Being a Filmmaker

This class has taught me a lot about what it takes to be a filmmaker.  It is more than I thought, but I very much enjoy it.  I did not realize all the work that goes into making these films.  They are things I was taught to do, that I never even knew existed.  Editing is something that I am still trying to get better on.  It is all about learning the software.  Doing the wild card project was my favorite assignment in the class and I am very lucky to have been the director.  Musical films are what I want to make, so I am glad I had the opportunity to do this.  I learned the leadership skills and the patience it takes to be the director.

Wild Card Assignment Pre-visualization Matarial

Suddenly Seymour Budget

BUDGET
Suddenly Seymour – Wild Card Project A short, student production film Running time: 5min Based on a 10 day shooting schedule and a 1 week editing schedule.
	QTY	COST	Total
A. SCRIPT & STORY
Script & Story	1	$0.00
Storyboarding	1	$0.00
			$0.00
B. TALENT
Director (Brandon Butorovich)	1	$0.00
Actors	2	$0.00
Back-up Singers	3	$0.00
			$0.00
C. PRODUCTION PERSONNEL
Cinematographer (Victoria Foley)	1	$0.00
Sound Person (Luqi Zhao)	1	$0.00
Producer (Lydia Plantamura)	1	$0.00
			$0.00
D. EQUIPMENT
Camera Package (Sony NEX VG20)	1	$0.00
H4N	1	$0.00
Tripod	1	$0.00
Shot Gun Mic & Shock mount	1	$0.00
FST 201 Light Kit Gels E. LOCATION EXPENSES Location (Residential Home) F. COSTUME & PROPS Eye Glasses (Seymour) Flowers Plant Watering Pitcher Costumes	1 6 1 1 6 2 1 5	$0.00 $25.00 $0.00 $5.00 $6.00 $5.00 $0.00 $0.00 Final Total:	$25.00 $0.00 $16.00 $41.00

Wild Card Project

For our Wild Card Project I am the Director!  Directing is what I really want to do, so I am very excited for this project.  Musical Films are what I want to make.  I would like to film the musical number Suddenly Seymour, from Little Shop of Horrors.  Little Shop is written by Alan Menken, and Howard Ashman.  It is one of my favorite musicals.   I pitched the idea to my other group members and they all liked it and were excited to do it as well, which made me very happy.  As the director I plan to learn about the leadership it takes to direct a crew in a film project.  I plan to stay organized with a clear vision.  I am excited to be the director in the project because we have complete freedom in what we want to do.  Since we are doing a musical, we have freedom to be theatrical and creative with lighting, sounds, props, and costumes, to name a few.

Visions

Visions Film Festival was very fun.  I got up early and attended the Keynote Address.  The Keynote speaker was Kiva Reardon.  Reardon has a B.A. in Cultural Studies and a M.A. in Cinema Studies.  I enjoyed listening about how to she got to where she is.  It was very encouraging and inspiring to me. 

            Kiva Reardon is the creator of her own film journal.  She is the founder and editor of Cleo Journal, which is a quarterly digital journal of film and film culture informed by feminist perspectives. 

            Kiva Reardon and I may not have the same career goals, but it was nice to listen to sometime talk about how they got to where they are, the struggles they faced, and how they overcame things.  

I really enjoyed the the film Caught by Bruce X. Li.  He was from NYU and wasn't able to come to visions.  I wish he was because I would have loved to ask him questions.  I thought the idea for the film was truly original.  I remember in elementary school how serious it was if you brought Pokemon cards to school, even worse, how serious it was if you got caught!  I enjoyed the way they filmed it.  I also enjoyed the animated film Peck Pocketed by Kevin C. Herron.  Again they were not here to the Q&A.  I thought the animation was very well done.  Seeing these films makes me excited to continue in the my degree Films Studies Department.  I am so proud of my school hosting this conference and I am excited to be a filmmaker. 

Editing 3b

Our group had a lot of fun editing 3b.  There was so many different ways our group could have taken the project.  One word that really stuck out to me from our sentence was horror.  A lot of the sounds that were recorded had a creepy aspect to them, a door shutting, violins, fork scratching plate, the list goes on.  We wanted to really utilize that and tell a story.  We wanted to included the farting noise, because we all thought it was great, but we were worried  that it wasn't going to work well in our edit, and it would feel out of place.  After discussion we decided to keep it, and we left it out of our second edit.