Wade's Film Log

It's pitch day at the CMPA and Why Did I Miss My Alarm!?!?  My alarm is set for 7:15 AM every morning, since I have to be in lass by 9:00 AM and I want enough time to wake up, shower, have breakfast, and walk to class. I don't remember the last time I full slept through an alarm, and why did it have to be today?? and why did I have to wake up at 8:31 AM??? I put on the first pair of pants and a jacket, grabbed my bag, a granola bar, and began the 20 minute walk. I spot my usual bus approaching, but then the God Damn cross signal wasn't up so I had to fucking stand there across the street watching my bus speed past and solidify my walk to class. Out of sheer will and determination I made it to the film school to which Chris capturing my uneasy appearance.  I kept having to explain that "I was asleep 30 minutes ago" to all the people who asked if I was okay. Anyways there I am sitting in class physically waking up and mentally preparing. My pitch was admittedly pret...

Hello and welcome to the newest chapter of this blog: The F2 (documentaries)! After a semester of narrative and building our technical foundation, it was time to put it to the test, while also still building up our skills. The purpose of documentaries at FSU Film is to:      1. Explore and acquire the skills to an adjacent medium for visual story telling.     2. Force us to learn about real people and the real world.     3. Hopefully get very comfortable with some of your classmates Documentaries are a fan favorite for many students for its uniqueness in terms of limitation. We got a bump up in runtime, going from 2:30 to 7:30 of content; and for some who dare, you have the option to double up with a classmate to get an even larger content runtime of 12:30. Doubling up is basically when two students come together to work on a singular documentary, often it's 2 co-directors, though occasionally someone might decide to be specifically a cinematographer o...

 God, this is embarrassing. I really need to catch up or at the very least not disappear and abandon this blog for months at a time. On the bright side this posting will conclude the making of my F1, which feel like so long ago at this point. It was odd wrapping Ray's movie Sunday at midnight and then arriving in the editing room Monday at 9 AM, but I'm glad I would have the opportunity to finish my film before Thanksgiving break. It was probably weird going into the editing room knowing that I'd be in here from 9 AM to 6 PM, Monday through Friday all so I can edit a 3 minute film. It seemed excessive. Especially considering my background in developing, filming, and editing 3-5 minute films in high school at most over the course a week. And don't even get me started on all the fucking 8-hour competitions. While I still think giving us a whole week for 3 minutes was a little excessive for me at least (god knows some of my classmates used every second and more), but I lik...

     So what started as me trying to get ahead of this blogs by making my first couple postings before the screening has turned into wanting to wrap up the blogs on my F1 experience about 4 weeks after wrapping up with my F2 experience. I'll be sure to elaborate on the time needed to make my F2, but for now I want to reflect on my F1. Production! (it's m y major!)     Any who, I was first up on the chopping block. 01F1 type stuff.  We weren't going to have a full 13 hour day, and the interior would only be available for about 8 hours. In a last minute re-arrangement in the schedule, we'd change from filming the interior at the beginning to the ladder half both because of the forecasted rain in the afternoon and so that we can make the most of the daylight at the start of the day since the sun was starting to set earlier (thanks to daylight savings less than a week ago). I believe the official work day would go from 7 AM to 7 PM, so we got there late.  ...

 Just by shear luck the end of traditional classes and start of pre-prodction week was marked by Talloweekend. It was nice seeing friends from out of town and going to parties with friends, but I needed the the Halloween season to end ASAP so I can get prep for prep. I got that chance when my friends from out of town left Sunday morning and my other friends didn't want to go out Sunday since they were either partied out or felt as though they got scammed.  Neo costume With time now in my hands I determined that the things I needed to do were as follows: -Tech Scout Barbie's location -Monday -ATL Presentation for I Lost What's Mine - Tuesday -Do my Green light meeting - Thursday -Rehearse with actors - TBA That's it, that's all I had to do. Pretty simple stuff. So I got started on my ATL Presentation with was scheduled for Tuesday at since that seemed like the most extensive, and I had the fun quirk of being the very first ATL Presentation of the entire cohort, so I ...

While doing this location research we also had begin planning for our casting calls. For me this was particularly challenging because I was already struggling to describe the film's tone to faculty, and now I was expected to describe the characters and tone without using the working script of the film since I wanted to keep specific details under wraps. It also didn't help that we weren't allowed to post casting calls until after a casting workshop and without proper approval from the school and it was about 3 weeks before I would have to film; in that time I would have to post the call, have a reasonable submission window, have call backs, decide, confirm, sign, and rehearse on top of the other prep work I had to do for my film and the other films. So I got to work. Before we had the casting workshop I was already planning on posting to social media to find a Jordan for my film. Now the last time I posted a casting call to social media I didn't really have too much suc...

One of the quirks with the first semester is the sheer amount of overlap when it comes to pre-production. Now maybe that's just business as usual in the business, but it's something I definitely had to adapt to. Locations was something that was always on my mind, especially considering the idea that I wrote a film to be in a specific kind of location. It was probably around draft #2 where I began to think critically about locations, but I wouldn't actual go location scouting until around draft #3. Because of the way this program works and that I had involvement on 4 other films that would film the same week as my own film, my group and I were recommended to location scout together. We tried our best to coordinate a time for all of us to scout together, but ran into a few difficulties since we had such wide location requirements. An antique store, interrogation room, train station, sorority house, and a sidewalk. While some locations were more common than others the kind of ...