Awesome Show!

So yeah, I always come on here and feel no need to really ever say anything because either Kathy or Jordan probably has already said it already and I've used "already" a few more times than I probably needed as well, buuuuut I guess that's my fault for not being as much of an "eager beaver" (or an "eagver" as Jordan would say, however that sounds more like a cross between an eagle and a beaver... I can picture it now... oh it's majesty... Jordan draw one and I'll give you extra credit towards the course). Anyway yeah, we did good last night. We're definitely getting more efficient at running this show. Looking forward to wrapping up, post-production, destroying that @&$!ing wall, and stealing Prof. McEwan's newborn child. To all a good evening.

- Pete

Great Job!

Last night we worked from about 9:00 until midnight and finished almost all of Neil's scenes

We still have two final scenes to do with him, which are more complicated than the other. So we are going to finish up his scenes this Friday and be done with that.

Neil has been very cooperative and eager to work with us on this project as best as he can, and its really turning out well.

Anyway, thats about it for now.

We're shooting again tonight and I'll update again soon

-Jordan

Oh Yeah

So as Kathleen mentioned we shot yesturday starting at 10am, and we finished the vast majority of Natalie's scenes. We may only need her to do some tiny additional shots and possibly a reshoot or two. Nothing major.

We are shooting again tomorrow, tuesday, thursday, and friday.

I'm definitely feeling less stressed about finishing all the shots.

bravo us
-Jordan

saturday

Today we all got up and to the studio at 10, a great feat for us all. we were kind of half-dead to begin with, but woke up as the day went on. we got some good shots, and we're pretty sure we're either completely done or very close to done with Natalie. Since she is of no use to us anymore, we're not sure how to get rid of her...we got some shots with the wall set up vertically, so it looked taller. we did a slow tilt down the wall and some from the ladder. This was also our screaming scene, and so Natalie wouldn't feel too weird just screaming at the top of her lungs, we all joined in. A few hours later we wondered why we suddenly got sore throats, and then remembered. this week we have some more shooting, but we're getting there. After we shot we captured the footage, then jordan and i edited a little just to experiment with how the stop motion would look with natalie. it looked pretty cool, I'm pretty excited to incorporate all the other shots too


_Kathleen

stoppa tha motion

sooooo we did some stop motion wednesday night. it went really well. once we took the wire out of the paper, the movements were a lot smoother. it took about 6 hours to get three shots, which only will add up to like 30 seconds. it was cool, it was my first time really doing it. I did the pencil, which had to be slithery. Pete did a paper and Jordan did the other. We all switched off with the camera so we wouldnt go too crazy.


success.

_Kathleen

I beat Kathleen

Seriously, I do. Anyway, I need more blog posts... I feel like a negligent parent (don't worry, I don't mean you McEwan). So yeah, the other day we started stop-motion at 7:30 and ended around midnight. It went relatively smoothly, except for that one time when Kathleen made a mistake and I had to give her a black eye... again.

- Pete

Photos from Stop Motion

Here are some photos of us doing stop motion last night

-Jordan

Stop Motion Last Night

We worked for six hours last night and completed 3 stop motion scenes.

Today I'll try to log and capture them.

And I'll upload pictures in another blog post later tonight.

thats it for now!

-Jordan

Logged and Captured.

Not much to update on right now.

shooting tomorrow and saturday and several days next week. Hopefully that will be all for shooting.

I spent some time in the studio today and finished logging and capturing everything we have filmed so far.

That's all for now.

-Jordan

Chuggin Along

We had another shooting night with Natalie the other day and got some really good shots I think. We got a very interesting shot for the end of the movie, and Natalie's half of the tracking shot I came up with in my last post.

So overall things are looking good, we have maybe saturday to shoot and Monday, Wednesday, and Friday as well. Once the acting is done we just have stop motion, and then post production.

We also started logging and capturing our footage into Final Cut, so now we really feeling like there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

epic

-Jordan

peter hits me

soooooooo just had more filming, and more mishaps. we ran to the studio because we realized no one had gotten the equipment. sue was gone, but luckily tony was JUST leaving and I caught him. so we set up everything, getting ready to shoot. open the camera. tape too small. freak out, throw hands up in disgust. dr. mcewan drives over after his interrupted dinner to bring right tapes. we get some good shots, and accidentally got our final shot which we all agreed looked really good. then we fiddled a million times with the lights to try and get our tracking shot that goes from one side of the wall to the other. by manipulating the lights and closing off the iris on the camera, we got the background off to the side of the wall pretty black. however, there was this strip of white wall showing where the curtain didn't reach the ground. so we got everything black in the room, the garbage can, a backpack, the lighting bag, and covered it up. but the lighting bag kept slouching over, so i went behind the curtain and held it up. so technically i'm actually in the movie, i think i did a good acting job, but i hope i didn't steal the spotlight too much off natalie. we worked crazy hard for that shot, but in the end it looked good, and i think we pulled off the illusion pretty well. after working on the shot a million times we got one we were happy with, then wrapped it up. now we're tired.

