This Past Week... what did you do?

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indietalk

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Reviving Zen's idea of "What did you do?"...

I screened ...To Skin a Cat at the Red Bank Int'l Film Festival, which was a very nice fest. I highly recommend this film fest, it's well promoted throughout the town (Kevin Smith's home town) and the staff is friendly and professional. I had close to a full house for my screening. I caught up with an old friend from film school who also had a film there. All in all a good weekend.

What did you do?

:cool:
 
Oh man, these are good threads.

Saturday: Met up with the two actors and the PA for "Broadband" in Chino Hills State Park. The cameraman bailed on us and never showed up, though he left a voice-mail an hour after we started saying he couldn't make it and would it be okay if we all came back on Sunday instead.

My answer:
smiley_flip.gif


Filming with a backup camera, we went ahead with it. Started at 10am, finished at 6pm. Tired, sunburnt, but happy. Every scene filmed, aside from a 30-second bit that takes place in an office that gets filmed Monday.

Sunday: Editing a short film for a friend, who teaches (and records) a drama class at a local school. I'm going to buy him a tripod for Christmas, as he has clearly never used one at any point of the footage. :lol:

Rar! Has been a good weekend, indeed. :yes:
 
This wasn't one of my best weeks.

In August my dad fell, broke his nose and shattered his elbow. While in the hospital, a CAT scan found rapidly spreading cancer throughout his body. He spent a short time in a rehab hospital, then went home under hospice care.

My sister and I were his primary caregivers: I had the day shift and she took the night shift. Together with the hospice nurses and health aids we kept him as comfortable as possible.

Dad died last Saturday. My sister and I were with him at the end, holding his hands as he passed away. It was quite an experience to say the least.

The rest of the week was spent tackling the myriad details. Funeral arrangements, transportation and accomodations for out-of-town relatives, it was all so busy in a surreal way.

Now everything's winding down. The relatives have departed. The paperwork is just about all handled, thank-you cards yet to be done.

On a happier note, though, today (10/10) is my 17th anniversary!
 
SPaulovich said:
This wasn't one of my best weeks.

In August my dad fell, broke his nose and shattered his elbow. While in the hospital, a CAT scan found rapidly spreading cancer throughout his body. He spent a short time in a rehab hospital, then went home under hospice care.

My sister and I were his primary caregivers: I had the day shift and she took the night shift. Together with the hospice nurses and health aids we kept him as comfortable as possible.

Dad died last Saturday. My sister and I were with him at the end, holding his hands as he passed away. It was quite an experience to say the least.

The rest of the week was spent tackling the myriad details. Funeral arrangements, transportation and accomodations for out-of-town relatives, it was all so busy in a surreal way.

Now everything's winding down. The relatives have departed. The paperwork is just about all handled, thank-you cards yet to be done.

On a happier note, though, today (10/10) is my 17th anniversary!
Click to expand...

Sorry to hear about that.


Happy Anniversary.
 
I just returned from field training so I am sore, beat up, bug bitten, cut up, scratched and generally pretty dirty. Plus a guy took a couple of cheap shots into my ribs during a scenario when I was supposed to be surrendering.

It is always worth it as I shed blood sweat and tears with 20 other guys who are like your brothers! We captured the students flag and even let them attack us using their site. Now I have to squueze in a day of filming before going to another base to assist them with there training program.
 
SPaulovich: Sorry to hear that, and Happy Anniversary as well.

I spent my weekend shooting video in a nightclub on Friday night for use in our final episode of the season, due next Monday. Afterwards, we all went out to drink and yours truly overdid it... way WAY overdid it, to the tune of sharing the contents of my stomach with 200 of my closest friends outside the club (fortunately NOT the one we'd just filmed at). It so happens that I was wearing my STBD t-shirt at the time, so at least everyone watching me doubled over in gutbusting agony had time to copy down our URL off my back...

Saturday: Recovered from the attendant hangover until about 3 in the afternoon. Scheduled a shoot for Sunday morning. Ate Mexican, ice cream and wings, which must be one of the most bizarre ways to overcome a hangover...

