Wednesday, May 23, 2018
No Film School - How to Diffuse Light
So there's a thing called No Film School that's basically a pretend film school. It's online, anyone with internet can find it. They have one article/video that tells casual filmmakers how to diffuse light without going over budget. And somehow, they managed to write 4 paragraphs about it, even though their solution was so blatantly simple you could've summed it up with 1 sentence. Professional reflectors are $15, or just use a sheet. That's literally the whole thing. I guess their name No Film School is pretty accurate.
Monday, May 14, 2018
Feature Film Premiere
Well, our video class made a feature film. It's about an hour long, and we've been working on it since December. I was the script supervisor, which means that I was in charge of reading over the script and checking for continuity and plot holes. Supposedly, it was my responsibility to change the script when necessary, and make sure the actors said the correct lines. Of course, that's kind of hard to do when everyone is telling you to shut up. I'm just doing my job. Although I spent a lot of the time doing other people's jobs too. I ended up being the boom operator, sound supervisor, stunt coordinator, set designer, I provided props, location scout, and more. Then of course, there were like 5 people who didn't do anything, and more still who did something the first day and never again. I tried my hardest to institute the right changes, but I kept getting shut down. The assistant directors had more influence than the director, even though one of them didn't do a damn thing for the whole project. The director agreed with me on most of my changes, but because the assistant directors, the UPM (who's job doesn't include the script), and the writers were so proud of their complete crap pile of a story, I was almost always shut down. The one thing that I did manage to change was the end monologue. It was dreadful, terrible, awkward, boring, and it didn't contribute to the story in the slightest. I finally convinced the goddess's of controlling everything to scrap it and get a new one written. Of course, I ended up doing that, with input from the director. As it turns out, that was one of the few good parts of the movie, and even that was tarnished by a rushed and unexplained ending. And of course, there were so many continuity errors and plot holes that I noted and told them about, but I was ignored. And then for editing, there were times when the music was so loud that it completely drowned out the sound of the scene. And in the first scene, the dialogue was just plain stupid. The camera work gave my mom motion sickness, and I've never seen her get that way before.
Then there was the blood. The blood was excessive to the point of unrealistic. There was a scene where a character get shot, and the main character runs over and grabs them, and holds them as they die. My mother is the most anti-blood/squeamish person I've ever met, and when she saw how much blood they had put on the main character's arms, she laughed out loud. That scared me. Not the blood, the fact that my mother was laughing at the unrealistically massive amount of blood they had coated his arms with. There wasn't a spot, fingertips to elbows, that wasn't gleaming bright red. My mother does not laugh at blood, injury, embarrassment, failure, or even funny internet fail videos. So that scared me a little bit.
And on to the props. I provided four airsoft guns that we would use in the movie. One was my brother's but he said it was fine. The first gun (my favorite) was broken after a robber spiked it into the ground in a scene. It made no sense, it looked awkward, and you could hear the impact as the gun's internal parts practically shattered. The outside wasn't much better, but at least it was mostly intact. But the sights were damaged, the grip came off, the safety broke, the magazine no longer feeds right, the hammer gets stuck, and the slide wobbles. So I was pissed. My teacher, being the lone angel in a field of demons, replaced it for me. But then it went downhill. In one scene, a bad guy picks up a gun (my brother's) and tries to shoot the main character. The gun jams, and he throws it down as the main character tackles him. At first, I thought the gun was fine. It was still intact, and it still fired. But when I took it home, my other brother glanced it with his foot, and the stock completely disconnected. I can't prove that it was broken on set, but I was still pissed, because I had to replace my brother's $60 gun. Then a third gun was broken during a bank robbery scene, where a henchman got hit and hurled the gun across the room. So three of the four guns I offered up were broken in my classmates's usual careless fashion.
As for the actual premiere night, I did not have a good time. I would've been satisfied with driving to the movie theater, watching the movie, and driving home. But no, we had to take a limo. Now, I understand why we had the limos, add to the red carpet experience and all that. But I just really didn't like it. It was hot and stuffy, and I had no room because there were thirty of us stuffed into each car. They played music, which I also didn't like, but I tolerated it because it's just music. I tried to see if I could get some sleep, but then the kid next to me started poking my lips every time I closed my eyes. Not a big deal, just a minor thing. The limo drove around town for a while, then we stopped at a restaurant right across the street from the theater. Other people said the food was good, but I didn't taste anything. It was like eating bread, there was just no taste. And I was eating burgers and buffalo wings. But it tasted like nothing. But whatever, that's the restaurant's problem. Then we got back in the limo, and just drove in circles for ten minutes before going right back to the street and walking out onto the red carpet. I hit my head as I got out. Then I was blinded by the flash from our volunteer paparazzi, and I almost missed the door of the theater. I watched our movie, and it was terrible, like I previously described. Then, when it was announced that there would be a horror/thriller short film shown between the movies, and my family got up to leave. I left with them because the limos weren't waiting to take us back to the school. So all in all it wasn't the worst night ever, but it certainly wasn't very good.
