To Do List for Presentation/Premier

Premier:

1. Secure Date (Monday the 13th at 7 PM in the library)
2. Making sure all the critical people can show up (Mr. Heurich my mentor, Ms. Gergely my WISE teacher, John Nord who is a student evaluator, Avalon Bunge, who is another student evaluator, and the community advisor for my presentation who I have yet to know who it is.)
3. Burn DVD's for all my actors and the critical people who will be grading my presentation
4. Do Package design. 
5. Buy Jewel Cases for DVD's 
6. Make poster/flyers 
7. Securing food and goodies for people to munch on during the premier
8. Make a playlist for when people are walking in and out of the premier
9. Script my comments for my short speech at the beginning of the premier before the movie plays

Presentation

• Unexpected learning from this project
• Scheduling 
• Being at the mercy of other peoples flakiness (sometimes)
• Spending more time on things that weren't part of the movie but part of the project
• Care and feeding of my crew
• Unexpected challenges that cropped up during the course of the project
• Time Management/Balancing real life with my project
• Personal Growth 
• The Creative Process/The Spontaneity of Creation (Put this near the beginning of my presentation) 
• Journaling (How my view on journaling changed depending on different phases of my project)

One of my favorite things of filming.

One of my favorite parts of filming is the spontaneity of film making. For instance even though I had a script and I knew how I wanted the story to progress there were a lot of things still not hammered out such as choreography of fight scenes, changes to dialogue to make it better, and blocking of scenes. Its so much fun to work with a bunch of people and come up with cool and interesting ideas and twists to scenes for things. For instance. On Saturday we had a little bit of time left and I was going to say ok guys that's it for today thanks for coming we got a lot done. But, one of my friends had a cool/funny idea for a scene and so we wanted to film it. So even though people could go home and the scene wouldnt actually end up in my movie we filmed it anyways and then we came up with even more ideas and filmed those even though we didn't have to. I love this part of filming where you come up with a cool idea completely spontaneous and then film it and it ends up working really well and looking great.

Shenanigans of Filming 4

This weekend went awesome!!!!!!!! I got pretty much everything done this weekend and I am so relieved that I got it done for I was really starting to freak out. On Friday we filmed my big fight scene and even though I didn't have a crowd and the fading light was a problem things ended up working out very well and I got all the scenes I needed to do. On Saturday was where the real fun began. We started at 10 in the morning and ended at 5 but got all the scenes done. Even though the weather wasn't the greatest it didn't end up being a problem and we even had some extra time which we decided to make some "deleted" scenes or "alternate" endings from
cool/funny ideas that we all had. Sunday the weather was even worse and it was pouring rain outside. However, it ended up that the scenes I was doing were interrogation scenes and it worked perfectly with the mood I was trying to portray for the scenes. So while we got pretty wet we got it done and it looks good! I am
so much more relaxed now that I got all the work I did over the weekend done and my project is back on track!!!

Character Profile: Dante

The character Dante was actually a collaborative effort between myself and the actor who plays him James Eaglesham. During my script writing process one day during calculus (yes I know tsk tsk for not doing calc) he and I were talking about his character because I knew I wanted James to play my bad guy in the movie. I had already wanted to have my bad guy be an arms dealer (for I had already written a good chunk of my script) but he was lacking in both a name and character quirks that would really make his character interesting. We tossed around a lot of ideas and while not coming up with his name we came up with some really good quirks. The name for Dante was originally supposed to be for Jordan Mathew's character but I decided it was just such a cooler name for a bad guy than a good (well sorta) guy thus the name switch and Jordan's character name becoming Diego

Character Bio: Dante first and foremost is an arms dealer. But one with bigger plans than most. He is not content with just selling guns and ammo to people who are already fighting. He purposely starts wars between people and then will sell guns to both sides along with medical supplies to keep the war going for as long as possible. As you can see. Not a very nice guy. He however, in public puts on a very good face and even gives money to charity so is considered a good guy by people in his community. He also is a raving psychopath who's underlying madness sometimes breaks out and can be seen from his otherwise cool and collected manor. He also is a coke addict who's addiction possibly contributes to his madness. He also is a huge Stravinsky fan which is fitting because Stravinsky himself was also mad. Dante also has a very quick and large temper that is displayed especially when O'reilly (Zack Bend) brings him some bad news.

The unintended learning experience of WISE

So I started this project thinking I was going to learn how to 1. Write a script 2. How to film a movie and 3. How to edit a movie. I figured it would be pretty time intensive and I'd be spending most of my time on aspects relating to my project. But to be honest the one thing I have spent the most time on for my entire project is scheduling. Because my project depends on other people and other people have tons of stuff to do for their own lives scheduling is honestly a nightmare but at the same time probably one of the best learning experiences of my project so far. At first I tried to send a questionnaire to people to see when they would be available and while that allowed me to get an initial film schedule set up people got busy and things they didn't know about came up and so I would have to frantically schedule things last minute. I realized, hey clearly the way I'm scheduling things is not working very well and so I went to a weekly based schedule where I would email everyone at the beginning of the week telling who to come, where and how to dress and at what time which worked better. But things still came up last minute that caused to me have to again frantically re-arrange things. I have now changed to a new system while still not yet perfect has been pretty effective. In addition to and email at the beginning of the week I ask everyone that I'll be needing what days their free and then make the schedule from that for the weekend. In addition I become an absolute pest and constantly harass them for the entire week reminding them where to come and etc. I'm still learning but I have gotten better at learning how to schedule things which will definitely help me not just for the rest of this project but life in general

Some dissapointment

So I didn't get any filming done last weekend because people are studying for AP's which i understand but I'm kinda freaking out. I have way to much left to film and I physically can't extend my filming anymore. Like I just can't. To be honest I'm starting to get really bedraggled. I love filming and I love editing but because of the constant scheduling issues it's feeling more like a hassle than something I'm enjoying to do. I'm honestly just tired. I'm constantly running around trying to get everything and everyone set and ready for filming. In addition to helping to prepare my ultimate team for states and my own work outs which adds physical exhaustion to the mix and also having to do all my other school work, tons of college forms and things I have to sign up for, and preparing for two concerts I'm playing in. There's just too much stuff to do and I basically have less than a week. This is probably the lowest point in terms or my morale for my project so far. But I just need to push through it. If I can just get through this week and do all the filming this weekend then everything will be ok. Easier said than done though.

Shenanigans of filming Part 3

Wow so a successful weekend of filming. Boy am I exhausted. So unfortunately one of my actors canceled on me last minute for Saturday but after a quick re-arranging of scenes I could still film the same amount of stuff. Unfortunately because of time issues we only ended up being able to film one scene but that wasn't that big of an issue. The next day Sunday was great however. I got all of the end scenes done except for a small part which can easily be done later. I was really happy with all the people who showed up and even with a small mis-communication on about props (we were short a sniper rifle and an M16 but it ended up not being a problem) We got a ton of stuff done and the movie is really starting to take shape I'm so excited!!! Although I have to say it is exhausting to manage that many actors and block that much stuff even though its fun. Also I edited another promo video together but I wanted to wait till I have some more footage from a different scene to add to it before I release it so be prepared for that!