Tuesday, February 24, 2009

The High School Environment


At this point, we are trying to focus our story more. We have chosen 4 students to follow and schedule our shoot dates around. We are hoping that at least 2 of these students will lead our documentary. This feels extremely risky to us, because if for whatever reason, a lead student decides they no longer want to participate as heavily then our documentary could suffer.

After our feedback from out trailer, it looks like we still have a lot of work to do.  We are going to focus more on story development and pay more attention to cinematography. There was also concern about the choice of music for our trailer. But as a group, we decided we wanted out trailer to have a light-hearted feeling with uplifting music. Should more dramatic scenes or stories arise then of course that feeling will be portrayed as well. There was also concern about the fact that the environmental part of this school is not portrayed well in the trailer. Our story is not just based on the fact that this school is an environmental high school. We have also agreed that we want to focus on the theme of community, and the impact that this small high school community has had on its students. Our goal is not to expose these students as not being as environmentally friendly as they should be. Each student has a story, and attending Environmental Charter High School is just part of it. 

Production Schedule:
Thursday -- Student/Faculty basketball game
Friday -- Pep rally and school dance
Saturday -- In-home interview with a student's foster mother 

Issues: The issues we are currently facing is being able to attend shoots as a group, streamlining the system of watching footage and capturing as well, and story development. 

Shell Guy: Redefining

As the semester begins to define itself and as we define our plans for production, our team is also redefining our roles. After some discussion, we realized that this film is not solely directed by one person, but jointly directed by all three of us. As the original director, I felt like I was playing a unique role because I was supposed to be "directing" but I did not form the initial story idea and I had the least experience film making. It made it really hard to "direct" when I didn't know what to do! So I relied a lot on my team members for help. As our filming has progressed, we realized that we were all directing different aspects of the film. It has become a very joint project and for this reason we have decided to all be co-directors and I will be the producer.

I am okay with this change, as is the rest of our team and our professor. The one thing I realized I did want different, was more experience. As "director" or now "producer" I did not get a lot of the hands on experience. I've been setting up shoots, making contacts and doing interviews, but I wanted to get my fingers wet with cinematography and editing. After some discussion with my film team, I hope to get a little more experience in these areas. I don't want to take over either role, but I do want to learn what they do to share in the knowledge and the experience, since school is for learning. (That's at least the reason I took this class :) )

It's difficult once roles are defined to change and redefine, but I think that is a life lesson. We can plan for one thing, but for whatever reason, often it doesn't turn out as planned. We have to be flexible and sometimes ask: is there anything we can do to make this better? When we realize there is, we have to readjust and redefine.

For the future - we will be filming this weekend with Louis. We are still working out the details, but we may do a dive and at the very least ask some good interview questions and get some good content for our film.
On a completely different note - I watched a beautiful sunset yesterday at the beach. When I was standing there, I noticed all these little shells around me. If nothing else, working with Louis has opened my eyes to the whole wide world of micro shells and has given me a greater appreciation for all the beauty of the beach :)

Monday, February 23, 2009

Insane in the MemGRAIN

I spent some quality time with the camera this week, we filmed together as we strolled the busy streets of Santa Ana...we admired the architecture of the town....witnessed schoolchildren playing in front of beautiful murals..memories were formed that will be shown to you all in due time. In all seriousness though, our group got some long overdue filming done this week/weekend. We have begun to envision what will tell a story through images....We imagine a sort of stark contrast between the levels of the community and showcasing the fast paced lifestyle omnipresent in all of those levels. To really exemplify the feel of Santa Ana we will show disjunctive urban society and then show how community comes together doing community type things, and then ultimately community happening on a personal level (or shall we say GRASSROOTS level?).
We were able to conduct a few interviews this week and the information we attained from our informants will be very useful for our finalized film. We were able to interview two volunteers from KidWorks (a non profit organization also from Santa Ana focused on helping the children of the community), we also interviewed Nick Spain again. Our teaser critique mentioned a few flaws about the interview we used of his, hopefully this one will be better. We also interviewed some of the local children and got them doing children-y things. We also interviewed Dalilah, the sole proprietor of The Road Less Traveled, a sustainable conservation based store in Santa Ana. Dalilah also happens to be one of the three founding members of the Grain Project and has a great outlook on the Santa Ana community as a progressive entity. Her interview probably went the best out of all of them, we had conditions we could actually manipulate so the lighting, sound, and background were under our control.
All in all I think we are coming along and acquiring as much footage as we can and with more time available for editing we will be able to string all our pieces together and hopefully give you all a better picture of what exactly is going on in Santa Ana and the Grain Project and hopefully you will be as impressed as we are with the whole movement.

