So here we are, America. Beautiful summer. The wind in my hair and hair in my Popsicle. In my week off I intend to enjoy the better things in life: sleep, cars that aren't mine, beer (not always in that order), and sleep. Yes, although I may be going back to Florida on sunday for thesis crewing, this week I am in temperate Pittsburgh, PA! Home of the Quaker oat cakes! (or at least the inspiration for them).
Big News!
My birthday is on the 21st of this month and I have yet to decide which movie opening is the worlds gift to me: Terminator or Dance Flick...I'll let you decide in the polls!
Other Big News!
It's the hott button question right now, which celebrity will get swine flu first? I say it's Kermit.
Anyway, I'm really excited to be done with this semester. I had an interesting experience with my second documentary: I had to drop it late in the game and pick up a new idea that I filmed in three days. I basically just sat down with some cool old guys and asked them about romance, and yes, LET them tell me stories for a while. I think it will turn out well and I'm trying to find someone who will do some animations for it as of now.
Also, I will finally be working on the Red camera this summer when I crew on the thesis films! Excitement! Check out red.com to see these bad boys. As of right now, I'm scheduled to work as a script supe, boom operator, 2nd assistant camera, 2nd AD, UPM, and art director, but these schedules are always tentative so we will see how it ends up.
Check back after this week for updates on these positions and the editing/animation process of my doc.
Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
Monday, May 4, 2009
Friday, April 3, 2009
FSU Film Admissions
So, as promised, here is a post dedicated to info on the FSU Film School admissions process. But before I begin, I would like to weave you a tale of misfortune, uncertainty, and my eventual induction into the film school.
First, let it be known that I am an out of state student here at FSU. I am originally from Pittsburgh, PA (for which there is an unusually high acceptance rate here at the film school for, so hold your heads high pittsburgh) and so being so far away, it is only natural that one must fly down to Tallahassee. I had started rehearsing answers to questions I thought they might ask weeks beforehand, and I gathered together all of my nice dress clothes to look as professional as possible during my interview, I mean, this aint no high school (and by that I mean nobody wears slap bracelets in college, besides the occaisonal 80's party). So away I went, to the Pittsburgh Int. Airport, on my way to be interviewed. Now I don't know how much you know about murphy's law, but if there was anyone out there who exemplifies it...it's me. My flight to Atlanta was delayed four hours for tornadoes which had grounded every plane in the area. Luckily my connecting flight had a long layover so I wasn't too nervous when we finally got about the plane. After two lovely hours we arrived in the Atlanta airport, where we were told that our flight to Tallahassee had already left...wait...no, you can make it right now if you run all the way to the other side of the airport. After hoofing it with my dad, we got to our gate which was packed with exhausted people who had been waiting hours to get on board, but we were happy because it hadn't left yet. It was at that point that we realized there was no plane to board, and the subsequent three hour wait gave me some time to think about my future. "If I don't make it to my interview, I'll have to become a businessman, or perhaps an accountant...I have to make it to my interview."
By 1:00AM we were weary and almost ready to give up, when they announced that we would start boarding. After half of the passengers board, my dad and I step on and start looking for our seats, when a screeching noise comes over the speaker, "Attention passengers, the crew has timed out and will not be able to fly tonight..." "Well shit." We had boarded! We found our seats! It was over, and now because the crew had been waiting so long, they wouldn't fly anyone out.
"It's one in the morning and I have an interview in eight hours, I'm not going to film school."
"The hell you're not!" My dad proclaimed, or so I like to think. It was probably more like, "Chris, I'm tired as shit, lets rent a car and just drive down so I can go to sleep."
So by 3am we were on the road from Atlanta to Tallahassee, without any sleep, without any of our luggage (the airline had locked it up and we weren't allowed to get it) and without much hope of an effective interview.
That morning when we arrived at our hotel an hour before my interview, I jumped in the shower and my dad ran out to buy me a clean shirt since I was in all of the same clothes from the day before. He dropped me off in front of the film school and went home to finally sleep. I walked into the hallway where I sat and waited my turn with adrenaline rushing through me.
"I hope they don't notice how much I smell." I thought.
So that's my story of pre-interview madness. Now on to what you actually want to know, the admissions process and so forth:
Q: How undergrads apply each year as freshman?
A: I have heard from the administration that there have been from 300 to 600 applicants every year. I overheard today that this year was somewhere in the 400's. There are 20 - 25 chosen to enter as freshman of these applicants (after you do an interview).
Q: How much do grades/SAT scores matter?
A: They are looking for the best students to attend because it is extremely competitive. They WILL look at grades and SAT, but they are not the most important thing. Your essay(s) are very important in order to get an interview because they want to know what kind of a filmmaker you will be. If you blow off classes in highschool and get bad grades, than they know you will probably blow off class in film school, which is not a good thing (some classes lose a letter grade for one unexcused day). I had pretty decent grades in highschool and did very well on my SAT, but I have friends in the film school who bombed their SAT but had good grades otherwise and vice versa.
Q: Do I need to have filmmaking experience to get in?
A: No. The program is very open to people who have a strong passion for filmmaking, but have never made a film before. The most important thing to do is reveal to them that this is what you want to do and what you will suffer for until the end.
Q: Is there a preference to Florida Natives?
A: No. Everyone is equal in the admissions process, but there are usually more people from Florida simply because more applied. FSU is very well known and respected in the south and not so much so in the north because NYU, Columbia, Emerson and all of those are close and get a lot of attention.
Q: What should I expect during the interview process?
