Documentary Update 1

The first two weeks of my documentary have been spent trying to gather information about the current problems our local kelp forests face as well as trying to contact professionals that work with kelp forest restoration and marine protected areas. So far I have successfully contacted three very important people in this field: Tom Ford, Michael Quill, and Brian Meux. We are currently trying to set a date to get an interview with them and their team. I just talked with Tom on the phone today, and unfortunately I will not be allowed to dive with them because I am not properly certified nor am I 18 yet. This shouldn't be too much of a deterrent because I think one of their team can record while they dive if they strap the go pro to themselves while they work; however, this is only an assumption. I am also trying to see if I can just wait on the dive boat while they dive too. I'm slowly but surely making progress, but it may take a week or two to get these interviews.

Cooking in 'Merica

Our new project, Cooking in 'Merica, is still in preproduction. We have our lighting setup, shot list, and prop list all ready and are just waiting to do a practice shoot. I am the technical director, which is honestly not very hard compared to some of the other job on the shoot. The job consists of basically hitting 3-6 buttons that correspond to the camera the director wants to make live. Mark is the director and Amber is floor manager. We are looking forward to our practice shoot on monday.

French Toast in the Hizzy

New project is a how to video, and for our how to video we are making French toast. We had debated making it into communist toast by adding cherries and jam on top, but it is still under debate. Either way I am loving my group so far. I can't tell you the last time I worked with Amber or Mark. This project will be fun.

Toxic Relationships

Our group is fairly toxic and unfriendly at the moment. There is little to no talking between us and whenever I suggest something I am ignored. It really bothers me that nobody talks to each other unless it is a negative comment or complaint.

The only people who seems to stay positive anymore are Ramiro and Collis. They act to relieve the tension of the group, but usually fails.

I'm trying to stay positive but the distance between this group is unbearable. I don't like the negative comments made by everyone or the fact that nobody trusts anyone else in this group. Even worse, I feel not everyone is being heared pr cared for. Some people are just completely being ignored by the director until she needs something from them that pertains to the film. It is just depressing how toxic our group is.

Powering Through To The End

    We are almost done shooting all of the footage for Long Legs. It's been such a long process of shooting for what seems like hundreds of hours after school. Thanks to Nick, our VERY FAITHFUL actor, we were able to finally finish all of the Mr. Adams scenes. At one point I thought we wouldn't finish this film, but through some serious hard work and dedication from the whole team, we were able to get just about everything done.
     It was a pretty slippery slope to get to where we are now. I was getting very forgetful with the props this week. This lead to scenes being changed so that we could make it all work. The main reason we weren't getting things done as quickly as we could be was the sheer amount of funny moments we had during the shoot. We all have had equal roles in making those though. A HUGE problem was that at the beginning of the week, me and Stephanie didn't know our lines. I studied them and did a lot off of memory, but I did need to use improv every so often. This shoot definitely taught me how much improv can help a movie and get you out of tough situations. I can personally say it has saved my ass quite a few times this week.
    Now we have one more scene to do until we move on to postproduction. I have to say, I'm happy to finally be done shooting so that I can stop slacking off in my other classes. I've been putting off a lot of homework to make time to shoot after school. I need to get back to my make-up work... see you next week space cowboys.

Things Are Finally Settling Down

   After a long and stressful week things are finally settling down. We've gone through two leading actors and two leading actresses in the past week. Today our leading actor quit and our leading actress can't perform because she was in the ER because of an infected tooth that she needed the nerve removed for. This lead to Stephanie and I playing the roles of Ted and Sylvia. Thank god we know the lines at least.
   Honestly our hired help was not very good. They lacked connection to character,  wouldn't take the time to study their lines, and they would never respond to our emails or messages. They couldn't act either.
    Everything is back on track now. The bonus of us being the actors is that it cut our time restrictions by more than half. Our group is shaping up and we actually made some progress shooting after school today. Things are looking up!

Three Times The Charm

So this week we had our third draft and beat sheet due... Too bad neither are done yet. I had to almost completely rewrite our story. I just want to get done scripting it and get shooting. The reason I teamed up with Jose isn't just because he's my friend, it's because he's undoubtedly the best movie maker in the class. Although I'm quite jealous of his great productions, I know if we get our movie made it will be amazing.
I'm frustrated now because of the crippling writers block I have. I don't know where to go with my story anymore. It's looking like a twenty minute film too.
I do have to say one thing though. My teacher Mr. Lemos and my friend Patricia have been really helpful. They gave me a lot more to work off of when I went to them for advice.
Well... I guess I better get back to writing this damned treatment. See ya next Thursday.

Revision! Revision! Revision!

Writing a film treatment is hard work. Jose and I are writing a a noir film called, A Table Twice Turned. We're on our third revision of the treatment. This time, our story is changing nearly completely. Characters are being changed, new problems are added to the movie, and a lot of the core elements of the film at being removed.
The only problem I have is thinking of more to write. Writers block is hitting me hard. Trying to make every element work is hard. Imagine the story like two puzzles thrown into a pile an mixed. It's our job to find, fix and combine the pieces for us to finish the job.

Oscars 2013

     This Sunday is the night everyone in the film industry is waiting for, the Academy Awards. This year is filled with tension, and not one film is expected to receive a large percentage of the awards. The oscars are spread out over various great films this year, which hasn't happened in a while.
     Although Argo is almost definitely going to win best picture and best director, it isn't expected to win much else. The movie has few acting nominations and isn't even nominated for best cinematography, which is rare for best picture. Life of Pi is suspected to win best cinematography, score, and visual effects. Les Miserables is expected to win best supporting actress, and Django Unchained is suspected to win best screenplay. The shocker for this years award is in animation. For the first time in many years, Pixar's movie is not favored to win. The favored movie is Wreck-It Ralph.

