Modern Craft is Done

That’s it. It’s done and I have done my best. I am officially calling a wrap on the post production for Modern Craft. I cannot believe it. At the beginning of the semester I knew I was in for the long run, but I had no idea how much of a toll creating a film can take on you. The funny thing is that this is only a short film, so I can’t even begin to imagine how grueling a feature must be. Over this week Modern Craft was color corrected and the end credits were appropriately tweaked. I added myself as a sound designer and Damien Capps added colorist to his pre-existing titles since he was incredibly helpful with getting the coloring right throughout the film. As of right now it seems that my crew and I have decided not to pursue this short as a feature simply because we want to move on to other things. If Devon decides to take it over and maybe go further with this story then I will consider handing it over to her or agreeing to turn it into a feature. This week she, Conner, and I will be looking at which festivals we want to submit to first. I cannot wait to start sending it out and seeing where it gets accepted.

Thankful for a Break

I don’t know if it was the moon or what, but holy crap this has been a long week. Not going to lie, not a lot got done with the film. After discussing a few things with my crew, I think we have all agreed we are happy with the story and the footage. We realize there are things we could have done better and differently, however we are all very happy with what we’ve got. On Wednesday I gave Damien Capps my hard drive with the project file on it. He’s going to help with color correcting since that has been the hardest aspect of editing for me. Some of the shots are just way off and have been a big pain to color correct, so I’m especially thankful for his assistance with this. I have also made the decision to add a credit for myself as a sound designer since mine has pretty much had nothing to do with me or the rest of the crew for weeks now. Fun times indeed. It doesn’t seem right giving someone full credit who only did half a job, therefore my name will be added for the final cut. The domain name for our website also changed over the week since I decided I no longer wanted to keep paying for the domain. Wix was confusing the crap out of me and doing weird charges, and it was not something I wanted to keep up with so I went ahead and canceled it. While Thanksgiving isn’t my favorite holiday by any means, I’m definitely thankful to be getting a break from my classes.

This year at Cucalorus

This year was my second time attending Cucalorus. I saw three narratives, a shorts block, and attended a virtual reality horror shorts block. On Thursday night I went with Devon to She’s Allergic to Cats. This was a very quirky film and the director himself was as well. He discussed the making of quite a bit during his Q & A, including how he kept actual rat poop in his cabinets while filming. Needless to say it was an odd evening, and unfortunately I didn’t particularly like the film. Friday morning Devon and I went to the Sea Monkey Animation Shorts, all of which were really good. Some of the shorts were serious while others were more light-hearted, so there was a nice balance. I’m also in an animation history class right now and noticed some different animation techniques during the block, which was pretty cool. After this block we headed over to the Leafy Sea Dragon Horror VR Shorts block. I was really excited about this as I had never seen a virtual reality film. However the set that I got did not have headphones, and unfortunately being able to hear everything going on around me took away from the experience. The two shorts were pretty cool though, as one had the viewer in a room with an infected person and people tried to break you out and escape from it. For the other film you were in a space ship that crashed and the entire mission goes wrong. If I had had headphones it definitely would have made a difference, so this was disappointing overall. Saturday evening I attended Always Shine which was about two friends traveling to a cabin for the weekend and things go dark. One friend becomes so consumed with jealousy she kills her other friend in blind rage and ends up trying to take her place only to realize in the end what she did. I did not know what to expect from this film, but it was actually really good and the buildup was incredible. Sunday afternoon Devon and I went to The Love Witch since “Modern Craft” is obviously about wiccans. One of the first lines in the film was “she’s into all that Wicca stuff” and it ended up being about a witch who goes too far with her spells and things. It is such a shame this film wasn’t playing next year because “Modern Craft” would have been a fantastic opener as a short before the feature. Last year at Cucalorus was so much fun, so this year had a lot of high expectations. Unfortunately I think a combination of me being tired and stressed took away from my overall experience, however I got to see some interesting films and just hang out with friends, which is always a fun time and escape from school related issues. Next year I am hoping to attend Cucalorus as a filmmaker with “Modern Craft”, so until then I will focus on that film and begin festival submission elsewhere until Cucalorus opens submissions for 2017.

