Vimeo and the Picture Lock

Our group has been using the video sharing website "Vimeo" to post rough cuts of our film using password protection so that each of us can view our project and also get feedback from other hand selected people.

David Quon has begun writing and recording music for the film and we should be on track to send off a good draft to the AAA on Thursday.

We have continued to shorten our film. Right now, it's less than fourteen and a half minutes long. I don't even remember the three minutes I've cut out. This is a good thing, as I've heard that if you can cut something and you don't miss it, then it's a good thing it is gone.

The End is Nigh...

As I'm sure all of you are about your own films, we're getting excited about ours. As you've seen in class, its coming together nicely. But, this weekend I did something that I'm not looking forward to doing again. Subtitles. It was only a 25 minute interview, but it took FOREVER!! Our friend Barney took great care in translating the interview. I took it and put it to the timeline, then he came and helped me sync everything up just right. It took 12+ hours just to get it on the timeline. I have no idea how long it took Barney to translate it, but he was our saviour. The interview with Maria is vital to our film. You should be seeing it in class today. It was a good experience though. Between that, collecting some B-roll footage, and Tin's stellar editing...I think we had a pretty productive weekend.

See you all in class!!

r

Another venue for us..

SCAAN
Anthropology in Action Film Festival
Saturday Evening May 23

Open to students, faculty, professionals and amateurs!

The event will take place at the home (garden) of Leanna Wolfe
in the hills overlooking Cal State LA.

If you have a film you would like to screen, please contact Leanna at LAWolfe@aol.com

Collaborative Editing

Thank you to the class for your constant input on the various stages of our film. I am indebted to your fresh perspectives as you have been able to share your opinions and reactions to our film.



This week is exciting as we will be meeting with our film music composer. Our film will be strongly enhanced by it's score.

I hope to get a really good version done by next week for our last chance to get class feedback before we have our public screening.

Coming Along...

The film is coming along. Tin has been confining himself to his house and spending countless hours in the editing of our film (interrupted by the occasional bike ride of course). It appears to be taking shape, though it hasn't been easy. As Tin so eloquently put it, "Its like putting together a massive puzzle without a picture for reference." I've been working in FCP as well in the spare time that I have to try and gather footage for Tin's editing endeavor. Its looking like we're going to have something by May 9th after all.

In the mean time, here are a couple video clips for your enjoyment, or not.

Hmmm...interesting weekend editing?

Jessica and I were in the lab on Saturday from 10:30-1pm trying to get work done on two separate projects that we are doing together. My purpose for being in the lab on Saturday was not to necessarily work on our Louis film, although I was going to help Jessica with some story development for it. My main purpose for being in the lab was to work on the after-school-documentary-filmmaking project we are finishing up for our thesis project. I was trying to create the DVD menu for our youth's films they worked on for the past 9 months. Unfortunately, nothing really progressed with our Louis film or our thesis project as Jessica's attention quickly turned to the issues I was having. Needless to say, we had some major technical errors including such words like "PAL", "not compatable", and "NTSC" when trying to import our kids' films. I spent 45 gracious minutes talking with Steven, and then about an 1 and a half talking with Andy from the 1.800 Apple number I called for technical support. We figured out the issue just as Tin was arriving for 20 minutes of work before Jessica closed VAL.

Steven has been kind enough to help me learn how to work with DVD Studio Pro. He also let me borrow the tutorial so I could do some more study on my own. It's a fantastic program and by all accounts, should be fairly easy (not to mention, enjoyable) to work with. I am very much looking forward to getting our Louis film to the stage where I will be designing a menu, DVD face design, and even some DVD packaging for the film.

There's a lot of work that goes into making a film from start to finish. I'm trying not to get overwhelmed with how technical things are, and how many small mistakes you can make that eventually turn into something catastrophic. Thoughts?

Visuals, and story, a Movie...Oh my!!!

