This movie, first and foremost, is adorable.  I do love the story line, and, if I don’t say so myself, I thought that the casting was great.  The chemistry between Stella and Matt was wonderful, and the actor playing Brad was hilarious.  I laughed over and over at his lines, no matter how many times that I watched them.  I also thought the hospital scene was great – it was good to have that break in dialogue with the nurse character.  I think the office scene could have been trimmed a bit more, but I know that we had shaved off 40 seconds and we had to keep a lot of stuff to keep continuity.  The audio obviously needed more work, but we came pretty close to relatively normal dialogue.  I’m sure that the only reason I could clearly hear the audio in the coffee shop  is because I know all of the lines.  I think that there were a lot of nice angles that made the film move quicker and I loved the transition from the fight to the music to getting hit by the car.  The shot of Stella’s name on the phone needed to have something done to it because it was too abrupt.

I wanted to mess with the filters on both the dream sequence and the nightmare, as well as the off sync sound in “Stella” because I could see it and it bothered me to death.  I don’t like the transition of music from the car accident to the dream to the nightmare.  I think the car accident could’ve been ambient sound with sound effects and the idea we had about Stella’s voice saying “Fader?”  The dream music, although the kiss music was nice, you could tell it was mid-song and I didn’t like how it was just this weird overdone build to the kiss.  Then, even though the music for the nightmare was hilarious at the end, it was too much in the beginning and I don’t know how I would’ve fixed that myself.  The ADR in the final scene with “screw friendship” also needed to be reworked.

I thought that this piece had strong acting, the cinematography was great – I wish we could’ve used the dolly once more, my biggest problem was the sound, which I know was partially my fault, partially the locations, and partially it being 16 straight hours of editing and refusal to hear out other options.  I do love this story.

Oh, and of course, the freeze-frame 80′s ending is magical and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Before I knew it, Christie signed on board with Chris and I as a cinematographer and we were set.  I am lucky enough to have a lot of connections to talent in the acting program and, while casting for the film, I realized that I had become the producer.  We basically Facebook stalked our actor choices and decided who would be best.  We also made sure to tell Kat, our lead actress, who she felt she would be most comfortable with.  Because I am not a great editor, nor a great filmmaker, it was really fun to find a niche in contacting and coordinating with the actors, as well as scouting locations and contacting those locations that we would like to shoot.  And, although I originally intended to be the director, I really felt it was a team effort between myself, Chris and Christie.

After spreading out filming over a couple weeks, everything seemed to be coming together and I thought to myself: there’s no way everything could be going according to plan… but, it really was.  And, on our first day of shooting, after Chris, Christie got into the swing of things, filming was smooth and enjoyable.  The three of us had a really great balance between team work, and, at the same time, not stepping on each other’s toes.  After shooting, we went right to the edit suites to work on our first part.

While the audio came out terribly for the first scene, Chris and Christie worked their magic in the edit labs, literally all night.  I was upset that I had messed up the audio so much in the office, but I did figure out what I had done wrong, and I have learned to watch for next time, which is really all I can do at this point.

This is the first time that I have been able to say that through all the stress and editing and rushing to get out of the health center by 5 (they only allowed us one hour), it was all so much fun.  This project was an awesome effort between the three of us and I learned a lot from Chris and Christie and I think I’ve become a better leader because of the experience.

Before I talk about the movie itself, I will talk about the editing, because, regardless of my feelings toward the story, I liked both the editing as well as the cinematography. In the past victim situations, the scenes were edited in quick flashes. It was very jumbled, but I really enjoyed the way it was put together. When the victim found out her face was going to be, and I’m not joking, ripped off if she didn’t get the key out of a “dead” man’s stomach, the combination of the ticking timer and her struggle to kill a man who was, in fact, alive and paralyzed, and then finding the right organ (his stomach) and getting the key into the lock, was both nauseating, terrifying and suspenseful. I also enjoyed the wide shots of the various rooms that victims were trapped, that would snap quickly to their faces for reaction. Adam’s kidnapping scene is also very creative and suspenseful. With all of the lights in his apartment not working, he uses his camera flash to light up the room and find his intruder. Jigsaw dresses in a terrifying animal mask and cape when kidnapping his victims and every time the flash went off on the camera, you were just waiting for the killer’s face to appear and I did jump when it finally happened.