Sunday: Filmed the final scene of the season at 11 a.m. Watched the Steelers game at a sports bar. Captured some video for the next episode. Scheduled shoots for every night of the week.

I can already see my answer to this thread next week: "Sat in my office and edited for 60 hours straight..."
 
Me, I found out that the writer/director and actor for my short film for the competition had to cancel due to family emergency(They're brothers).

I decided that I had to do something and came up with an idea right after the email came in. Turned on the cam and recorded. Edited it, added music and had a finished product, all in the same day. I also have been getting call after call for me to work as a contractor at my previous place of employment for over $15,000 than I'm making now.. Interview is Monday...
So we'll see.
Anything else?..... not that I can think of right now...


What did you do?
 
Crappy...

indietalk said:
Reviving Zen's idea of "What did you do?"...

I screened ...To Skin a Cat at the Red Bank Int'l Film Festival, which was a very nice fest. I highly recommend this film fest, it's well promoted throughout the town (Kevin Smith's home town) and the staff is friendly and professional. I had close to a full house for my screening. I caught up with an old friend from film school who also had a film there. All in all a good weekend.

What did you do?

:cool:
Click to expand...

First of all, my past week was a dream week compared to SPaulovich's...

My prayers go out to you and yours... And yes, happy anniversary!

Anyway, this past week really pissed me off to say the least... Why? Glad you asked... Okay, in the last week of August I found out about the state of New Mexico's Governor's Cup Film Festival. Having never entered a film festival before, I thought this one would be kinda nice as my first...

I had just ordered a Panasonic DVX-100A but hadn't received it yet... But I went ahead and wrote the script... 10 pages... The festival rules say that you could submit any Narrative, Documentary, or Student entry that was 25 minutes or less...

My niece acts in high school and she's not bad so I wrote this 10 page script about a 16 year old girl who, after having sex one time, finds out she's pregnant... The main character, calls up her best friend and meets her at this local teenage dope smoking hangout... i.e., an old dilapidated house with one room out in the desert... Anyway, my niece recruited her real best friend who also acts with her in high school and after looking at her, I had her play the pregnant girl... She doesn't even look 16... More like 13 so I thought this would have more of an intense reaction from the audience...

Anyway, I could only get both of these girls together for one day and even then only for 3 or 4 hours... I got my panny the day before and attempted to learn it all in one night but the manual is for shit so I ended up shooting in auto mode except for setting it to 24p Advanced/Thin.

All in all, the shoot went great... Had an hour of footage to play with and with some tweaking, was even able to hide some of the glaring inconsistencies I had... Luckily, I shot enough (just enough) coverage to do this...

Editing took a few days and I got the film down to 06 minutes 08 seconds. The deadline was 10 September. I mailed off our entry, "SEXTEEN" on 06 September.

So far so good...

I kept checking out the New Mexico Film Commission web site for any updates... Finally, last week, there was one... It turned out that they had enough entries from our region of New Mexico to hold local screenings of the films... Cool.

I immediately called the film commission's office (number on the web site) and asked which films they were showing for our local screening... I was told "All of them." --In other words, every film that was entered. I then asked how they were going to screen them i.e., project the VHS screeners everyone sent or were we to furnish a master tape/DVD? The person I spoke to didn't have a clue and gave me the number of the person actually running the fest...

So I called her up and it turns out that she was just going to call ME and ask if I would be one of the judges (they needed three) for the screening... I told her that I would normally be happy to but that I had entered the fest so I said it probably wouldn't ethical for me to be a judge...

Then I asked about my film and how they were going to project it... I immediately offered a master DVD of the film...

She looked my name up on some list and said, "Sorry, you never sent us a Master tape or DVD to project at the screening so your film won't be screened."

I promptly told this person that nobody ever contacted me... Nobody called. Nobody sent an email (they asked for my email address on the entry form). All this person would keep saying over and over is "The list says you were contacted and you didn't submit your master to us, so your film won't be screened."

