The Golden Doorknob Awards

The Skip Landen Golden Doorknob Awards is an annual tradition in Park, and this year's event was celebrated during alumni weekend for the 40th anniversary of the School of Communications. The ceremony was entertaining as always, hosted by Peter Johanns, who made the entire auditorium laugh out loud with his stone-cold jokes about giving his kid away. The night started with some of the classic doorknob films from students in the past, there was a tribute to Skip Landen, the name behind the Golden Doorknob Awards, some previous award winners, and some other gags throughout the night before the montage of this year's official entries.

The winning mini-knob film, Death Door 3000, starred Canon Brownell and was the story of a young adult who becomes aware that he is currently in a doorknob film and must try to stay alive, and away from doorknobs. He eventually gets shot to death by a malicious door, in a hilarious ending. The entries for this year were creative, with some notable entries such as the The Man With The Golden Knob, a James Bond parody with amazing intro and ending credits sequences just like in the Bond movies. Second place went to Gerbert The Pervert, a wildly sexual and gory short film about two characters who attempt to murder a pervert, but the murder attempt goes horribly wrong. The gore effects were done very well, and they used swish pans effectively. The winning film was Happy Birthday, which I was a part of. It is the story of a young adult on the day of his deceased father's birthday going to pay him respects and give his father a message. He writes a letter to his father and leaves it at the base of Ground Zero, where his father was killed in the 9/11 attacks. There is a flashback to the day his dad left for work, and to the last words his father said to him. My roommate James Majeau came up with the story last year, he edited it and also starred in it. The film was shot over fall break in 2012. Rebecca Hersey was our colorist, Breanna Espina was our director of photography, Brian Felsenthal was our audio editor, and I was the special effects editor. When James was taking Fiction Field I, he used this for his news story project in this class, like we are now. I am so glad that I was a part of the production, it was a great experience and I enjoyed watching James' excitement when all of his hard work finally paid off. At the end of the ceremony our group met with one of the professors who was here when production classes were just getting started. He gave us a great piece of advice, and the one lesson he has learned throughout his 80 plus years of life. He told us there is no such thing as a boss, there are only teams and captains. Everyone is in it together, and has something to contribute to the team. If you help your peers out, they will help you out, we all learn from each other.

Final Project Pitch

For my final project I would like to make a Golden Doorknob. The protagonist of the story would be a male in his early twenties. He comes back to his apartment from class and finds his girlfriend packing up her belongings. The girlfriend leaves the apartment and hands him an engagement ring. The protagonist is both depressed and furious. He goes over to his closet and looks in the shoebox full of memories that he has of the two of them. A little while later he goes back into the closet but when he opens the door, he does not see his clothes hanging or anything. He sees a moment from his past that he shared with his girlfriend. During the film, he will see multiple memories that he shared with his girlfriend. I was thinking of using the time they first met, their first kiss and when he proposes to her. The final moment that the protagonist will see is the time that his girlfriend cheated on him with another man. I still have to develop the idea more but I want to have the protagonist kill the girlfriend and the other man. When he is about to do it, there will be a flash and the final shot will be the protagonist hanging in the closet and all you see is his legs. The protagonist imagined killing the two others but actually committed suicide.

Parenting a Movie

This final project is much to me like a child. I helped raise it, I fed it, taught it right from wrong, and even played catch with it in the back lawn... But in reality, this short film was stressful and frustrating, but also fun, and I feel a love for it in my heart. As this movie aged and grew, it went through some of the phases of a childhood, from infant, to toddler, up through boy scouts, and now it is in the adolescent stage - as in we don't really get along with each other right now. Its time to take a break. Throughout the writing, conceptualizing, storyboarding, directing, and editing, I have seen this movie far too much.  Though this movie is far from finished, it screens tomorrow; as the arrogant, cocky, ignorant teen that it is. I guess the parenting 101 lesson is to let the child (and myself) learn from their experiences. Once this is over and a short break is taken, it will be time to nurture this film into an adult. More post-production, and hopefully it will be ready in time for the Golden Doorknob screening in April. Wish us luck!

Golden Doorknobs and exporting

Golden doorknobs are done!!! Whooo Hoooo! Pretty pleased with how ours turned out. Very happy it is done haha. On another note, make sure you check your settings when you export to quicktime. I had trouble playing my quicktime and I couldn't figure out why. It was because the settings of my export did not match up with the settings of my original footage. So yeah, check your settings. Now it's time to ADR.

Finally Finished

Golden doorknob is done! Yes! I honestly have no idea what I'm going to do with all of the spare time I anticipate having now that it's over (probably homework, but whatever). Anyway, here's our final product: PEACH IS A WHORE

Done!

We're done our GDK! Woo! Special thanks to our cast for being awesome and Red for lighting. :) We're pretty satisfied with how it turned out. I think I'm especially happy with how the basement scene and the end scene turned out. We really had a good location for the basement scene, so props to Jamie for that! We even had some ADR for a few lines and it actually worked out, so that was nice too. Not sure what else to say about it, hope everyone else is done and can breathe again. :)

Golden Doorknob

Hey, does anyone know when the Golden Doorknob Screening is? Thanks!

update

our GDK is finally complete. we had a major continuity error that was holding us up for a bit BUT we worked around it with our shot variety and sound after effects. turned out pretty good and i'm happy with it. on a side note, I made a rug today.. thought that was pretty cool haha

word

getting there

ok so our GBK has really picked up in the last couple shoots. got one or two more scenes and already started editing. not too worried we dont have anything crazy to do special effects etc..maybe some ADR and transitions really. got some good pics thanks to molly and thats about it

HAPPY OPENING DAYYYY

For all you Phillies fans out there like me (yes Kyle, this one's for you) it's OPENING DAY! So probably not a lot of editing is gonna be done today until the game is over.

