This week we finished shooting for the rough cut that is due this Monday. We were on a time crunch so we didn't get to film all of the transition shots that help to make the film make sense. I mean this rough cut is gonna be, uh, pretty rough. We managed to film all of the necessary shots that are essential to the plot. Unfortunately we didn't get to film the shot where the killer is talking to his "dolls," about the situation and basically why he's killing himself. So without that we basically just have him shooting up in the bathroom and then dying on his couch- not exactly the meaningful ending we're going for. BUT we will get the shots that are necessary for the film to make sense by the time the film is due to IB, so I'm not too stressed about it right now. Yet thankfully my crew knows how to keep it light, so after a delicious round of Taco Bell- in which our cinematographer Sabrina, had it for the first time (she practically made out with her chicken queserrito)- we had a RAGING DANCE PARTY in Sabrina's bathroom with a strobe light and this really funky disco music from this rockin' bad called Chromeo. But despite these adversities we got some pretty good footage, so hopefully our film won't turn out too badly. Have a nice weekend! Go get a Queserrito! Look up some Chromeo! J-Dog Out.
Helloo my faithful readers! Well this has been one heck of a week. I mean it's been a rough five days. Between homework, classwork and keeping up with my incredibly busy social life (I'm just so popular, gosh it's hard being me sometimes) I've been stretched pretty thin. But despite these trials and tribulations our production is moving along quite smoothly. We're on schedule for shooting so far, and our team is working together pretty well (as in we haven't killed each other... yet). But there is one small detail that may cause a bump in the road. Our lead actor... shaved. Yes that's right, that wonderful, magical, beautiful beard is gone. The beard that has been with us through thick and thin is gone... forever. Not only does our actor now have a baby face that makes him look younger than our character, he also has caused one heck of a continuity issue that may very well be the death of our film. Luckily I and my oh so clever film teacher managed to collaborate and come up with an idea of him shaving, and cleaning himself up and prepping himself for his death. Hopefully this won't mess up our time limit on the film and throw us off schedule. Well I best be off. If you're a guy- DON'T SHAVE. J-Dog Out.
Hellooooooooooooooo Lovely day tis'n't it? Anywho, this weekend has been pretty successful in terms of filming. We all drove out to Sabrina's house (during the DAY I might add, with no vehicles getting stuck in ditches either) and shot most of the interior footage. We have some pretty good stuff.. We couldn't do it all because we had some scheduling issues with the extras, but we'll probably finish up shooting this upcoming Saturday. Exciting stuff right? So we got down to shooting and shot all of the scenes with just the serial killer, and part of the scenes where it was shots of him just speaking. It was a pretty productive day. Afterwards we celebrated with some ORGANIC Mac 'n' Cheese. That's where things turned sour. Don't get me wrong it was delicious chow, but it had some uh... less than desired repercussions. You get the idea. But other than that it was a good day, and this week we got to editing and managed to edit together the majority of the footage that we shot. Well that's all on my end. Stay awesome! J-Dog Out.
Greetings Cinephiles! Hope you are having an oh-so wonderful week; and if not, well hopefully my INCREDIBLE BLOG will help cheer you up. So we plan on wrapping up shooting this weekend, and hopefully move on into post production before the end of the month. This Saturday and/or Sunday we will be shooting the interior sequences, and some of the extra footage that we want for the exterior shots. If all goes to plan, AKA NO CARS IN DITCHES, we should be done with filming by the end of this week. In order to organize a shoot we have to coordinate all of the extras, props and equipment that we need. So far the list is:
Main actor
6+ Extras
Assorted Props (Food for breakfast scene, clock, syringe)
Clothing and costume for the extras
Camera and film equipment
Entire crew (Juniors included)
That's all we need, not too much really, it's just a matter of making sure that everyone is available at the same time. Already I have talked to our main actor and some potential extras, so hopefully we'll be good to go by this weekend. That's all! J-Dog Out.
Hola film amigos! Happy Tuesday! So starting off this new week I went to school nursing several itchy bug bites, a sour disposition, and a newfound respect for vehicles with 4 wheel drive. Oh Jessica, why did you come to school with all of these things? Well I'm glad you asked kind samaritan. My cast and crew decided to get to shooting this weekend, and we started with the exterior shots: the victim escaping, the victim tied up in the car, yadda yadda yadda. So we checked out our equipment from school, contacted all of the actors that we needed, and got everyone to our cinematographers house to start shooting. And then it started raining. So we thought, no biggie, it'll look cool. So we wrapped the camera and all the lighting equipment camera bags and unleashed the full force of our army of assorted umbrellas and ponchos. And we forged on into the darkness. We drove out to the woods by Sabrina's house, where there's some cool pathways that we could shoot from, and got down to business. It was not fun. The rain was cold, the air was humid, and there were bugs EVERYWHERE. We got down and dirty for those shots, but dang do they look good. So after we'd gotten all of our various shots, we packed up our equipment and got into the cars (a Jeep and a Kia Soul). Now that's where things went downhill, LITERALLY. As we were pulling out, our lead actor, in all his wisdom and professional skill, accidentally drove the Kia Soul INTO A DITCH. I mean the back wheels WEREN'T EVEN TOUCHING THE GROUND. We had to get Sabrina's parents to tow the car out and jump start it because the battery had died. So after a long, cold, wet, night full of bugs and frustration, we decided to call it a night. But hey, we got our footage. Have a nice Tuesday! STAY AWAY FROM DITCHES IN THE RAIN. J-Dog Out.
