Criticism and Congratulations

I think this will be my only spare moment this week so I'm seizing the opportunity to blog while I can. Last week was, simply put, Not Fun. Midterms occupied the thoughts of every first year film student. It was my luck to catch a cold the week before, making studying "awesome" to say the least. Class notes, tissues and cold medicine. Ah, good times. And of course, the week of, my body decided to show forth it's hatred even more by being "a girl" and by the end of the week I'd also caught hold of the flu bug that's going around. Needless to say, an outstanding performance is not to be expected. All that aside, I think that I did OK. All except the first turned out to be easier than expected. That's not to say that I did exceptionally well, just that I feel I did better than I thought I would going into the exam. We don't have any marks back yet, but I'm sure they'll trickle in throughout the week.

On a brief breakdown, the first was for Film Development and Production. I don't know if it was the stress of delivering Mini#1 and a 3 page script before 9a.m. or because it was just Monday. Maybe I just turned stupid, because I drew a lot of blanks during the test that afternoon. Things did get better though. Business of Film was Tuesday and our instructor is amazing. So amazing, in fact, that the first test was turned in within 20minutes. Not by the brightest student of course, but we all finished quicker than I think she expected. I took my time on the written part and re-checked my M/C and I think was finished closer to the 45min to hour mark. She prepared us really well for the exam and should be proud of her skills, but I think she may start making things harder on us. Wednesday was the Camera and Lighting exam, which I SO overstudied for. I really want to understand everything in this course and I went into a lot of depth on the technical stuff. The exam turned out to be a lot of the basics, most of which I understood before I even started University. So, for the first time in my life I completed a midterm in under a half an hour. We'll see if I'm overconfident when I get the mark on Wednesday. And that brings us to Thursday, the dreaded day of 2 exams. Film Crafts went well, though I know I overanalyzed the written part and somehow forgot that the tightening ring on a boom pole is called a collar. I felt better when our instructor announced the next day at Mini 1 screening that no one got that right. So we're all stupid. It was kind of funny. I also realized that the arrow I thought was pointing at a section of the boom pole was actually point to the pole as whole. Oh well. (If you're unsure of what a boom actually looks like, as I apparently was, check out this guy. Just remember an actual boom op would never dress like that. And he'd be covered in headphones and cables...) As for the Post Production exam, the one I dreaded the most and went in feeling at my worst both mentally and physically, didn't go near as badly as I imagined it would. I don't feel exceptional about it, but I no longer believe that I failed as I had resigned myself to beforehand. So, the first year motion picture students breathe a collective sigh of relief, right? Wrong.

Friday. The day we'd all been trying not to think about but knew we had to get to in order for Mid Terms to be over. Screening and Evaluation of Mini#1. All 20 first year projects were played straight through for all to see and then each group was asked to stand and receive the teacher's evaluations. We don't have our marks yet, this is just general remarks, much like how a film festival works. Luckily they played and evaluated in section and group order, so we were the 4th group (Section 1, Group 4) of victims of the 20. (Why prolong the inevitable?) None of their comments were untrue or unexpected, just hard to hear in front of 100+ people. It's all constructive criticism of course and they did think the commercial was funny so at least we got points for that. We got some kudos on our paperwork which was kind of ironic because so much of it was done last minute. Mostly our problems resulted from a lack of preparation and clear role definement. (I don't think that's a word, but I'm going with it.) Our 1st A.D. (Assistant Director) and the director kind of "team directed" which is not how things are supposed to work and everything became confusing, especially to our passive Camera Operator and our volunteer actor. We did eventually hit our stride when everyone stuck to their roles but unfortunately our instructors never observed us in that stride. Oh, well. Live and learn. Our poor director took all of the comments really personally and felt responsible for all that went wrong. I managed to convince her that no one hated her and that it was a group effort. I've even coined a new motto from calming her: "You haven't failed if you've learned." So I hope to take what I've learned from Mini #1 (which let's be honest, we all knew would be a bit of a gong show) and do better on Mini#2. And Mini#2 starts "when?" you may wonder....Now.

