December Already?

Where oh where did November go? Needless to say it was a busy month in the world of a Cap Film student. I survived Midterms and we've since finished Mini #2 and the screening went well. We received nice comments on our project with special kudos to our director. She was great. We had a lot of fun working together. I ended being the Set Decorator and Production Manager instead of the AD (insert DRAMA here) but still ended up filling quite a few of the AD responsibilities, as I expected. Oh well. It was a good learning experience and we got a B despite some paperwork issues so that's good. Here it is:

We were really specific about how we wanted it to look but it caused so many problems in Post production. The program that we used to do the colour effects wouldn't link to the hard drive properly so that we could take the project to a transfer station to put it back onto a master tape. 4 hours spent as a group on Friday night redoing it a different way and trying to link it still proved futile. I spent 2 hours on Sunday night (project due Monday am) trying to find the way to link it all up properly. I figured it out so much faster than I thought I would. Divine intervention. That's all I can say. I got it to work and then made the transfer to tape, burned some DVDs and was done. It was beautiful. It's amazing how you can work on something for so long and be completely lost and out of ideas, but as soon as you walk away for a bit or sleep on it, it always seems to come together smoothly.

So right now we are in Post Production on Mini #3, our last Mini as First Years. The 4 sections were combined into 20 or so groups of 8 instead of 4or5 groups of 6 from each section. This was pretty cool as we were able to work with some people we hadn't even met yet. There ended up being 3 of us from Section 1, one of which I wasn't too keen on working with but it was OK. We all just kept a close eye on him. I knew one of the girls, who ended up directing, so that was cool to be able to work with her. Our team was really good. There was a bit of drama with people signing up for equipment and shoot days without the proper permission of having their script signed by the faculty advisor. This forced us to shoot on Monday instead of Wednesday like we were hoping. It ended up being one of those "happy accidents" though where it all just

worked for the best. All of our actors who weren't available on Wed were on Monday. With the delay on getting our script finalized for a rewrite we only had about 3 days of solid prep work and it really pushed us and made our prep better. We had so much set decoration and props. We all threw in $10 and hit the dollar and thrift stores. It was a fun day.The premise of the story is 3 athletic "jock" type guys who play a medieval role playing game in their basement and have to hide in their closet when their "cool" friends show up unexpectedly. The decision is then to leave the closet and own to their embarrassing pastime or get caught hiding in the closet in full costume. It was a really funny script and required a lot of set and prop work. I actually was the 1st Assistant Director on this project like I wanted to do on Mini#2. Turns out no one else even wanted to do it so they were more than happy to let me. The director and I planned every shot and budgeted time for every scene and set up. I had a 3 page shooting schedule for a 2 minute project! Of course, very little actually went as planned. Our equipment was picked up late and our first shot took about an hour and a half to get to.

When Seanna, one of the faculty, came by and observed the 'chaos' she had some calming suggestions for me - as my job was to manage chaos. She said "you're just constantly seeing and unravelling all these knots - and there are a lot of knots" I couldn't have agreed more. Just as she said that 2 of the guys were moving the equipment cart and getting unknowingly tangled in cables and a backpack that was poking out from under the table. Now - a huge part of the ADs' job is to control safety. She saw my eyes widen and turned to see what I saw as I got their attention to fix their navigation in the small space that we had. I feel a little uncertain about how I managed everything - keeping things on pace and in control, but I knew it would be a challenge for me, so I think I did OK. Both my director and key grip said I did well and not to worry so I'm just going to stick with that. My only concern is that in a scene change, our key grip (lighting dep't) was doing makeup on the actors so I was helping the Gaffer with the lights when a different faculty observer came in...so I wasn't "sticking to my role" but I did see him checking out my super detailed shooting schedule that was taped to the "production table" with the script etc. so hopefully that impressed him enough to forgive my leaving my role for a bit.

So now we're in post and Mini#3 is due on Monday. I can't believe the semester is almost over. This next week will be spent in review for final exams and final presentations in a few classes. My partner and I gave our presentation in the Business of Film class this week so I'm glad that's over. There is another presentation to give in Film Crafts on Monday - which we were able to pick our own groups for - hooray! My study buddy and I had a really cheesy "eyes meet across the room" moment when we were told we could choose. And we teamed with our artsy Iranian friend to make 3. We chose "Requiem for a Dream" as our film to analyze. The assignment is to break down the production design and metaphor for a scene from a film. It's a pretty deep film about addiction and the cinematography and set dec is amazing so it'll be fun. But we're finding that there isn't a lot of 'making of' information on it, so that is proving a little difficult. But it's only a 10min presentation and it's "study buddy's" favourite film of all time so I think that we'll focus on the look and metaphor of it more than the nitty gritty.

With November flying by, no one at home has really known about the French girl that lived in my house for 3 weeks. She's 25 and we got along really well. It was fun to help her with her English and try to recall the very little amount of French that I once knew. She found an apartment and moved out yesterday. But her room was quickly filled by Rod's daughter from England home from Christmas. I met her when she was here at the end of summer and she actually used to go to Cap U as well. We get along well so it'll be fun for her to be here.

On that note, I can't believe Christmas is coming up so soon. I can't wait to be in Alberta again! I'm trying to figure out how to pack for flying from Vancouver to Calgary and then driving to Arizona...being in Arizona and then going back to Alberta for 2 days and having my umbrella ready when I get off the plane back in Vancouver! That's 3 different climates to plan for! I'm excited to see my new niece in Arizona and hang out with my big sis. It'll be nice to be with at least some of the family. 3 siblings will remain in AB for c-mas, but a road trip with the parents will be fun. I'm sure they'll be tired of my ramblings after the first 2 hours in the car! Christmas break will be crazy with all the travelling that I'll be doing but I know that being w

ith the family and not stressing about school will be just the recharge that I need. Until then, I've busted out the Christmas music (Josh Groban's Noel is only a year old and already a Christmas staple!) and keep thinking of Alberta snow to get me through!

Here's Mini3 Crew shot toasting the end of a productive day. G'Night!