The End is Near

I cannot believe the fine cut of our 495 is due on Monday. This semester has flown by and it really does seem like only yesterday we were all in class on the first day pitching our ideas. On Wednesday Modern Craft was finished visually. All of the clips are in place as well as the story. Literally all we have to do is go back and color correct a few things and sound mix. The film sounds totally different in and out of headphones, which has proven to be rather challenging when trying to get all of the levels right. On Monday Jordan and Damien were able to go out and get some b-roll footage of Danny, which has proven to be just what was needed to finish the film. They got some awesome shots of him meditating and walking around the park. Unfortunately we were unable to schedule Alysha as our schedules just could not agree on a time. I do however on another note feel that our Marketing and Distribution presentation went well. The suggestions from our classmates on our website were really helpful and I incorporated them into it as soon as possible. It isn’t perfect but it definitely looks much better than what it did. All of the color corrections for the film as well as the sound mixing will obviously be done by tomorrow evening and I could not be happier. Modern Craft has been a new experience for me since I had never directed before or put anything together from literally nothing. It has had many ups and downs, and while I have enjoyed every minute of it, I’m ready to be done with it and start our festival circuit.

Onto the Next

So we made it past the first rough cut and now it’s onto the second. The class reception overall seemed positive and some good suggestions were made. This week I was in the lab Tuesday and Wednesday night in order to make changes. I tweaked the storyline a bit and moved around some b-roll. Another thing I went ahead and added was our credits. It took me twenty minutes or so to find music to play over our credits, however I am not entirely sure whether or not I am 100% happy with the song. Jordan should be getting more b-roll this weekend of nature shots and perhaps even some beach shots, so I will be incredibly relieved once I have those to look over in the lab. As of this point in time, I am really not sure what else there is to do with the film except for filling everything in of course. The shots will have to be color corrected, but in reality that shouldn’t take too long. Modern Craft is incredibly close to being finished. This weekend my crew and I are focusing on our marketing and distribution project. We found the festivals and are now working on getting the presentation together.  Our Facebook has been up and running since the beginning of the semester and we had a very successful Indiegogo page. An actual website is in the works but we have not decided how exactly we want it to be laid out. I’m actually somewhat excited though to present everything in class on Monday and can’t wait to see everyone else’s websites.

Let me see you WORK work WORK work WORK work....only replace that with edit

In case the title throws you off I always imagine the song “Work” by Nicki Minaj when I’ve been in the editing lab for what feels like forever. Imagine that, the song that repeats work over and over again is named “Work”. How original. Anyway, it seemed appropriate this week since I’ve been working in the lab every night. Another thing that amazes me is the fact that I’ll literally be in there for hours yet I’ve only made about a minute’s worth of progress in the actual film. Yikes! All three of our interviews mesh together incredibly well. We are so fortunate that despite scheduling setbacks we were still able to book three subjects and all had information that coincided with the others. Getting stuff into the timeline hasn’t necessarily been the hard part though. Color correcting and trying to get various fonts to cooperate with Premiere Pro have been the biggest troublemakers. On Thursday the font downloaded correctly and I think our main title card is good to go. Now I just need to incorporate that into our lower thirds and the only thing that’ll be left text-wise is our credits. As of today Modern Craft is ten minutes without the ending credits and I think I am happy with that length. The story unfolds how I feel is appropriate and I feel as if I try to add any more it’s going to be too much information. It’s really coming together though and I can finally see the film from start to finish which is really reassuring considering a few weeks ago I was really concerned I wasn’t going to be able to pull off more than eight minutes.

So Much Footage

It’s a dark, cold room. Computers line tables with the under glow of brilliant white rope lights that are always on, even when the motion-sensor lights up above go out. Yep you guessed it: the editing lab. That’s where I have been all week. A lot of progress has been made on the timeline, including dailies to show in class, Alysha’s interview, and Lady Passion’s interview. On Monday we shot Alysha’s interview and her answers were incredible. Once I started editing it in the lab, I noticed a lot of similarities between her and Lady Passion’s answers. We also really wanted to get b-roll of Alysha’s tarot card collection and maybe even some sigils that she had in a notebook. But scheduling is continuing to be quite difficult with everything that’s going on this month. Another thing I have been having some slight difficulties with is color correcting in Premiere Pro. In our opening sequence of the film I have this awesome setup with a lot of Asheville b-roll, however the problem with some of our mountain shots is the fact that they are seriously overexposed. To try and correct this I have been attempting to mask half of the frame that contains the sky and trying to bring down that exposure. I can’t seem to figure out the masking feature though, however Damien has volunteered to come help me with this. Once I know how to mask certain parts of the frame, I know for a fact I’ll be able to really bring out all of the colors. We were in Asheville during a gorgeous weekend and I would hate for that to not show because I can’t figure out certain Premiere features. Our title font is also another thing I need to tweak but was having difficulties understanding how to import new fonts. When I was in Visions we imported fonts from online into Premiere, so I know it’s possible but that’s also something else I need to crack down on. I’m really excited though now that I’ve got footage put together onto the timeline. I can see Modern Craft coming together and once we film Danny’s interview tomorrow I’ll feel much more relieved since our most important filming will be behind us. We may go out again and get more Wilmington b-roll, but our interviews have given us a hard time and I know we’re all ready to have them done.