Keepin' on keepin' on.

As of this week, nothing new to report.  My esteemed colleague was out of town since Wednesday, and since we prefer to work on most matters of the film together, we haven't really done much in the last week.  I received the suggestions regarding our film form Prof. Schindler, and have been putting some thought into what he said.  He mentioned that we should try to stylize all of our shots to create more continuity.  The shots that were stylized were the ones that we used unnatural lighting on.  We'll have to get creative with our locations and setups if we're to stylize every shot from here on out.  And of course, we still don't know where this film is going.  Perhaps we'll figure this out sooner than later.  Until next week...Happy Shooting!!

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Making Sense of the ECHS film

While filming at ECHS for the last few weeks we’ve been able to meet so many cool young people who have interests in fashion design, break dancing and even producing hip hop music. It’s been a great experience so far getting to know the students each time we visit the campus. With so many students to pick from I’m learning from the other film teams that we’ll need to narrow down who we will focus on in the film.
Right now it seems like the focus and potential story line is going in all sorts of directions. We’ve shot a few of the sports games and interviewed several students and a few teachers. We were even able to interview parents who have sent three of their five children to ECHS.
After watching our teaser with my classmates and hearing their feedback and comments I realize that we’ll need to really explore and develop the environmental angle a bit more. It’s there. We just need to start digging and asking questions that will spark ideas for where to go from here. As we spend more time at the campus and talk more with students, teachers and parents about their impressions of what’s happening there, I’m confident the story will begin to unfold and the feel of the film will start to emerge and become clearer for all of us.

"Do you want to know the #1 reason women get breast impants?"

Things are moving along in our attempt at documenting the "Beautification" of Western humans.  So far we've logged about half of our tapes, 8 of 16.  And, we've created a simple, rough, teaser for class today.  In going through our footage together, we find that there are moments in our interviews of absolute brilliance and revelation into our topic.  Things that make us look at each other and say, "WOW, that is powerful".  Its these instances that help us to push forward in the hope that we'll create a good film.  
We've noticed that the playback decks don't communicate well with our version of Final Cut.  It works, but the deck doesn't always follow orders.  This may be due to our settings, but it may not.  We're continuing to work on the issue.  
Last weekend Tin had the opportunity of capturing some amazing footage of a liposuction and fat transfer surgery!!  Our contact, Dr. J, has been nice enough to invite us into his clinic repeatedly to get an inside look and what goes on there.  He was able to get a pre-op interview with a patient, and tape her surgery as well.  I must say, its some amazing footage.  The visuals are enough to get you, but the fact that Dr. J is talking about "Beautification" the whole time he's working is even better!  He even gives a play-by-play of what it is he's doing.  
Even though things are starting to come together, we still have a long way to go.   Stay tuned folks!!!


Go, go Grain Project!

We, as a group, are quite pleased to have officially completed our first extended, sit-down interview with a member of the Grain Project. We realized upon finally viewing our existing footage that it was mostly action based, which is great, but not ideal for telling a story. To remedy this we were able to contact Nick Spain of the Grain Project and have him sit down for an interview Thursday afternoon.

Overall the interview went very, very well. Nikki and I felt like we really didn't have to prompt him, or explain to him what we were looking for. Sometimes we'd ask him one question and he'd lead right into the next question on our list, without us even asking it! This isn't too surprising, as we had already discussed a lot of our subjects on prior field days without cameras. One particularly funny/heartfelt moment came when we were talking about why kids come to the garden to help and work. Nick went into details about how despite all the other options kids these days have for their free time (ipod wizardry, for example), they still come to the garden to help out.
Also, in a side note, about sound, the afternoon in a park is not the ideal time to conduct an interview, sound-wise. Too many soccer games and handball courts. People do not listen to you when you ask them (nicely) to stop playing handball.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Louis Sheldon Film

I apologize that I don't have any images to show you from my time with Louis our shell collector this Saturday.  Louis and his family were gracious enough to have Jessica and I in their home again to get thorough coverage of Louis' shell collection, Louis' enthusiasm behind a microscope searching for microshells amongst rubble (not rocks),

 

his shell research books, etc.  I even captured some intimate moments with Louis having conversations with his bi-valves, 
Drawing illustrating typical bivalve symmetry, where one valve mirrors the other
his two year-old niece, and showing his excitement as he received his bank statement in order to buy more shells...I think he was making a joke.  Lucky for us, Louis also said he thinks our film has been a good process for him to think about why he collects, researches, and devotes so much time to shell collecting.  

