The Smuggler

Phil, our professor, showed us a failed movie portfolio called The Smuggler. It was used as an example of poor pre-production. they mentioned actors and producers without permission and many other problems on top of that. basically the plans fell apart and never was put together into a film. Sad? Yes, but the really sad part was how little effort was put into what could have been a good idea.

Guillermo del Toro

In class we talked about the amazing mind of Guillermo del Toro. Our professor copied some pages from the book above. It was amazing! Del Toro is a genius when it comes to film making. 

The book covers many of his drawings and notes of his projects that he has done including Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy. 

The book itself is a big inspiration for this blog. I would like to attempt to recreate something similar for my film projects.

Screenwriting

Dan Levine spoke with our class about screenwriting. He has had tons of experience as a screenwriter. He has worked on multiple big screen projects (all of which have seemed to slip my mind).

He has offered to help us with future projects at the school or even our own personal projects.

Another Day Missed

Another guest speaker came to our class, Brittany Poulton. This was another day that I missed and I never knew she came. I never got any notes of sorts because I was unaware of the guest speaker until a couple days ago.

Location Scouting

Marshall Moore came in and spoke to us about scouting for locations for a film.

It's a lot harder than I thought it would be. There are the obvious qualities like setting the mood for the film and color pallets and such. You must also have permission for filming in certain areas. Why? because laws and stuff. Wouldn't it suck to get your whole film finished and produced and then lose all your earnings in a lawsuit?

Libby & Art

We have spent an ample amount of time on this class project, which is a good thing. After all the casting, stills, treatments, recasting, and discussions, we finally have a basic script for the film. It's great and I love the effort that everyone has put into it.

The idea is a lot more refined than it was at the beginning of the semester. Now it's actually starting to look like an actual movie (which is the intention).

All that is left is to pitch the idea to the vice president of the school so we can get funding for our project.

Record Store Day

I went up to Groovacious on Record Store Day and had a blast. I got some reissued vinyl, a pressing of an old album, and even a brand new Skrillex album made specifically on cassette tape.

That was great and all but there was work to be done. I had to talk with the owner to see what he thought of my idea, if he was okay with it. I approached the owner, Tim is his name, and asked him if that would be alright. He said that he liked the idea and would be okay with it. He said people do stuff like that all the time.

I was feeling pretty good. After leaving Groovacious my friend informed me that Tim had been diagnosed with throat cancer. Immediately I felt dumb for bringing up my capstone to him. what if he only has a certain amount of time to live? Of course he wouldn't want to humor a college film student. Then I thought that maybe This could help. Maybe it could get him support. It could add emotion to the film.

I'm still not sure what to make of it though. But on the bright side, Groovfest is this summer and I can get some footage of the music festival for my film.

Casting

Working hand in hand with the theater department is a very helpful thing for a film major. Varlo Davenport visited our class and told us how we can use the theater students for our future films. He explained how it would be an important experience for film majors to get the feel of casting for our films and for the theater students to get a better understanding of open casting for film/theater projects.

Production Coordination

Katherine Szewczk talked with us about production coordination and the importance of it. I don't actually think that I was there on that day of class.

They work under the production manager. They coordinate separate groups on set to further proceed production on a movie or theater set.

NAB Show 2014

The NAB Show was an excellent experience. I paired up with a friend of mine who isn't in the film program but he wants to be so he decided to join me. The show itself was very insightful. It started me thinking about purchasing as camera for myself. I started to realize how expensive they were and began forgetting about the idea.

NVIDIA's 4K booth.

Nvidia had a very cool booth with graphic cards that support 4K games, movies, editing software, etc. One of the reps from the booth started talking about some really cool animating software and then started talking about the NAB Show itself. He mentioned the BlackMagic booth and said that it has tons of film equipment for much cheaper than average prices. BlackMagic was fantastic and now I'm looking into purchasing my own camera.

Something that was at the BlackMagic booth.

The coolest thing I thought was all the booths about loyalty/free stock footage and music scores. I had no idea that such helpful tools were available. Warner Bros. Music, to be specific, was my favorite of the music selections. And stock footage from Motion Elements was really cool as well. They gave me a flashdrive.

The absolute best thing about NAB was all the free stuff people gave you. I have so many things to look over now that it is over!

Here some other random photos that I took. 

Sharp's RedGiant.

Giant film projector.

Lizard King

A low budget short film was being filmed in St. George called Lizard King. A couple of my fellow class mates participated in the filming. Sadly I did not. I forgot about it and missed the day they started shooting. It's a bummer to miss out on cool experiences like that.

Budget

We have spent several days discussing the budget for our Liberal Arts film. It has taken a while but we are asking for $30,000 in funding for the film. That is quite a lot, at least I thought so, but all of it will be need to properly fund this movie.