So after a flu and midterm recovery weekend during which I did not once leave the house, I prepared for school feeling fairly positive about starting Mini#2 with no exams looming overhead. It's pouring rain so I pull on my favourite black sweater and some fuzzy socks and head down for breakfast. Here's my lesson for the day: Fuzzy socks + wood stairs + sleepy Megan = Megan on the floor. An audible thud caused Rod to look up from his toast making to see me sitting at the bottom of the stairs hoping I'd only wounded my pride. I chuckled and said "This is not a good way to start my day." Aside from a very sore backside I'm alright. When I got home from school I told Anna what happened and she exclaimed "I heard a thump this morning but I thought it was Rod...but then no ambulance came so I thought, Ok...." At dinner, it of course came up in conversation and I told them that I'd managed to hide my klutziness from them until today. Truth be told, I've nearly biffed it on those stairs a couple of times!

But I have to say, with that start to my day, things actually got better. Aside from spending most of my class time trying to find a comfortable way to sit in the chair things went well. We had an exam review in Film Crafts (but no marks yet) and received a photograph/emotion/tone assignment that we were allowed to choose our own groups for. My study buddy glanced over at me and we both made a silent cheer. During the break, the super artistic Iranian girl asked to join us. She's also in our self made storyboard group as well so we were happy to take her. Lunch was our Mini#2 "Release" which is when all our instructors meet with us and give us our faculty advisors and guidelines etc. I'm excited for the extra lighting equipment we get to use this time around. I really want to find a use for the gel.

We also held a meeting in our little group to pick 2 scripts to pitch to our instructor. Our given theme is pretty lame. "Better Safe than Sorry." And it's only 1 minute long. Ick. The two we've decided on are fairly opposite. One is a serious mob type story and the other is a silly play on puns; Mr. Safe and Mrs. Sorry go to the doctor. I like them both, but the instructor's are pretty picky on comic timing so I have a feeling we'll be doing the mob one. We'll see. At any rate, I think I've been elected to be the A.D. this time around. It's not finalized yet, but the director from mini#1 spread the word to the stronger members of my new group that I would be a good AD so unless someone else really wants to do it, (and speaks up soon) it's on me. It's a lot of work but I think I'd rather take it on than leave it to someone else this time. It only made me frustrated. I'd rather do poorly on my own terms than someone else's. And actually, the other girl and I have pretty much already started on our "ish" jobs. I've already got my AD paperwork and she hasn't received opposition to directing so she's already working up some shot lists for the two scripts. We're waiting for final script choices to finalize job titles but we're the only ones who have taken initiative, so I think it'll stick. She asked, "If I direct, will you be my AD?" By the end of the day, we were organized and no one has argued so we'll see how tomorrow goes, after we pitch to our instructor.

Ok, I'll finish off with the results of Film 103:Screenplay Analysis. We received our 3 page scripts back today. You remember, the one that was handed in the same Monday morning as Mini#1 and the first mid term? Here's a bit of back story on my part. I had a great script in mind and had my basic beat sheet down. As I started fleshing it out on Saturday it just became too long and I had no idea how to cut it down without diminishing my characters. So, I decided to switch it with the idea I'd been saving for my 5 page script and prayed I'd be able to make the new one work. I had a loose idea in my head from a friend's experience. Now this particular friend has many ridiculous experiences to share and is luckily gifted in the art of telling a good story. When I moved out here she granted permission to use any of her life's adventures if I ever got stuck for a story idea. As soon as I changed my mind on the script and began to write the new one, it came together beautifully and I had the new screenplay in about 3 hours. I took a few artistic liberties for length etc. and I was pretty happy with it. I wasn't focused too much on it ever becoming a project, I was just grateful to have a script to hand in that was entertaining and fun to write. And then I forgot about it. Until today.