A: Usually it goes down like this - The morning will be an interview with yourself and two teachers of the school. They tend to ask questions such as what your favorite movie is and why, if you could make anything right now what would it be, if you are willing to put in time at all hours (and they mean ALL hours) of the day to complete your work, but there are also questions to make sure that you are being honest with them. They asked me if I was ever on set with someone that I really despised, and they were getting on my nerves more so than usual that day, would it affect my work. I thought about it for a second and said that, yes, it probably would in some way because it would make it much more difficult to focus, but I would try to work around it. You need to be honest with them because you will be working with them face to face soon enough and if you turn out to have lied about work ethic and you slip up, they can toss you out. It rarely happens, but it could. Luckily the screening process acquires a lot of really great people that will become your best friends.
That's all I can think of right now, leave a comment if you have some.
First, let it be known that I am an out of state student here at FSU. I am originally from Pittsburgh, PA (for which there is an unusually high acceptance rate here at the film school for, so hold your heads high pittsburgh) and so being so far away, it is only natural that one must fly down to Tallahassee. I had started rehearsing answers to questions I thought they might ask weeks beforehand, and I gathered together all of my nice dress clothes to look as professional as possible during my interview, I mean, this aint no high school (and by that I mean nobody wears slap bracelets in college, besides the occaisonal 80's party). So away I went, to the Pittsburgh Int. Airport, on my way to be interviewed. Now I don't know how much you know about murphy's law, but if there was anyone out there who exemplifies it...it's me. My flight to Atlanta was delayed four hours for tornadoes which had grounded every plane in the area. Luckily my connecting flight had a long layover so I wasn't too nervous when we finally got about the plane. After two lovely hours we arrived in the Atlanta airport, where we were told that our flight to Tallahassee had already left...wait...no, you can make it right now if you run all the way to the other side of the airport. After hoofing it with my dad, we got to our gate which was packed with exhausted people who had been waiting hours to get on board, but we were happy because it hadn't left yet. It was at that point that we realized there was no plane to board, and the subsequent three hour wait gave me some time to think about my future. "If I don't make it to my interview, I'll have to become a businessman, or perhaps an accountant...I have to make it to my interview."
By 1:00AM we were weary and almost ready to give up, when they announced that we would start boarding. After half of the passengers board, my dad and I step on and start looking for our seats, when a screeching noise comes over the speaker, "Attention passengers, the crew has timed out and will not be able to fly tonight..." "Well shit." We had boarded! We found our seats! It was over, and now because the crew had been waiting so long, they wouldn't fly anyone out.
"It's one in the morning and I have an interview in eight hours, I'm not going to film school."
"The hell you're not!" My dad proclaimed, or so I like to think. It was probably more like, "Chris, I'm tired as shit, lets rent a car and just drive down so I can go to sleep."
So by 3am we were on the road from Atlanta to Tallahassee, without any sleep, without any of our luggage (the airline had locked it up and we weren't allowed to get it) and without much hope of an effective interview.
That morning when we arrived at our hotel an hour before my interview, I jumped in the shower and my dad ran out to buy me a clean shirt since I was in all of the same clothes from the day before. He dropped me off in front of the film school and went home to finally sleep. I walked into the hallway where I sat and waited my turn with adrenaline rushing through me.
"I hope they don't notice how much I smell." I thought.
So that's my story of pre-interview madness. Now on to what you actually want to know, the admissions process and so forth:
Q: How undergrads apply each year as freshman?
A: I have heard from the administration that there have been from 300 to 600 applicants every year. I overheard today that this year was somewhere in the 400's. There are 20 - 25 chosen to enter as freshman of these applicants (after you do an interview).
Q: How much do grades/SAT scores matter?
A: They are looking for the best students to attend because it is extremely competitive. They WILL look at grades and SAT, but they are not the most important thing. Your essay(s) are very important in order to get an interview because they want to know what kind of a filmmaker you will be. If you blow off classes in highschool and get bad grades, than they know you will probably blow off class in film school, which is not a good thing (some classes lose a letter grade for one unexcused day). I had pretty decent grades in highschool and did very well on my SAT, but I have friends in the film school who bombed their SAT but had good grades otherwise and vice versa.
Q: Do I need to have filmmaking experience to get in?
A: No. The program is very open to people who have a strong passion for filmmaking, but have never made a film before. The most important thing to do is reveal to them that this is what you want to do and what you will suffer for until the end.
Q: Is there a preference to Florida Natives?
A: No. Everyone is equal in the admissions process, but there are usually more people from Florida simply because more applied. FSU is very well known and respected in the south and not so much so in the north because NYU, Columbia, Emerson and all of those are close and get a lot of attention.
Q: What should I expect during the interview process?
A: Usually it goes down like this - The morning will be an interview with yourself and two teachers of the school. They tend to ask questions such as what your favorite movie is and why, if you could make anything right now what would it be, if you are willing to put in time at all hours (and they mean ALL hours) of the day to complete your work, but there are also questions to make sure that you are being honest with them. They asked me if I was ever on set with someone that I really despised, and they were getting on my nerves more so than usual that day, would it affect my work. I thought about it for a second and said that, yes, it probably would in some way because it would make it much more difficult to focus, but I would try to work around it. You need to be honest with them because you will be working with them face to face soon enough and if you turn out to have lied about work ethic and you slip up, they can toss you out. It rarely happens, but it could. Luckily the screening process acquires a lot of really great people that will become your best friends.
That's all I can think of right now, leave a comment if you have some.
Monday, March 23, 2009
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.
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.
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