This post is going to be all over the place in terms of what it covers, and as such I could not think of a good name for it, so for the lack of a better name, here we go!
All things video and photo have consumed my life. I feel as though everything I do now has some time back to film-making or photo-making. I’m not complaining; I’m so happy that this stuff has become what I do in life, but at the same time, film-making is one of the most time consuming careers/hobbies, and with so many things going on or ideas bouncing around in my head, it’s hard to feel in control of it all or find the time to make it all happen. I’m still trying to figure it all out and find that balancing point and hopefully I’ll be able to put out a History Is…film for the competition since an actual monetary prize is up for grabs.
One thing that will ease up my workload is the fact that I finally finished my 365 Photo-A-Day project. It’s pretty amazing that I made it a full 365 days and didn’t miss a day. Some of the photos were crappy last minute ones but as a whole I am fairly proud of the results. It’s pretty incredible to look back on all the photos and be able to remember the day just based of that one photo. It’s a giant photo journal of one year of my life. That’s a pretty incredible feeling. And it ended with a bang! I couldn’t have imagined a better final 365 photoshoot. I went to Alki with Sean and Kayla. (Side note: I have been on an insane dubstep/chillstep/electronica/trance trip the last month; listening to the likes of Deadmau5, Nero, Skrillex, Kaskade, Blackmill, Bassnectar, etc etc. And if you look at some of the final images in my 365, you can definitely see that influence on the photos.) So Sean has a Deadmau5 head that lights up, and I wanted to get some crazy photos of it with Seattle in the background. The photos turned out incredible–if I can say that without sounding egotistical. It was great to be out there with two great friends on a perfectly beautiful night with the Seattle skyline floating above the waters. The music we had playing was perfect for the setting and it all just made me so thankful to live in a place like this. This whole thing was also an example of thinking up an idea and actually executing it. That one of my biggest flaws. I’ll have ideas but rarely take the necessary steps to get it done; especially cause I am so independent I’ll feel bad asking for help with something. But Kayla and I came up with the idea, and we called Sean to see if he would be down and he was. I was stoke they were both down for it and I couldn’t have done it without their help! Enough with the mushy sentiments though, if you would like to see the photos click here: flickr set
(Side Note #2: Dubstep/chillstep and so on is becoming one of my main sources of inspiration for videos. And now that I have the program Twixtor–which allows me to convert my videos to 1000fps for super slow motion–some pretty insane images mixed with songs by Nero or Blackmill are racing through my head. I can’t wait to start putting the ideas down on film!)
Drama.Drama.Drama. In drama class we are now working on scene work. The final showing of my monologue went okay. The TA said I was holding back and not committing enough or connecting/embodying my character whole-heartedly. I can understand the TA’s critiques and suggestions he gives to me and other students, but I’m no actor at all so it’s hard for me to figure out how to put the critiques into action. I’ll try to connect more with my character in my scene, but I’m more looking forward to watching how the TA works with the other students to get the best performance out of them–which is what interests me most being a future filmmaker. Being eternally sick has not help my own performance in drama class either.
My internship at NFFTY is going fantastic! That psynap5e films video tag I made a while back has been modified for use in all their videos with their logo. That feels pretty cool. We are also working on a commercial idea to promote the festival that I will be helping film and edit soon. In previous internships I didn’t feel very productive–one, because I was constantly fighting a very very very bad slow computer, and two, I wasn’t working the most interesting projects. But with this internship at NFFTY, each day I come in, I turn something around, whether it is a video, an animation, or an article for their blog. It feels great to have that kind of productivity and to be able to work on projects that are helping an amazing organization like NFFTY.
The final thing I want to babble on about in this post is a big take away I have had from my filming class with the graduate screen actors. In that class, Andrew, our professor, runs it like a tradition Hollywood set. We have most of the crucial roles like grips, gaffers, assistance camera ops, assistant directors, script supervisors, etc. I have helped with a couple video shoots outside of class where we didn’t have any of those roles–of which was most crucially a script supervisor. And it felt odd and like something was missing from set. All of the film projects I do now, I feel like they will need to have all of those roles filled. They are crucial to putting out quality work and to speeding up the efficiency of the shoot. Andrew’s process of how he runs a set and how he works with the actors is so polished that if I’m on a set that is not being run in a similar fashion, it feels odd and makes me want to take control and fix it all. This class has definitely helped me my way around a set, how a set should be run and it’s changed how I prep and plan for all my future video projects.
ericschofhauser 