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Cinema School Log
April, 2004
Monday, April 5th to Thursday, April 8th � Spring Break, so no classes. No one will call it Easter Break, though, probably because of the religious significance. Except for Geuens, who calls it Easter Break repeatedly and unapologetically. Its an endearing characteristic.
Monday, April 12th � No class today, because of the completion of my physical editing. Only computer now. Sad. But I get to see my family. Happy.
Tuesday, April 13th � Midterm exam today. Went pretty well, I think. Pretty confusing stuff, though, what with F-stops going up, FCs going down, shutter angles and the like. The rest of class was pretty drab, actually. Spent a lot of time talking about film logs, and slates. Important stuff, to be sure. But not particularly exciting. The class definitely seems to be breaking into two groups, though. A few of us talk, ask questions, and interact. The rest take notes. Geuens tries to get them involved by asking them questions point-blank�with only moderate success. I can�t tell if its because they don�t care, or because they think its too easy. Interesting to watch, one way or the other�
Wednesday, April 14th � We watched a whole bunch of Gunsmokes day. 24 of them, to be exact. And most of them were solid, if unspectacular. People seemed to have a pretty good feel for cutting the picture, but the sound work was fairly spotty. Some where actually terrible, though. I would say that people had a lot of trouble with the manual part of the work�the actual cutting and splicing, and using the flatbeds. I bet people will do a lot better once we get into the computer lab. But apparently its still much easier to get a job as an editor if you have some actual �mechanical� experience. It means you have a more ordered mind, in many cases. Apparently.
Thursday, April 15th � Got pretty mixed reactions on my script draft from Tom and Tanya today. Tanya thought it was far too wordy, too many action lines. Tom, on the other hand, really likes scripts that tell him what he�s seeing. After some disagreement, they agreed that is was well written, but probably described things in more detail than necessary. So, I guess I�ll have to go through and try to eliminate excessive comments. I�d rather do that then try to flesh out something I�ve already finished thinking about. Part of it is that I tend to think very visually in my scripts, so I include a lot of reactions and little movements of one kind or another that strengthen the characters I�m writing about. But I guess that�s not acceptable, finally. The polishing begins.
Monday, April 19th � See the last couple of Mondays for an explanation�
Tuesday, April 20th � I got my midterm back today, with a 19/20. Not too bad. But then I found out that there was only one perfect score, apparently. So then I felt even better. It confirms my opinion that I�m in the top third or so. For class itself, we went over the exam. And then we spent some time watching a film on Dogma 95. I have decided that its stupid. I don�t believe in rules for the sake of rules. That just seems stupid. And I really don�t think there is any conflict between beauty and realism. Von Trier seems to be forcing people to make ugly films with these rules. Bleh.
Wednesday, April 21st � We started editing in iMovie today. And people seemed way more comfortable. OK, make that some people. There are a couple of folks in the class that seem uncomfortable no matter what. I find myself wondering why they are even trying to do this. The stress they impose on themselves for the least little thing makes me wonder how they could possibly survive on the �ruthless� Hollywood scene. But maybe its because they really love film. So I guess I�ll cut them a little slack.
Thursday, April 22nd � We had more pitches today in Screenwriting. But mostly we just listened to a bunch of completed scripts from people. Mostly OK; nothing that really excited me, though. There is a strong tendency to make comedies, which doesn�t interest me much. Especially since they�re all pretty broad comedies. My least favorite kind. �I know, I know! What if we have a dog bite him, or something. That�d be hilarious!� Oh, well. Tom gave me an A on my latest draft, but he still wants me to work on the last 3 pages. He thinks that it lacks punch, and I can see what he�s getting at. I�ll see what I can come up with over the weekend. I also discovered that people can move on without getting A�s. So that�s encouraging. I�m going to have an A on both of my scripts. Maybe I�ll ask him if I can pitch him some feature length ideas, as well. Once I�m done with this one.
Monday, April 26th � No class, again.
Tuesday, April 27th � Today was the day we were supposed to pass in our first film for Cinematography class. And so, I started down to do just that. But, there was an accident on the 5 right around Burbank. And the traffic was backed up onto the 126. Which meaning it would probably have taken me about 5-6 hours to get to class. I decided I didn�t want to do that. I went home. My family was pleased. I was hot and tired from being in the car for 2 hours before deciding to do this�and before I could turn around.
Wednesday, April 28th � In editing class today, I spent the first 15 minutes finishing off the Hawaii 5-0 footage we had. Pretty straight-forward, really. Not too exciting. But it featured some truly terrible acting. I hope I never have to watch the series. So then I started on the Bank Robbery editing. Nothing too exciting there, except we have about 13 minutes of footage. And we need it to be about 2 minutes long. So there�s going to be some serious cutting. I notice that a lot of people are starting to use the �speed� tool. They speed up and slow footage down. I hate that. Its like creating a fake mood; one that you couldn�t get in the actual shoot. I think that�s a big part of the reason why people have so much trouble with film nowadays. They don�t really have complete thoughts before they start shooting. They figure they�ll just �fix it in post.� Bah!
Thursday, April 29th � I finished off my second script to Tom�s satisfaction today. He had me read the last couple of pages to the class, and they generally considered it to be more effective. I also cut down about 4-5 pages, so Tanya was pleased. Tom also said he�d be happy to look over some feature length ideas from me. That should be a frightening, but helpful experience.