Ok, so, that first shoot, the prom sequence. Wow, what an undertaking that was, for all of us- from myself, I suppose (directing and art directing simultaneously are sometimes not fun when you have to make a blank area look like a high school prom in very little time thanks to locked doors and cranky custodians and I'm rambling), to the crew (lots of equipment, lots of shots, lots of things and people to be organized, lots of lots of anything), to the cast (emotion, emotion, emotion), and even having to wrangle enough extras to make a believable dance floor (thank God for the blessed Loomings kids; Norwegian film majors; and a few others who ended up becoming named extras; that showed up looking fresh on a Friday night before Finals week!)...I mean, it was crazy. I wrote a lot of more "intimate" scenes for 'Us & Them', scenes between two people, or ones that take place just in one house or one classroom. There's a few other scenes that'll require some extras (Cole's class through the years when he's teaching, the baseball field fight), but this was the biggie in terms of just about everything. And with the help from all the above that pitched in, we filmed it, right up until midnight but we got it DONE, and man, I can't stop watching this raw footage, even just with camera audio. Can't believe how hard my crew worked to get things going and looking as well as possible, and how amazing (see below post where I gush uncontrollably) the actors were at diving into the scenes when we were ready. I am so relieved. We likely won't be filming again for about another month (as I may have mentioned before, this is a pretty spread shoot til around the end of March considering a couple other Theses have to be worked on as well, and I aint no Thesis Grinch), and it truly makes me sad because no matter the insane stress and pressure leading up to the first slate call, once it gets going it's kinda like magic. And it was really nice to feel that again.
A little tidbit about something that happened recently. Some of our core crew (Marc, Rob, Nugent, myself, and Alan) submitted a comedic famous film quote-themed short awhile ago to The History of Movies Film Festival sponsored by Pass the Popcorn. It was accepted into a bracket-style tournament which was voted on by the public until a winner would be announced. That winner as of December 2011 was us! We won the grand prize ($$$!) and will be splitting our winnings for use in our Thesis budgets. Woohoo!
In case this is my last post of the year 2011, and what a damned fine, damned crazy, damned stressful, and "I'll be damned!" year it's been, have the happiest of holidays. See you on the flip side.
A little tidbit about something that happened recently. Some of our core crew (Marc, Rob, Nugent, myself, and Alan) submitted a comedic famous film quote-themed short awhile ago to The History of Movies Film Festival sponsored by Pass the Popcorn. It was accepted into a bracket-style tournament which was voted on by the public until a winner would be announced. That winner as of December 2011 was us! We won the grand prize ($$$!) and will be splitting our winnings for use in our Thesis budgets. Woohoo!
In case this is my last post of the year 2011, and what a damned fine, damned crazy, damned stressful, and "I'll be damned!" year it's been, have the happiest of holidays. See you on the flip side.
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