But we finished shooting this week. YAYYYY! Feels really good to have all of our footage done, there's a great blooper reel up on facebook if anyone's interested. Our actors were really goofy which is something I love in a cast, it keeps everyone's stress level down. Something I love about having Joe act for me is he's always fun on set, usually makes for an awesome blooper reel.

So basically we shot in the parking garage, the audio isn't too bad, needs a little work, and we need to color correct a little. Since we were outside everything is a little extra blue, but no biggie. We've got a rough cut done, but like i said, nothing else is getting done till after this game.

Hope everyone else had a good shooting week like we did!

Final Cut's Being a Bitch

Okay, so, for the GDK project we recorded our good audio (from the boom mic) on the right channel. I am now trying to use only that channel to make the audio duel-mono. I've de-linked the stereo pair and re-positioned a copy of the good track to run in parallel with the original, but when I go to change the pan to -1 (so that it will come out of the left channel), it won't let me. It will let me move the slider or type in a number into the pan value, but it wont do anything and when I de-select it and then re-select it, the audio says that pan is at 1, even though I just changed it. This and the fact that Final Cut has been slow and jumpy with the amount of footage in it is making me very short-tempered.

What am I doing wrong?

Its Monday Already...whoa

Lots of shooting over the weekend for GDK. Business school pt. I on Friday evening; green screen studio and parking garage on Saturday (plus relay for life); business school pt. II Sunday morning. Plenty of footage to look through, already started editing some.

Second shoot went great!

Hope everyone who shot this weekend had a good shoot. I know Becca and I did!
We shot Saturday at a house on South Aurora, and sure, the house was a disgusting mess. BUT it was the perfect location. Our audio came out good and the lighting is amazing thanks to my awesome roommate (Rachel Rothenberg) who is practically a lighting goddess.

So basically all we have left to shoot is the outside stuff, its about 3 very short scenes. So please keep your fingers crossed that we have some decent weather soon.

More Green Screen

Team Member Down

Hey everyone, turns out Ellis withdrew from the course so Becca and I are a group member down.
If anyone is free Saturday the 26th from 330 until 10 at the very very latest and wouldn't mind lending a hand we'd really appreciate it. We just need a couple (or at least 1) extra person on set to be audio, or be a PA. anything really. Just text me or becca if you'd like to help out. Seriously though, I'd love you forever.

green screens are pretty sick

today in class we shot a short scene from our GDK and after we got everything in place i was really impressed with exactly what was possible with the green screen. i mean it had reflections from our background on things like the desk. after effects looks like it does a lot of the work, or maybe arturo just made it look easy, probably the latter. we did have some scares as far as styrofoam ceilings go but im really glad we did that in class today i think i learned a lot

thanks for the warm welcome back ithaca..

..you never cease to amaze me with your bright sunny days and warmth. (to then be followed by snow and freezing rain, but she doesnt mean it right ithaca?) anyway i digress. our actors are more complicated to organize than. well something really hard to organize. but other than that were ready to go. were doing our green screen scene (say that 3 times fast) tomorrow in class so thatll be good. thats it for me see you bright and early..well maybe not bright

btw anyone have a half decent bracket left? and go miami bball!

Mondays. Silly.

Hope we weren't supposed to post over break. Oopsie daisy.

Well, obligatory update on the GDK: we've reserved our equipment and have everything ready for our shoot this upcoming Saturday. What will be most difficult is the shoot after that- our cast is really only available on Saturdays, and only during the afternoon, so that makes our last shoot (outdoors, off-campus) pretty time-restricted, especially since we're running out of Saturdays. But I think with some good in-class prep and some editing of what we already have, we should be okay.

I didn't watch too much TV or movies over break- I know, I'm really regretting it- but I did manage to watch a movie my dad Tivo'd for me. It was called "Always" (I think), and it was about a firefighter pilot who dies and gets sent back from Heaven to act as an unseen guide for an up-and-coming firefighter pilot. It was directed by Steven Spielberg (I'm pretty sure- my memory is really failing me right now), and the script was great. It had some really nice moments. There was a part just before the end that I wasn't sure fit very well, but overall I really liked the characters (Richard Dreyfuss plays the main guy) and the dialogue. So overall, pretty good. :)

I'm gonna post a Wednesday blog post yeahhh wooo

I realized after re-reading my last post that it sounded whiny and 12-year-old-girl-like, so I apologize. Or I don't. Maybe I'm a twelve year old girl. Justin Bieber. Perms. Whipping hair back and forth. You get the picture.

A lot changes in a week: We're done shooting most of our film and are now in (drumroll) the editing stage! Ten gigabytes of footage currently sit on my desktop ready to be sliced and color corrected and what not. I'm not sure that we'll need to do much with the video -- it's the audio I worry about. I'm thinking we'll need some serious ADR for one of the scenes; but then again, I haven't looked at the footage yet. I'll either be pleasantly surprised or not surprisingly disappointed. We'll see.

Life's good otherwise. Break is coming. Get excited. See you after next week.

~Will

Forms, Legal, and Shenanigans

Everyone planning to film on city property, you may want to pay attention. So, we all know that to film on city property, we need to submit a form to the Department of Public Works at least two weeks in advance (see the form on the Field Production research guide on the IC Library site, or go here. But, what about the insurance form (item number 2 on the form)? Well, as IC students filming in the city, we are covered by the college through the Office of Risk Management, but the office need to get a form at least 10 days before the shoot (and I would recommend getting this paperwork in before submitting the form for the Department of Public Works). Click here to get to the page you need for the Risk Management forms.

Also, I realized that I haven't been doing these entries for the past month or so, so I'll try to get one down every day for the next week or two (personal goal).