I know that they re-edited the movie before it was released to theaters, so that they could give it an ‘R’ rating instead of NC-17, and I do think that they did a decent job. Most of the movie was more of a mind game than it was actually disgusting, but, still, it was disgusting to think about.

My friend insisted that I see the first Saw movie. He said the rest were terrible, but the first film is good and has a great twist ending. I will probably never listen to his movie recommendations again. I like being scared, but this movie was not enjoyable to watch and I didn’t like the situations people had been put in. I don’t recommend this film for its content because I don’t think it was anything more than a film about watching people getting tortured in various situations. I wasn’t scared so much as I was just grossed out, and that is not why I watch a horror film.

Below is a movie clip from the film showing the youngest son, Frances, casually capturing a baby elephant.  Followed by, the part I discussed about the two dogs attacking the tiger.  I think Mrs. Robinson forgot her line because she hesitates “Don’t you know you might’ve been…EATEN?!”

I also learned that it really is important for your actors to have a back story for their character.  Knowing about the character allowed Sean to develop the character more with his facial expressions and a fantastic improvised scene in the office where he just starts crying (that we, unfortunately, had to cut).  I did also learn that it is important to keep the momentum going throughout the day.  And to make sure people get breaks.  We had Sean arrive on our first set at 9:30, but because our Rifa light was shooting sparks, we probably didn’t start filming til 10:15. Then we filmed straight til 3 and gave Sean a break til 4:30, which is when we logged some of our footage.  Then we got him back and filmed until 10:00pm.  The shoot ran way later than expected, but both Ally and Sean were troopers.

Ally, our actress, I had known both from theater make-up class and Liv’s experimental film.  I was afraid of using the same actress from Liv’s other film, but I knew she would be perfect, and she was.  She filmed from 11:00 to 3:00, also without complaint, always willing and eager to please.  She even tried to help us when we, back and forth, picked up the Indie Dolly and tracks into and out of the road to film one shot. I remember Liv saying to her “you are responsible for this man’s life, how does that make you feel?” and Ally made an expression and we loved it.  I have no idea how actors can bring about these emotions, but it’s awesome.   And, when you see a director get it out of them, or, better, when they do it on their own, it’s exciting to witness.  I loved everything about being on set with our actors.

The film was directed by Robert Schwentke and, though I do not consider this a great film, I felt very connected to the story.  Even though the main character had a gene that made him time travel, I was completely in the world of the movie and I felt very close to the characters. I believe this has a lot to do with the actors in the film.  I found that there was a strong chemistry between Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana.  Their relationship was natural and I could feel the tension and the toll that time traveling had taken on them as a couple.  They had a strong bond, which made me really believe in the friendship they had formed over the years.

Another really great part about the movie was how well Schwentke was able to put me in both the mind of Clare as well as the mind of Henry.  In the film, they’re constantly switching points of view from Henry to Clare and back in order to tell both stories of Henry with young Clare and Clare married to Henry. I never noticed, however, when they switched points of view and I think the reason was because I was so enveloped with the struggles and emotions of the characters.  Regardless of the fact that part of the movie was about Clare being unable to have a baby because the fetus kept time traveling, I still managed to stay completely enthralled and devoted to the concept, which is really saying something.

I recommend this movie to anyone who wants to sob as uncontrollably as Henry time travels.  I do not know if I was feeling particularly emotional at the time, but I really empathized with Clare’s situation.  I loved her character and I wanted to tell her to just give up and find someone who didn’t time travel, but then so many good things came from marrying Henry that I had to be happy for her as well.   I do not think I would ever marry someone who time travels involuntarily, but apparently it works for some people.