Ty, our instructor is sitting there on the desk, holding the huge stack of scripts and I'm just nervous about my grade. He talks a bit about how the top 7 or whatever from each section will be pooled and judged by the other instructors and then some of them will be put on the webpage or something to be used in the second semester. I kind of tuned this part out because I just wanted my grade. So he starts handing out his top choices (not by grade necessarily, but also by production value....some scripts just weren't feasible for on-campus shooting) and the class applauds each student who is called up. Then I hear my name. What? Luckily, I was sitting in the front row and didn't have to make the trek up to front of the class and back. I look at my paper. 86%, A- Now, not only am I in shock at having been chosen but at the A on my page. From the very beginning Ty has had no qualms about announcing that A's are hard to get in his class. He said he was impressed and gave a couple this time. (My study buddy also rocked the A- yeah!) Plus, I don't plan on being a screenwriter, so I was happy with my B from the last script. (If anyone wants to try their hand at this, start here) So this is where my thanks goes out to my dear friend in Lethbridge. Thanks for never being afraid to share your crazy adventures with me (and others) and for letting me exploit your experiences. I hope for your sake that the script goes forward so you can finally see one of your stories on the big screen, even if it is just a student film. I'll keep you posted. As for me, I now have some formatting mistakes to fix and then my work (and your life, but no one knows that yet) will go before the rest of the faculty, and possibly a lot of students for judgement. (Dun da dah!) So, that was the high point of my day - as well as the scariest (near death on the stairs aside.) Now I have to deal with that scary word again...what was it? Oh, yeah...Potential.

Until next time, "Keep fit and Have fun"

Megan

P.S. I'll send a digital gold star to anyone who can pinpoint that origin of that random quote that just popped into my head. :-)

Pass the Robitussin and the Flash Cards

Well, I have slacked off from my very eager blog beginnings and I am here to repent. Well, not really. My life has been so crazy hectic I've barely had time to....well, I don't know. I can't seem to think of anything clever to finish that line, which should show you how tired I am. First things first, I promised a report on my inspiration assignment. Please keep in mind my inability to write small amounts. And it's been a very full week since my last blog.

First, for a bit of back story, my Film Development and Production class is probably my favourite. The instructor was actually my interviewer to get into Cap and I think she's great. She shows passion for her work and is fun yet easily demands the respect we're all very willing to give her. Her focus recently has been to get us to discover what motivates and inspires us.

What is it that really brings out our creativity, keeps us going...essentially finding out who we really are and how we express that visually. (Leading to film...) At first this seemed designed for the high school kids but I have really enjoyed her assignments. The first was to create a self portrait that gave information about myself. My first thought was ok - behind a camera or at the piano or with my nose in a book. Nothing seemed to work and then the combination came to me. (Some of you have already seen this on Facebook, if so, feel free to skip ahead. ) At first laying on the piano just worked for composition and then I realized it was great because I LOVE to sleep! And my textbooks imply that they're the cause :-) The next assignment was to take a photo of an object or person that evoked or represented an emotion. This was trickier and after nearly a week of carefully observing my surroundings, including a trip to Whistler, I had nothing. Finally, I started sorting through photos I had already taken. I found this. I took this photo

on a quad ride with my dad this summer. I remember marvelling with him about how desolate and empty it felt, almost haunting, like we didn't belong there. The fire left the area completely exposed and the stark contrast of the white bark with the burn marks was eery. The fallen tree gave the whole thing a very dead feeling. I wasn't sure if my teacher would understand all of that from the picture since "art" is so subjective, but I actually received full marks on both of these assignments! I take that as a sign that I can communicate visually, which is nice to know after many years of trying to figure it out. I still have a lot to learn.

