Wendy completed shooting her first (ever) 16mm film. It feels like a major
milestone
for her. She came home after the final shoot, Sunday night, and joined the celebration
for the closing ceremonies of the Olympics. (That's all of the Olympics she
has seen.)
***
Wendy & Lisa are the only
team not
shooting this weekend, a pick-up weekend.
Everyone else is shooting.
Many are shooting major scenes, and some are even
shooting multiple major scenes. A few
students mentioned
being tired of shooting.
Wendy saved 50 feet of film for pick-up weekend, but didn't need it. She gave
her
extra film given to Doug & Stacey (who loaded a roll backwards). They seemed to
need it
most. Wendy doesn't know of anyone else who's giving film away.
***
Lisa has
been an editing demon. She didn't even come to class all week. After Lisa
showed
her edited footage this week, Helaine said, "Good
job, Lisa". Wendy said,
"Helaine
never gives
compliments."
As a result, Lisa & Wendy are ahead of everybody else. Since students learned that
Helaine doesn't want to see
*any* uncut footage on days when they view cuts,
nobody had
very much footage to show .. except Lisa.
Wendy is
doing the audio for her film. That's the director's job.
Since the girls are ahead of schedule, Wendy's going
to shoot a test roll for Lisa's film
tomorrow. Wendy has never shot 16mm before. Lisa
has a 100-foot roll of her own.
Not to be used in her film, just a
test. The idea is to make mistakes before they count.
Lisa whittled down the film to
6 1/2 mins.
It was over 9 last Thursday. It can be
no more than 5 mins +
33 secs (including credits) .. not a second more. USC says,
"The
industry is full of limits. Best you get used to it now."
After the rough cut table screenings,
Wendy came home glowing. Said, "I could tell
from their
faces, they really liked it." Some individual parts that people had
problems
with before became clear when viewed together, as a whole. The soundtrack helped.
***
Wendy is
using Mag tape to do the soundtrack. Mag tape sucks. We have nice digital
audio workstation (DAW) for recording & editing audio. She didn't realize how spoiled
she'd become .. until she began trying to work with Mag tape. Short but steep learning
curve. She tried to tell
me what's involved with Mag tape. It made my head hurt.
Some of her
classmates are trying to do as much of their soundtracks as they can
with digital audio .. then transfer the final result to Mag.
The school warned students against editing their entire audio tracks digitally (much
easier). Wendy recorded some of the audio track at home. For example, both Zarena
& Louie came over
yesterday, to record voiceovers. Have many takes, but we posted
a
few samples here.
It'll give you an idea of the voice-overs going into the film.
The audio files are encoded to MP3 format at 128kbps, 16-bit, 44.1kHz,
stereo.
They're very short
audio clips. One clip is only a few seconds long. Shouldn't take
long to
download, even for a dial-up connection.
The file labeled
Spanish is the biggest, but one of the best. Wendy wants to use
Zarena's
Spanish version as background (low) effect. Either Winamp
(free) or Windows
Media
Player will play these files.
***
The best
footage came Friday, at Betty
Davis Park, a part of Griffith Park, near the
horse stables. Wendy rented
contraption called a doorway dolly, which is a track that
forms a complete circle, the size of small room. A dolly goes on the track. Lisa
(with
the camera) goes on the dolly. Zarena was in the center of the track, dancing.
Lisa
and the dolly went round & round Zarena, dancing in ecstasy, in a wooded area.
Dave Reeder saved the day. He helped Wendy the whole day. He has a truck,
which
was needed to pick up the doorway dolly from store in Hollywood. He took
everything
back to the store after the
shoot was over. The doorway dolly comes with enough
track to start your own small railroad.
***
Last semester, a few
students skipped class & sat in on the 508 screening of the
class ahead of them. Students came back saying, "All films had their
points, 1, 2 & 3,
all had nice arc-of-character, but none *moved* me. They played it too safe."
For Wendy, making a movie that doesn't move is the worst possible fate. From that
moment on, she wanted her
508 to be moving .. and was willing to take a
risk to do
it
(as much as you can with only a 5-minute film). That's when she began
developing her
story idea for Liliana. It may have
changed many times since, but that's where Liliana
began, and that was
her motivation.
She feels she may've bitten off
more than she could chew (into 5 mins + 33 secs),
but Lisa is tightening it, little by little. She tried to do a lot with this film
.. probably
too much. Time will tell how it gels.
***
She's been meeting
with the Composer, Ed.
Has another meeting with him Monday.
I hear he's whipping up something special
to make Liliana rock.
Fade to black.
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