5 Phases of Making a Fiction Field Production I Film

Well my friends, it's that time of the year. Picture Lock season. Each and everyone of us has worked hard, suffered greatly, and felt like we've gotten nothing accomplished. But as we near the end of our filmmaking journey, I want to reflect on the steps we've taken (or at least I've taken) to get to this point.

5 Phases of Making a Fiction Field Production I Film

1. Pick Your Group
Though this seems like an easy task, the cooperation of your team members can either make or break your film and/or mental state. A group that works well together and has members with different strengths makes the difficult process of making a film a little bit easier. They become your family. Either you love them or you hate them, but you're attached to them no matter what. Thankfully, I got lucky and have a really strong group with some great people, and they have become not only my coworkers, but my friends.

2. Pre-Production
You're all so excited. "We're going to make a movie!" You assign jobs, then start planning how the rest of the semester is going to go. You have to write the script, find sponsors, start a fundraising campaign, get actors, get additional crew members, get locations, storyboard, start production design, the list goes on... forever. But you're bright-eyed and bushy tailed, ready to take on this film and make your family proud. So how do you get started? You don't... for weeks. Because you think you have time. You have all semester! Why bother?

Don't worry, it'll all get done. Right?

3. Beginning Production
Nope. You were wrong. You were so, so wrong. By now you've wasted at least three weeks, spring break has come and gone and you haven't even casted. The script may or may not be done (sorry guys, my bad), and you have to start filming in a week. As of right now, your blood pressure is shot through the roof. You have to distribute flyers and still make a blog post. Coffee is your new best friend. But you get together with your group and you muddle through it, dealing with one crisis after another to start on time. You are now familiar with panic attacks, but feel like you have gained superhuman powers at the same time. This is what adulthood feels like, and although you're unsure of the future, you go into the next phase head on.

4. Production
You're in the heart of your production phase. Check your pulse. Yes, you're still alive, but barely. You haven't slept in what feels like years. Your friends and family are worried because they haven't heard from you and don't know where you are. You forget that you have other classes, and your grades suffer from it. Coffee is not your friend, but has become a part of your bloodstream.

Schedules are no longer set in stone. Film shoots are temperamental, either convincing you that you will be the next Steven Spielberg or making you rethink your entire career and future. Arturo laughs as your health deteriorates, slowly but surely. Someone, if not every single person in your group has had some sort of a mental breakdown. But post production is so close, so you torture yourself a little bit longer, hoping and praying that something, ANYTHING good will come of this hell known as filmmaking.

5. Post-Production
You think you'd be relieved, but the work has really just begun. This is the part where you save your film from every little and big mistake that you've made during pre-production and production. And it all falls on the one or two people you call your editors. Thankfully, this is not me, but I have a feeling my work is not done. As we approach this stage of our voyage, I can only hope that it's smooth sailing. But like all of my hopes and dreams this semester, I'm fully aware that this will not be the case. Until then, I'll live my life day by day and hopefully come out of this with at least one lesson: Making films is hard. If anyone ever says anything different, this semester has shown me that it is completely appropriate to react with physical violence.

So to everyone in my class, and all future Fiction Field members, I wish you luck as we come to the close of the longest (yet shortest) semester of my life, and I look forward to all of our hard work to translate into something we're not embarrassed to show even our parents.

(Bonus) Wrap Party

Good Mood Food Update

The post-production period of "Good Mood Food" is nearly finished! We have most of it edited, the last scene is the last one to be finished. The audio is also completely synched, which made the process of editing so much easier. We've chosen a nice color grade to use in color correction which really adds to the depressing feel of the piece. I'm extremely excited to see how the final product turns out!

As for the final project, our group decided to go with the slender man idea. We really started to bounce off a ton of cool ideas with what we can do with this premise, including how slender man kills his victims and where we could shoot this to be the absolute creepiest.

Production

Tomorrow we are going to shoot the last few scenes of our film. We got off to a good start last weekend and shot most of what we needed so we were entirely on schedule. I have enjoyed this project for the most part and the group of people on the cast and crew, but I wish we had more time. More time so that we could further develop an idea and cut down on plot holes and just in general have more time to for production so that we are not rushed and trying to cram in all of the post in a few days. With that being said, I think we still will be able to accomplish something that we are proud of and I think we are all excited to show off some of the footage in class!

Behind the Scenes of The Hobbit.

Judging just by this blog alone, there has been quite a lot of hype around the upcoming film adaptation of The Hobbit. As someone mentioned in an earlier post, the producers have been releasing short clips of how the film has been coming along. Released on youtube just a couple of weeks ago was a featurette that offered some insight into the post production process of the film. As many of us have begun to work on the footage we have shot for our final project, I thought that it would be of interest. 

It was really interesting to see all of the different jobs that are part of the post production team and what they do for the film. Considering the Peter Jackson's film adaptation of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy was widely known for its graphics, it is safe to say that The Hobbit has potential to be even better considering that technology has advanced since then. This clip shows the origins of what the animators receive (a title card just describing the scene) and all of the necessary steps they go through to get a finished product, including sound design and visuals.

Color correction for the color blind!

Look at this picture below:

If you were unable to see one or more numbers hidden in the big circles, then congratulations! You are most likely colorblind. The number should be apparent.

If you are colorblind and in denial, this is the size of the numbers that you should be able to see.

So you are color blind, and if you work with photography, including video, this can be a major problem. Why? Well if you know how a camera works, you'd know that there are different light temperatures depending of the source of light that the camera can pick up more than our eye does. This results in different color tints on the picture than you want. And for a colorblind person it can be difficult to tell if the color os off, and how far off it is.

But have no fear! Someone found a way to color correct photos, even for a colorblind person in post-production. Colorblind photographer Chris Nicholson has developed a way to be able to color correct photos for colorblind people. 

It is a little time consuming, but considering how much it can enhance/save a photograph it is completely worth looking at. This especially becomes true when it is used to earn a living. So from one colorblind person to another, thank you Mr. Nicholson, and I recommend everyone to check out this tutorial.

Musical Adaptations

As a drummer, I find myself listening and tapping along to music on a constant basis. There is never a time when a there is a song (or multiple songs) stuck in my head. I like a wide range of music, but mainly stuff I can drum along to. I was a band geek in high school, and lead drummer when I was a junior and senior; this meant that I had to help out with our biannual musicals. At first I was very bitter and disinclined to participate, but I quickly found a soft spot for musical theater, and medleys from musicals and movies that we played in concert.  My favorite was the percussive score from the Pirates of the Caribbean films.

Because of this, I began watching film adaptations of famous musicals, as well as attending many shows. I am very interested in taking part in film adaptations in the future, as well as possibly producing, directing and/or editing music videos.

Here's a short list of my favorite musical films:
Grease (only the first one, the sequel was garbage)
Most Disney animated musicals (Lion King, Aristocats, Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast, etc.)
Little Shop of Horrors (I recommend this to anyone who has not yet seen it)
Sweeney Todd (a great Johnny Depp/Tim Burton film, yet a little graphic for the weak stomached)
Wizard of Oz (such a classic)
Rocky Horror Picture Show (it's even weirder than the title would suggest)

I could go on, but I'll keep my list for now to the ones more people have probably heard of.
More to come in later posts if others share my strange infatuation :)