Best Picture Nominee: Django Unchained

    Django unchained is nominated for best picture this year. It rivals such fearsome films such as Argo, Life of Pi, and Lincoln. Although it may not be the best film of the year, it definitely is a great one.
    Django unchained is the story of a slave named Django, who is rescued from the grips of slavery by a bounty hunter named Dr. Schultz. Django is taught the ways of the bounty hunter, and the two of them team up together. They then set of on a journey to free his wife from slavery under the most well-known slaveholder in the South, Mr. Candy.
    The Acting in Django was great, especially Leonardo DiCaprio's character, Mr. Candy. Nearly every character in the movie played a serious yet comedic role, except for Mr. Candy. Leonardo DiCaprio is a big star, yet seemed to get lost in this role. He portrayed a twisted southern slave master, like I have never seen before. He seemed to be charming, calm, and inquisitive, but very easily turned into a demonic and racist individual twisted by the evils of slavery.
     Although this movie has gotten a bad reputation for supposedly being "racist and unnecessarily gory", it really is not. The film is definitely not racist. Sure it pokes fun at the stupidity of slavery and  uses the N-word a lot, but that was in the sake of making it quirky and fun. Also, the use of the N-word is very realistic for that time period. In the south that word was certainly a household word used by everyone. The blood is for the sake of realism too. A lot of movies leave the blood out when someone is shot, but that isn't realistic. When someone gets shot, they bleed. When someone is shot in the skull with a rifle, blood and brain is supposed to fly out in chunks.
   Seriously, don't believe what the negative media attention has told you. This movie is a downright amazing action/comedy.

Jennifer Lawrence Nominated Best Actress

          This year Jennifer Lawrence is nominated for best Actress for her role as Tiffany in Silver Linings Playbook. Her Character Tiffany is an odd woman and has some serious problems. She also has mental health issues that lead her to sleep with everybody in her office as well as her rude attitude.

         I really wasn't a big fan of her performance. To me, she just seemed a tad bit unrealistic. Her character was just a little too out there. The combination of a needy, sex crazed, and rude individual sort of threw me off at times.
         Part of my problem was her lines in the story, but that was the script writer's fault. Her lines make the character a little too unrealistic. Also, her lines sounded a little forced sometimes.
         I do believe she fits the look for the movie though. The way her character was dressed, had makeup applied, and facially expressed emotions really fit the picture of a hurt and broken individual.

Silver Linings Playbook Nominated for Best Actor

             Previously, I had no interest in seeing this movie. The first wave of trailers to sweep television made the movie appear to be a chick flick. It honestly did the film no justice. If it wasn't so highly recommended by my friends Marissa, Mark, and Alexa I would have continued on with the belief that it was just another chick flick. This just goes to show that you can never judge a book by its cover.
             Silver Linings playbook has been nominated for every acting position possible this year. For this weeks post, I will be talking about one Oscar nomination in particular, best actor. Bradley Cooper was nominated best actor for playing Pat.
             Pat is a bipolar man who beat the man sleeping with his wife half to death. As a result, he is put into a mental institution, and when released is obsessed with the belief that he could still be with his wife. He eventually meets an attractive young woman with similar mental problems named Tiffany, whose husband recently died. As they slowly come together he looses his obsession with his ex-wife and moves on to something better.
             Bradley Cooper did a fairly decent job at playing a mentally unstable individual. He did a good job of fitting the abrupt mood swings of a bipolar person with other characteristics of people suffering with aspergers and extreme OCD. His medley of psychotic characters built into one gave the movie a unique, but awkward, feel.
             My favorite scene of the move was carried out by his unstable character. This is the scene where Pat walks Tiffany home for the first time. Tiffany tells Pat that he can come in and make "whoopie" with her if he leaves the lights off. He says that he can't because he's married, to which tiffany rebuts the same thing. Out of confusion he says something like, "No thats impossible. He's dead". This created an element of comedy, where there shouldn't have been one. The placement of the dialogue and the way it was argued made it funny, and resulted in me bursting out in laughter.
            But seriously, Silver Linings Playbook is a great film. Don't let the trailer confuse you.

Moonrise Kingdom: A Masterpiece By Wes Anderson

    Sam and Suzy are two misfit children on New Penzance Island. They fall in love and run away from home to be together in seclusion. Chaos breaks loose as the small island community searches for the young couple.
    Moonrise Kingdom is directed by Wes Anderson, and is one of the best films he's ever made. the movie is filled with his unique art direction and style. He is famous for his quirky visual stile of pans, tracks, and tilts to enhance the story and the flow of the movie.
    The movie uses an array of muted yellow-green and pale blue colors. They give the film a real storybook and nostalgic feel. They help express the emotions of many of the characters and add to the time frame the movie takes place in.
     Like almost all Wes Anderson films, Moonrise Kingdom has a sort of offbeat sense of humor. This is expressed by the eccentric characters such as the Child Services, who acts strictly like a law obeying child services handbook brought to life, or the Bishops, an emotionally distant couple who can only talk to each other if it's about their jobs. A great example of the offbeat comedy characters is Mr. Bishop, who can't cope with his depression. In one scene, he is struggling to deal with his disobedient, runaway, daughter and walks down a flight of stairs shirtless. With a bottle of wine in one hand and a large axe in the other he monotonely says to his boys, "I'm going to go find a tree to chop down."

    Moonrise Kingdom is one of the best examples of an overlooked movie I've ever seen. It is easily in the top three movies of this year, but because it was a summer release it didn't receive even half the credit or praise it deserves. It is only nominated for one Academy Award, best screenplay, yet had so much more potential than that.