_Kathleen

filming again

I'm writing another post now. so filming with neil the other day was really good, it went super smoothly and quickly and we got a lot done. tonight we're going to work with natalie, and probably finish up her stuff or at at least most of it. we actually never need neil and natalie at the same time though, because of the way jordan suggested we do the tracking shot. sweet! we got the studio booked for earlier tonight, so thats great, we'll get to have some sleep

_Kathleen

stop in the name of stop motionnnn

soooo yes the other day pete and i continued with stop-motion. it was horribly frustrating, because the paper kept popping off the tape, or ripping newspaper, or whatever, so we'd have to keep starting over. but there is definitely usable footage, we should edit it and see how it looks. we'll need to crop the frame a little because *ahem* my knee somehow got into some of the shots...yeah, we were pretty stressed about the filming thing i think haa but its alright, we did get some done and now that we've had practice it will probably go more smoothly next time.

_Kathleen

First Day with Neil

Today was our first day shooting with Neil for the film. His costume looks good and he was easy to work with.

He did great and we got some interesting shots with him. Didn't finish but we worked faster and did very well i think.

I have also just now (literally) had a possibly good idea that would look cool in the movie.

we have had one problem shot that we have been dreading and that is the tracking shot from one side of the wall to the other. This would be hard to do with our flimsy wall. But here's my fresh idea.


---------idea time---------------------------------------------------------

imagine that the boy and girl are leaning back to back against the wall directly at the center of your 180 rule line (yeah you know what i mean). The trick is we only have one usable side of a wall.
So we imagine the other side exists and begin the shot from directly in front of the girl, eye level. She is writing her second note. She finishes writing and looks at it.

She crumples the note into a ball and throws it over the wall. She sits back to her original position and lowers her head. Then the camera (on a dolly) moves in a quarter circle to the left end of the wall and moves into the blackness. The camera moves out of the blackness and continues the circular movement, but now beginning at the right end of the wall and moveing to the middle of the half circle arch, this time positioning the boy directly in the middle of the shot with his head down. He is wearing the clothes of a soldier.

The note falls directly in front of him, causing him to raise his head and look forward (mimic of how the girl put her head down). The boy gets on his knees, reaches, and picks up the note. He opens the note and reads it.

"Are we at war?"

THE END (of that tiny scene)

-------------over-------------------------------------------


that's my idea, and i'm going to sleep now

goodnight
-Jordan

Weekend Update (with fail williams)

Ok so as Peter mentioned, we failed at shooting this past weekend.

disappointment.

Oh well, i needed sleep anyway, and we rescheduled our two days to Monday and Wednesday of this week.

However, one thing at least was gained.

We figured out a very efficient method of stop motion that involves creating a track

here is my blueprint of the tactic



you just inch it along the double-sided-tape track and shoot each scene for less than a second. saves tape.

ta da!

-Jordan

Stop-Motion & Epic Failure

Yesterday was hellish. After only getting about 4 hours of sleep the night before, I went to class at 11:30am which ended at around 3:15pm, and then from there went pretty much straight into our stop-motion shoot but not before dealing with the fact that when I booked the studio for this weekend it was only for Friday due to the fact that Saturday and Sunday were completely filled... which I forgot about and neglected to tell my groupmates... because I suck. We've rescheduled since then for next week so that looks fine, but now on to stop-motion antics. After much set up and many problems (and a gracious visit from Dr. McEwan), we finally started shooting. Then Jordan had to leave. Kathleen and I ran into some issues which were probably my fault to be honest, but we did end up getting some usable footage so it's not ALL bust. Sorry guys, I'll try to get more sleep the night before a shoot.

Yours truly,
Peter "Slightly Sucks" Kleinberger

And now back to work

Spring break was fun, but now somehow school has started again.

I've started mentally mapping out some shot ideas for this weekend. I drew a still shot out, but my scanner is being none-too-helpful.

I'll try to scan it in soon if I can figure it all out.

Anyway, ready to go round II this weekend.

-Jordan

fall back, spring ahead!

Pete, I'm surprised you didn't notice we have a disciple. I know you've been drooling for some since we've started this blog. nice cast list too...mysterious huh...I can work with that.
So I emailed the cast and Rachel and we're good to go for this upcoming weekend, though there are some conflicts that we'll have to work around, but I think it will be fine. god, I realized how little time we really have to finish this film...like 7 weeks. that's scary. and then for post-production, really 6 weeks because we won't be done filming til this weekend. AH. I brought my parents to see the infamous wall when they brought me back from break. they were also mighty impressed with the tv studio, but they both agreed that the wall was the best they've ever seen in their lifetime, and also the best set for a film ever, rivaling that of the godfather parts I and II (k I made MOST of that up, actually everything after "mighty impressed with the tv studio.") i'm excited for the upcoming shoots, neil's WWII costume that makes no sense, stop motion and EDITING, the most fun thing ever!! no, I'm not being sarcastic, I actually love editing. alright, well I guess I'll see the other peachwedges this week, we should be recovered from "the weekend" as I refer to it now, and ready to spend lots of time with each other until we can't stand each other!

_Kathleen