I am hoping to go with Louis as he visits his favorite local shell shop, Ferguson's Shells which also happens to be the shell shop highlighted by Hewell Howser in  2005 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dufQiX74WQ4) and owned by a shell club member,  on a dive for shells accompanied by his father, and back up to the Natural History Museum for better club member interactions and cutaways.
  
Welcome to the Natural History Museum

Which reminds me, Rachel and I went to Louis' shell club meeting last Sunday - despite horrific sound issues that I think were resolved, I was so glad to see Louis in a setting discussing his adventures in shell collecting and research while getting some hard-earned recognition.  It added yet another perspective, and admittedly for me, a legitimizing perspective on Louis' passion for shells.  

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Interview With Greenpires By Zuba Z. Boites


A couple of weeks ago "Team Green" finally got out of the starting blocks and began to shoot some footage. B.M and I have been busy at ECHS interviewing staff members and students. Many of the people we have been interviewing seem to agree that ECHS is more then a academic institution, it's also a community. Many students at ECHS build lasting relationships with their teachers and rely on them for emotional support, and everybody knows each other.

Shamms, a bright energetic 11th grade student, pictured above, who started at Lawndale High as a 9th grader describes her reason for transferring to ECHS. "Lawndale was not the best experience, I was a number not a student." She chose ECHS because of the class size, student teacher ratio. She found out the teachers are "friendly and funny."

Although content for the movie is coming in droves we have limited space to conduct interviews. I have encountered problems with keeping the backgrounds interesting. It would be nice to conduct an interview outdoors on campus, but there is too much noise. In the future we are hoping to gain access into some of the homes of the students and some action shoots to eliminate the talking head syndrome we have been experiencing.

As of now we have conducted one interview outside of campus with a former student who is currently attending UCR. This shoot was fun, but loaded with all kinds of trouble with lighting.
We had a difficult time adjusting artificial lighting to remove shadow play on the walls. In the end I think we adjusted our lights well enough to remove the shadows, at least I hope. Our next shoot is scheduled for this coming Thursday, we will be shooting a basketball game this. We'll see how that goes, until then I am out.

Roadblocks.

Roadblocks seem to be the theme of our project. We keep trying to get great footage and set up opportunities to film, but little things keep getting in the way. Not having a tripod… not having a tripod plate…scheduling conflicts with the grain project... not having tapes… rain... technical difficulties in uploading our footage, and thus not being able to see and/or edit said footage.... I know I sound like a terrible whiner, but I'm not trying to, just putting it all out there. The good thing is we’ve made the best of it so far. Mike’s certainly had the opportunity to work on a lot of hand-holding with the camera (back in November/December especially). We've built crazy report (with each other and with our informants). This past weekend of filming was particularly frustrating at first because of the inclement weather, but we were able to rally and collect some good footage. Our scheduled morning interviews have been once again delayed (no lights or rain-free location in which to shoot), but were at least able to film in the afternoon once things cleared up.

The important thing is that we, as a group, are still optimistic about the prospects for our film and the need for our film. I think our focus for the next few weeks needs to be controlling our shoots and having a plan B. We can't afford to waste any more time.

Shooting and Logging

Well, at this point, we're shooting and logging. Logging and shooting. Its become difficult to do this as our conflicting schedules make it hard to work on anything for a significant amount of time. We're slowly chipping away at our 14+ hours of footage. And as of this point, we still have no idea where this film is going. Not in any direction that interests us anyway. We're really hoping that a savior of an idea lies somewhere in our footage, and that we find it soon. Its difficult retelling a story that has been told countless times already. More to come in future installments!

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Shell Guy: Production and Teasing

Technical issues we have had: the tripod does not like to lock in place when the legs are widely extended and the camera does not like to zoom in very far. This has been a problem when we want to white balance. 




Fun we have had: Over the break we did a full day of filming at a La Jolla beach on the lowest tide day of the year. It was great being in one of the many environments where Louis does his shell collecting. Today, we went to his house and filmed him sorting through previously collected shells. We were also able to interview his parents.





What the immediate future holds: I have begun to log all our footage, about 3 hours so far, and have done a first draft of a paper edit for our teaser. I will continue to do this today in between Super Bowl commercials and before The Office starts. My goal is to have our teaser completed by Thursday, so that Donia and her husband, David, have the weekend to record some music to accompany it. I hope you enjoy some photos we have taken during production.

-Jessica Steaffens