I offered to drive it up there (4 hours away and it was early enough to get it there), overnight it, and finally, show up early before the actual screening and hand it over...

To each offer, the answer was an emphatic, "No!"

Went to the screening tonight...

I went there with all the people that helped on my film and a few friends... We couldn't believe our eyes at the total crap we saw. First off, I'll let the student films off easy... They're students, so I would expect to see something less polished --Although, having said that, in my opinion, the best film sreened tonight was in fact one of the student films... And, luckily, he did win $500 for his flick... Good for him but trust me, it was not that great of a film...

Now I totally understand that film reviews are subjective and everybody has their own opinions... But I would think that at a minimum, we are looking for some kind of a baseline... LOL. You know... Decent lighting, decent sound. Dialogue that's not ON THE NOSE, etc., etc.

The first film screened was listed as a documentary. There was NO NARRATION and it was simply home movie (with camcorder) type footage of a rodeo down in Mexico. This thing went on for over 20 minutes! It was murder to sit through! It won second place documentary and $250.00! It was shakier than the Blair Witch Project! LOL. A lot of the shots were telephoto shots that must have had the zoom all the way extended and was so damn shaky that people were complaining about it in the theater...

The narrative films were just as bad... Two of the narrative films we saw (one of which won 2nd place and $250.00) had absolutely no story line. The editing was so bad... We just kept following the characters around and around before a cut took place... All these films were like 20 minutes and could have easily been cut down to 5. Nobody even knew what the films were about after the screening was over... How do I know this? Because almost everyone went outside the theater, stood around for about 20 minutes (a lot of us know each other) and talked about the films... At least 7 people have seen my film and came up to me and let me know that none of the films compared to mine... Which, was really nice to hear... Then they asked why mine wasn't screened and I told them the story...

All in all, it just plain sucked... The films were so terrible overall that I couldn't believe this was a state funded screening...

And no... I'm not saying my film is so great... It was however, much better than any other film screened tonight... I would be the first one to say my film sucked compared to the others if it were true... It just pisses me off because nobody contacted me even though they say they did... I didn't care about the money or winning... I really wanted everyone involved (everyone worked for free) to be able to see the film they worked on projected on the big screen and compete with the others...

The good thing is that even though that didn't happen, everyone saw the crap that was screened tonight and couldn't believe these were the best the state had to offer the public...

Oh well... So much for my first festival... LOL.

filmy
 
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Hmm, this week I found a bunch of footage that I had shot with some friends back in Fresno, so I dumped it all back onto my computer to play with. . . whee! Aside from that, school. . . school. . . and more school. Oh and getting ready for the annual Sierra Cup Classic!! 2004! So that'll be fun. . . Anyone else a marching band fan too?

Here's last year's show. . .just fyi I guess

http://homepage.mac.com/directorlca/iMovieTheater6.html
 
Oh yea, my best friends(from like age 5-15) dad died of an aneurysm, that sucked hard.

And i'm sorry about your loss too SP....
 
I spent most of the week in the sound suite mixing down the soundtrack for No Place.

I also completed a research project I've been working on for The Arts Council.

Aside from that, I've been dealing with various logistical problems with the online edit, ie. the whole deal collapsing at the last minute and the stresses that that has created, whilst we pull together a new deal.

Just a regular week really.
 
I went to the Columbia art museum on Saturday. My little sister was presented with an award for her art work. She is only eight so it was a big deal for the family.

Sunday I chased my crazy chihuahua down the street and found a dollar. so that was a good day. Now I have four dollars to my name instead of three. Go me.
 
Ooh.. I actually did something this week. A couple friends and I shot a short to promote our first school dance... I'm supposed to be editing it, but I don't have a FireWire cable for my machine, and I can't see the sense in buying one for this one-time thing (though if and when I get a camera, that's a different story...)

So I'm stuck, but hopefully I can borrow me one tomorrow and get to work. I also have my first meeting thingy for a local media club tomorrow night... :)
 
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