So during these assignments, we also had an ongoing assignment, presented verbally to the class, to explain for 2-5 minutes - What inspires you? It was very open ended and with four people volunteering each week, I took some time to think about it. I thought about my family, my friends, my faith...and then about music, books and photography. I couldn't quite pin it down until I was talking to a friend on the phone about making hard decisions and risking failure. I repeated my new outlook on hard times, which she's heard before. It goes something along these lines...."How do you deal with it? You just deal with it. Whether or not you deal with it well is irrelevant, you just deal with it as best you can. What other choice do you have? Don't deal with it? Well, then, you're dead. If you're not dealing with life in some way, you don't exist." OK, now this may sound harsh and somewhat convoluted but it makes sense to my brain. To lighten the mood a bit I then told my friend to think of Yoda - "Do or do not, there is no try" and my whole presentation came to me in a flash. I then exclaimed "That's it!" to my friend's complete confusion and briefly explained before getting back to the problem at hand. So here is essentially what I ended up blabbering about to the class. I began with explaining my most terrifying word. "Potential" My best friend used to use this on me whenever I got down on myself and worried about the future. I hated hearing how much potential I have. My parents have incredible faith in me, which I am so grateful for, but yet so baffled by. I remember coming home from school with an amazing exam result, diplomas I think. It was in the high 90s, 98% I think. I was so excited and my dad looked at me and said "You could've done better" Thankfully I know my dad's humour and could realize that he didn't say it to be hurtful. He smiled and said "where's the 2% ?" Or something like that. I got the message though. He wasn't saying that I wasn't good enough, he was saying that he knew I was good enough to be amazing at anything I wanted. Hm...I actually didn't tell that story to the class, I remembered it just now and there it is. Anyways, so I explained my fear of potential, having family and friends believe in you so much you want so badly to prove them right. That's not my only motivation of course. My other greatest fear is amounting to nothing, knowing what I could achieved and just being a lame lump of skin. As soon as you have potential there's a fear of not reaching it and thus a fear of trying. "Those who don't try never look foolish" (Wicked - The Musical...also didn't use this in the presentation but I should have!) Here's where I told a vague version of the Star Wars scene where Yoda says his famous line, without revealing which movie it was until the end of the story. (Sneaky, I know.)

I then talked about possibility for a little bit, similar to potential but along the lines of the various things that can be achieved and how amazing that is. I took note of the 28 people in front of me and noted the possibility of how much we can and will achieve. I then touched briefly on perseverance. (P,P,P...alliteration!! I didn't even plan that) and tied everything into my family, friends, hobbies and passions that keep me going and encourage all that I do. I concluded with this poem, which is a super cheesy "Mormony" fridge magnet that one of my Young Women leaders made for me years ago. I really love it. It hangs on my white board list of homework and To-Dos to keep me going.

Stick to your task till it

sticks to you;

Beginners are many, but

enders are few.

Honour, power, place and

praise

Will come, in time, to the

one who stays.

Stick to your task till it

sticks to you;

Bend at it, sweat at it,

smile at it too;

For out of the bend and the

sweat and the smile

Will come life's victories,

after awhile.

I think that I emphasized the smile part - or I intended to. I actually don't remember if I actually did, but that's my favourite part. Sometimes you just have to smile or laugh at something to put it in perspective. The whole thing went well I think. I wasn't nervous until I got up there and then I was a little shaky. It kind of bugged me because I've pretty much overcome my fear/hatred of public speaking. (A mission will do that to you...nothing is scarier than knocking on a stranger's door to talk about religion) I think that it was because it was such a personal thing that I was trying to convey to my peers and future colleagues. And as personal as the mission was, I always had my scriptures to back me up doctrinally. Anything I said in front of that class was purely my opinion and experience, and let me tell you, that's scary.

