. We've exchanged some emails to see if he could just skip, or come in but be less prepared than he wanted. Now we're at maybe one of the Sunday guys will swap with him. But that's short notice for them. If it works that's the best solution, if it doesn't I'm not sure how tonight will play out.

It's turning into a big pain in the ass, but I think it's worth it. There's not much that people get for working on student films. If you want to work with good people it helps if you're easy to work with. Sometimes, often, you can't be accommodating. So when you can, you should. People notice and appreciate that kind of thing.

Putting together a team

I've had great teams when I was doing films in DC, but we all had day jobs. So while I think we did fantastic work, it was a hobby, especially for everyone else. Now I'm pretty much building a team from scratch. No one from previous Heron Media films is likely to work on Ghost Tours. But they're all in film school so this is their job, so to speak.

Job Hunting = Making Connections

We had auditions last night in a room right next to where my Thursday night editing class was last term. We kept the door propped open when we didn't have someone in just to make us easier to find for when they arrived. In the room were 3 people in their last semester of school: and undergrad senior, Aaron, a young grad student, and me, a not so young grad student. At one point we all looked at each other and had the realization that we all needed to be job hunting starting right now. Fortunately we're not really qualified for the same jobs so it's much easier to be supportive rather than competitive with each other.

Pet Peeves

Actors who send head shots and resumes with filenames like DSC_9481.jpg, and Actingresume.pdf.

That's great, so when I've got a folder full of 50 head shots and resumes I will have no idea who you are. And if you don't care I'm not sure why I should.

Actually the first round of auditions aren't going so badly.

Wow, it's only week 2

Making a film could be a full time job. You can laugh at that statement if you want, after all the possibility of it being a full time job is why everyone has come to school for it. However, I have 3 classes this term and all I want to do is work on my film. I'm half tempted to double my thesis credits just so I can drop one of my classes except that I like all three of them. What all three have in common is that they are taught by professors who LOVE the thing they do.