Things have taken a turn for the better in the last week!!! Tin has been working on some great visual sections of the film, and in turn, these sections have given us some guidance as to where the film will be headed. We have decided on a character to focus on, and how her story will put laid down (for the most part). All of our interviews have been logged and topics broken down into 24 topic-based chapters. Now it is these chapters that we'll be working to connect to create the rest of our story. Also, we've decided on the musical tone of our film. This decision has also given us guidance on how the film will be put together. At this point, it appears that music will be a vital part of our film. The musical dichotomy we have in mind should leave for interesting contrasts and compliments to the visual aspects of our film. We're going to be writing a good portion of the music ourselves, but also getting some duty-free music from online, and a friend of Tin's is doing an interesting arrangement of a well known Beethoven piece for us.

We're going in light-speed right now in hope that we'll have something great to show in the next three weeks! At this point, we are optimistic.

where do pirates get their veggies? gaaARRRRdens.

Now that Cesar Chavez day has come and gone, we think we have the meat of our veggie film. This last weekend we conducted a post-Cesar Chavez day interview with Bella and she gave us more intimate information about her life that we might be able to incorporate into the film, we'll see in the editing room.

One interesting update is that because of the Cesar Chavez day celebration the OC Register took an interest in the garden and put an article in the Local Section last week. The article focused on why the garden is there and how beneficial it is to the community, sort of like what our film will be about. It was just nice to see good acts getting praise and recognition.

So, after reviewing the rough cut thoroughly in class and alone, we have a good idea as to what it needs to tie it all together. The film has a direction, but it might not be as evident as it can be, so by creating clear chapter type segments either by narration or text we will be able to showcase each topic covered better. We are also in the process of getting the final pieces that were missing, footage-wise. We are filming this weekend and hopefully that will be our final shoot and then can devote all remaining time to editing.

Experiments in Transcription

Things are cruising along, perhaps not at the pace or direction we would like, but they are non the less. Well, actually things are moving along in a direction that may prove to be fruitful. Over the break I began the full transcription of out interviews. Lets just say that it takes roughly 8 hours to get through one tape. Multiply that by 17...no dice. Tin thus invented our new method and direction for the moment. In going over our tape logs, he pulled out roughly 17 recurring themes within the footage. Now, as we watch our footage on Final Cut, we're pulling out clips that correspond to these themes and putting them on separate time-lines. Hopefully this will reveal something to us, but if anything it will give us a very clear idea of what we have. We have ideas for some new interviews that could be interesting, but we've decided to hold off until we know what have so that we'll be able to expand on it and perhaps make something awesome! And from seeing what I've seen of the other films, there is already some awesomeness going on!!

Till next time race fans!!

My Experience as Cinematographer for Louis Sheldon

Spring Break! Woohoo! Party! Oh, wait... nevermind...

Most colleges have a time period known as “Spring Break.” Usually this break corresponds to some sort of Judeo-Christian holiday like Passover or Easter. I’m not really sure of the exact history of Spring Breaks throughout time, but I’m pretty sure they tend to serve three purposes: 1) give people time to spend with their families during religious holidays (not this year though, Spring Break came a little too soon); 2) give students a chance to blow off steam (method to be determined by student, I’ve never been to Cabo San Lucas, but I can only imagine); and 3) give students a chance to catch up on school work! Our group chose the later.

On Saturday, March 28th, our group filmed our first big Jerome Park Garden Event, the Cesar Chavez 9th Annual day of service. This was the most crowded we’ve ever seen the garden. Not only did we film the interactions occurring the garden, but also conducted several interviews with new and returning participants. Some of these new participants included a city councilperson and a state assemblyperson, both of which gave excellent interviews providing an outside authority on the importance of projects like The Grain Project. Other highlights of the day include an orange tree planting by the children of Cesar Chavez, other planting projects, and arts and crafts activities for the kids.

In addition to this marathon day of shooting, we also spent our spring break finishing up our rough cut and submitting our American Anthropological Association application. To be honest, this was a little bit exciting. This is our group’s first submission, and hopefully not out last.