I delivered this presentation over a week ago now (and I've received some compliments, which always feels good. It also means I didn't talk too fast - hooray!) so a lot has happened between now and then. We've been in post production on our Mini#1 projects which has been a harrowing experience to say the least. What was the biggest lesson learned? Prep, prep, prep and more prep. We thought we had prepared well and we knew we would realize later that we should've prepared more, but with our limited knowledge we didn't know how to address it. Once we got into filming and especially in post there was a lot of "I wish we had done ______" or "We should've_______" and "Do we have ______ piece of paperwork?" Etc. We also learned that clearly defined roles is very, very, key. We have an assignment in our Film Crafts class to read "Into Thin Air" by John Krakauer which chronicles first hand the 1996 Everest Climbing disaster. If you ever need persuading to not climb anything that is only slightly under the jet stream, have a read. The point is to analyze what went wrong team-wise and leadership-wise and then apply it to a film crew and set. It's easy to talk about sure, but this project has sure given us a first hand view of how applicable the book is.

Our project is due Monday morning and we did the final transfers back to DVCAM tape and DVD storage this evening. Three of the six of us took three hours to accomplish this:

1. Create an MPEG 2 on DVD,

2. Store the project file on DVD

3. Transfer an anamorphic and letterboxed copy to HQ tape.

Not a big deal really. Make 2 DVDs and spend a few minutes watching the 30sec commercial twice for transfer. Ok - here's where I explain what delayed us so much. It might not make any sense at all, however I'm considering this a bit of a journal for myself and as such a bit of venting space. And for those of you who can make it through the whole description, you can get an idea of how much work is behind 30 seconds of film and how much can go wrong. Here goes.

Well, first we shot our film in Standard Definition (ie. old school square TV size) instead of 16:9 (widescreen) and had to fix that in post, which isn't difficult and something we had planned on when we decided to shoot in SD. (The camera we used just simulates 16:9, anamorphic so we decided post would be better) BUT - we found that when I had started editing I forgot to setup the Frames per Second correctly to 29.97FPS. Instead it had defaulted to 24 and I neglected to check. So we spent some time figuring out how to fix that before we could set it to widescreen. When we fixed that we lost some image quality but decided that it made our assistant picture editor's unhappiness with his colour correction seem less noticeable. Our director took note of a flaw in composition that she wished she could change. We took a moment to vent our frustrations about our individual failures and then told each other not to be so hard on ourselves. We knew our first project would be hard and full of flaws! We finally get to the point where we can start making hard copies and we couldn't find the function in our program to export as an mpeg -2 file, just mpeg -4. And no one in the lab knew how either. Only one group was keeping pace with us (yes, we were the group closest to the finish line..I felt so bad for the others) and they had the same question. We finally discovered the super easy answer of "drag the video file into Toast" Toast is Apple's CD/DVD burning program and it automatically burns as mpeg 2. Ten minutes of frustration later...Laugh and move on. Just keep going. Then we go to burn our project file and the DVD wouldn't let us rename the disk. The keyboard decided it didn't want to work on that window, even though it just had for the previous disk. So my assist. ed. decided "Whatever! We're labelling the outside of the disk anyways" and hit burn. My director protested too late and accepted that we would hand in an "untitled" disk. Now the last step. Transfer to tape. Simple - plug in Firewire cable from deck to computer. Turn on TV, tape deck and DVD player. Change input and find computer image on TV screen. Nope. That would be too easy. It took us forever to get things to work right and then we only had a still image of our commercial and not a moving one. We got that fixed and managed to record our Letterboxed version. (I like to think it helped that I called home to say I'd be late for dinner...Murphy's Law!) We didn't touch anything and followed the same procedure for the anamorphic copy. Didn't work. We tried a couple of options until placing the clip into a new sequence fixed the problem. My assist ed figured out the technical reasons behind it but I was too tired to retain the information. It worked and the three of us exclaimed in unison "Colour Bars!" as the bars and tone appeared successfully on the screen and the project began to record. We got a few funny looks from the other teams in the room but I'm sure an hour or two later they were doing the same thing. At least, I console myself that they had at least some of the same issues. So that's it. We get our collective paperwork organized over the weekend and hand it all in on Monday. Done. Ah.....sigh. Wait....