Below is a scene that I thought exemplified both the actor’s chemistry and the difficulties that Clare struggles with throughout the movie.

The film takes us through Mark Zuckerberg’s life in the weeks prior to and following the launching of Facebook.  At the time of the launching, Zuckerberg is a sophomore at Harvard University and Saverin is his best friend.  The movies tells the story through the eyes of both Zuckerberg and Saverin as Zuckerberg addresses the two lawsuits that have been made against him.  One lawsuit examines whether or not Zuckerberg stole the idea from two other Harvard University students, while the other examines the lawsuit Saverin makes against his former best friend.

I was excited to learn that Aaron Sorkin was the writer for this movie because I had learned about his experience on The West Wing in a class.  I enjoyed the sassy and bitter attitude of Zuckerberg during the hearings, while his life in college clearly showed his low social standing and desire for recognition and popularity.  While I thought the ending scene was rather abrupt, it was the perfect way to show how the success that Zuckerberg had achieved still did not make him happy.

Although I enjoyed the film in terms of editing and, especially, how characters were introduced (for example, Justin Timberlake’s character said his name to a girl he’d just slept with, and she asked him jokingly if he was the inventor of Napster, which he was), there was one very stylized scene that took me out of the entire film.  The two boys accusing Zuckerberg of stealing the idea of Facebook from them were participating in a crew competition in the UK.  They lost by a few seconds and, to make matters worse, they discovered that Facebook had gone international.  I understand why the competition was shot, but it was heavily stylized in slow motion with intensely dramatic music.  This scene was so drastically different from the rest of the movie that I completely separated it from the story.  I felt like the scene was made to impress the audience, but it brought me out of the world of the film and it took me awhile to get back into it because all I could think about was the race.

I enjoyed this movie and would recommend it to anyone who has wondered about the Facebook phenomenon, but, especially, to those who have their own Facebook accounts.  As someone who was invited to Facebook in 2004, when it had just become open to high school students, it was truly interesting to see what was actually developing ,while I flipped lazily through various Facebook profiles.

For this project, we were able to get a hold of a Canon 7d, as well as the Panasonic.  This, combined with the morning light and the beautiful farm, made for some of the best visuals I’ve seen in any project I’ve ever done.  With both cameras, we were able to experiment with a lot of shots and we had a really good time. Regardless, the beautiful farm was invaded by an impossible-to-deal-with amount of wind.  I learned a lot about editing audio for this project because it was what we spent the bulk of our time doing.  Using two 3-band equalizers and, at times, a low-shelf filter, we had to find the frequency of the wind, along with the frequency of our subject’s voice.  Then, we had to attempt to match it throughout the clips.  While, at the time, I had thought to myself “we should just be doing this inside,” I realize now, we could’ve blocked the wind with a board or a coat, anything to cut off that wind.  And, although I had the wireless lav attached to Mr. Teague’s shirt, it was the rode mike attached to the Canon 7d that we were able to take audio from.

When we were worried about our audio, we went back and redid the interview in an area with more buildings around to block the wind.  This audio ended up being used under b-roll, which helped to clean up our piece a little bit.  Though, we did have to try and keep some consistency with the sound and, therefore, had the 3-band equalizer on that audio as well.

We filmed Friday morning, Saturday afternoon and Sunday in the late afternoon.  The wind never ceased. On Sunday, we interviewed Mr. Teague’s son and father, as well as the milking of the cows.  While the wireless lav completely shut down on me, I was able to get good audio on the shot gun mike, or so we thought.  Both Christie and I were shocked when we got into the edit suites to find the entire day’s audio was nonexistent.  Even though the audio was coming out in the headphones, we had nothing to show for it.  We changed the focus of the documentary to the middle Teague and the farm’s change to organic, with less emphasis on the family aspect.  While it was upsetting to lose so much good footage, there was nothing we could do and we had to work with it.  I think that’s what I learned, while doing this project: You have to work with what you got.  I think that considering the problems we did encounter, we were able to pull off a decent documentary and, hopefully, we’ll only get better for the next project.

