Kaboom! Update

Good news, Kaboom is almost done with production. I would estimate that with another hour or so of some last minute editing that we will be done with our project. One thing that will take some time will be adding the vocal track to a phone conversation scene in our piece. I am very excited to show you all on Monday.


Cheers

Final Project Idea

I have a small idea for the final project.  It's going to need some more elaboration, some more thought and some time to develop, but I think it could become something better than just an idea.

The premise?  A movie playing inside someone's head.

I'm thinking the typical kid, probably no younger than 13 and no older than 20, not realizing what they have.  Life gets "rough" for the character, and by "rough" I mean maybe they don't score with their love interest or they're doing poorly in a class- so nothing too tragic but enough to put our main character down in the dumps.  But then, all of a sudden, he sees camera's around him accompanied by lights, microphones, and an entire film crew.

Why? His life is being made into a movie.

The director keeps changing what he doesn't like about the character's life, as if he is changing what he doesn't like about the film he is creating.  Sometimes, the kid likes the changes the director makes and sometimes he doesn't.  Eventually, throughout the story, the character realizes that he is in charge of his own life.  He learns through the director that he enjoys his life just the way it is, and that he can do whatever he wants.  He also learns that the drama in his life is nothing too tragic, and definitely isn't anything a movie could be based on.

Welp, it's all over..

Tomorrow, we get to show our fellow students what we've worked on and what we've learned.  Ending the semester is always a bittersweet thing.  You spend a lot of time working on things, put a lot of heart into them, but end up being so happy for it to be over once it is all over. Anyways, I'm really excited to show everyone the hard work all of our group put into our project.  Of course, nothing always goes as planned and we have had a ton of setbacks, from birds and trains on set, to not one, but two macbooks failing but I've always felt that the most important thing you can learn when you're working on something that is important to you, is learning from your failures and working through the hard things that are inevitable to get in your way.  I think our group did just that.  We made the cards we were dealt with work.  Of course, there are things that we could have avoided or do better at certain times, but I believe that we really did work hard to achieve what we achieved and for that, I'm extremely proud of our group.  With that being said, good luck to all of the other groups with their showings tomorrow, its going to be a great day and I'm excited for everyone to see all of our work!  Thanks for a great semester everyone, and of course, the main man himself, our teacher, Arturo.  Thanks again!

Final Project in Review

When we started our final projects over a month ago I really did not know what to expect. I latched onto an idea that I found interesting in class and went from there. I was assigned to write the script with two of my classmates Rob and Kofi. Admittedly, we would consider ourselves amateur script writers. After 2 weeks of writing we came up with a 35 page script called the Face Off. Was 35 pages too long for a fiction field final? In retrospect, yes, but I think the theme of this project was that I was learning on the fly. I am proud of the script that the three of us wrote and I think had we were allotted more time than we could of have followed it more closely. Production was also a huge learning experience for me. Finding locations, talent, costumes, and set pieces, was an exciting new venture me. Also, creating the set with proper lighting, audio, and continuity was a challenge. Some scenes went better than others. Most notably our debate scene which we held in the Park auditorium was looking fantastic. However, we ran out of time for our reservation for the room. Being only a handful of days before editing was to take place, we could not re-shoot the scene. Instead, we had to choose a new location, cut a big chunk of our script, and stay up much later than I think anyone in the group planned to finish the production. This served as another valuable lesson: always have a backup plan, and think quickly on your feet. The next part of this experience that I was able to learn from was editing. The editing process was an interesting one. By interesting I mean exhausting, staying up through all hours of the night and into the morning to get our film edited correctly. I tip my hat to Jarred and Breanne for their dedication throughout the editing process. That basically leaves us where we are now, audio mixing our project so it is ready to go for the screening on saturday. As we started the audio mixing process, I was actually terrified to see what all our clips looked like lined up with each other. As we mixed through our entire session on tuesday night, I grew more and more excited to see the final project. The bottom line is this: Our project is not perfect. The plot line didn't go as planned, our locations didn't go as planned, editing didn't go as planned, but the final product resembles countless hours of hard work from each group member. This is by far the hardest I have worked on a single project in my life. With that being said, I am so happy to present The Face Off at the screening on saturday in front of friends and peers. Over a month of work put into one project is finally over. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the Face Off.

Final Project status

So the scripts been done and shooting is under way.    We have 30 pages worth to shoot in less then a week, and its getting rough out there.  Not really though.  We are making good progress and have most of it shot.  Lots of work to do tomorrow but after that we should be in the clear.

So for those of you who dont know, our project is a mockumentary about a college election.  The two candidates Brian Morgan, and Veronica Taft, compete against each other to win the colleges vote and become the new SGA president.  Along the journey there are highs and lows for each candidate.

So far the real difficulty I personally, have run into, besides for the lack of time, is the size of the project.  I personally have never done a project this large and when I worked on writing it I wasn't sure what to expect from length and preparation.  It is all new to me.  I do think that with the time we have and the ground we have to cover we are doing just fine.  A lot more has to be done so lets get at it.

Robert Cannon