FInal EOC

I will admit, in the beginning this class kind of scared me. From thing I heard from other students and reading the workload, I was slightly intimidated by the idea of this class, especially because it’s my last quarter and I already had so much work I had to do. Between tweaking my demo reels to get to a point to make the school happy, my other 2 hard classes, and this class, I was unsure how I would keep up with the work. Especially when I get really sick in the middle of everything. Getting to a point were I couldn’t even crawl out of bed took a real toll on my standing on how close I was to being done.

Non-the-less I was able to pull through. I was able to pull everything together to get all my work done. Some things may have lacked a little, but I finished it. Granted I still have a few finals to do and get ready for graduation next week, but the class that scared me in the beginning of the quarter, ended up being a class to help spark and form a great idea.

Ideas are a dime a dozen, everyone gets them all the time. But finding an idea that has so much potential, so much to offer not only to the people paying for the serves but also for the people working. That is always the hardest part of learning how to create something. Even better is learning how to create something and understand how to use it.

With a better understanding of business plans, and how business works, I feel the class was effective. Being able to put down in words a great idea is hard, let alone create a full business plan to make it work is harder. I still have some tweaking to do, but now I know where I stand and what I want to create. I also now have a plan that with some fixing could be perfect to help find the funding for the new creation. 

Week 9 Photo Challenge: Producing

For my Producing Photo Challenge I want to stress one main thing about the term producing, producing could be anything from finding the money to finding people or even helping create content when needed. Pretty much your only true job is to make sure the work gets done. Either by phone, in person, or on the computer, you are always doing something; even after the work is done you are still working. It’s a long job that stresses a lot of people out. When everyone else gets to go home for the day, you are sitting there watching dailies until 2 in the morning and waking up at five or six to get back to work.

Now with all that said, I was going to take a new picture for this challenge, but decided to look through some old ones. I choice this picture because it was my first time trying to produce a news style segment. I was completely out of my comfort zone and just focused on trying to find the means to get the segment done. It was a major challenge that I found stressful. The main reason was producing for news is not the same as producing for narrative. Basics of the jobs are the same, but the way of executing is different.

During the time of the picture I was handing out jobs while I was making sure we had enough material to cover our segment. We were actually short by two stories and I had to create them without much time before shooting. I kept giving orders and making sure everyone was doing their jobs while my eyes were fixed on finding the right stories and figuring out where they need to go in our segment. It was a very stressful day, and pointed out to me how hard that specific job can be. Gives me more respect for it.

Week 9 EOC: Tennis Clinic

When following your dreams, it’s very hard to make the right decisions, because it can be very hard to even know what the right choices are. If it’s your dream, then you have a love and passion for it. That same love that drives you to follow your dream can, in some cases, destroy your dream and sometimes love. If you don’t start out on the right foot to begin with, then you’ll find yourself in a little bit of trouble.

            This is what happened to Rob Johnson. It’s unfortunate, but happens, and for Rob it could have been avoided. Rob was a journalist that was always working with deadlines and yelling editors. He was tired of the grind and wants to follow his dream of playing tennis for a living. He thought easiest thing to do would be to quit his job, in early 2000’s people were getting fired like crazy, and he went around to some of the Orlando, Florida resorts around him and offer to teach tennis for their customers.

           

            He hopped in it, offering to teach for fifty dollars and hour and kick back ten percent back to the hotels for working with him. After getting a couple hotels he invested $500 for t-shirts. He quickly had a few clients and thought everything was working out. Rob had a few problems. He was trying to teach to tourist and kids that don’t even really care about tennis. He was also teaching in a place that gets hits by hurricanes and where it rains all the time. Quickly he began to hate what he once love.

            Rob could have avoided this all by thinking things through first. He didn’t have a business plan, and that would have made him realize the actual job he was trying to get into. He also could have volunteered to teach at a boys and girls club to even see if he would like teaching. Or he could have eased into it by teaching one or two days a week and keeping his job. His problem wasn’t that he was following his dream; it was the execution of it.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204369404577208811394364448.html?mod=wsj_share_tweet

Week 8 Photo Challenge: Dressed for an event

This is me at the NAB show. I was only able to make it for one day, but it was an amazing experience that I can’t wait to have again. I went as a student and started off at the Job fair. After hours of talking to employers, I went and walked around the show to check out some of the new gear.

          There was A LOT of really nice, cool, and inspiring gear for filmmakers of all types. New cameras were release, like the Blackmagic Cinema Camera. It’s a camera in the size of consumer DSLR cameras, like the canon 7D or 5D Mark 2. The biggest difference is that the Blackmagic Cinema Camera shoots in raw footage and shoots in 2.5k format (DSLR’s only shoot in 1080 with the exception of the 1D). The only problem with the 1D is price. For the Blackmagic Cinema Camera it’s almost $3,000 and you get free Coloring Software.