Because this is a project, I was supposed to learn something. But I thought long and hard, and I couldn't come up with anything. At least, nothing that isn't super depressing or anger-inducing. I worked really hard on this film, but it didn't matter. I already knew no one in that class liked me, but this experience was eye-opening in one way. It revealed that not only do none of them like me, it showed me that none of them give a damn about my opinion either. Yeah, I'm not angry anymore. Now I'm depressed. Because I wrote everything down. For weeks, I wrote down everything that happened during the shoots. Everything good, which honestly wasn't a lot, and everything bad. But nowhere did I really learn anything. And more noticeably, I didn't have a good time. I hated almost every second of it. If I could do anything differently, it would be to choose a different class. I don't have any final thoughts for my classmates that I can write here without getting in trouble, so I'm just going to end it here.
Then there was the blood. The blood was excessive to the point of unrealistic. There was a scene where a character get shot, and the main character runs over and grabs them, and holds them as they die. My mother is the most anti-blood/squeamish person I've ever met, and when she saw how much blood they had put on the main character's arms, she laughed out loud. That scared me. Not the blood, the fact that my mother was laughing at the unrealistically massive amount of blood they had coated his arms with. There wasn't a spot, fingertips to elbows, that wasn't gleaming bright red. My mother does not laugh at blood, injury, embarrassment, failure, or even funny internet fail videos. So that scared me a little bit.
And on to the props. I provided four airsoft guns that we would use in the movie. One was my brother's but he said it was fine. The first gun (my favorite) was broken after a robber spiked it into the ground in a scene. It made no sense, it looked awkward, and you could hear the impact as the gun's internal parts practically shattered. The outside wasn't much better, but at least it was mostly intact. But the sights were damaged, the grip came off, the safety broke, the magazine no longer feeds right, the hammer gets stuck, and the slide wobbles. So I was pissed. My teacher, being the lone angel in a field of demons, replaced it for me. But then it went downhill. In one scene, a bad guy picks up a gun (my brother's) and tries to shoot the main character. The gun jams, and he throws it down as the main character tackles him. At first, I thought the gun was fine. It was still intact, and it still fired. But when I took it home, my other brother glanced it with his foot, and the stock completely disconnected. I can't prove that it was broken on set, but I was still pissed, because I had to replace my brother's $60 gun. Then a third gun was broken during a bank robbery scene, where a henchman got hit and hurled the gun across the room. So three of the four guns I offered up were broken in my classmates's usual careless fashion.
As for the actual premiere night, I did not have a good time. I would've been satisfied with driving to the movie theater, watching the movie, and driving home. But no, we had to take a limo. Now, I understand why we had the limos, add to the red carpet experience and all that. But I just really didn't like it. It was hot and stuffy, and I had no room because there were thirty of us stuffed into each car. They played music, which I also didn't like, but I tolerated it because it's just music. I tried to see if I could get some sleep, but then the kid next to me started poking my lips every time I closed my eyes. Not a big deal, just a minor thing. The limo drove around town for a while, then we stopped at a restaurant right across the street from the theater. Other people said the food was good, but I didn't taste anything. It was like eating bread, there was just no taste. And I was eating burgers and buffalo wings. But it tasted like nothing. But whatever, that's the restaurant's problem. Then we got back in the limo, and just drove in circles for ten minutes before going right back to the street and walking out onto the red carpet. I hit my head as I got out. Then I was blinded by the flash from our volunteer paparazzi, and I almost missed the door of the theater. I watched our movie, and it was terrible, like I previously described. Then, when it was announced that there would be a horror/thriller short film shown between the movies, and my family got up to leave. I left with them because the limos weren't waiting to take us back to the school. So all in all it wasn't the worst night ever, but it certainly wasn't very good.
Because this is a project, I was supposed to learn something. But I thought long and hard, and I couldn't come up with anything. At least, nothing that isn't super depressing or anger-inducing. I worked really hard on this film, but it didn't matter. I already knew no one in that class liked me, but this experience was eye-opening in one way. It revealed that not only do none of them like me, it showed me that none of them give a damn about my opinion either. Yeah, I'm not angry anymore. Now I'm depressed. Because I wrote everything down. For weeks, I wrote down everything that happened during the shoots. Everything good, which honestly wasn't a lot, and everything bad. But nowhere did I really learn anything. And more noticeably, I didn't have a good time. I hated almost every second of it. If I could do anything differently, it would be to choose a different class. I don't have any final thoughts for my classmates that I can write here without getting in trouble, so I'm just going to end it here.
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