Then Monday afternoon is our first midterm, followed by a week of midterms (all while I have a head cold of sorts. I finally caved and bought some cold medicine and it doesn't taste very bad, which is a welcome change to the world of cold sufferers.) And then right after midterms we go into prep for our Mini#2 and it starts all over again, this time with new groups. I know who is in my group and I feel fairly good about it. I do have some uneasiness but I'm just going to focus on the positive. (Watch out for a rant about people with no desire, direction or maturity not belonging in this program. It's bound to explode soon enough. My study buddy and I have already had many a conversation about it and I'm sure it's just bursting to be blogged...You've been warned.)

Anyways, I'm going to end on a good note. Two actually. The first is for all my friends who are Twilight-a-holics. Personally I've only read one book and though it was ok, but I don't see what all the fuss is about. Anyways, every so often we get a guest speaker on our "empty" Fridays. The first was 2 weeks ago and it was a man named David Brisbin. He's a production designer. He plans the look of the film - set, props, costumes, paint, furniture, locations - everything about the feel, look or mood is in his domain. One of his first projects was "My Own Private Idaho" which I have no desire to see, story wise, from the clips he showed, but it was interesting. He also worked on "The Day the Earth Stood Still." Ironically both of these shows star Keanu Reeves. Hmm.. And I learned that a lot of this film was shot at Simon Fraser University. The interrogation room is the wrestling room at SFU - who knew? Ok - so what's the Twilight connection? Well, that's his current project actually. New Moon is shooting right here in Vancouver. The poor Twilight fans in the room hung on his every word waiting for some mention of the film but there was none. With good reason, I'm sure. Fans stalk down the cast so much production has been interrupted at times so location have been kept very secret. He's probably under contract not to say a word for fear someone might've figured out which place he was talking about and gone over there screaming for Edward Cullen. My point here is that I met someone who works with Robert What-his-name. Meh, I was more interested in his thoughts on texture and feel than Twilight, but I thought I would share that with you all who want to narrow your line of separation. You now know someone (Me) who knows someone (David Brisbin) who knows Edward. Hooray!

Next - a quick funny story from screenplay analysis this week. We watched "The Big Chill" to analyze a Multi-Protagonist story. It's about a group of friends who haven't seen each other since high school and are gathering for their friend's funeral. I hadn't seen it before, but I liked it. Except for the weird part where this single girl who wants to have a baby and her married friend offers her husband (their mutual friend) for the night. In the context of the story it was kind of sweet since they were all part of this group of old friends, but still very weird. I looked at my friend beside me and told her "No matter how much I like you, I would never do that for you." She looked at me and said "Me neither" shaking her head with eyes wide at the screen. Ok, sorry, that's not the funny story. The funny story is that we weren't in our regular room due to Thanksgiving rescheduling. (The film program doesn't believe in skipping classes for holidays, classes are always made up or we'd be so behind schedule) We had a projector instead of our usual widescreen TV and the attached speakers were not very powerful. We're able to follow along ok for a while by shhhing anyone who made any noise, when we hear faint singing. At first we think it's the film because the sound was already so faint but then it got louder and didn't make sense at all with the image. We then realized that there was a choir in the classroom next to us. They started class while we were on break. We convinced our teacher to turn the subtitles on which I'd been hoping for for a while. (I love subtitles! They're super handy.) We finally get back to the movie and are able to understand what's going on but for the remainder of the film our soundtrack became choir rehearsal. It was quite comical, especially when the choir suddenly sang upbeat during a particularly emotional scene. Ah, the joys of going to a school centred around the arts. :-)

Okay, enough rambling for tonight. Geez, go to bed people, sleep is way more important than reading my never ending blog. (Or maybe I've helped by lulling you into a reading induced coma...) Ahem...midnight thirty approaches and yells at me for being awake.

G'night

Megan

P.S. For those of who that don't have a blog account, I discovered this handy link at the bottom of this page that allows you to subscribe by e-mail. Maybe you already found that. I like to think I'm the first clever enough to find it :-)