PD Artstravaganza

...And so, as the schedule gets closer to the end of the F2 cycle I too get closer to the final task of Director of Photography for David Liz's film. Luckily, though, there has been much to do beforehand which has kept me busy. This morning I finally saw my Production Design for Ron's F2 "New World Administration" come together, which was a huge weight off of my shoulders. Ron's style has been very PD heavy so far and this one was no exception. We had to turn a "bar" stage (as seen below)...

...into a future-punk basement where junkies illegally download the internet into their bodies for years on end. We used wires and rubber tubing as well as pvc piping hung on fencing in order to get a dark technological feel.

It took a lot of work (about 7 hours total) to get everything together (especially the fencing which was an issue for a long time, but fell into our laps the night before the shoot), but I was really happy with how each wall came out, and even happier with how the "junkie" looked in the shot. The script called for a girl to be hooked up by her fingers and mouth by wires as she downloaded into herself for the past 33 years. We used a gas mask with a large tube attached and rubber tubing for her fingers, which spread out to her sides.

The entire process was very challenging because it was a very original idea and it was up to Ron and myself to figure out what the future is going to look like, but I'm pretty sure that if things turn for the worse and we have to download the internet into ourselves to feel alive, my place might look like this...but with a few more kitty posters.

The poll is showing that we've got some people wanting to have a post about admissions so that will be what I work on next. Check back in a few days for that to be posted and if you have any specific questions that you would like answered leave them in the comments below and I will include it.

...See ya film cowboy

Being an AD and nude...minus the nude

Today was Walter's F2 set where I was 1st AD. Like most young teens, I was nervous for my first time. I wasn't really sure what to say when he asked me how much footage I have, and of course I was anxious when I realized that all of the time was in the set up, and not so much in getting the shot off. All innuendo's aside, it was a great experience and we all had a great time. For our F2 projects we have 200ft of super16mm film in order to shoot a two page script within four hours, which seems easy enough. We had eight total set ups and were able to get all of them off as well as have enough time and film for a crew dance, which is basically like a school dance except filmed and of a film set's crew.

The next set that I'm working on is Ron's as Art Director, which seems like somewhat of a challenge. It's a futuristic, underworld set where people illegally download the internet into themselves through chords entering their fingers and mouth.
I'm gonna line the walls with wiring and pvc pipe to get a "once sterile, now run-down" feel to it. I would really like to make some of the wires spark to show how old they are, I was thinking about putting a sparkler inside of the pvc and letting it rain out a bit?

Leave a comment below if you have any suggestions for a safe way to have sparks come off of the walls.

For those refered from Studentfilms.com

Hey guys, if you are someone who saw my link from studentfilms.com, welcome! I recently joined the forum there and I started getting a lot of personal messages from people asking about admissions and whatnot, but I haven't kept up with visiting the site to reply to them all. Hopefully you can come here if you have some questions (leave them in the comments below and I will try to answer them) because I will be on this site more often than studentfilms. The interview admissions process is going on right now so I would be happy to inform anyone with questions about my process or other things on your mind.
-Chris

I'll Catch You Up

So being that I created this blog long after starting Film School there have already been many notable events that I've missed. I'll go over a little bit of a back story to bring us up to date.

For the FSU Film School, sophomore year is the first year of actual production and strictly film related courses, thus I am a "first year" student. Freshman year was all the necessary classes (general english, math, etc.) in order to graduate with a bachelor's degree.

Our class is a very transitional one for the film school in that we are the first class most effected by the digital change. They scrapped the older Canon xl1's used for F1's (Production 1 projects) to get HD Sony XDCAM's, which are beautiful. Although this was a pretty great change for us, the biggest one will be the new RED cameras (www.red.com) we work on. These digital cameras shoot at 4k resolution (twice the quality of HD) and look like 35mm film. In the past, our school shot F2's, F3's and Thesis on 16mm film, which isn't bad, but with the new RED cameras we can reach the quality of 35mm and start to move with the industry over to digital (Crossing the Line, Jumper, Che, Angels and Demons all shot on RED).

But for now I'm working my way up. My F1, "Typewriter" was shot in HD on the XDCAM. Below is a screenshot.



I recently finished filming my F2, "Speed Dating," which is mainly an exercise with 16mm film. I don't know if film will forever be abolished by the industry, there is something about working on something so delicate to make an image look right that gives you a true sense of pride. There is so much that goes into creating the right look on film that digital does not have to deal with, be that a good thing or not.

I will update later on the documentaries currently in the process.