I Have Survived!

So, I'm certainly tired out from getting up at 7:30 every morning, when I'm used to getting up at 9, and not going to bed until nearly 1 a.m. But I have officially survived my first week of film school! It felt like the longest week ever, but it was very fun. 

I learned so much in just five days; it excites me to think about how much I'll learn by the end of the semester, and then, by the end of two years. 

I had my acting class today, and it was so much fun. We sat in a circle, and went around, and each person said one word and we had to create a story with it. For example, the first person would say, "Sheila," then the next would say, "was," and the next would say, "walking," and so on, and so on. It took us a few times to get it right (we kept mixing up characters and saying really strange stuff), but finally we came up with this adorable story about a little Chinese boy named Wong who saw a bright star and looked for it in his book but couldn't find it, so he went up a mountain with a kite (I don't know why he brought a kite!) and a camera, but the camera was dead, so he went home, got a sketch pad, and drew the star on paper so he would always have it. How cute is that? And not bad for one word by one word.

Our directing class got cancelled again, because the BFA students were having their documentary screening, and our professor wanted us to be able to go to it. It was really incredible. They had the screening in the campus theater, and there were a bunch of people there. The documentaries were filmed all over the country: some in Florida, some in Arizona, even one in West Virginia, and they were on a ton of different topics. They were very well made. I felt really happy for the people who made them. I could only imagine how it would feel to sit in a room and have our movies watched by others. I'll find out first-hand how it feels in the winter, when we watch our D1 films. It should be fun.

Anyway, next week is already the 2nd week of film school! I know I said it felt like the longest week ever (well, last week felt like the longest week ever, this week was the longest longest week), but I can't believe I'm already going into the second one. As weird as it sounds, that's how I feel. 

I don't have my schedule yet for next week, but I'm pretty excited. Mostly for screenwriting and editing. Stay tuned.

Movies!!

I am almost officially done with my first week of film school, and I have to say, I am in full-on film school mode. I feel like I've been here so much longer than just one week! 

I love my class and I love the professors, and I love learning all of these crazy things that I've never thought about before.

So far, I think lighting may be the most difficult thing I'll have to do. There's all this math that goes into figuring out where you're going to place the lights and how. But I'm gonna feel so awesome if/when I finally start to understand it.

One of the things I like best about film school (other than the awesome classes, of course) is that I can talk to people about movies. Today, I talked to some people at lunch about movies for, like, 2 hours. Unbelievable.

Speaking of movies, there's a comedy about phone-sex operators coming out called, For a Good Time Call, which was written and produced by some FSU alumni. One, who also stars in the film, happens to be Seth Rogan's wife! Crazy.

I had an editing class today, and we watched the same documentary I watched in Intro to Film with Professor Haltof, like, 4 years ago. So that was nice. It's a great documentary! Also, I love editing. It's so incredibly much fun. And it occurred to me today that for our D1 films, we get to edit something that someone else directed. I've never edited someone else's work before, so I'm pretty pumped for that. It should be pretty exciting. Also, terrifying. But exciting, I'm sure.

Holy Cow, Sound!

Today I had a class in Sound. It was the craziest thing, because: 1) I never knew sound was so complicated! and 2) I never knew it could be so interesting!

We watched this raw footage of a movie with Adam Sandler in it, called Bulletproof. It looked awful, but that's a different blog.

Anyway, the people sent this raw footage, and then all of the tracks with the sound. There had to be 100 tracks. One track was just the production sound, which was the dialogue track. When they filmed it, everyone in the background was quiet, and the actors weren't making any noise. There was a little ambient sound, but just the humming of a beer cooler (they were in a bar). 

Then we looked at the same clip with another track instead of the dialogue. This one was with the extras talking. These tracks are called "Walla-Wallas," because they literally bring people in to walk around and say things that aren't real words, and then when they put it together, it sounds like bumbling conversation.

Then there was a track just for footsteps, done by a foley artist. Look them up. I've wanted to do foley work since I learned about it in Intro. to Film in my sophomore year of college. It's amazing. They're people who go in a studio and march around on gravel or hardwood floor or stone or grass or corn starch, which apparently sounds like snow. It's just incredible.

And then there was another track for just guns going off. Then one for the ricochet of bullets. Then one for a stripper's leather costume. You get the point. It was nuts.

I also had my first production design class, and that was pretty cool. I think it's gonna be hard, but I'm excited. Production design is everything: sets, locations, props, costumes, hair, makeup, even greenery. Someone has to paint those tree leaves if they aren't the right color.