My experimental assignment was based loosely off a children’s lullaby that I found called “Swinging” written by C.J. Heck. I wanted the piece to be calming and peaceful.  It was intended to be in a dream-like state, which was why I put on a slow shutter speed for many of the shots.  I also partially wanted the viewer to think that they were flying along in the swing with her.  I had a lot of trouble with exposure because I had to shoot in the late afternoon, which put the swing set in shadow and the background bright.  I had also hoped to get a blue sky, but most of that was washed out.  I don’t love my piece because even when I think of interesting visuals, I can never carry them out as well as I see them in my head.   I do think that my film conveyed what I was going for though.  I wanted it to be serene and I wanted people to feel relaxed and ready to go to sleep.  I do like the still shots that I did of the swings, which had a bit of a frame within a frame and I wish I had done more still shots on the tripod. Sometimes I felt that there was too much movement and I am worried that the class is going to get motion sickness, while watching the film.

I had a lot of trouble with this assignment because there was no narrative story involved and that was a foreign concept to me. I find that I’m usually better at the story than the camera work and visuals, so the focus on camera work was nerve-wracking.  There were many things that I wish I could change, but I think it matched the lullaby well and I liked the way it made me feel after I watched it.

Swinging (By C.J. Heck)

Swing-ing, swing-ing,
I love swing-ing.
Bye oh bye up,
bye oh bye down.
Bye oh bye feet,
way off the ground.

Swing-ing, swing-ing,
I love swing-ing.

Bye oh bye high,
bye oh bye low.
Bye oh bye faster,
look at me go.

Swing-ing, swing-ing,
I love swing-ing.

Bye oh bye flying
up to the sky.
Bye oh bye push me
higher than high.

Swing-ing, swing-ing,
I love swing-ing.

Bye oh bye gently,
bye oh bye slow,
bye oh bye, shhhhh,
To    sleep    I    go.

Swing-ing, swing-ing,

I
love
swing-ing.

The entire time I watched this movie, while I was completely aware of how scared I was, I was also completely aware of how much I loved how the film was shot.  I love following Jack’s son, Danny, on his tricycle, around corners and down hallways.  My favorite shots are the ones that bend around corners – they’re so smooth and the angle they create are so interesting.  I also love how the film shows how isolated the hotel is.  There was one shot where Jack was sitting at his desk, his back facing us, and the shot, zooms back.  It doesn’t actually zoom, but it tracks back and makes the space bigger.  It was a beautiful shot and it emphasized how alone they really were.

I also have to bring up the suspense that the movie builds.  The flashes of the dead daughters and random scenes, such as the bloody elevator or woman in room 237’s bathroom, they really get to you.  And the fact that they held onto the flashed scenes of the girls just a little bit longer than a second, made me want to keep watching it over and over again.  And no matter what Jack Nicholson is doing in this movie, he is scaring me.  I don’t think I ever was not afraid of him.  His eyes search the room erratically, his tongue sticks out, he begins to bald and does not shave.  Everything about Jack Nicholson in this movie, is terrifying.  His son, Danny, and Danny’s imaginary friend “Tony” are equally terrifying.  If possession isn’t scary enough already, just make a child possessed.

One last thing I noted was the awesome sound for this film.  Whether it was the horrifying music with the most high-pitched, horribly piercing notes ever, or, Danny’s tricycle wheels moving from wood floor to carpet seamlessly, the music and sound for this film makes the movie.  I highly recommend this film for anyone who wants to look at something visually awesome, while they’re getting their pants scared off of them.

Probably would have slept better if this is what the movie was actually about…