I'm baaaaaaack! Hey guys sorry it's been a while (10 days if you're counting), I know you've probably missed my day-to-day activities on this here handy dandy blog thing, it is the highlight of your life after all, so I'll just give you a run down of what I've been up to this past week. So on the eighth we had our auditions- exciting stuff I know- and we picked our actor for the character of MAN. It's this little fella named Garrett, who is perf for the role. He also happens to be our composer; handy dandy. He's an awesome actor, he's got a beard and everything. We tried getting another girl for the character of HEATHER, she would have been AMAZING at the role, but unfortunately almost every other production wanted her, and since we already got Garrett we decided to let it go. So we still need to cast all of our extras (we need a ton mind you) so we're not quite ready to dive into shooting yet, but we will be soon (hopefully). So now that we've got our actor we needed to decide when to shoot, so after we took the ACT *shudders* last Saturday we all headed to the Promise Land- PANERA BREAD COMPANY. There we hammered out all the details of shooting- the when's, where's and how the heck's. As in "how the heck are we gonna do this?" So we agreed that we are going to start shooting this Saturday night, where we do the chase scene in the woods, in which the victim manages to escape. This should be interesting... a whole filming crew... running through the woods... at night... But anyways we're still scouting for a reasonable location to shoot the interior scenes, thankfully our cinematographer, Sabrina, knows a realtor who is going to let us shoot in one of their model homes, it comes fully furnished and everything! So she's gonna check those out this weekend and send some pics, so hopefully we'll have a place to shoot soon. Well that's me. I'm all done. I'm gonna leave now, okay? Miss me? No? Okayyyy. Bye. J-Dog Out.
Good evening avid bloggers! (Or whatever time it is for you, I'm assuming evening). So today I have undertaken an assignment assigned to me by my oh-so wonderful film teacher. Which is to identify the tropes of our film, it's conformation to the three act structure, and how each scene in our script conforms to that structure. So let's get cracking! So many of you may wonder- what is a trope? Well that is a good question... A trope is basically any element of film, from the theme to the character to even the extras. An example would be the "Five Man Band," in a film like "Star Wars." So you get the idea, here's an image of a PERIODIC TABLE OF TROPES It's beautiful I know, try to contain yourself. So for my assignment I had to identify all the tropes in my script, and I identified the following based on the periodic table up there: Anti-Hero: The main character is a serial killer, enough said. Rounded Character: Despite the fact that he's killing people, he means well. Red Shirts: These are just characters included in the script just to die... so like 90% of our cast. Enemy Within: The main force opposing the character is himself, and his need to have his family. Villain Protagonist: Basically the same reason as him being an anti-hero. Reality is Unrealistic: Since my esteemed colleagues and I do not know all of the effects of paralytic drugs (we're not THAT weird) we are just going to assume the effect of death, so we are portraying a reality that is somewhat unrealistic.
So there's the tropes to our wonderful script. Now fasten your seat belts and keep all hands and feet inside the vehicle, we're about to get into THE THREE ACT STRUCTURE, and it gets pretty wild here. So the Three Act Structure is an outline for all stories to follow, and it states that in Act I the main character and the problem are introduced, in Act II the character fights to resolve the problem, and in Act III that problem is resolved. So "Dollhouse," follows this quite nicely, even with the manipulation of time. Scene by scene our film goes thusly: Scene 1: Introduction of the character's life (Opening credits) Scene 2: Problem is hinted at, not fully shown Scene 3: Formal introduction of the character Scene 4: Problem is fully revealed. Scene 5: The character fights (well sort of, not much to fight here) and the problem is resolved).
So there it is folks, the tropes and structure of "Dollhouse." I know, cah-razy.
Hellooo all. Today I downloaded all of our production forms onto this here handy dandy website, and let me tell you, there are A LOT of forms. Like I mean making a film is no cheesecake, this is hard stuff. So I basically had to go through all of my documents in my laptop and pick out the ones that I needed, and I mean I haven't cleaned out my laptop in a while, so I had a lot of stuff to go through, I'm pretty sure I had stuff from pre-K in there... So between downloading and uploading and wanting to shoot myself I also got into contact with our composer, just to check in on how the score's coming along, he seems pretty excited about it and I'm going to be listening to the rough draft soon, he's already getting into contact with the school band and orchestra for recording purposes, so things are moving along quite nicely. Stay awesome. J-Dog out.
So welcome to my blog guys, this blog is dedicated to my day-to-day activities as director of "Dollhouse," AKA THE BEST FILM EVER, so try to keep up. Each post will dictate what I did that day to further the progress of our production and all that fun stuff. I'll try to keep you guys interested with my wit and charm. So here goes nothing: Today I unpacked all of our fancy new equipment. That included a brand new Rebel T5i, shot gun mic, 32GB SD Card, camera batteries, and a killer backpack to hold all of these lovely things. All of this equipment will be used during production, and today I unpacked it and organized it in the bag, as well as updating our equipment list. But I did not only unpack all the new equipment, I MADE ONE. Yes, that's right, Yours Truly MADE SOMETHING. I unpacked a shoulder rig, one that had to be ASSEMBLED. So, using my oh-so incredible smarts, as well as a manual, I and a classmate assembled a shoulder rig with little to no damage to ourselves (I have a slight scratch on my finger- no biggie). Also today I spoke to a composer who will be able to arrange a score for our film, I gave him the script as well as some notes on what I wanted, and he is already writing away (he's named the score DOLLFACE, get it? Because our film's calle- no? Okay). J-Dog out.