The third class I had today was producing. I've already had it once, but I really enjoy it. It really helps with screenwriting, because producers are gonna be the ones we're selling our scripts to. Today we learned about how producers option screenplays. It was quite fascinating. 

Oh, and The Wedding Banquet is a really good movie. Look it up. It's funny.

Anyway, editing tomorrow! I'm super excited!

Screenwriting!

Today was my first screenwriting class, and it was awesome. It was supposed to be nearly four hours, but it only ended up being forty-five minutes. But, anyway, I have never been so excited for homework in my life! 

We have five assignments due Monday, and they're all pretty short, but they'll be fun. We have to read a feature script and write coverage, which is basically a synopsis and analysis of a script. Then we have to list 10 movies we love, that we think we could have written. Then there's a prompt about a non-dialogue scene about a person letting a dog outside. Which is great. We had stuff like that on the application, and it was so much fun.

And already, I learned so much, just from forty-five minutes! And I'm excited to go back and apply what I learned today to all of the scripts I've already written, to make them better. 

We also had cinematography class, and I never knew it took so much work and planning just to film a scene! We dissected this scene: where was the light? Where was the sun? Why do you think he put the light here? Why do you think he framed it this way? Phew. Crazy stuff.

Then I had production management class, which was pretty awesome. We started out the class by talking about the 5 top box office movies of the week, how much they made, and what the budget was. Which is really what I do in my spare time. So that was great.

It's just cool, because I've had so many film studies classes where we discussed the film as viewers. But now, we're discussing films as people who actually want to make movies. And that's really incredible. It's hard to explain, but, trust me, it feels so much more important. 

It already feels like I've had waaaay more than 2 days of class. In a good way.

I think this semester is gonna fly by.

My First Day of Film School Ever!!

Things I've learned today: The scene in Jaws where there's a big shark head coming through a boat was filmed in one of the crew members' pool. Blue gels over lights make it look like day time. And film school is really fun. 

I only had two classes today, but I think I'm really gonna like this. I actually had both classes on the same subject: BTL. I had BTL Lab, which is "Below the Line," which means those people on the crew who make less money than the director, producer, cinematographer, and actors (not BLT Lab, which is what I wrote in my planner).

In the lab we learned about lighting (a person on the set who does the lighting is called a Gaffer). I was a little terrified for the class, because I never learned how to do lighting, and in my one digital cinema class in my undergrad, my professor gave us lights and told us to use them, but didn't tell us how. But it turned out okay. 

The class went from 2:15 to 6, and the first half was a whole lot of information, half of which I probably won't remember until I hear it again or reread my notes. The other half was hands-on, where we got to set up light stands and put lights on them and put up silks to help filter the light and stuff like that. 

We didn't get to turn the lights on, because they take up a whole lot of power (some were 250 watts and there were 15 of us in the class!), but at the end of class our instructor showed us an example of a giant light with different filters and screens, and it was really cool. 

Oh! I also learned that if you put a blue gel over this huge light and move it, the shadow behind the light looks like rippling water shadows. So that's pretty neat.

My night class was also BTL, but it was basically an info session on every position in the film industry and what each person does, which was very, very interesting. And my professor was Reb Braddock, the Associate Dean of the school, and one of the guys I interviewed with two years straight, and he's really, really cool. He knows so much, and he's really funny. So I think that any class with him will be great.

We also learned about the steps of setting up a scene, which we'll be doing for our short films in about eight weeks. There are nine steps that you have to complete before you film each scene. Which is precisely why a three minute film will take thirteen hours to shoot.

Welcome to the film business, everybody!

I think it's gonna rock.

Oh, and how could I forget? SCREENWRITING TOMORROW!

The Day Before!!

I start film school tomorrow!

This seriously just clicked on Thursday. I was sitting in film school orientation, along with the other first year MFA and BFA students, and I thought, "I'm going to film school. At FSU. And I was chosen out of hundreds of writers." 

And I was finally very excited. It seriously only clicked then. I saw my cubby hole in the MFA office with my name on it, and I realized I had finally made it. 

Well, not made it, made it, but I'm on my way. 

I don't have my class schedule yet-- it changes every week. But I'm soooooo excited to see it and find out what I'm going to be doing this week!

Here's the general layout of the program: it's about six weeks of class, one week of Crew Drills, where you go to the sound stage and practice everything you learned in the first six weeks, and then six to eight weeks (I don't know the exact number) of filming D1 films, which are short films where you work on every position from doing camera, to producing, to production design, to lighting and sound, to editing. Everything. So that should be fun.

Anyway, stay tuned for more updates on my crazy life. It's gonna get seriously busy. :)