Be Cool, Stay in School

Alright folks,

So far I think I'm doing OK on the blogging. I've

made it past post #1 and I think that's half the battle. As an FYI it's 930 Pacific time at the moment and I probably could've fallen asleep an hour ago. Here's why: Today was our shoot for our Mini#1 project - the aforementioned 30s commercial. Our scheduled shoot time was set for 830-1230. The team decided to meet early for preparedness sake and 730 was the plan. 800 was the latest we allowed for buses. As the only car owner I agreed to get the much desired morning donuts and the rest would pitch in to buy lunch. Well, even with my donut run I arrived on campus at 735, only a few minutes before the team member with the longest bus ride showed up. Her mom had kindly given her a ride to save an even earlier wake up. So of course the rest of the crew shows up much closer to 8 and we head off to pick up our equipment.

For as much as could have gone wrong today we did pretty well. There were definitely moments of poor communication and overlapping roles that caused confusion, but I remind myself that it was our first major project and also our first as a full crew given the illnesses last week. We were lucky to have the same 'actor' from our dogme shoot agree to help us again. I'm grateful for his willingness and patience. Our first scene became particularly confusing as we were getting our bearings on the whole thing and our director tried to explain what was wanted from the scene. He finally reminded the room that he wasn't a real actor, but a film student just like us. It was a good way to lighten the mood and get his point across. He does have an advantage when he gets to his shoot day - he's had a practice run on the process with us.

For my part I took on the role of "Gaffer" which I decided to rename "Gopher." Normally the gaffer is in charge of electrical stuff with the Grips and lighting with the Director of Photography (DOP) and Cinematographer. Well, we didn't have any lighting

on this shoot and we decided against using our bounce board (reflector) to favour the natural light. And there wasn't all that much electrical to worry about once everything was hooked up. So I held the window curtain open and out of the way and then I ran for a fresh camera battery in between scenes. I spent a lot of time feeling useless to be honest. I found purpose in the "building" scenes because everything kept getting moved around and pretty soon the sound and camera cables were a mess. So I became a cable puller. (which you can make $25 an hour for if you're in the union!) Basically I gathered the cables that ran from the camera to the field monitor, from the camera to the boom mic and the headphone's wire and tried to prevent them all from being constantly tangled in the tripod which our DOP/OP was seemingly unaware of. Thankfully we had comic relief in the whole thing as we progressively covered our dear OCD H1N1 fearing student in garbage bags, duct tape and bubble wrap. I would like to say that although I felt a little useless on set I did contribute the bubble wrap - fresh from my move out here - and my motorbike helmet. (hooray for the scooter!) So I was a very vital part. The brilliance of the day was the guys' impr -

omptu idea to attach the mattress pump tube to the gas mask. The sound was hilarious and was perfect for the muffled voice overs that we needed but had planned to do later. I took a short video - we'll see if I'm smart enough at the end of this to attach it.

Throughout the shoot 2 of the faculty

were constantly hovering around campus, taking notes on our actions and generally making us nervous. They've been pretty clear that they have high expectations but also that they know it's our first project and we're bound to screw up. Hopefully mercy will find us somewhere in the middle. All that's left is post - production (Hah! Easier said than done....) Wait...and paperwork. Boo.

I'm sure I have a lot more to say. I haven't even covered any of my YSA experiences, which is probably be good because they haven't been that exciting. Beyond my taking over of the ward pianist position without even being called to it, not much is happening. (We'll see if they actually make a calling of it...although there is a vacancy in the RS pres'cy as well that makes me kind of nervous.)

I'm pretty excited for tomorrow. It's my turn to give the "Inspiration" assignment in Dev and Prod class - a semester long task of each student giving a 2-5min spiel on what inspires them. It's a very open topic and I've seen some interesting presentations so far. Some brilliant (Lego - infinite possibility) and some not so brilliant ("I inspire myself!" Yes, someone really said that) I've taken the first month to think about it and I've finally got it figured. Also, my new buddy (who is not in any of my groups, much to our dismay) is coming over for a study session tomorrow and then we're going to a film that one of our faculty participated in that is showing as part of the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) right now. So besides the studying part, it should be a good day.

Here's hoping! *fingers crossed*

Megan

P.S. I've managed to upload pics and vid but can't figure out how to move them around without really messing with my text. Sorry. (Denise - oh queen of the blog - any help?)

For your viewing pleasure:

(Since Cap has issues with us guarding our "creative work" they don't like us posting our projects so this may be all you see of the craziness of my day. Enjoy!)