            There where a lot of other gadgets and gear I got to test and look at. The one thing I wanted to do I couldn’t. I really wanted to get Avid Certified at NAB. I looked into doing it outside NAB and it cost so much and is just a pain, for students at NAB it was a lower price. Or at least I was told it was.

            I’m wearing a suit I pieced together with the help of my fiancé. I’m a big fan of the vest look. I have a bulkier upper body, I’m not saying fat at all, just thicker chest. Because of that, jackets can be awkward and my sleeves always feel too short. The vest gives me a look that stands out more. It gives me a look people don’t see all the time. My sleeves are up in the picture because this was near the end of the day and I was hot, when I was at the job fair the sleeves were down.

Week 7 Weekly Photo Challenge: Screenplay Cover

Screenplays are interesting monsters.  I say that in the most loving and hateful way I can. Every filmmaker wants or wishes they could write the next biggest screenplay hit. They want to be the next Joss Whedon with an Avengers script, or Shane Black getting paid over a million dollars based off of just the treatment and not even the script.  They can get too flashy, or creative, and loose track of the importance of writing a screenplay. It all comes down to just the story. That is why covers to my screenplays are very basic, and looks like most Hollywood scripts.

The Last Drive was a seven page short screenplay that I wrote in 2011 just for fun. It wasn’t for a class or assignment, just for myself because I had a great idea stuck in my head and I wanted to get it out. The importance of the title page is the same as a book, just not as showy. It’s the first thing people are going to see and read. Of course it’s important to have the writer’s name on it, more then once would be ideal, and it’ll have a way to contact the writer. For contacting it could either be a phone number, e-mail address, or in some case a physical address can be used.

The main thing about the cover page is the title of the screenplay you are showing. Titles alone can make or break your chance of getting it made, or even just looked at. I personally feel that the best titles tell a part of the story, while leaving just a little bit of mystery. Movies like The Sixth Sense, Along Came Polly, The Thing, and Cabin in the Woods, seem straightforward; yet still hold a slight bit of intrigue curiosity to them. That’s what I tried to do with The Last Drive. It’s telling you the part of the story it wants you to know right off the bat, this is the last drive for someone, but it makes you wonder why.

Week 7 EOC: My Resume and Optical Resume

My resume has been worked on over and over, and has had many different forms and images. It has seen so many different designs, I’m sure it’s as tired of being worked on as much as I’m tired of my fingers hitting a keyboard.  Since it is getting closer ad closer to my graduation date, I have found that my main time is spent editing and writing, fixing designs and applying for jobs.

            In the last three months alone my resume has been updated five times. It has had everything moved around and reorganized, and had my new logo fixed and correctly applied to it. Because of the fact that everyone I talk to has a different opinion about how a resume should be set up, the resume keeps forming. I’m not changing it to be in the form of those opinions, what I have been doing is finding way to take what people have felt most important or a must do and apply them all to the resume.

            By doing this I am hoping to create a resume that is not only appealing for most people to look at, eye catching, but also as effective as it can get. When it comes down to it, being effective is the most important part. What’s the point of making something eye catching, if as soon as they tried to read it they were lost or didn’t like the wording? This is why effectiveness is very important.

            My next step for my resume will be using Optical Resume to see how they would set it up. It’s a professional site that helps you create an effective resume the best you can. Once I get everything into Optical Resume I will take what it says is best and apply it to my current resume.

Week 6 Photo Challenge: Special Effects

I talk about my short “The Survivor” a lot, the reason is it has gone further then any other short I have done. I’ve been a part of a television show for VegasTV, but when it comes to creative work, it’s the only short to get “Official Selection” in film festivals, and even got shown all the way in Florida.

“The Survivor” was also the first thing I created were I had to do the Visual Effects myself. I’m use to hiring a visual effects artist. When I know I can’t have one I plan on only Special Effects, effects that are practical and I can hand make. I’m good at things like making mask or squibs, a device that shoots fake blood to make a gunshot look. When it comes to Visual Effects I only knew the basics.

The reason I had to do my own Visual Effects is because my artist I hired had a family emergency and I couldn’t get a second one to commit because they were too busy with classes. This left me with watching a lot of tutorials, and reading lessons on how to get done the task I needed.

For this shot of “The Survivor” I had to use about 6 different layers. The City was broken up into 5 parts. I had to make sure they were all cleaned up and I can fit them together to fake a complete city. Then I had to add the city into my footage. Blending and color correcting too a long time to get as close as I could. Once I had that I had to color correct the scene.

For “The Survivor” all color correction was done in After Effects. It was important to try and get a good contrast with a solid off orange color. Each shot was slightly different, but doing the whole short in After Effects helped keep a close enough continuity of color that it was the best way to do it.